Ron Chernow’s book Alexander Hamilton is the basis for the popular musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Regardless of your feelings on the musical or Hamilton, he was the right-hand of General George Washington during and after the Revolutionary War with Britain. Together with James Madison, they were the most influential and formidable men in the process of forming and helping ratify our U.S. Constitution.
Hamilton was the indispensable aide and liaison between Washington, the soldiers, and Congress. His role was that of paperwork and administration, but he always sought a battlefield command.
Fearless and perhaps belied by his affectionate name of “Ham” or “Hammie,” he was also known as “The Little Lion.” Eventually, Washington allowed him to take the field. He distinguished himself as a competent and brave commander.
After the war, Hamilton remained at Washington’s side. He formulated and implemented the basis of our modern banking system and found a way to solve America’s problem of paying for the war. His plan called for transferring the debt of all 13 states to the federal government and making good on payment of money owed by the states to the soldiers who fought to give us our freedom.
Chernow notes that for Hamilton, the American Revolution was “a practical workshop of economic and political theory, providing critical object lessons and cautionary tales that charted the course of his career.”
At a particularly bleak time, “Thoughts of both love and war coursed through Hamilton’s brain during that arctic winter in Morristown. The paper currency issued by the Continental Congress continued to sink precipitously in value, as inflation undercut the patriotic cause.
During one ghastly period of 1779, the continental dollar shed half its value in three weeks. Silver coins disappeared, driven out by nearly worthless paper money, and State governments were going broke.
In March 1780, Congress tried to restore monetary policy by issuing one new dollar in exchange for forty old ones, a move that wiped out the savings of many Americans. The need for financial reform had grown urgent.
“[Hamilton] saw that inflation had originated in wartime shortages which had led, in turn, to the waning value of money. Over time, inflation had acquired a self-reinforcing momentum. Economic fundamentals alone could not account for this inflation, Hamilton noted, detecting a critical psychological factor at work. People were ‘governed more by passion and prejudice than by an enlightened sense of their interests,’ he wrote.
“'The quantity of money in circulation is certainly a chief cause of the dollar’s decline. But we find it is depreciated more than five times as much as it ought to be…. The excess is derived from opinion, a want of confidence.’”
Over 240 years after Hamilton’s observations, we must consider whether America’s politicians have forgotten lessons of the past and lost their way.
As we advocate for a Convention of States to address the fundamental structural problems of Washington, we must insist on reasonable and necessary fiscal restraints and responsibility (such as a balanced budget and caps on spending and taxes).
And we must ask, could there be a time when we must revisit the lessons of 1779 and once again experience “a want of confidence?”
This is why we must take action in order to reclaim our confidence.
Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, Penguin Random House, LLC, 2004.
