Why doesn't the US praise Alexander Hamilton as the visionary profit that he was?

Answer 1

GREAT QUESTION!!!! And he WAS A VISIONARY PROPHET!!! Wasn't he amazing!!!? Alas, he is not recognized as the visionary profit that he was because of his powerful and dubious enemies. Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Burr were all political enemies of Alexander Hamilton, they also came from prominent and wealthy families. Jefferson used the irrational whims of the people to gain popularity, posing as a freedom-loving farmer, despite his great wealth and attatchment to slavery. This I especially find funny because Hamilton opposed slaver and never owned slaves as an adult, yet Jefferson was still credited as the more "democratic" of the two. Having public popularity on his side, in addition to power and wealth, Jefferson succeeded in pushing Federalists out of the limelight. In addition to Jefferson's eclipsing public popularity was Hamilton's damaging personal life. Hamilton commited adultury and published the loe letters he sent his mistress to clear his name when he was accused of stealing public funds ( in truth his mitress was bribing him and Hamilton never withdrew money from the government's bank accounts.) This was deeply dammaging to Hamilton's reputation. The Federalist party went down with Hamilton's popularity. Once the Federalists lost power, it seems that America forgott its most loving Founding Father. We Americans have always had short attentions span, even before the onset of TV. Hamilton never had great wealth, in fact he died in great debt. His lack of family history made many of his colleagues suspicious of him in a time when family and wealth were the only means of being found respectable.

Indeed, what the above person said is correct, in most ways. Alexander Hamilton was a visionary, and today we do live in the world he envisioned. Yet whilst Jefferson is praised as a common man, despite the fact that he was a member of the Virginia gentry and owned 135 slaves, Hamilton is vilified in American history textbooks as an elitist, even though he never owned a slave and worked for everything he got. I think it stems in part from the fact that Hamilton didn't know how to lie. He really didn't. Alexander Hamilton was physically incapable of the campaign rhetoric that Jefferson so excelled at. It was his excessive candor that led to his economic policies, and some of the later scandals of his life. Jefferson said the masses were wise, but Hamilton, who was terrified of anarchy and despotism, did not. He was too distrustful. In reality the only thing he trusted was the truth, even if it wasn't pretty. He knew, for instance, that the government debt couldn't be pushed aside. It had to be paid, and it had to be paid pronto. And he set to doing it. He didn't produce flowing compositions of liberty and freedom, even though he DID believe in it, like Jefferson. It's a lot more appealing to praise Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration, and his visions of liberty, than to praise Hamilton, who was a cabinet member (which sounds more important?), and his excessive honesty. It really isn't fair to him, because we live in a world that Alexander Hamilton envisioned. He wasn't a slave to liberty. he was a slave to the future, but liberty sounds better.

By the way, "profit" in this context is really "prophet", and Hamilton did not only publish love letters, but a pamphlet detailing the workings of the affair (and the love letters were in this said pamphlet). He did this lest anyone think of more scandalous things than what actually happened. It was his reputation, his character, his honor, that he was hypersensitive about, and any slights to it, any doubts, had to be squashed (if you watch the miniseries on John Adams, episode 6, this is apparent). Once again, he was incapable of lying. Or shutting up, whichever way you want to think about it. :)