c-span 3 as a public service. selected by president george, washington in 1789 alexander hamilton served as the first secretary of the treasury until january 1795. up next on american history tv historian and author william hogeland talks about alexander hamilton's financial ideas. this discussion is about 50 minutes. now while the museum the gallery of the museum is closed because of flood that we sustained our robust programming continues as evidenced by today and our author who is speaking is william hogeland. he's written multiple books on early us history including autumn of the black snake declaration the whiskey

rebellion and founding finance. he's also the author of a recent publication are not author. he is a contributor i should say to recent publication historians on hamilton. he's also penned many essays and articles that you can read in places like the atlantic monthly salon the new york times boston review huffington post, but none more important than our own magazine financial history. you can find that magazine at www.moaf.org for museum. american finance so it should be no surprise that the topic of williams. next book is alexander hamilton. it's my pleasure to introduce him william hogeland. thanks a lot. i know the acoustics in here boom a little bit. can anyone hear me? okay. thank you.

that's good to know. i think some of you know that maybe it's a little bit. i'm a little bit of a fish out of water here. i would like to point out that the museum of american finance has had me speak. this is the third time in fact my very first ever talk on alexander hamilton and other related issues was sponsored by the museum from my very first book and that was back in 2006. so it's a big i think some of you already know that my you know, it's celebrate hamilton time right now and celebrate is not exactly what i do generally speaking. i those of you know my work know that i think critically and i write critically i write and think critically about everything because that's just how i think people sometimes think because i'm not celebrating that i'm filled with hatred for these people that i write about you don't spend your life in the company of these people because you hate them but none us for those of you who

don't know my stuff you'll note the irony of some of my approaches here. we are at the here. we are in the federal building. and here's here. we are on wall street. we could say we're conveniently located right now at the corner of money and government. and what i want to talk about is how hamilton began to form those connections between money and the united states government. and so i don't talk so much about some of the things that have sparked such great interest lately for the obvious reason of the phenomenal cultural event. that is the musical. i don't talk about dueling. i don't talk about his relationships with his family members. i don't talk about his infidelity. i i feel like a lot of people dueled. i think you know that some of you have looked into this. i think you've read about it. hopefully in joanne freeman's book. for example affairs of honor you can find out a lot about the

dueling culture. and of course a lot of people had family relationships and upbringings and all of the things that people have i'm interested in what made hamilton the dynamic force that he was that was not like what everyone else did if you know what i mean, so i'm looking very specifically at what i guess i would call and i'm not alone in calling it this the great sort of creative phenomenon that he was that occurred at a certain time. i'm going to date it 1782 to 1795. you could date it a little differently. i'm just going to pick that period and say something happened there where of course with all of the things that went into his his life before he arrived in the continental congress. he brought all that baggage and all that inspiration and everything that made him but something happened there that was different from what everyone else was doing things that he

saw that others. he was not alone in this but things that he saw that others did not necessarily see dreams that he had visions that he had that others did not necessarily have and some were very much opposed to he saw also the nuts and bolts on a level that literally i think no one else saw it how to bring those dreams about and then there are the lengths that he went to in action sometimes quite unsettling lengths i think. to bring those things about so the decisive effects that he had on the founding a and b on how we think about money and government today are what really fascinate me about hamilton and so for me, it's almost like he gets born in 1782 the phenomenon that i'm talking about the creative force that i'm talking about starts about there. and i'm looking at the arc of an action not just thinking and not just ideas. but action that has some a very

compelling drama to it some of which is as we say today frequently highly problematic, but nonetheless without which we might not be here as the nation that we are. in a sense hamilton created the nation. in an economic sense, but the thing is that story the details of that story get left out. you wouldn't think they get left out since it's the reason he's famous, of course as secretary of the treasury first ever secretary of the treasury, you wouldn't think they get left out because there's been a lot of biographies of hamilton and yet you know, they do get left out because people i mean not here museum of american finance on sarah lee, but people don't like to hear necessarily the word the economic nation. or the word finance. i am writing a book on this subject and my agent said to me

when i was sort of pitching it to him. i kept i'd say, you know the financial ego don't say finance. you know, we're trying to we're trying to pitch a book here that people might want to read don't say finance and i'm like right i got you. so. and then every so often a little buzzer goes off when i happen to say the word like no, it's not finance because it's really, you know to hamilton, of course he would use the word but no our connotations with that. are not his you know to hamilton this is money power wealth greatness size scope expansion. things that are actually highly active and dramatic greatness. i just i guess i just use that word. i mean like dominance making the nation into america the empire and that's a word he would use that's so what many of his contemporaries in this area making it into the great thing that he envisioned very early that it could be.

