My Dear Students:
Though I may talk about Alexander Hamilton at considerable length in class, please do not assume on this basis that Alexander Hamilton was actually a US president. More significantly, please refrain from insisting — as several of you have already done on the tests I’m grading this evening — that Alexander Hamilton was “one of our greatest presidents” or that, much worse, that he was “our first president.”
Because I never said these things, and it hurts me to think that you may believe I did.
I am, however, pleased to see that so many of you have watched this definitive account of Hamilton’s early demise. Though even this entertaining and informative video should not have led you to conclude that Hamilton was at any point the nation’s chief executive. Because he was not.
That is all.
cheers,
Your Affectionate Professor
The Edge of the American West 
65 comments
November 19, 2008 at 5:18 am
Michael Turner
But Alexander Hamilton could have been president. Not only did he want The Power, but, like George Hamilton (with whom he should not be confused), he had The Power. So why didn’t he simply deflect the bullet telekinetically? Historians still debate this. One theory is that he was drunk at the time.
November 19, 2008 at 6:02 am
CharleyCarp
Why talk about Hamilton at all? Burr was a better lawyer (in addition to being a better shot, and a better womanizer). Gallatin was a better Secretary of the Treasury. Marshall was a better and more consequential Federalist leader. Hamilton’s various plays in the 1796 and 1800 election cycles should kill whatever reputation he has for political acumen.
Another alternative: treat your students to Firesign Theatre. Ben Franklin, the only president of the United States who was never President of the United States
November 19, 2008 at 6:54 am
eric
Nice TMBG ref for the with-kid set.
November 19, 2008 at 7:20 am
Levi Stahl
So why’s he on our money, genius?*
*To be said in your best Lucy van Pelt voice.
November 19, 2008 at 7:44 am
albiondia
This might be a dumb question, but was Hamilton constitutionally eligible for the Presidency? Not being a ‘natural-born citizen’ and that…
Or does kicking about at the right time mean that would never have been contested?
November 19, 2008 at 7:49 am
arbitrista
CharleyCarp: Well, Hamilton was only the architect of the U.S. financial system and industrialization strategy, the founder of the first U.S. political party, Washington’s chief of staff during the Revolutionary War and de facto prime minister during the Washington administration, and one of the prime movers in the calling of the Constitutional Convention and its ratification. Not important at all. I mean, it’s not like he wasn’t right about virtually everything that he was arguing with the Jeffersonians about or anything…..
November 19, 2008 at 8:14 am
kid bitzer
the guy was an executive-power extremist who described a minimal role for the prez in foreign policy when he was trying to sell ratification, and a maximalist role for the prez once he got near the presidency. either he changed his mind because the power got to his head, or he was lying all the time.
like i said, john yoo with a powdered wig. (or maybe not, in that painting above.)
November 19, 2008 at 8:31 am
Postman
Oh, Drunk History… where were you when I was getting my degree?
November 19, 2008 at 8:41 am
drip
He was a flip flopper and for change you could believe in. Perfect.
November 19, 2008 at 9:21 am
otis
Reminds me of that clip from the first season of The Wire, where D and Wallace argue about this very fact.
November 19, 2008 at 9:40 am
arbitrista
Kid Bitzer: Not to sound like an unreconstructed Federalist, but in what fashion was Hamilton an executive power extremist? Certainly he called for “energy in the executive”, but that’s just in terms of the executive setting the policy agenda. It’s unfair (not to mention anachronistic) to compare him to Yoo.
November 19, 2008 at 9:47 am
dana
Reminds me of that clip from the first season of The Wire, where D and Wallace argue about this very fact.
I spent part of the morning looking for the quote… no white man on the money unless he president, or something like that.
November 19, 2008 at 11:17 am
kid bitzer
in federalist 75, hamilton argued that the power of making treaties is essentially legislative in its nature rather than executive.
in pacificus 1, he argues that the treaty-making power is executive.
in fed 69, he argued that the president’s role in receiving ambassadors is entirely inconsequential, merely a matter of convenience, since he receives them on behalf of the senate.
in pacificus 1, he argues that the same right of receiving ambassadors is proof that the president is the sole organ of foreign affairs.
madison was appalled, and rightfully so.
of course the comparison to yoo is an anachronism, as is the comparison of michael jordan to achilles. the disparity in era tells us nothing about aptness.
November 19, 2008 at 11:53 am
19 November 2008 « blueollie
[…] evidently it isn’t just the math department; one historian writes: My Dear […]
November 19, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Brad
Come on, the first thing Hamilton did was raise taxes. Obviously, he cannot be John Yoo, he was a Democrat.
