Alexander Hamilton (55 page)

More than anyone else, Hamilton engineered the transition to a postwar political culture that valued sound and efficient government as the most reliable custodian of liberty. Calling such an effort “an object of all others the nearest and most dear to my own heart,” he said that its attainment was “the most important study which can interest mankind.”
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On the same day Hamilton said this, word arrived in Poughkeepsie that New Hampshire had become the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, meaning it would now be activated. This jolted the convention and abruptly transformed the debate from one about constitutional principles to the political expediency of New York’s joining the union. The state now risked political estrangement if it stayed aloof. Nevertheless, the Clintonians continued to load crippling conditions on the Constitution, and Hamilton saw they would yield only if Virginia ratified. “We eagerly wait for further intelligence from you,” he wrote urgently to Madison on June 27, “as our only chance of success depends on you.”
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The next morning, all the pent-up emotions in Poughkeepsie gave way to rage. It grated on Hamilton that the Clintonians would enter the new union only under duress, while it galled the Clintonians that the national tide was now running against them. Hamilton made a superb speech about the powers that would be reserved to the states under the Constitution, showing, for instance, how the federal government could not make laws affecting the punishment of certain crimes, such as murder and theft. This was too much for John Lansing, Jr., Hamilton’s fellow delegate at the Constitutional Convention, who accused him of saying one thing in Philadelphia and another in Poughkeepsie. In particular, he charged that Hamilton had argued earlier for abolishing the very states that he now held up as necessary foils to federal power.

This accusation produced a vivid confrontation. New York’s entire delegation from the Constitutional Convention—Hamilton, Lansing, and Yates—dropped all show of decorum and began to denounce each other heatedly.
The Daily Advertiser
reported that Hamilton described “Mr. Lansing’s insinuation as improper, unbecoming, and uncandid. Mr. Lansing rose and with much spirit resented the imputation. He made an appeal to Judge Yates, who had taken notes in the Federal Convention for a proof of Mr. Hamilton’s expressions.” Hamilton must have been flabbergasted: Lansing was inviting Yates to breach the solemn oath of silence taken at Philadelphia. On cue, Robert Yates flashed his notes and quoted Hamilton as having stated in Philadelphia that to stop the states from encroaching on the federal government, “they should be reduced to a smaller scale and be invested with only corporate power.”
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At this point, Hamilton turned furiously on Yates and cross-examined him in prosecutorial style. He asked point-blank: Did Yates not remember Hamilton saying that the states were useful and necessary? Did he not remember him saying that the chief judges of the states ought to join with the chief justice of the Supreme Court in a court of impeachments? Yates assented reluctantly.

Governor Clinton, realizing that he had to stop the quarreling, adjourned the session. All of New York gossiped about the highly personalized altercation. One member of Judge Yates’s family reported that both Lansing and Hamilton “got extremely warm—insomuch that Lansing was charged by the other with want of candor and indecency.”
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Still another observer noted that bickering between Lansing and Hamilton had shaded over from spirited repartee to such personal insults that a duel might follow: “Personal reflections were thrown out by Mr. Lansing against Mr. Hamilton, which were productive of serious disputation. It will be well if it does not terminate seriously.”
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Two days later, the convention still seethed about the matter.

As Hamilton tangled with Lansing, neither knew that Virginia had on June 25 become the tenth state to ratify the Constitution. Like their New York counterparts, antifederalists there posed as plucky populists, even though their ranks included many rich slaveholders. Patrick Henry, the leading antifederalist, warned delegates who supported the Constitution, “They’ll free your niggers.”
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George Washington noted the hypocrisy of the many slaveholding antifederalists: “It is a little strange that the men of large property in the South should be more afraid that the Constitution will produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine, democratical people of the East.”
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Shortly after noon on July 2, a rider rode up to the Poughkeepsie courthouse and handed the doorkeeper a dispatch for Hamilton. Soon an excited murmur arose that drowned out the voice of George Clinton. Hamilton read aloud a letter from Madison with the dramatic announcement of Virginia’s approval. It must have been a deeply moving moment for Hamilton, the climax of his partnership with Madison. Joyous federalists spilled out of the building and circled the courthouse in celebration, accompanied by a fife and drum. If New York did not ratify the Constitution, it would now be stranded and excluded from the newly formed union, lumped together with the outcast states of North Carolina and Rhode Island.

