1790s Alexander Hamilton

The first years of Hamilton’s financial vision being realized of Americans trading in government securities and in businesses began to look like the corrupt nightmare that critics feared. Speculation went rampant and one of his directors, William Duer, took advantage of Hamilton’s friendship and created the nation’s first great financial scandal.

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The financial turmoil on Wall Street and the William Duer debacle pointed up a glaring defect in Hamilton’s political theory: the rich could put their own interests above the national interest. He had always betrayed a special, though never reflexive or uncritical, solicitude for merchants as the potential backbone of the republic. He once wrote, “That valuable class of citizens forms too important an organ of the general weal not to claim every practicable and reasonable exemption and indulgence.” He hoped businessmen would have a broader awareness and embrace the common good. But he was so often worried about abuses committed against the rich that he sometimes minimized the skulduggery that might be committed by the rich.

-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”

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