November 19, 2008 at 12:57 pm
kid bitzer
i hear strange rumors that yoo himself had some liberal tendencies before his appointment to the bush crime regime.
November 19, 2008 at 1:13 pm
andrew
Hamilton? He ain’t no President.
November 19, 2008 at 1:18 pm
andrew
madison was appalled, and rightfully so.
Madison himself was not above advocating for positions opposite to those he had once taken. Our Founders and Framers were also Flip-Floppers, face it.
November 19, 2008 at 1:24 pm
kid bitzer
but they were *founding* flip-floppers, damn it. great men! giants!
okay, madison maybe not so literally gigantesque.
November 19, 2008 at 2:54 pm
davenoon
at least not height-wise
November 19, 2008 at 3:36 pm
LizardBreath
Somewhere, I saw Hamilton and Franklin described as the two greatest American Presidents never actually to serve as President, and loved it so much that I describe Hamilton that way every time I hear him mentioned.
November 19, 2008 at 3:46 pm
kid bitzer
davenoon, i was hoping ‘literally’ would do that job, but maybe i should have literally spelled it out.
(i-t o-u-t).
November 19, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Hemlock
Prescient (Report on Public Credit), deviously cogent (Federalist 84), and a ‘lil bit scandalous (Maria Reynolds), our founding Bohemian remains our most engrossing non-president/president. Hey, when you can argue against a bill of rights and still ascend to the highest political echelons of power, you must be somethin’ special, eh?
November 19, 2008 at 7:12 pm
kid bitzer
“when you can argue against a bill of rights ”
well…the argument (if i am following you) is that the rights that *we* associate with the sogennante “bill of rights” are too important and too basic to risk explicit ‘enumeration’ in a document that merely charters a limited government.
so it’s not as though he was arguing against the rights; just against their being put into bills, pour ainsi dire.
November 19, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Super Rookie’s World » Drunk History.
[…] again my former professor pulls out a real gem. Turns out that a lot of his college students feel that Alexander Hamilton was a former president […]
November 19, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Mirth… « Blurred Productions
[…] Anyway. Edge of the American West put me in a better mood with this. […]
November 19, 2008 at 11:53 pm
urbino
Imagine my surprise and delight upon arriving at the end of these comments and finding the saying of the following still available to me:
Hamilton was only the architect of the U.S. financial system
And look how that turned out.
November 19, 2008 at 11:56 pm
urbino
when you can argue against a bill of rights and still ascend to the highest political echelons of power, you must be somethin’ special, eh?
Which means Madison is even cooler than I already thought he was, which hardly seemed possible. (See kid bitzer @ 7:12, along with the fact that Madison had seen Virginia’s bill of rights fail to protect the rights it supposedly protected.)
November 20, 2008 at 12:25 am
Hemlock
Rights are founded in natural law is the premise of the argument…and yes, I question his motivations (see debates concerning the executive). A “bill of rights” is a noun…see Rakove, Levy, etc.
“Hamilton was only the architect of the U.S. financial system.” He foresaw the socioeconomic/free labor turn, which means he was prescient. That’s not to say it’s a good thang, eh?
November 20, 2008 at 12:27 am
Hemlock
Madison is cooler? Reread the Federalist Papers, especially the conclusions…you’ll find some real “cool” gems in there. In fact, Madison’s statements back my appraisal of Federalist 84 and Hamilton himself.
November 20, 2008 at 1:10 am
Hemlock
…I’m not clear here, but Urbino is trying to point out that Madison opposed a BOR prior to 1790.
No offense to Professor Rakove, but Madison is not exactly my favorite person, either. See, for example, the end of Federalist 54. So, in making the statement about Hamilton, I did not necessarily imply that somehow Madison wasn’t guilty, either. Hell, one could also argue that slaveholders were Presidents, or that Madison was purely a vehicle for Jefferson, etc…all the fan favorites.
But, in defense of our beloved framer, he proposed a national veto and Council of Revision…which the Convention shut down (Philly proved the apex of Madison’s disinclination for a Bill of Rights). He was sorely disappointed, providing some insight into his motivations. Hamilton, on the other hand…
When criticizing, note that questions are more helpful to graduate students…something I need to remember as well.
November 20, 2008 at 1:53 am
Hemlock
“The argument (if i am following you) is that the rights that *we* associate with the sogennante “bill of rights” are too important and too basic to risk explicit ‘enumeration’ in a document that merely charters a limited government.”
