Chapter II

The Jeffersonian Reaction

In the low arts of the demagogue, or the craftiness of the politician, Hamilton was not in any wise a match for Mr. Jefferson, who, Simpkins writes, “had not a superior, nor scarcely an equal, among his contemporaries.”
In the breadth of general knowledge, Jefferson surpassed nearly all others of his time — perhaps only rivaled by John Quincy Adams. Jefferson wrote so diversely and on such a vast range of subjects that he is continually quoted in Congress on all sides of every question. “True Jefferson,” the author remarks, could provide both inspiration and contradiction within a single volume.

Hamilton, by contrast, was little else than a soldier, statesman, and financier. His writings were not as abundant because he devoted his pen to one side of every issue.
Jefferson’s patronizing disposition, Simpkins asserts, soon led him to seek domination over his colleagues in the Cabinet — an impulse resisted by Hamilton’s self-reliance and imperiousness, which could not tolerate control. Their disagreements soon descended into personal hostility.

During Hamilton’s tenure as Washington’s chief of staff, he drafted many of Washington’s most important proclamations. While serving later as President, Washington entrusted Hamilton to write nearly every major document except the Neutrality Proclamation, which was penned by Attorney General Edmund Randolph. This preference offended Jefferson, who wrote to James Madison, deriding the proclamation and sneering that “from the pusillanimity of the thing, you may infer from whose pen it came.”

Yet, Simpkins points out, that proclamation has since become the cornerstone of American foreign policy and has been described as “the greatest state paper ever issued.”
Similarly, it is generally conceded that Hamilton authored Washington’s Farewell Address, a document of worldwide reputation, both as an advisory state paper and a model of literary excellence. The last letter Washington ever wrote was to Hamilton, approving his plan for the establishment of the Military Academy at West Point.

Hamilton, Simpkins concludes, “settled the controversy that brought the first new State into the Union,” while Jefferson’s pen and philosophy shaped the moral conscience of the Republic. Their rivalry—one practical, the other visionary—embodied the very tension that forged the American experiment.

“If Jefferson dreamed the Republic,” Simpkins writes, “it was Hamilton who built it.”