The life of Alexander Hamilton is an essential chapter in the story of the formation of the American Union. Hamilton’s work was of that constructive sort which is vital for laying the foundations of new states. Whether the Union would have been formed under the Constitution and would have been consolidated into a powerful nation, instead of a loose confederation of sovereign states, without the great services of Hamilton, is one of those problems about which speculation is futile. It is certain that the conditions of the time presented a rare opportunity for such a man as Hamilton, and that without some directing and organizing genius like his, the consolidation of the Union must have been delayed, and have been accomplished with much travail.
The difference between the career of Hamilton in America and that of the two greatest organizing minds of other countries—Cæsar and Napoleon—marks the difference between Anglo-Saxon political ideals and capacity for self-government and those of other races. Where the organization of a strong government degenerated in Rome and France into absolutism, it tended in America, under the directing genius of Hamilton, to place in the hands of the people a more powerful instrument for executing their own will. So powerful a weapon was thus created that Hamilton himself became alarmed when it was seized by the hands of Jefferson, Madison, and other democratic leaders as the instrument of democratic ideas, and those long strides were taken in the states and under the federal government which wiped out the distinctions between classes, abolished the relations of church and state, extended the suffrage, and made the government only the servant of the popular will...
The difference between the career of Hamilton in America and that of the two greatest organizing minds of other countries—Cæsar and Napoleon—marks the difference between Anglo-Saxon political ideals and capacity for self-government and those of other races. Where the organization of a strong government degenerated in Rome and France into absolutism, it tended in America, under the directing genius of Hamilton, to place in the hands of the people a more powerful instrument for executing their own will. So powerful a weapon was thus created that Hamilton himself became alarmed when it was seized by the hands of Jefferson, Madison, and other democratic leaders as the instrument of democratic ideas, and those long strides were taken in the states and under the federal government which wiped out the distinctions between classes, abolished the relations of church and state, extended the suffrage, and made the government only the servant of the popular will...