so when you say economic nation well to him, you know, that's the nation that's the nation in a lot of ways and a lot of ways. i think he was right about that. so what gets left out when people say oh then he did all these things but it kind of gets buried in like all the other things about his life. i've called it for the purposes of this talk. anyway something we could describe as the hamilton scheme the hamilton scheme. i think i have water here somewhere. yes, i do. um, okay the hamilton scheme. scheme is obviously a loaded term. can mean a plan any kind of sort of plot of something a schema just it can be kind of value neutral. but of course we also use it to mean. a scheme he's scheming in the back room. aha. i might nefarious plans. you know that kind of thing. well it when we talk about hamilton we have to talk about the fact that he did have a major plan it goes beyond even

plan an incredible sort of vision and also a nuts and bolts engineering kind of thing going on to build a country that could do the dynamic explosive things. he wanted to see it do but of course there were also other people who saw it as a scheme. of corruption a scheme designed to destroy democracy and so the various uses of the word scheme. i throw in here just because i think in this very room no doubt and if you go around talking to other people outside this room about hamilton, you will get a wide variety of views on this whether it was a scheme in a good sense or a scheme and a bad sense. um so that's what i want to try and tell you about today how the scheme worked and we can think about you can all think about you all probably have before whether you think it's a what kind of scheme you think it is. um, i think when i set up the kind of invitation to this talk in the description about what i was going to be doing i promised a kind of efficient 45 minute

trip through everything single thing. you would need to know about the hamilton scheme. i now realized as i began to approach this talk that that was a slight exaggeration or more like maybe a bold-faced lie because there's no way in the time that we have here today to go do a deep dive on every one of these topics or even on any one of them what i'm really going to do now that i've lured you all in here with my sales pitch. what i'm really gonna do is actually give you a kind of superficial jumping glancing sense of what what the various topics are. and on any one of them, you know at other times maybe we could do a deeper dive and look more closely at how it all worked and then i can actually back up some of the things i'm saying instead of just saying them which is really what i'm going to do today. so realize that the sales pitch was a was a sales pitch and that we're actually going to get a kind of more general view of what i think the hamilton scheme involves.

one thing that's funny. is that since he became treasury secretary under washington and of course put his scheme into effect in the first half of the 1790s that actually i'm going to focus today much more on the 1780s because that's when he developed the scheme and that's when the issues that drove him and the opposition to it also began to form and this tension that we still have today in our society about money and government began to form. so while there was a lot to say about what he did in the 1790s to get at what he was really trying to do in the 1790s. you actually have to go back to his first efforts in politics in the 1780s, i think and see him develop it and figure out what really should be going on if you could ever get himself into power and into a position to bring it about so somewhat surprisingly. maybe i will be focusing in the time that we have largely on what he did in the 1780s to develop the scheme.

so in seven, he comes to the continental congress. right after his service in the war the revolutionary war the war of independence. and again, here's something i don't really talk much about or think too much about you know, yorktown everyone knows about it now and the ridout and the defense of their doubt and all that sort of stuff, you know to me that's all pre that's like juvenileia or something like now he comes to do what he's really gonna do that other people couldn't do and didn't do he comes to the continental congress which at that time was meeting meeting and again in philadelphia. interesting because the war is coming is going to be over quite soon. and so with the war almost over the revolution almost over victory in a sense on the horizon. well, we might think oh and out of this. of course, it's great victory. we comes this fantastic building of nationhood the country's now going to emerge from independence fully unified ready to take on the world.

