About 25 hrs into listening to Hamilton, around 10 more to go.
Really interesting reading about the debates between founding fathers, many who were actually at the constitutional convention, regarding the meaning and intent of various provisions. They couldn’t even agree at the time.
Also interesting to see the how much of the public back and forth was more vicious and trollish than just about anything in the 20th century. Hamilton’s nasty letters and argumentative essays perfected the form, most of today’s writing is superficial and utilitarian in comparison. People aren’t kidding when they say Hamilton wielded the written word like a weapon. He would knock out so much strongly argued and polished prose that many of his enemies and detractors despaired. Try writing responses to the federalist papers at a pace of like 2x per week.
I’m pretty firmly in the Hamilton/federalist camp, and it’s interesting to see how Hamilton vs Jefferson/Madison/republican debates are recapituated even today.
A small sample of Hamilton on Jefferson during the 1796 campaign:
On this day in history October 19, 1796, Former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton wrote an essay in the Gazette of the United States under the pseudonym “Phocion” accusing presidential nominee Thomas Jefferson of having an affair with one of his slaves. During the contentious campaign between anti-Federalist Jefferson and Federalist Vice President John Adams, Hamilton wrote 25 essays attacking Jefferson. None of the attacks would plague Jefferson beyond the 1796 campaign as the accusation he was involved with his slave later revealed to be Sally Hemings. For 200 years, it would haunt Jefferson’s legacy, which historian Joseph J. Ellis called, “The alleged liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings may be described as the longest-running miniseries in American history.”
On October 15, Hamilton started to write his articles in the Gazette attacking Jefferson as unfit for the presidency. Historian Thomas Fleming writes in his book The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation President George Washington inferred a warning about Jefferson in his Farewell Address mentioned as the “spirit of party” taking over. Hamilton’s attacks would mostly be about Jefferson’s public views, his support for France the French Revolution. Many of the assaults attacked Jefferson’s “lack of courage” while Governor of Virginia and his “retreat” from Washington’s cabinet as Secretary of State while the nation faced international problems.
Hamilton repeatedly attacked Jefferson’s noble claim not to be seeking power or having “political ambitions.” Hamilton writing as Phocion decried Jefferson as a “proto-Caeser, who ‘coyly refused the proffered diadem’ while secretly doing everything in his power to obtain it. In a word he was a hypocrite.” (Fleming) In contrast, Hamilton praised fellow federalist Adams, who was Washington’s handpicked successor. Hamilton ended his attacks on November 24. As Paul F. Boller noted, “The first real presidential contest in American history turned out to be exuberantly venomous. On both sides, handbills, pamphlets, and articles in party newspapers denounced, disparaged, damned, decried, denigrated, and declaimed.” (Boller, 7)
The article on October 19 was intensely personal, and the first time Jefferson would be accused of having an affair with one of his slaves. Neither Jefferson nor Adams directly engaged each other during the campaign remaining above the fray. Adams would go on to win the 1796 election but by only three Electoral College votes, 71 to Jefferson’s 69.
