A lot of Hamilton's ideas were right for 1900 onward but wrong for 1800. I like Great Britain. My grandmother was born in London. However, Great Britain was still trying to screw with the United States at least through the civil war when they sided with the CSA. France was our natural ally at the time. Like Woodrow Wilson and the UN, in some cases, Hamilton was too forward thinking.
I believe in a national bank and the fed. However, Hamilton's version at the time enriched the elites at the expense of everyone else. It was not until my third con law class at UT Law that I learned there actually was some screwiness with the national bank and Jackson's ideas, though wrong in the long run, about the rich using the bank to screw everyone had more merit at the time then I had ever been led to believe (though a better solution would have just been fixing the bank, not abolishing it).
I absolutely do not agree with Hamilton wanting to do away with the states completely or his strong anti-first amendment views.
Jefferson certainly has a lot of faults (and big faults at that) as well. Of the two, as leaders in the early 1800s, I like Jefferson better.
A weak confederation was fine for the 1800s. As Otto von Bismarck said "The Americans are truly a lucky people. They are bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors and to the east and west by fish.God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." We could get away with it then, so why not less government? That weaker Jeffersonian/Jacksonian government built up the bill of rights and led to the expansion of voting rights that we have today.
Last edited: Nov 15, 2016