Alexander Hamilton, American by Richard Brookhiser

Author:Richard Brookhiser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Touchstone Book
Published: 1999-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Losing

THE LAST MAJOR SERVICE Hamilton performed for President Washington was drafting his Farewell Address. Washington had asked Madison to prepare a farewell as early as 1792, when he considered stepping down after one term, which Madison had done, though he, and all of Washington’s feuding advisors, had asked him to stay on for another four years (they were afraid of being left alone with each other). In May 1796, the president sent Madison’s old text to Hamilton, with additions of his own, and with permission to cut it if he thought it “too verbose.” Hamilton instead expanded the text, making it Washington’s longest public paper. The president preferred Hamilton’s version “greatly,” and it appeared in the American Daily Advertiser, a Philadelphia newspaper, on September 19. 1

Structurally, the style of the Farewell Address was Hamilton’s, in its length and its lawyerly elaboration of its points. Here and there are phrases that are pure Hamilton, such as “the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be directed …” 2—which is not only a military metaphor (Washington rarely used them), but an artillery metaphor. Yet sentence by sentence, Hamilton strove to shape his style to Washington’s, making it graver and more apothegmatic. Most of the dozens of small changes that Washington made in Hamilton’s draft made it more terse and solid still. For the opening paragraphs, Hamilton retained Madison’s 1792 address. It was their last collaboration.

The theme of the address was the blessings of Union, and the dangers that threatened it. “The continuance of the UNION” was “a primary object of Patriotic desire…. The name of AMERICAN… must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.” Twenty years after Hamilton’s first polemics as an American, flickers of tension still played around his identity. Washington’s first draft had used the phrase “We may all be considered as the Children of one common Country.” Hamilton changed this to “Children for the most part of a common country,” which Washington amended to “Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country.” 3 Taking the metaphor literally, Hamilton excluded himself; Washington returned him to the fold.

The Union rested on the Constitution, public opinion, and self-interest: “[A]ll the parts combined cannot fail to find” the “united mass of [their] means and efforts” yielding “greater strength, greater resource,” and “greater security.” These blessings could be undermined by excessive attachment to regional feeling, domestic factions, or foreign allies. “There can be no greater error,” the address declared, echoing Pacificus, “than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation.” 4 The Farewell Address covered Hamilton’s, and Washington’s, major goals and worries, from the Constitutional Convention to Jay’s Treaty. The worries especially would preoccupy the nation for the next four years.

Hamilton never discussed his role in the Farewell Address, and the documents that established it were not published until 1859, though his close friends and family knew. Walking down Broadway with Betsey one day, Hamilton was offered a copy by a veteran who was hawking them.

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