People, we need to reread Federalist 1. Read Hamilton’s intro, and then read the Papers. I’m not resurrecting a holistic “Progressive” agenda here, nor am I taking on fire-and-brimstone Scaliaman, but just clarifying what we mean by “political theory.”
Oh, and a “bill of rights” is singular, not plural. I guess the lesson here is that contextualism–the act itself–is diachronic. It is, after all, what we know as “historical” rather than synchronic time. Cambridge peeps, eat your hearts out.
November 20, 2008 at 3:56 am
kid bitzer
i agree that “bill of rights” is a noun (unless gratuitously verbed). i agree that “bill of rights” is singular (“bills of” for plural). i’m not sure where i used the phrase “bill of rights” in such a way as to give you the impression i disagreed. probably some carelessness on my part; perhaps an idle joke. in any case, i certainly agree with you.
also agree that i should reread the whole damn thing. i read it in installments when it first came out, and it was a cliffhanger, believe you me, but that was some time ago.
November 20, 2008 at 5:06 am
J Thomas
so it’s not as though he was arguing against the rights; just against their being put into bills
Brilliant!
It reminds me of the passage in RA Lafferty’s seminal novel, _Annals of Klepsis_, in which an important woman, a logician, is offered grapes by a conference staffer. “No, I don’t want grapes. I only want fruit with the possibility of worms. Bring me fruit with the possibility of worms.”
So the staffer brings her some wormy apples. And she says, “No! Take those away! I want the possibility of worms, I sure don’t want the actuality of worms!”
So rights are too important to have any assurance that they won’t be violated wholesale, too important even to list a representative sample.
He wants the possibility of rights, he sure doesn’t want the actuality of rights.
November 20, 2008 at 6:15 am
Matt W
Actually I think (having only a cursory acquaintance with the actual history) that there’s something to the idea that the rights are too important to be enumerated. As I understand it, the argument was that if the rights were enumerated, some future official would decide that the People had no rights that were not so enumerated. And so they stuck in the Ninth Amendment, an explicit statement that the People’s rights were not restricted to the enumerated ones. Presto chango, Justice Scalia now insists that our constitutional rights are now only those explicitly enumerated in the constitution, under the ordinary meaning those words had at the time (except for the Ninth Amendment, which doesn’t count, and anything else Scalia doesn’t like, which doesn’t count either).
So, the “These rights are too important to be enumerated” argument seems prescient to me. Even sticking a big yellow Post-It on the Constitution saying “These aren’t all the rights, DUMBASS” didn’t work. I guess the counterargument is that the Scalias of the world would interpret people’s rights away no matter how the right were enumerated or not.
November 20, 2008 at 6:38 am
Dave
Not only was AH a slippery snake in print, he had stood up at the 1787 Convention and said that America should become a monarchy [in all but name]. Frankly, he was a pissant.
November 20, 2008 at 6:43 am
Dave
Oh, and on the rights thing, Robert Yates had him bang to rights [hah!] in the Antifederalist no. 84:
“Does this Constitution any where grant the power of suspending the habeas corpus, to make ex post facto laws, pass bills of attainder, or grant titles of nobility? It certainly does not in express terms. The only answer that can be given is, that these are implied in the general powers granted.”
Since the Constitution did forbid these things, the argument that other abuses did not need to be forbidden, because they were not enumerated, showed, as Yates said, that Hamilton and his ilk “are wilfully endeavoring to deceive, and to lead you into an absolute state of vassalage.”
Whether the BOR actually helps much [indeed helped much, in the first century of its existence], is a moot point, but AH’s general sliminess on the subject isn’t.
November 20, 2008 at 6:44 am
J Thomas
Matt W, I agree. When you write the contract, your benefits that are not listed will not be enforced regardless how many benefits are listed.
If you don’t write down the first ten, that doesn’t make #11 easier to protect. It just means the first ten are as hard to protect as all the rest.
November 20, 2008 at 6:51 am
kid bitzer
“He wants the possibility of rights, he sure doesn’t want the actuality of rights.”
this really isn’t it, j thomas, not at all.
the arguments against explicit enumeration include the one that matt w. gives: any enumeration will leave off some items, and it may then be thought that the omitted items were excluded from the legislature’s intent.
the principle of construction is the “inclusio unius est exclusio alterius”: if a legislature includes one thing and is silent about related things, then they may be assumed to have intentionally excluded the others. if they say “cars may be painted on mondays”, they may be assumed to exclude the painting of cars on any other day. it’s related to the rule of construction that hamilton in Fed #32 calls the “negative pregnant: that is, a negation of one thing, and an affirmance of another….”
it’s not the only rule of statutory construction, and there are others that pull against it. but it is an important one.
i don’t like hamilton, but his argument here in #84 is completely above board:
“I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority, which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it, was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.”
