Founding Fathers: Complete Biographies, Their Articles, Historical & Political Documents. Emory Speer
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in the world. The pageant of State Sovereignty sent them home with nothing but their hangers and spontoons, their rifles and muskets. In vain he urged the organization of a regular force which might become the nucleus of future armies. When State Sovereignty was through with the National defense, the army of the United States was found to consist of eighty mercenaries.
It is not then surprising that Hamilton's disposition toward forceful and effective organic law was immensely strengthened. The inanition and imbecility of scarecrow government, tolerated by the selfishness, suspicion, and inertia of thirteen unconnected States, drove him to the side of Washington, as faithful, as devoted, and as indomitable as at Valley Forge and Trenton, at Monmouth and Yorktown.
Now for the first time, he takes active part in the formation of the Constitution. Seizing the occasion of the abortive convention at Annapolis, he drafts an appeal for a new convention, which throughout the country is read everywhere. Securing an election to the legislature of New York, with the utmost difficulty he induces the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention of May 8,I787. In that body he is the minority delegate from his State. There he contents himself with one great speech, which Gouverneur Morris declared the ablest and most impressive he ever heard. The synopsis of this great argument is preserved, and it sets forth those profound meditations upon the science of government which have been to him habitual from boyhood itself. In favor of strong government, it is far in advance of the views of the convention, but it is as it is intended to be, highly educative. Certain of its principles, while startling to the convention then, to the American people of to-day are as familiar as household words. His colleagues, saturated with opposition, leaving the convention, he does not hesitate to sign the Constitution for New York.
To frame the Constitution was a difficult task, but to secure its adoption by the people is more difficult still. The story is familiar how he and Madison and Jay devoted their facile and lucid pens, their exquisite powers of argument and organization to the cause of the perpetual Union. Of Hamilton and Madison, who has been termed the "Father of the Constitution," it has been said that "the complement of two such minds was most auspicious for the country." They are both very young for such a mighty undertaking, but the serene wisdom of Washington, the silent watchman, curbs the fervid energy of the one and encourages the dispassionate, clear-sighted and persuasive powers of the other. In successive numbers the "Federalist" is published. Aside from the great decisions of John Marshal] and the mighty judges who held with him, to this day, it is the best and most satisfactory exposition of the mischiefs the Constitution was intended to cure, the elastic and all-sufficient remedies which it affords. Nor is it without the proud elation of Americanism, we reflect, that when the victorious Princes of the great Teutonic race, intent on the formation of the German Empire, assembled in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, to the "Federalist" their jurisconsults turned, as to the most comprehensive treatise on the principles of federal government.
But the literary rank attained by Hamilton in these great papers, great as they were, does not afford such manifestation of astonishing power as his part in the debate in the New York convention. Here the opponents of the Constitution under the leadership of Clinton, Governor of the State, have forty-six out of sixty-five votes. The majority is led by Melancthon Smith, no mean debater himself. There also are Yates and Lansing, who had been Hamilton's colleagues in the constitutional convention. The minority of nineteen have for its leaders Hamilton, Livingston, and Jay. "Two-thirds of the convention and four-sevenths of the people are against us," Hamilton declares.
The work of the convention and every clause and paragraph of the Constitution is scrutinized and assailed, with all the bitterness a venomous and hypercritical majority can suggest. Hamilton himself is constantly assailed as if he, and not the Constitution, is the object of attack. The sessions of the constitutional convention had been secret, and Hamilton is familiar with every detail. He comes to the debate as from a rehearsal. When it is all over it is again seen, in the words of Washington at Yorktown, that "the work is done and well done." The opponents of the Constitution dare not come to a direct vote. This suits the Federalists, who know that time is working for them. Nine States have ratified, and presently comes the news that the Old Dominion, the State of Washington, had also assented. Perceiving their defeat, the opponents propose a long string of amendments and a conditional ratification. So brilliant is the reply of Hamilton to these measures, that Melancthon Smith himself confesses that conditional ratification is absurd, and then admits that he has been convinced by Hamilton, and that he will vote for the Constitution. The Constitution has won.
The victory of Hamilton Was epochal. As a parliamentary victory it has rarely been equalled. In open debate upon clearly marked party lines he has overcome and Won over a hostile majority. Mr. Bancroft declares that as a debater he was the superior of William Pitt, the famous son of that more famous Pitt, the Earl of Chatham. We may well believe that he had little if any familiarity with the masterpieces of Greek and Roman orators and poets which afforded an incomparable training and equipment to such men as Pitt and Fox, Macaulay and Gladstone. Nor did he possess the musical and irresistible eloquence found in the native Wood-notes Wild of Patrick Henry. It could not be said of him, as Grattan said of Chatham, that he "resembled sometimes the thunder and sometimes the music of the spheres," but in crystal clearness he Was unsurpassed. No man could misunderstand his meaning, and behind this there were qualities which touched the deepest springs of the human heart. Many eye-witnesses testified that Hamilton moved his audience to tears. It Was the passionate fervor of his convictions, the profound consciousness of his audience that he paid them the high tribute of an appeal to the deepest and purest sources of their patriotism. Reasonable differences he dispelled by the illuminative processes of his mind. Immovable hostility he destroyed by the concentrated flame of reason's whitest heat.
When the new government is formed, and the Department is created, he is at once appointed by Washington as the first Secretary of the Treasury. In ten days he is directed by the new Congress to prepare and report upon the public credit. That this involves his whole financial policy does not prevent that body from requesting him to report also full details for the raising, management, and collection of the revenue, for revenue cutters, for estimates of income and expenditure, for the temporary regulation of the currency, for navigation laws and the regulation of the coasting trade, for the proper management of the public lands, upon all claims against the Government, and for the purchase of West Point. With the utmost celerity the young Secretary disposes of all these matters, and, in addition, voluntarily suggests a scheme for a judicial system.
He obtains money for the immediate necessities of the Government, sometimes pledging his own credit, and then devises the vast financial machinery of the Treasury Department, and the system of accounting which in efficient principle survives to the present time.
The ineffaccable impression he makes is in the early days of our legislative history. In his first great report on the public credit he announces principles, which when observed have been rewarded with a national prosperity such as the world has never known, but when, for the hour, avoided, the punishment as swiftly comes in bankruptcy, disaster, panic, and dismay. His entire system is based upon the most scrupulous unvarying honor in the discharge of national obligations. In his own language he expresses it all, "to justify and preserve the confidence of the most enlightened friends of good government; to promote the increasing respectability of the American name; to answer the calls of justice; to restore landed property to its due value; to cement more closely the union of the States; to add to their security against foreign attack; to establish public order on the basis of an upright and liberal policy — these are the great and invaluable ends to be secured by a proper and adequate provision for the support of public credit."
It is obviously impossible upon an occasion like this to discuss even the principal topics of those momentous concerns, to which Hamilton's original and constructive powers were successively devoted. It will suffice to say that his report on manufactures is the first, and by many believed to be the greatest, argument ever made in maintenance of the principle and the wisdom of protection of the manufactured products of the American people against injurious competition from other lands. It was instantly declared by Jefferson, his great rival, to be designed "to grasp for Congress control of all matters which they should deem for the public welfare and which were susceptible of the application of money." His second report urging the establishment of an excise tax is the basis of the internal