what's actually happening as he arrives in the continental congress? is that the -- because of because of the wars about to end the countries about to fall apart? that's because what's holding this country together this these various states these various entities. they are confederated. they are not a nation. what's holding them together is this war has been this war what the unity of the country is really around this war. so what hamilton sees when he comes to congress is that actually it's all about to crash and burn. and there's such incredible potential to do something different to actually pull it all together and create an amazing new phenomenon a growing expanding even imperial phenomenon. that's a pretty outlandish thing to envision actually for a 20 something year old man arriving, you know with his elders and superiors many of whom were committed to a completely different visions from that at that time, but he did begin to see it. he was not alone in that he had

a mentor in that whole vision robert morris. a name that is that while it's known. i believe at the museum of american finance is not actually widely known by people who see the show or even read many of the bios because morris is a problematic character for a lot of for a lot of reasons. he becomes hamilton's i think most important mentor in this area that i'm interested in i should say because of course there are other areas of hamilton's life the area of his creative period but morris is a difficult character sometimes for us to deal with because while he was the financier of the revolution, that's how he's known and he certainly was that spending his own vast wealth on financing the revolution out of his own pocket. the revolution has some people say also financed him. he did not have any problem with mingling private and public funds. he was a shipper and a merchant and probably the richest man in america casually corrupt obese

witty charming and quite a character and really the first major banker the country had and this was someone who hamilton who saw the brilliance of hamilton the young hamilton and to whom hamilton gravitated they're looking at the issue of how to keep the country together. and what we're really talking about here here is is how to keep the country together as a as a political force, but the way they saw it and this was the genius of the way they saw that had to do with keeping the country together as a kind of an economic phenomenon a financial phenomenon. what they were talking about here is what is known as the revolutionary war debt. which is to say in very simple, i mean, it's an incredibly complicated topic and you when i've studied it like smoke comes out of my ears as i try to get a handle on all the aspects of this debt, but you know the country needed money to fight the war the kind that the part of that that morris and hamilton were interested in took the form

of bonds paid bonds issued to a small number of very wealthy people of the robert morris type. who were expecting hoping? to get paid 6% interest on their bonds. remember there was no tax on that at the time. so that's a pretty nice rate of return and that was what was supposed to finance the war and these this was an interstate kind of investing class and interstate lending class. these were the merchants the people with actual money gold and silver or the equivalent in their possession. so the war debt and this is what's fascinating when people talk about debt now and about hamilton the war debt is what's pulling the country together as far as the people who envision a future for the country because you have all the richest people in the country or many of them invested in this in these bonds. so it's funny to think about national unity being equated

with you know war. public debt but that is the way they looked at it for obvious and cogent reasons. and what people say about hamilton frequently is, oh he was you know, he was confronted with all this debt after the revolutionary war as treasury secretary. he had to wrestle with this and try to you know, get it paid off because oh my god, they'd run up all this money. that is exactly the opposite of what happened in the 1780s as you actually also know probably hamilton's famous for funding the debt. and assuming in that debt the federal obligation all of the state debts funding and assumption hamilton funding assumption. everybody knows that funding a debt and paying off a debt are not the same thing. they're actually in some ways opposites. we know this when we make payments on our credit cards or whatever that we're not paying our credit cards off while we pay make the minimum payment. so this is a funny thing that's happened to hamilton's legacy. and it's not just that. most people don't get it or whatever. i'll read you something very

quickly from from the web the world wide web the internet if you just put in a few search terms around hamilton debt etc. can get this. paying for paying for the american revolutionary war was the start of the country's debt. true some of the founding fathers formed a group and borrowed money from france and the netherlands to pay for the war. well, that is also true, but that's where that particular entry stops on the war debt. we know. oh, yeah, john adams went over there and he negotiated blah blah blah. the foreign debt is not the critically important part of the debt the domestic debt to the rich americans i was just talking about is what are what is what drives the whole all the issues we still deal with today. it was substantially larger in numbers and overwhelmingly more important, but the fact that some website gets this wrong should not surprise anybody right except that this website is called treasury direct kids. it's supposed to educate kids about debt and fiscal matters. it's the bureau of the fiscal service, which is the department

