Alexander Hamilton (48 page)

It was typical of Hamilton’s egotism, expansive imagination, and supernormal intellect that he refused to settle for refinements on somebody else’s plan. His mind had minted an entire program for a new government, not just scattered aspects of it. In future years, he reminded critics that the deliberations had been kept secret precisely so that delegates could provoke debate and voice controversial ideas without fear of reprisals. Instead, his speech acquired diabolical status in the rumor mills of the early republic, providing gloating opponents with damning proof of his supposed political apostasy.

Though we have no written transcript of the speech, the sometimes conflicting notes left by Hamilton, Madison, Yates, Lansing, and Rufus King agree in most essentials. Ever since his September 1780 letter to James Duane, Hamilton had toyed with creating a new hybrid form of government that would have the continuity of a monarchy combined with the liberties of a republic, guarding against both anarchy and tyranny. He now suggested a president and Senate that would be elected but would then serve for life on “good behavior.” Hamilton’s chief executive differed from a hereditary monarch because he would be elected and, if he misbehaved, subject to recall. “It will be objected probably that such an executive will be an
elective monarch
and will give birth to the tumults which characterize that form of gov[ernmen]t,” Madison scribbled as Hamilton declaimed. “He w[oul]d reply that
monarch
is an indefinite term. It marks not either the degree or duration of power.”
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It scarcely helped Hamilton’s historical reputation that in his personal notes he observed of this monarch, “He ought to be hereditary and to have so much power that it will not be his interest to risk much to acquire more.”
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Hamilton edited this from his talk, however, and never openly advocated a hereditary monarchy, as evidenced by Madison’s reference to an “
elective monarch.
” And nowhere else in Hamilton’s vast body of work does he support a hereditary executive. Even here, in his most extreme statement, he called for a chief executive subject to ultimate legislative control. However atrociously misguided the idea was, it fell short of proposing a real monarchy, in which a king has permanent, autonomous, hereditary powers that supersede those of all other branches of government.

While Hamilton’s Senate would be chosen for life by electors, his House of Representatives, by contrast, was exceedingly democratic, chosen directly by universal male suffrage every three years. Thus, the aristocratic element would be represented by the Senate, the common folk by the House. As prosperity widened income differentials in future years, Hamilton feared that the Senate and House might try to impose their wills on each other: “Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many.”
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The system needed an impartial arbiter to transcend class warfare and regional interests, and here Hamilton muddied the waters by using the dreaded word
monarch:
“This check is a monarch…. There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current.”
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Fearing aristocrats as well as commoners, Hamilton wanted to restrain abusive majorities
and
minorities. “Demagogues are not always
inconsiderable
persons,” he responded to one Madison speech. “Patricians were frequently demagogues.”
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To curb further abuse, Hamilton recommended a Supreme Court that would consist of twelve judges holding lifetime offices on good behavior. In this manner, each branch would maintain a salutary distance from popular passions. The House of Representatives would be the striking exception. Hamilton concluded, “The principle chiefly intended to be established is this—that there must be a permanent
will.
”
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No less inflammatory to some listeners was Hamilton’s assessment of the former mother country. “In his private opinion,” Madison recorded, “he had no scruple in declaring…that the British Gov[ernmen]t was the best in the world and that he doubted much whether anything short of it would do in America.”
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For future conspiracy theorists, this admission clinched the case: Hamilton was a dangerous traitor, ready to sell America back into bondage to Britain. In fact, admiration for the British political system was still widespread. At one point, Pierce Butler of South Carolina remarked that the delegates were “constantly running away with the idea of the excellence of the British parliament and with or without reason copying from them.”
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But Hamilton’s detractors were to interpret his view as one of uniquely servile adoration for the British system, with a desire to import it to America.

When he finished, Hamilton received a polite smattering of applause. Perhaps the delegates were glad to escape the heat and head for their lodgings. Gouverneur Morris extolled Hamilton’s speech as “the most able and impressive he had ever heard.”
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William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut said that Hamilton’s speech “has been praised by everybody [but]…supported by none.”
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Years later, John Quincy Adams lauded the plan as one “of great ability” and even better in theory than the one adopted, however misplaced in an American setting.
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How had Hamilton blundered into this speech? That Hamilton had an abiding fear of mob rule did not distinguish him from most delegates. What did distinguish him was that his fears had triumphed so completely over his hopes. He was so busy clamping checks and balances on potentially fickle citizens that he did not stop to consider the potential of the electorate. Hamilton often seemed a man suspended between two worlds. He never supported a nobility, hereditary titles, or the other trappings of aristocracy. He never again uttered a kind word for monarchy. Still, he wondered whether republican government could withstand popular frenzy and instill the deep respect for law and authority that obtained in monarchical systems and that would safeguard liberties. Too often, his political vision harked back to a past in which well-bred elites made decisions for less-educated citizens. This contradicted the advanced economic thinking expressed in his vision of a fluid, meritocratic elite, open to talented outsiders such as himself.

