of
George III, that once arbitrary power was acknowledged to reside elsewhere, all
liberty was lost. And at a primal level it suggested the unconscious fear of
being swallowed up by a larger creature, the terror of being completely
consumed, eaten alive. If Madison had ever managed to convince himself that
these historically sanctioned fears had been banished with the creation of the
new national government, the debate over assumption demonstrated that they were
still very much alive. Indeed, because of their historical and rhetorical
association with the successful war against British imperialism, they were the
most potent forces in the entire political culture. 19
What Madison
actually thought about the most frantic expressions of Virginian mistrust is
difficult to know. Along with John Adams, Madison was America’s most
astute student of the role of the passions as a political force. But, unlike
Adams, Madison’s mastery of his own passions took the form of total
suppression. His letters back home to Virginia tended to endorse the legitimacy
of the threat posed by assumption, but also to counsel patience, to urge, as
much by their tone as the content, a less apocalyptic attitude.
Hamilton’s fiscal program was certainly a menacing shadow over the new
federal edifice. But talk of secession was premature and counterproductive.
After all, with Washington as president, Jefferson as secretary of state,
Edmund Randolph as attorney general—he might have added Madison as
dominant presence in the Congress—Virginia’s interests were hardly
unrepresented in the capital. As for the threatening insults from their
northern brethren in the government, pay them little attention. “We shall
risk their prophetic menaces,” he noted confidently, “if we should
continue to have a majority.” For on assumption, unlike the earlier
debate over funding, Madison had the votes. Assumption would never pass. 20
I T GOES WITHOUT saying that Alexander
Hamilton’s understanding of the issues raised by his fiscal program, and
the Virginia-writ-large squadrons that were mobilizing south of the Potomac to
oppose it, was blissfully free of all the Madisonian ambiguities. Once Hamilton
encountered a major obstacle to the advancement of any cause in which he
believed, he instinctively hurled himself onto the offensive, never looked
back, and waited for no stragglers. Whether the objective was a British parapet
at Yorktown, the admiration of the legal and merchant elite in New York, or the
ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton’s pattern was the same: to
unleash his formidable energies in great bursts of conspicuous productivity;
imposing his own personality on events in an ostentatious, out-of-my-way style
that was precisely the opposite of Madison’s preference for stealth;
irritating more modest and cautious colleagues with his casual presumption that
both his overall vision and his mastery of the details were self-evidently
superior; irritating them even more when events generally proved him
right.
Critics of his take-charge temperament and his dashing
Hamilton-to-the-rescue demeanor would make a plausible case that they were
excessive compensations for his lowly (indeed bastardly) origins. Some
biographers, pursuing the same interpretive line, have suggested that his
deep-rooted insecurities drove him onto the plains of Weehawken and then into
the fatal gaze of Aaron Burr. But if insecurity was the primal source of
Hamilton’s incredible energy, one would have to conclude that providence
had conspired to produce at the most opportune moment perhaps the most creative
liability in American history. 21
Like Madison
in 1790, Hamilton was at the peak of his powers. He wrote the forty thousand
words of his
Report on the Public Credit
in a three-month surge and
with the same kind of desperate speed he had turned out his fifty-one
contributions to
The Federalist Papers.
Scholars on the lookout for
the theoretical sources that may have
George III, that once arbitrary power was acknowledged to reside elsewhere, all
liberty was lost. And at a primal level it suggested the unconscious fear of
being swallowed up by a larger creature, the terror of being completely
consumed, eaten alive. If Madison had ever managed to convince himself that
these historically sanctioned fears had been banished with the creation of the
new national government, the debate over assumption demonstrated that they were
still very much alive. Indeed, because of their historical and rhetorical
association with the successful war against British imperialism, they were the
most potent forces in the entire political culture. 19
What Madison
actually thought about the most frantic expressions of Virginian mistrust is
difficult to know. Along with John Adams, Madison was America’s most
astute student of the role of the passions as a political force. But, unlike
Adams, Madison’s mastery of his own passions took the form of total
suppression. His letters back home to Virginia tended to endorse the legitimacy
of the threat posed by assumption, but also to counsel patience, to urge, as
much by their tone as the content, a less apocalyptic attitude.
Hamilton’s fiscal program was certainly a menacing shadow over the new
federal edifice. But talk of secession was premature and counterproductive.
After all, with Washington as president, Jefferson as secretary of state,
Edmund Randolph as attorney general—he might have added Madison as
dominant presence in the Congress—Virginia’s interests were hardly
unrepresented in the capital. As for the threatening insults from their
northern brethren in the government, pay them little attention. “We shall
risk their prophetic menaces,” he noted confidently, “if we should
continue to have a majority.” For on assumption, unlike the earlier
debate over funding, Madison had the votes. Assumption would never pass. 20
I T GOES WITHOUT saying that Alexander
Hamilton’s understanding of the issues raised by his fiscal program, and
the Virginia-writ-large squadrons that were mobilizing south of the Potomac to
oppose it, was blissfully free of all the Madisonian ambiguities. Once Hamilton
encountered a major obstacle to the advancement of any cause in which he
believed, he instinctively hurled himself onto the offensive, never looked
back, and waited for no stragglers. Whether the objective was a British parapet
at Yorktown, the admiration of the legal and merchant elite in New York, or the
ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton’s pattern was the same: to
unleash his formidable energies in great bursts of conspicuous productivity;
imposing his own personality on events in an ostentatious, out-of-my-way style
that was precisely the opposite of Madison’s preference for stealth;
irritating more modest and cautious colleagues with his casual presumption that
both his overall vision and his mastery of the details were self-evidently
superior; irritating them even more when events generally proved him
right.
Critics of his take-charge temperament and his dashing
Hamilton-to-the-rescue demeanor would make a plausible case that they were
excessive compensations for his lowly (indeed bastardly) origins. Some
biographers, pursuing the same interpretive line, have suggested that his
deep-rooted insecurities drove him onto the plains of Weehawken and then into
the fatal gaze of Aaron Burr. But if insecurity was the primal source of
Hamilton’s incredible energy, one would have to conclude that providence
had conspired to produce at the most opportune moment perhaps the most creative
liability in American history. 21
Like Madison
in 1790, Hamilton was at the peak of his powers. He wrote the forty thousand
words of his
Report on the Public Credit
in a three-month surge and
with the same kind of desperate speed he had turned out his fifty-one
contributions to
The Federalist Papers.
Scholars on the lookout for
the theoretical sources that may have
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