of the us treasury, which is the department hamilton founded and it's describing his approach to debt in precisely wrong terms. what fascinated him what got him up in the morning was to us might sound boring public debt was a thrilling opportunity and it was the domestic debt. that means the debt to rich americans. that was the driver of everything. i've been trying to talk about. it's really kind of amazing. here's some liberal scholars writing a piece about something unrelated, but they're trying to you know, authoritatively fill you in on the background to hamilton and debt and they say the most pressing issue was what to do about the new nation's debt both the continental congress and the individual states had accumulated massive debts during the revolutionary war close to 80 million dollars an enormous amount in those days true. hamilton now secretary of the treasury one of the new federal government to assume the state's debts. yeah and them back in full. that's not funding. no. he wanted to keep it going for the obvious reason that you have all of the richest people in the

country invested in the country. so this sort of general sense of he came into office. oh my god, we've run up so much debt irresponsibly. i've got to pay it off. i don't know exactly where that comes from. but this is the if he heard that we were saying things like that. he'd be like wow all these years later and they still don't get the brilliance of what i was trying to bring about. and i don't know how he would feel about that. but i find it fascinating that we don't really want to know about his real relationship to the debt because he didn't. try to hide it it was not scheming like that. haha. they'll never know what i'm doing. he put forth in the most brilliant and cogent manner an entire program based on this very idea. so that's weird. now the risk to all this. visionary stuff that he and morris are working on. a central bank federal bonds getting the state debts into federal hands as well.

coalescing this massive economic force through government threat to all this in the 1780s early 1780s is guess what? peace? the absence of war um because this what is the congress going to do this is a meeting of sovereign supposedly. they think they're sovereign entities. they're not going to they're not going to make good on these bonds. they're not going to they might just ignore them or just cancel the debt. this is peace is definitely a problem and to the extent that robert morris is assistant wrote a letter to general washington. it's explicitly asking him if he could keep the war going a little longer so that we could get, you know, continue the unity of the country a longer around this debt. the idea of frequently with robert morris is when he got actually was able to get requisitions and get money pay the bondholders. it wasn't about paying the soldiers and the troops pay the bondholders and this might sound somewhat familiar. i mean if you don't pay the

bondholders if you force the bond holders to take too big of a haircut anarchy will prevail stability will falter first you pay the bondholders. that's how you keep things together. this idea is not new. this is an idea that robert morris had the idea was to get a tax going a national tax. there was no nation but a national style tax get the get the states to agree to go beyond the power as they had granted in the articles of confederation and put impose an impost. they called it on imported goods and morris told hamilton and others. this impost is just the beginning if we can get him to do that we can have other kinds of taxes too other kinds of domestic taxes as well. this is the vision for forming nationhood. you can tie the country together by collecting in an interstate manner taxes earmarked for federal bonds. now that doesn't sound exactly

like what we think of and we think of a unified american nation, but tomorrow's in hamilton brilliantly enough. that is what they thought would gather up all of this economic force all of this wealth all of his power and make it grow and become dynamic. um, so let's see now that's like a really skeletal idea of the things they began to develop in the 1780s. which hamilton far in a far more nuanced way. i believe than mars ever could have probably put into effect in the 1790s and now i'm going to check the watch to see how we're doing and what else we can talk about here about how this went. and sip some water while i cogitate. in the 1783 they this is hamilton to my to my mind because i see of course i see him being born in 1782, which is

my conceit about this whole thing his first formative political action on the country-wide stage was to involve himself in a conspiracy. maybe that's ten dentists could argue about that to threaten the continental congress threaten the states with a military coup. in order to bring about the very scheme. i've just described. and this came this was fortuitous providential in some ways that because the officer class had not been paid and they were very very fed up about that. they sent officers to philadelphia to demand payment. well, hamilton and morris and their crew are finding it very difficult to get this tax passed that will have the effect of creating this interstate sort of unification of the country around the bonds. they they seize on this opportunity that's presented by the angry officer class to suggest to the officer class that they should also become bondholders. they should join in the fight to