But the sparring now only intensified. At a Fourth of July parade in Albany, a riot broke out when a copy of the Constitution was publicly burned and federalist and antifederalist contingents collided, leaving one dead and eighteen wounded. Suddenly on the defensive, Clinton’s forces tried to defeat the Constitution by demanding a bill of rights and other amendments. Hamilton thought this a tactical maneuver, and on July 12 he spoke at length in favor of unconditional adoption. In what one newspaper called “a most argumentative and impassioned address,” Hamilton insisted that the convention lacked authority to make recommendations and gravely intoned that the delegates should “weigh well what they were about to do before they decided on a subject so infinitely important.”
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Thus, in mid-July, the two sides remained unalterably apart. The point is worth stressing, since some historians have minimized Hamilton’s bravura performance at Poughkeepsie by claiming that only approval by Virginia and New Hampshire tipped the scales in New York. Emotions, however, remained venomous even
after
ten states ratified the Constitution, and Governor Clinton still thought civil war possible. One member of the French diplomatic legation, Victor du Pont, wrote to Samuel du Pont de Nemours that if the Constitution faltered in New York, outraged federalists might pounce on Clinton and his retinue when they returned home and “smear them with tar, roll them in feathers, and finally walk them through the streets.”
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On July 17, Hamilton predicted that New York City might secede from the state if the Constitution was turned down; Clinton chided him from his chair for his “highly indiscreet and improper” warning.
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Working himself up into a grand state of pathos, Hamilton summoned the ghosts of “departed patriots” and living heroes and with his words wrung tears from onlookers.
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Days later, Melancton Smith finally broke the deadlock when he endorsed the Constitution if Congress would promise to consider some amendments. Paying indirect tribute to Hamilton, Smith credited “the reasonings of gentlemen” on the other side for his changed vote.
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On July 26, Smith and a dozen other antifederalists switched their votes to favor the Constitution, producing a wafer-thin majority. The final vote of thirty to twenty-seven was the smallest victory margin at any state convention and portended future political troubles for Hamilton. Governor Clinton would not budge but tolerated followers who changed their votes. Anticipating New York’s approval, a huge rally had taken place in New York City three days earlier to express boisterous enthusiasm for the new government. It started at eight in the morning in light rain as five thousand representatives of sixty trades—from wig makers to bricklayers, florists to cabinetmakers—marched down Broadway amid a profusion of brightly colored floats and banners. The Constitution might be denounced as a rich man’s plot upstate, but the city’s artisans were now stouthearted federalists and crafted displays to illustrate the benefits that would flow from union. The bakers hoisted aloft a ten-foot “federal loaf,” brewers pulled a three-hundred-gallon cask of ale, and coopers hauled barrels built with thirteen staves. Many of Hamilton’s friends joined the crowd. Robert Troup marched alongside lawyers and judges, brandishing the new Constitution. Nicholas Cruger, his old employer from St. Croix, donned a farmer’s costume and escorted a plow drawn by six oxen.

The parade apotheosized the hero of the hour, the man who had snatched victory from the antifederalist majority. So exuberant was the lionization of Alexander Hamilton that admirers wanted to rechristen the city “Hamiltoniana.” It was one of the few times in his life that Hamilton basked in the warmth of public adulation. Sail makers waved a flag depicting a laurel-wreathed Hamilton bearing the Constitution while an allegorical figure representing Fame blew a trumpet in the air. This paled before the grandest tribute of all to Hamilton. Gliding down Broadway, pulled by ten horses, was a miniature frigate, twenty-seven feet long, baptized the “Federal Ship
Hamilton.
” The model ship rose above all other floats “with flowing sheets and full sails[,]…the canvas waves dashing against her sides” and concealing the carriage wheels moving the ship, noted one observer.
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The cart men fluttered banners that proclaimed, “Behold the federal ship of fame / The Hamilton we call her name; / To every craft she gives employ; / Sure cartmen have their share of joy.”
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When the
Hamilton
arrived near the Battery, it was received by congressmen standing outside Bayard’s Tavern. To represent the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, the ship changed pilots amid a deafening cannonade. The parade marked the zenith of the federalist alliance with city artisans. Hamilton had never courted the masses, and never again was he to enjoy their favor to this extent. Riding high on the crest of the new Constitution, Hamilton and the federalists held undisputed sway in the city.

FOURTEEN

PUTTING THE MACHINE IN MOTION

T
he battle royal over the Constitution exposed such glaring rifts in the country that America needed a first president of unimpeachable integrity who would embody the rich promise of the new republic. It had to be somebody of godlike stature who would seem to levitate above partisan politics, a symbol of national unity as well as a functioning chief executive. Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics. Many people had agreed reluctantly to the new Constitution only because they assumed that Washington would lead the first government.

Within weeks of the Poughkeepsie convention, Hamilton began to woo Washington for the presidency as determinedly as would a lover. Long ago, he had hitched his career to the general’s, and he needed George Washington as president no less than America did. They had shared the same chagrin over the inept Congress and grasping state politicians and saw an assertive central government as the indispensable corrective. In mid-August 1788, Hamilton broached the subject of the presidency when he sent Washington the two-volume set of
The Federalist Papers.
He no longer had compunctions about revealing his authorship with Madison and Jay. This was throat clearing for the letter’s real intent: “I take it for granted, Sir, you have concluded to comply with what will no doubt be the general call of your country in relation to the new government. You will permit me to say that it is indispensable you should lend yourself to its first operations. It is to little purpose to have
introduced
a system, if the weightiest influence is not given to its firm
establishment
in the outset.”
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Washington replied that he had seen no better gloss on the Constitution than
The Federalist
and predicted that “when the transient circumstances and fugitive performance which attended this
crisis
shall have disappeared, that work will merit the notice of posterity.” This tribute previewed things to come, since the first president would need constitutional experts in his cabinet to advise him on what actions were permissible. Washington approached the presidency gingerly. In the late eighteenth century, politicians tended to disclaim ambition and pretend that public service was purely sacrificial. So Washington closed the letter with a delicate statement that he would defer a decision on the presidency, intimating that he would rather stay at Mount Vernon: “For you know me well enough, my good Sir, to be persuaded that I am not guilty of affectation when I tell you it is my great and sole desire to live and die, in peace and retirement, on my own farm.”
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Not since the Revolution had Washington and Hamilton spoken so candidly. Their bond, if sorely tested, had never frayed, and Washington seemed relieved to unburden himself about his future. Hamilton knew that the new republic would be on trial in the first administration, and he dreaded having a mediocrity at the top. If the first government miscarried, he warned Washington, “the blame will in all probability be laid on the system itself. And the framers of it will have to encounter the disrepute of having brought about a revolution in government without substituting anything that was worthy of the effort. They pulled down one Utopia, it will be said, to build up another.”
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