November 20, 2008 at 6:55 am
kid bitzer
also: matt w’s points about the giant yellow post-it are exactly why i think that a9 is the most important amendment. it shows what the basis of all the other rights is: i.e., that they are not given to us by the constitution, but merely recognized by it as already in existence.
November 20, 2008 at 8:44 am
dana
I guess the counterargument is that the Scalias of the world would interpret people’s rights away no matter how the right were enumerated or not.
Or simply “if they’d really intended to recognize something so important as the freedom of speech, surely they would have written it down.”
It’s hard to imagine, but given the rest of the legal sytem, I like having rights enumerated. Were we a society that ran contracts based on handshakes and awarded judgments based on common sense, leaving rights unenumerated might make more sense.
November 20, 2008 at 9:35 am
Matt W
Well, Britain has contracts ‘n’at, and I believe it doesn’t have anything quite like the bill of rights, but I don’t know whether this has led to infringements of liberty over there that wouldn’t have happened with a Bill of Rights. And it’s possible that Britain has been saved because it hasn’t generated any Scalias, though it may also be that without the figleaf of literalism Scalia’s views would be so obviously outside the pale that he wouldn’t have been able to get so far. What I mean is, “Britain unwritten constitution blah blah someone who actually knows something about the comparative issue should post.”
November 20, 2008 at 9:53 am
urbino
I continue to agree with kid on the history.
November 20, 2008 at 10:12 am
Hemlock
Inclusio unius est exclusio alterius is all or nothing, but I do not believe that it (completely) structured Hamilton’s postulations. The rules of the game were still intertwined with British common law practices.
Hamilton: “I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power.”
So…why not elaborate, provided we accept the aguments in Federalist 51? That’s what makes me skeptical. Also, I find Hamilton’s pleas humorous, given his role as Treasury Secretary. But that’s a Whig fallacy, no? hahahah
I think Maria Reynolds is far more interesting and important, for both political and economic reasons, than the Papers.
November 20, 2008 at 10:18 am
kid bitzer
i make a habit of agreeing with urbino, but in this case i think it would be unwise.
November 20, 2008 at 10:29 am
kid bitzer
and, dana, part of the disagreement turns on what you take to be the default: that we don’t have the right unless it’s explicitly granted, or that we do have it unless it’s explicitly ruled out. hamilton and the anti-enumerators assume the second.
November 20, 2008 at 11:43 am
J Thomas
Kid, in terms of logical argument Hamilton may have had a point.
But in practice, if we didn’t have any explicit rights we would not have any rights. And I believe Hamilton knew that, and intentionally wrote a logical argument he disbelieved with the intention of fooling people, with the intention of preventing them from having any rights.
November 20, 2008 at 12:56 pm
kid bitzer
wow–even i haven’t made that accusation, and i’m a hamilton hater.
there may be something to what you say. but then we’d have to look at the other opponents of enumeration who were his contemporaries, and see what their motivations were.
of course, he could have been using them as cover, i.e. retailing in bad faith arguments that they had given in good faith.
but i’m not willing to accuse hamilton of that degree of bad faith just yet. give me time!
November 20, 2008 at 1:11 pm
dana
Matt, maybe. I wouldn’t make the argument that a bill of rights is necessary for liberty in all cases, but it might have been in ours.
November 20, 2008 at 1:23 pm
ben wolfson
Actually I think (having only a cursory acquaintance with the actual history) that there’s something to the idea that the rights are too important to be enumerated.
I agree with this and not only because of the danger that people will think that the ones that happen to be enumerated are all there are, but also because they can only be enumerated in some way or other, and people are liable to think that this way is the exact definition, or something like that, of the right in question. It leads to over-technical conceptions.
Of course, having them written down is helpful (or you’d think would be helpful) is that you have something more or less official you can shove in the face of transgressors, which would not be the case if you just had a general sentiment floating in the air.
November 20, 2008 at 1:29 pm
dana
Of course, having them written down is helpful (or you’d think would be helpful) is that you have something more or less official you can shove in the face of transgressors, which would not be the case if you just had a general sentiment floating in the air.