get the bonds funded via the tax if the officer class of the army were to refuse to lay down its arms with the coming of peace. well now you have the strongest lobby literally strongest that there is because now you've got an armed force behind this that this was a very dangerous thing to try to do as washington told hamilton a little later. this was this was a threat potentially to the republican nature of the country that was being supposedly being formed to the states. they did it though. they tried and again think of the incredible like audacity the incredible fearlessness the incredible ability to take risks with his future reputation, maybe even with his life. i mean his relationships now we'll go to his relationships for a second like his relationship with his father in law skyler if this had come to light in the way that it could have think of the think of the incredible high wire act. this was and hamilton goes so far as to try to get washington

involved and try to get him to lead this effort washington demers and yet fascinatingly when this whole thing, i mean what happened is by the way people say the newburgh crisis was a failure of a conspiracy. well in many ways it was washington was not dep. by the office by angry officers that the system continued the army happily continued under civilian command all that was good, but really what happened partly also was that the officer class did get added to the bond holding class. that was the compromise in the end in washington supported that so now you have the other component of the scheme, which is you have the armed forces. they the office of class of the armed forces involved in this very same economic dynamic relationship so you can see the newberg conspiracy as a failure, but in terms of what we're talking about regarding bringing forth the hamilton scheme conspiracy, he kind of sets the table in a way for what he's

going to do in the 1790s. he has a new relationship with george washington and you might think because washington council hamilton an army is a dangerous thing to play with i don't think i have that quote exactly right, but some of you probably know it you would think that washington had thought well this hamilton crazy, i got to stay away from him actually their correspondence after the newberg conspiracy is just a fascinating study in the dynamics of their always fascinating tents, but also all important relationship. they actually get closer after the newberg conspiracy in washington makes it clear to hamilton that he is 100% in favor of being sure that the country is put in a position and this is again leading toward nationhood nationalism. countries in a position to pay the public creditors, but by and that by which he means those same bondholders that were talking about this was a vision that washington shared. so coming out of newberg. we have this sort of picture of the hamilton scheme the concentration and growth of american wealth.

in a federal and a bonded government debt to the rich and obligation to the rich all in federal rather than state hands, which is what they were trying to do. it was hard and they were getting they felt they weren't getting anywhere sometimes an interstate mutual obligation to aligned with the interests of the rich the interest in the sense of interest payments on those bonds, but also the financial interests in general and the social interests. and now you've got the like if it's a puzzle you're trying to put together like in this system and make it perfect or complete is what perfect would have meant in the 18th century. you have the sort of the final click piece is like the concentration of military power in the same bonded debt. so this combines wealth with government with force actual literal force, and this leads sort of to the idea of tax collection kind of pulling the country together and actually tax enforcement pulling the country together. and there you have kind of the

basis i would say. of the hamilton scheme so i think here. we might begin to see how some people. at the time could consider this whole thing a bit of a scheme. a bit of a scam even and when i say the whole thing, i mean the american revolution the war of independence, i mean, what's about to happen which is the forming of the nation itself as a mechanism for enriching the rich at the expense of the poor and the ordinary you could see how some people might take that position given everything. i've just described hamilton had enemies. and i think you know that he had enemies because we know about the division in american culture that we're told is the sort of the fundamental division, which is jefferson versus hamilton, basically or jefferson and madison versus hamilton. but in the final few minutes that i'm going to be able to

talk. i want to tell you i just want to i just want to complicate that story a little bit. there are other enemies that come first, you know, we're still if we're still talking about the 1780s. um jefferson and hamilton were not enemies in the 1780s. they didn't really have anything to do with each other. you know, jefferson comes into the cabinet in hamilton comes into the cabinet and they're going to work together in the 1790s and you know, it's they didn't know they were going to be you know, you meet people in a new job. you're like, oh hi nice to meet you, you know excited to work with you help the ball team. well blah blah, then you realize this person is like my enemy and then you begin to realize this person's gonna ruin everything none of that had happened yet madison who became hamilton's really i think in some ways is more effective and enemy in in the legislature madison and hamilton were close allies in everything. i've just told you about except maybe the newberg thing. i'm pretty sure madison was not in on that part, but madison was very committed to all of the things we've just talked about and they were the two kind of

