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Sep. 13th, 2013
Alexander Hamilton
Sep. 13th, 2013 05:43 pm<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Over the past two centuries, Hamilton’s reputation has waxed and waned as the country has glorified or debunked businessmen. Historian Gordon Wood has written, “Although late-nineteenth-century Americans honored Hamilton as the creator of American capitalism, that honor became a liability through much of the twentieth century.” All the conflicting emotions stirred up by capitalism - its bountiful efficiency, its crass inequities - have adhered to Hamilton’s image. As chief agent of a market economy, he had to spur acquisitive impulses, accepting self-interest as the mainspring of economic action. At the same time, he was never a mindless business booster and knew how the desire for lucre could shade over into noxious greed. In Federalist number 12, when discussing how prosperity abets the circulation of precious metals, he referred to gold and silver as “those darling objects of avarice and enterprise” - a phrase that sums up neatly his ambivalence about the drive to amass personal wealth.
-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”
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Over the past two centuries, Hamilton’s reputation has waxed and waned as the country has glorified or debunked businessmen. Historian Gordon Wood has written, “Although late-nineteenth-century Americans honored Hamilton as the creator of American capitalism, that honor became a liability through much of the twentieth century.” All the conflicting emotions stirred up by capitalism - its bountiful efficiency, its crass inequities - have adhered to Hamilton’s image. As chief agent of a market economy, he had to spur acquisitive impulses, accepting self-interest as the mainspring of economic action. At the same time, he was never a mindless business booster and knew how the desire for lucre could shade over into noxious greed. In Federalist number 12, when discussing how prosperity abets the circulation of precious metals, he referred to gold and silver as “those darling objects of avarice and enterprise” - a phrase that sums up neatly his ambivalence about the drive to amass personal wealth.
-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”
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