99.9% of the reason I like having them written down. I’m imagining the state of civil liberties if it was essentially run by what people thought the sentiment was, and I suspect we’d be worse off as a nation.
November 20, 2008 at 2:02 pm
N. Merrill
I haven’t read this thread, but it seems like the problem of enumerating one of many possible specifications of a right is no more serious than the problem that “the general sentiment” is going to be amorphous in a way that makes it hard to know precisely when a right has been violated. That is, the reason any particular articulation is unsatisfying is that the sentiment giving rise to it is vague or ambiguous or…
November 20, 2008 at 2:18 pm
urbino
…unknown or varied over time and from one Framer to another. Precisely. This is why I find original intent arguments almost pointless.
November 20, 2008 at 2:19 pm
urbino
Which is to say, we are already in the situation you describe, dana, because the meaning of the words in the enumeration depends on what people think the sentiment was.
November 20, 2008 at 2:22 pm
dana
Sure. I just think we’d be worse w.r.t., say, the detainees. Perhaps not. Maybe we just need better citizens.
November 20, 2008 at 2:28 pm
urbino
The latter is certainly true, and probably the former. The Bill of Rights has turned out pretty well for us. I’m pro-Bill of Rights.
Nonetheless, I see the point of those who opposed it. I don’t think, by and large, their intentions were malign. Nor do I think we’d be terribly happy with some of the ramifications of their approach. Madison, for instance, because he had a very strict view on these sorts of things, said he didn’t expect the constitution he helped write to last more than a couple of generations, at which point the world would have changed enough that it would have to be scrapped and a new one written, and so forth and so on, into the future.
November 20, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Chris
the principle of construction is the “inclusio unius est exclusio alterius”: if a legislature includes one thing and is silent about related things, then they may be assumed to have intentionally excluded the others.
Isn’t this precisely why the Ninth Amendment *explicitly disclaims* the idea of applying this principle to the BoR? (Well, as explicit as you can get without naming it by name.) I don’t see how this argument survives the presence of the 9th.
And while originalism certainly has its problems, I also see the point of the people who say continuous reinterpretation is a license to the Court to sit as a permanent constitutional convention. (But the obscenity “exception” to the 1st is entirely judge-created ex nihilo, for example, so Scalia is full of shit when he claims to be an originalist – this even though I agree with him about the prefatory clause of the 2nd).
November 20, 2008 at 3:40 pm
kid bitzer
chris–
yes, i do think that the 9a was added exactly in order to address the worries of the anti-enumerationists.
November 20, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Hemlock
“unknown or varied over time and from one Framer to another. Precisely. This is why I find original intent arguments almost pointless.” My conclusion exactly! Politics, language, time! Although I’m not sure they’re pointless.
“Isn’t this precisely why the Ninth Amendment *explicitly disclaims* the idea of applying this principle to the BoR? (Well, as explicit as you can get without naming it by name.) I don’t see how this argument survives the presence of the 9th.”
That may fall prey to an ex post facto critique, but I agree.
“so Scalia is full of shit when he claims to be an originalist.” Scalia is a self-defined originalist, which I find fucking hilarious.
November 20, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Matt Weiner
i do think that the 9a was added exactly in order to address the worries of the anti-enumerationists.
And yet Robert Bork said that it was as meaningless as an ink blot, and got himself nominated to the Supreme Court. The radical right jurists now seem to accomplish Bork’s ends through (slightly, in some cases) more politic ends.
November 20, 2008 at 4:21 pm
kid bitzer
he said that? despicable, unamerican fucker–now i’m glad they made a verb of him.
November 20, 2008 at 5:58 pm
urbino
Although I’m not sure they’re pointless.
I didn’t say they were pointless. I said they were almost pointless. Original intent have suggestive value.
The problem, however, is knowing what They intended, and which They we should be interested in. These problems are well known. On just about any constitutional issue at hand, a persuasive originalist argument can be made for all sides in the dispute.
Originalism functions as a fig leaf on the very continuous constitutional convention you worry about. It’s a useful fiction, but there’s very little There there.
November 20, 2008 at 5:58 pm
urbino
“…has suggestive value.”
November 20, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Hemlock
“…singular noun,” eh?
Interesting that the “almost” is not a critical deflector. Originalism is a (useful) fiction…
…hence the ultimate contention and implementation of said contention…no bill of rights…is decidedly more useful than original intent. Back to: Hamilton argues against a bill of rights.
December 21, 2008 at 8:55 pm
me
this was awesome…my students are also dumb