young hot shot lawyers in the continental congress pouring over the articles of confederation to find ways to expand the power the federal power, you know, madison was committed to the federal power and to nationhood and everyone. that only later did the differences between hamilton and madison become so overwhelming. the enemies that hamilton had in the 1780s are a group of people whose names are not super well known, but they represent a movement a populist movement, which had its own ideas about finance if i may use that word about money about american wealth about accountability to the people and they meant themselves the ordinary people. these are people frequently without the vote because of course you had to have property to have the vote and to run for office you had to have even more property. this they wanted the vote. they wanted to vote for white men. i'm talking about but they wanted the vote for white men without property. they didn't want to have the

property qualification because what they wanted to do was do things like breakup government monopolies fixed prices. stop. the foreclosures enable small-scale credit for ordinary people and in that sense build their own financial system in a more what they consider democratic way. without the vote they rioted they rescued people from debtors prison. they did all kinds of illegal things. and so we get this sort of torches and pitchforks idea of the mob at the time and for sure they tore down people's houses. you know, there was a there was a violence involved in this however along with the torches and pitchfork image, you know, they wrote resolutions. they wrote petitions they organized and they said what they wanted they said what they wanted and what they wanted actually is democracy. and of course, this is anathema to the founding generation of famous people famous founding generation. this is anathema because if you think about what that really meant at the time what the

populists wanted to do was break the connection between property. and participation citizenship in that sense not. i mean people were considered citizens, even if they couldn't vote, but they wanted to break the property connection between property and rights property and liberty. that is an ancient connection as far as the famous founders are concerned and breaking it is sort of like a horror show because then you have just you have mob rule you have anarchy these people's names are not names that have gone down in history the way the names of the famous founders are but i'm going to tell you some of them. anyway, just to get them on the record right here for this moment thomas young a doctor and sort of a professional and not anarchist just trouble them activists. i mean troublemaker james cannon a math teacher christopher marshall a pharmacist. they were both labor organizers william findley a weaver who became a lawyer and ended up entering the pennsylvania

assembly robert whitehall a middling farmer and herman husband who had a vision of an end of an entirely egalitarian society american society. he wanted of course to end slavery. stop stealing indian land, but he also believed and we're talking about he started running about this in like the 1760s and 1770s. he believed in progressive taxation. he believed there should be some form of taking care of people when they get too old to work which we might call social security. he wanted government credit programs full employment and the to dynastic wealth regulation they actually called it regulation of the power of wealth the thing about husband. i'd like to get this on the record too, and he was not alone among the populists of the day. he didn't he saw these things like literally he had the kind of mind like say maybe a saint joan or something like that where he actually saw these things he had literal visions everything. i just said which sounds sort of like the new deal in the great society. he saw that he spent his life on

an exegesis of the book of daniel. so hit the the populists were not in our terms necessarily. they were not all modern secular rational scientific liberal types. in fact, there's a certain illiberalism to use a term that's around right now about some of their visions illiberalism like say you might find in some of the abolitionist movement meaning you're speaking not to oh, you know, it's not like, oh we did a study, you know, and we find that it's much more effective if you don't have slavery. no, it's a hot. it's a high moral calling from a vision that from a vision that might that might seem outside the enlightenment vision that i'd say hamilton represents among others. so there's an opposition for you and of course we won't have time to get to the jefferson madison opposition, but i want to get this other triangulated piece in to complicate what was going on there with the hamilton scheme. it's about to get put into place. he's about to become in the constitution. he's about to become the secretary of the treasury.

