Opinion of Alexander Hamilton

[Sol]

Absolute trash. Kind of glad he lost the duel.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

A clever guy, who was far more in tune with what America would end up resembling than most of the other prominent Fathers; but also a very unpleasant, anti-democratic person. Definitely pales in comparison to his duel partner.

[H. Ross Peron]

FF overall-America to-day is the product of Jefferson's politics and Hamilton's economics. Certainly better than the traitor Burr.

[Rockefeller GOP]

FF

[SPC]

Worst of the Founders.

[MurrayBannerman]

FF because he was right on the central bank. Fed 4 ever

[Deus Naturae]

FF overall-America to-day is the product of Jefferson's politics and Hamilton's economics.

Hamilton's policies consisted of blatant cronyism and economic doctrines now widely recognized as fallacious. So yes, very reflective of contemporary America.

[RI]

Somewhat better than Jefferson.

[Mopsus]

As much as they disagree with him on policy, libertarians should at least respect Hamilton for being one of the few self-made men to be found among the Founding Fathers.

[Lambsbread]

The fact that he's immortalized on currency is laughable.

[SWE]

Worst of the Founders.

[ElectionsGuy]

Worst of the Founders.

[Lief 🗽]

FF.

Also he cannot by definition be the worst of the founders, considering that he did not own hundreds of human beings as property and was not a supporter of slave-holder agrarianism.

[Bigby]

I'm going to be a heretical libertarian and say FF.

[Citizen Hats]

FF.

Also he cannot by definition be the worst of the founders, considering that he did not own hundreds of human beings as property and was not a supporter of slave-holder agrarianism.

Indeed, there is no reasonable way supporting a central bank and import tariffs should be out-libertarian-ed by someone who owned people...

[H. Ross Peron]

FF overall-America to-day is the product of Jefferson's politics and Hamilton's economics.

Hamilton's policies consisted of blatant cronyism and economic doctrines now widely recognized as fallacious. So yes, very reflective of contemporary America.

Yes I'm sure Jefferson's anti-urban agarianism would have been much more useful to the United States compared to internal improvements, having a central bank, and subsidizing infant industries.

[Deus Naturae]

FF overall-America to-day is the product of Jefferson's politics and Hamilton's economics.

Hamilton's policies consisted of blatant cronyism and economic doctrines now widely recognized as fallacious. So yes, very reflective of contemporary America.

Yes I'm sure Jefferson's anti-urban agarianism would have been much more useful to the United States compared to internal improvements, having a central bank, and subsidizing infant industries.

I'm fairly certain the Industrial Revolution would've occurred in the US without protective tariffs to shield inefficient producers from foreign competition and redistribute wealth from consumers, merchants, and farmers to wealthy industrialists. "Internal improvements" was essentially coded language for wasteful corporate welfare, and utterly unnecessary considering the hundreds of private roads and bridges constructed in the first few decades of American history. Finally, I fail to see how the cronyist vehicle that was the Bank of the United States, one of the most corrupt institutions in early US history, can be characterized as essential to the development of modern America.

[SPC]

FF.

Also he cannot by definition be the worst of the founders, considering that he did not own hundreds of human beings as property and was not a supporter of slave-holder agrarianism.

You may be correct about quantity, but I do not believe that Hamilton was entirely innocent of chattel slavery. http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2011_winter_spring/hamilton-and-slavery.html

In any case, individuals ought to be assessed based on the context of their time period. I suppose you would condemn Jefferson for being homophobic in addition to being a slaveholder? Was the Magna Carta a horrible document since its crafters all "owned" serfs?

Whereas chattel slavery had unfortunately been a part of American colonial life for nearly two hundred years at the time period, Alexander Hamilton existed in a time period in which the colonies had already revolted against British mercantilist policies, and did more than any other individual to implement those very same British mercantilist policies that had been rejected.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

One of the greatest FFs of the founding era.

[RINO Tom]

Thanks to my dad, who has taken it upon himself to become a Hamilton scholar of types, I have always been interested in this man.  He is also from the Caribbean, right around where we have vacationed a lot, so that's awesome!

FF, definitely.  Hamilton > Jefferson.  Yeah, I said it!

[ScottieF]

One of my favorite founders. Bit of an elitist, but as previous posters mentioned he was considerably more attuned to where America was heading than his peers. He was in many ways the first "Big Government" liberal in that he was the first major figure in American politics to recognize the need for an active central government that could respond to the issues surrounding industrialization. This was something others (such as Jefferson) failed to grasp and it's a strand of thought that can be followed through to Henry Clay's American System/Whig Party, Lincoln's Union government, the Progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society. Plus he wasn't a slave-holding racist either, so bonus points there.

[RINO Tom]

One of my favorite founders. Bit of an elitist, but as previous posters mentioned he was considerably more attuned to where America was heading than his peers. He was in many ways the first "Big Government" liberal in that he was the first major figure in American politics to recognize the need for an active central government that could respond to the issues surrounding industrialization. This was something others (such as Jefferson) failed to grasp and it's a strand of thought that can be followed through to Henry Clay's American System/Whig Party, Lincoln's Union government, the Progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society. Plus he wasn't a slave-holding racist either, so bonus points there.

I hope you're not suggesting that Hamilton in any way had more of a meaningful connection to modern liberalism than Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans had ... He would be grilled alive for his views on business interests (so would Lincoln) by today's Democrats...

[Orser67]

He was a visionary who was wrong about some key things. He had a lot of good ideas that helped the US down the road towards being a superpower. But, given his elitist and autocratic tendencies, it's also a really good thing that his party lost power in 1800.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

One of my favorite founders. Bit of an elitist, but as previous posters mentioned he was considerably more attuned to where America was heading than his peers. He was in many ways the first "Big Government" liberal in that he was the first major figure in American politics to recognize the need for an active central government that could respond to the issues surrounding industrialization. This was something others (such as Jefferson) failed to grasp and it's a strand of thought that can be followed through to Henry Clay's American System/Whig Party, Lincoln's Union government, the Progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society. Plus he wasn't a slave-holding racist either, so bonus points there.

I hope you're not suggesting that Hamilton in any way had more of a meaningful connection to modern liberalism than Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans had ... He would be grilled alive for his views on business interests (so would Lincoln) by today's Democrats...

This is where we need Mechaman badly. He emphasized the why as much as the how and the what. You are right, Hamilton had a very nationalist view as well as a pro-business one, his policies were framed in the context of both empowering the US as nation and doing so by advancing the interests of its most elite members of society who were the natural source of leadership and so forth in his view. He may have wanted a stronger central gov't and his views (and those of Clay) may have attracted the support of working class voters in some circumstances, that hardly makes them anything remotely resembling a liberal by almost any definition.

[ingemann]

FF.

Also he cannot by definition be the worst of the founders, considering that he did not own hundreds of human beings as property and was not a supporter of slave-holder agrarianism.

Indeed, there is no reasonable way supporting a central bank and import tariffs should be out-libertarian-ed by someone who owned people...

Well, when I look at the people the Libertarians see as the great enemies of freedom and who they see as heroes, my conclusion have been that Libertarians really don't have a big problem with slavery, they just see it as a question about property rights.