Books: How Alexander Hamilton Set America Back

As time progresses and memory fades into legend, heroes’ rough edges and imperfections may be obscured by history’s mists. In his new book How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America, Brion McClanahan, a conservative author and speaker, takes up the task of separating the myths surrounding Alexander Hamilton—including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s  recent Broadway play, inserting the president into popular culture—from the truth.

Although his footnoting and documentation is impeccable, McClanahan’s critical analysis of Hamilton’s legacy is perhaps too thorough, leaving one wondering if some American heroes’ hagiographies should not be scrutinized.

A History of Government Expansionism

McClanahan traces how Hamilton, his Supreme Court appointees John Marshall and Joseph Story, and a more contemporary disciple of the Hamiltonian philosophy, Supreme Court Chief Justice Hugo Black—for increasing the federal government’s power at the state’s expense.

Hamilton redefined the American relationship between the government and the governed, McClanahan writes, telling their contemporaries one thing and doing another, once in power.

“To be blunt, Hamilton’s ‘American nation’ is little more than a fraud. Step by step, Hamilton refocused the way even men of his own generation thought about the central government. He sold them a bill of goods during ratification and then pulled the rug out from under them once in power. His arguments in favor of ‘loose construction’ forged the constitutional underpinnings of every Supreme Court decision that upheld his agenda, both during the Marshall Court and into the twenty-first century. … The United States Constitution was never intended to be interpreted the way Hamilton, Marshall, Story, and Black insisted it was during their political and legal careers. The evidence is all against them.”

Dramatic Reenactments Criticized

My primary criticism of How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America is McClanahan’s dramatization of pivotal debates to which no primary records exist. Video cameras and audio recordings of the Constitution’s writing don’t exist, and C-SPAN did not gain access to a time machine for broadcasting Congressional debates. The inclusion of such details may make for gripping reading, but they detract from the book’s non-fictional purpose. Because such audiovisual details are not provable, they exist solely in the author’s imagination.

The Primary Charge

McClanahan’s primary indictment in the case against Hamilton is the creation of a national banking system, a creation clearly uncalled for—or perhaps, even allowed—by the United States Constitution.

The loose interpretation of the Constitution favored by Hamilton and, McClanahan writes, facilitated easier expansion of federal power, breaking open the dam for future generations of lawmakers to build upon his work empowering Washington DC.

“Hamilton’s proposals to Congress for the reorganization of American finances rested on the creation of a central banking system,” McClanahan writes. “To men like Hamilton …, the United States had not yet moved beyond the financial calamities of the American War for Independence. The wounds were still raw and to them, American finances were no better off in 1790 than they were in 1781.”

Behind-The-Scenes Intrigue

Another milestone along the route McClanahan along which traces America’s decline is the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, a pivotal moment defining the relationship between states and the federal government.

Although the Rebellion’s official trigger was the federal government’s assertion of taxation powers, Hamilton saw the Rebellion as a manifestation of foreign powers meddling in American affairs, McClanahan writes.

“As much as domestic issues plagued the formation of the new American government under the Constitution, it was the broiling troubles with France and Great Britain that set the stage for the transformational political conflicts of the 1790s,” McClanahan writes. “The Whiskey Rebellion cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Certainly, hard feelings over what frontier farmers considered unjust and illegal taxation had started the scuffle, but to Hamilton and other members of his faction, these backwoods tax dodgers filled with liquid courage were simply a manifestation of French Jacobins who intended to erect guillotines on American soil to start lopping off heads, maybe even his own.”

Hamilton’s desire to maneuver the United States towards Great Britain and away from France, McClanahan argues, led to the creation of the unilateral executive, in which the President—not Congress—was the go-between for foreign relations.

In “Pacificus Number 1,” published on July 29, 1793, McClanahan writes, Hamilton explained this new theory of government, one much different from the explanation given to the states’ representatives, during the Constitution’s ratification.

“Hamilton concluded that the ‘Executive Power’ being vested in a president of the United States of America implied that its powers were ‘subject only to the exceptions and qu[a]lifications which are expressed in the instrument.’ Executive power was unlimited except for those “qualifications” where Congress had a concurrent role, namely ‘the participation of the Senate in the appointment of Officers and the making of Treaties’ and ‘the right of the Legislature to “declare war and grant letters of marque and reprisal.”’ This was not how the executive branch was sold to the states during ratification, nor how it was presented in the Philadelphia Convention in 1787.”

A Well-Researched Retelling

If one enjoys reading about America and one of the great men who built her, I absolutely recommend picking up How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America, even though I disagree with the book’s presentation. There is no question about the quality of the author’s scholarship, supported by hundreds of references—it’s the conclusions and characterizations with which I find fault.

How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America is a thought-provoking, well-researched critique of Hamilton’s legacy. Readers looking for a challenge to their assumptions and knowledge of American history are well-served by the book, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the opinions following the facts.