and the opposition is this kind of the white working class of the day in an interesting scope between socialistic ideas and kind of small capitalist ideas in dire opposition to that and that's what sets off a lot of the explosions that i believe to end this on this note. before so we can get some q&a in here are still in many ways. with us today so i'm going to leave it at that and thank you for your very kind attention today. thanks a lot. as we're about to do the q&a. let me say one more thing. i want to because i'll forget i want to thank the museum of american finance for for its multi-time tolerance of my eccentric and uproarious approach to the whole hamilton problem and also the alexander hamilton awareness society. i don't know if you guys are still speaking to me after this,

but if you even if you're not i think you very much for your liberal. actually. i should say approach to these kind of dissenting views. thanks a lot. how are we doing this q&a? it's our microphone going around. hi, i have a proposal for nancy spanis. i run an american system now blog on hamilton the proposal for a substitute for the word finance credit. yeah, since hamilton's work was all devoted to the idea of public credit and i suggest that that gives a higher concept to the kind of machinations. he was carrying out because the purpose of the credit of wedding the financial class to the government was to develop the country. he had tremendous support from some working class people as you know from the constitutional. activities here in new york the great ship hamilton that was

sent down the broadway in support of the constitution because it was going to build the country. that's what i would suggest. yeah, i think credits are better word. i'm not sure it's going to sell copies of my book necessarily, but i think i agree with that. it's the more accurate term possibly. was hamilton a bondholder himself? you know, this is a really i'm glad this came up actually people spent a lot of time jefferson madison. oh, sorry. yeah. i thought that got through was hamilton himself a bondholder, which i think raises the question about personal corruption, right? i would like to make this clear. i think it's really interesting that while he hung out with a lot of the people who would very directly benefit. in fact, he thought he wanted to hang out with him. he wanted to encourage them and make things more sort of better for them. that's how he thought that's how he was building the country people spend a lot of time jefferson madison others trying to prove that hamilton was personally corrupt that he would

purse that he was personally skimming and would personally benefit from his own his own projects. i think it's so fascinating that they totally fail to prove that and i think they fail to prove it because his his vision was so much like robert morris was skimming and he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. and you know, i don't know if he hadn't i don't know if we'd be here right now, so i don't know but skimming for sure. he didn't even think of it as that as skimming hamilton had a much more vaulting vision. he wanted to author an empire. he wasn't looking to like get a few bucks on the side. so i'm glad that came up because i i think hit when people accused him of corruption, they should have been confused if they wanted to accuse him of corruption. they should have been a railing the system not his personal interest. yes. i guess to it sorry. okay, let's this gentleman's carrying a microphone. okay. there's another microphone then you sir? yes. sorry. go ahead. thank you for your lovely talk. i want to neighbors in st.

croix to get some insight into his early formative years. i have the greatest esteem for him. so i wondered if you could give us more information on the development of his character being born out of wedlock. he was denied access to christian education. i can't give you i can't well partly because as i've as i was saying, you know that aspect of his right is michael. that man in the back, he's got his hand up briefly. he can tell you everything i would say there is to know about that and he's working on that now, i guess as i've as i was saying, you know, my interest just doesn't lie in the backstory, you know, like even in i've talked about as relationship with washington for a second i could do a long deep dive on that. i find it one of the most fascinating relationships there is but i find i'm not interested in like how that might relate to his, you know, his father issues or whatever not because i don't think that's an interesting subject. it's just that you know again like i'm interested in my father

issues, you know if i knew some of you better i'd be interested in yours, but like everybody's got them, you know, so i'm always looking for the things about him that make him different but there are obviously whole other ways to look at this and michael has a lot of that information. sorry. the microphones been handed away and i don't think we can hear you, but we can come back. sorry. go ahead. how did the revolutionary war soldiers enlisted people fear under the under the scheme. i understand that the officers became bondholders, but how did the revolutionary war enlisted soldiers? how did they fare? there's a long complicated answer to that which i can't go into right now. so i'll make a short answer which is that they did not at least in their opinion fair very, well. they they did not they were not made gentlemen many many of them went home unpaid in the end and so they began to get a sense

whether you will agree with them or not that this whole thing this whole long seven years of war had been nothing for them and only for enriching the class of people who already rich who they already knew as their local creditors who they were already indebted to at at rates we would now consider us. and who were foreclosing their properties and so forth so you can see how this conflict would develop. the microphone anyone else? sorry, there's one over there. hi, we all. passed on the way in this statue of george washington out there and i can see it from where i'm at and behind him. there's this bundle of sticks wrapped up, which is a roman symbol for strength and unity, and they're called fascies. you know the the root word of fascism. yeah, so it's not useful, of course to call hamilton a