Incorrigibly honest, Hamilton must have felt duty bound to provide an alternative to the Virginia and New Jersey plans, which he thought certain to fail. He must have believed that, if no consensus was reached, his speech would be dusted off and its merits belatedly better appreciated. Until then, he would rely on the secrecy of the proceedings. Hamilton wasn’t the only delegate who offered harebrained ideas. At one point, Hugh Williamson of North Carolina claimed that it was “pretty certain that we should at some time or other have a king.”
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Four states even voted for Hamilton’s proposal of a president serving “during good behavior,” most notably the Virginia delegation that included James Madison, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph. When later taunted by the Jeffersonians, Hamilton was pleased to remind them that Madison, too, had favored such a president. If he was a monarchist, so was Madison. Madison also insisted upon giving the federal government a veto over state laws “as the King of Great Britain heretofore had.”
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Benjamin Franklin wanted a unicameral legislature and an executive council in lieu of a president. He also opposed a presidential veto on legislation, thinking it would lead to executive corruption “till it ends in monarchy.”
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John Dickinson wanted state legislatures to have the power to impeach the president. Elbridge Gerry wanted a three-man “presidency,” with each member representing a different section of America. Though not a delegate, John Adams thought hereditary rule inevitable and prophesied, “Our ship must ultimately land on that shore.”
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For the great majority of delegates, Hamilton’s speech was just a daylong respite from the fierce infighting at hand. The next morning, nobody even took time to refute Hamilton. Madison feared that Hamilton’s speech would alienate small states at a critical moment. In fact, Madison’s Virginia Plan may have profited from Hamilton’s speech because it now seemed moderate by comparison. (Some scholars have argued that this was the true intent of Hamilton’s speech.) When Madison rose to speak, he made no reference to Hamilton’s oratory and consigned it to temporary oblivion. Instead, he mercilessly dissected the New Jersey Plan.

Though Hamilton’s plan was doomed, its effects were to linger long after the delegates had dispersed. Till the end of his days, opponents dredged up the speech, as if it embodied the
real
Hamilton, the
secret
Hamilton, as if he had blurted out the truth in a moment of weakness. In fact, nobody fought harder or more effectively for the new Constitution than Hamilton, who never wavered in his resolution to support it. The June 18 speech was to prove one of three flagrant errors in his career. In each case, he was brave, detailed, and forthright on a controversial subject, as if laboring under some compulsion to express his inmost thoughts. Each time, he was spectacularly wrongheaded and indiscreet, yet convinced he was right. Only one thing was certain: this verbose, headstrong, loose-tongued man made poor material for the conspirator conjured up by his enemies.

After his controversial speech, Hamilton lapsed into temporary silence as the large and small states squared off in a tense deadlock. It seemed the divided convention might collapse. When Franklin suggested on June 28 that each session start with a prayer for heavenly help, Hamilton countered that this might foster a public impression that “embarrassments and dissensions within the convention had suggested this measure.”
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According to legend, Hamilton also rebutted Franklin with the jest that the convention didn’t need “foreign aid.”
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The Lord did not seem much in evidence at this point in the convention. One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word
God
from the Constitution, he replied, “We forgot.” One is tempted to reply that Alexander Hamilton never forgot anything important.

On June 29, Hamilton mustered the will to speak again, voicing grave anxiety over the stalemated convention: “It is a miracle that we [are] now here exercising our tranquil and free deliberations on the subject. It would be madness to trust to future miracles.”
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Hamilton seized the chance to enunciate his first major statement on foreign policy, noting that great nations follow their interests and contesting the chimerical view that America should concentrate on domestic tranquillity while disregarding its interests abroad: “No governm[en]t could give us tranquillity and happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.”
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He also combated the fantasy that the Atlantic Ocean would protect America from future conflicts. With these fighting words, Hamilton splashed a cold dose of realism on the sentimental isolationism of the time.

After delivering these thoughts, Hamilton packed up and returned to New York the next day to attend to personal business. He was “seriously and deeply distressed” by the convention, he wrote to Washington. As he traveled back through New Jersey, he gathered impressions that reinforced his conviction that only tough, fearless measures could stem the country’s chaos. “I fear that we shall let slip the golden opportunity of rescuing the American empire from disunion, anarchy, and misery,” he informed Washington.
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The warring New York delegation shortly fell apart. By July 6, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., had expressed their disgust with the convention by also leaving Philadelphia. Members had come and gone before, but the two New York delegates were the first to depart irrevocably on principle. Washington, aggrieved, wrote to Hamilton: “I
almost
despair of seeing a favourable issue to…the Convention and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business.” He inveighed against “narrow-minded politicians…under the influence of local views,” who would selfishly block “a strong and energetic government” under the guise of protecting the people. Washington did not seem fazed by Hamilton’s June 18 speech. “I am sorry you went away,” he assured him. “I wish you were back.”
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On July 16, the thick gloom finally lifted at Philadelphia when delegates agreed to a grand bargain, the so-called Connecticut Compromise, proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut and others. The major conflicts at the convention had perhaps hinged less on the question of federal versus state power than on how federal representation was apportioned among the states. The delegates solved this baffling riddle by deciding that all states would enjoy equal representation in the Senate (a sop to small states) while representation in the House of Representatives would be proportionate to each state’s population (a sop to large states). This broke the deadlock, though the Senate’s composition introduced a lasting political bias in American life in favor of smaller states.

Left in limbo by Yates and Lansing, Hamilton drifted back and forth between New York and Philadelphia that summer. “Yates and Lansing never voted
in one single instance
with Hamilton, who was so much mortified at it that he went home,” George Mason told Thomas Jefferson. “When the season for courts came on, Yates, a judge, and Lansing, a lawyer, went to attend their courts. Then Hamilton returned.”
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With Yates and Lansing gone, Hamilton still could not vote because each state needed a minimum of two delegates present, so he became a nonvoting convention member. Yet he no longer had to appease delegates from his own state. Hamilton behaved civilly toward Yates and Lansing, telling them that “for the sake of propriety and public opinion” he would gladly accompany them back to Philadelphia.
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Needless to say, neither ever took him up on the offer.