fascist but is what you're talking about the combination of financial power and military power. is it not on the spectrum? so to speak? yeah, you know, it's not useful to me. to use that term not partly because i don't think i know enough technically speaking about fascism to apply it also it's it's not an 18th century term. i think i've seen arguments where people are saying exactly what you're saying. it's on the spectrum if you're trying to if you're trying to enrich the richest x number of families and manage the economy in that way from the top down. maybe i just i guess i would go with your statement that it's not really useful partly because you know, whether it categorize categorizing is not really what i try to do when i'm talking when i'm writing books about this stuff or talking about it. i think it kind of throws a damper on trying what i try to do is make it from my own

interpretation my own imagination my own engagement with the material i try to make it feel to me like it's coming alive. and so because that term wouldn't have existed and it has so many connotations that are just so obviously for obvious reasons damning. i just wanted to feel more like, you know, what was it like for them? how excited was hamilton when he saw the opportunities and so other people can do that and other people can decide can can have these debates and analyzes, but i i miss maybe ironic because of course i'm taking you to places that are quite critical, but i don't like it's not because i'm scared to use the term because then people won't like me or will be angry or whatever. i've seen i've been accused of that. i think no, i'm not scared to use it. i just don't think it helps bring anything to life, but i do think it's a good line of thought and worth pursuing, you know, so thanks for bringing it up. again, the mic i got to watch the microphones. i can't just call on people.

i'm watching i'm watching. this gentleman wants am i from? okay. okay. yes. is this working? yes, it is now, okay. i think i don't understand something because what you just explained. i don't know why the hamilton awareness group would hate you for that like what is bad about this or am i just a hopeless capitalist? oh you may be but i was just kidding when i said i don't know if they're speaking to me after this my take on hamilton is obviously critical and so there's nothing necessarily bad about it. but some people i mean this is what's so interesting like i wrote the whiskey rebellion was my first book and hamilton plays a major role. it comes right out of everything. i was just talking about that. i didn't have time to talk about in detail today and you know people who read that some of them said to me, you know, i really i finished that book and

i hate that guy. i hate him. and i thought well that was not my intention i get i get why you could find him frightening in some ways and overly intense and you might not subscribe to his to his vision for the country and a lot of people then didn't but you know, i don't hate him, but i do think sometimes that major enthusiasts. do not. always i'm not saying this about the aha people at all because here i am, you know under their aegis. i'm happy to say but i would also say that our sponsorship. anyway, i don't know about aegis, but i do think some of the big enthusiasts at the moment are are touchy when you bring up some of the nuts and bolts realities of how this stuff actually worked or any way seemed to work to those who did everything they could to stop it. but no, i don't think it's necessarily bad. you know, i just think some people think it is. one more. yeah.

not all of us hate you by the way. no, i didn't. i'm not saying anybody here. that was a joke. when would you talk about? what a lot. we just talk about hamilton his effect on. on the economy and the dichotomy between the soldiers and the upper classes. hamilton actually believed that corporations should be citizens have the same rights and the founders in my understanding were totally against that however, the supreme court has just put that into play in other pro-business things that deal with the federalist society and going back to the original intent of the constitution and you've written about that quite a bit. so what do you think? i don't know if you want to talk that much about our moment. you mentioned it. how long do we have here? that 30 seconds for that one. you know, here's what i want to say about that. i'm not going to delve into the

whole corporations people thing. i will say that federal is 78 beloved i believe by many as a great defense of the independence of the judiciary. he makes quite explicit his belief that one of the things an independent judiciary can do is sort of slap down more democratic fiscal type of legislation. so since you bring up the supreme court, and since we're all thinking about that right now liberalism modern liberalism has placed a lot of faith in the independence of the supreme court and had its way for a number of years on a number of important issues, but that is not necessarily the way hamilton thought that was supposed to work the independence of the judiciary can often make undemocratic decisions and in some ways to him. that was a lure for getting people to ratify the constitution. so would you say we're wrapped up? all right. thank you again, and thanks to everyone who sponsored this and you all for coming out. that's a lot.

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