Friday, May 27, 2016

A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, Part III: Human Nature

            Recent events in the world of musical theatre notwithstanding, it would be difficult to deny that Alexander Hamilton is among the least memorialized of the major Founders. Granted, his stern visage has graced the ten dollar bill since the late 1920s, and there are a number of statues in his likeness standing before, among others, his alma mater of Columbia University and the United States Treasury Building. That being said, there is no “Hamilton Monument” in Washington D.C. or New York City. His words are not carved in marble somewhere, proudly displayed for the inspiration and edification of future generations, and his face adorns no mountainsides. There are many potential reasons for this, likely having to do with his somewhat ignominious end, the self-consciously partisan character he often adopted, or the squalor and pathos of his origins. The most convincing explanation, however, is by far the simplest. Hamilton is not remembered in the same way as Washington, Jefferson, of Franklin – to name the great triumvirate of American Revolutionary myth-making – because he was neither a leader nor a philosopher. He did not write treatises about the nature of human liberty or the primacy of natural rights. He did not set the tone for generations of American politicians by his prudence, restraint, and integrity, and he was never a prolific promoter of a distinctly American cultural identity at home or abroad. What Hamilton cared about was policy, and structures, and building, and organizing. In his life he was a soldier, a lawyer, and a bureaucrat, and in all of these roles he embodied values that many Americans continue to venerate; ambition, dedication, confidence, and ingenuity. But he didn't write the Declaration of Independence, or lead the country through the Revolutionary War. He didn't try to inspire men with his words or his deeds. Instead, he made things; among them, institutions that have supported the growth and prosperity of the American people and allowed them to realize their full potential.

Keeping this in mind – this propensity for the practical rather than the theoretical – it becomes much easier to understand why Hamilton wrote the way he did. Compared to Jefferson’s aforementioned Declaration, with its commanding phrases and soaring idealism, Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit or his Federalist No. 1 appear pedantic, at-times snarky, and generally rather dry. Taken on their own terms, however, one cannot help but take notice of how organized, disciplined, and rational Hamilton’s discourse tends to be, and in turn develop an appreciation for the diligence of the mind that conceived them. A Full Vindication, though written by a callow youth with more ambition than his situation warranted, is no different than any of Hamilton’s later texts in its dependence on sound logic over philosophical or metaphysical abstraction. The first section in particular, spanning paragraphs one through seventy-six, relies almost exclusively on appeals to pragmatic considerations like hunger and profit, and practically groans under the weight of statistics, facts, and figures relating to crop yields, the resource needs of British manufacturers, and the military potential of the American colonies. In this bloody-minded realism there is evidence of a terribly exacting mind at work, worldly beyond its years, and unwilling to suffer the idealistic or the ignorant. A particularly striking example of his hard-headed approach to discourse, and one which seems to connect Hamilton’s sordid upbringing in the Caribbean with his later life as America’s first “accountant-in-chief,” are his frequent attempts to alert his opponent and their shared audience to the true nature of the British Empire.

Counter to the assertions he attributed to men like Samuel Seabury (in the guise of A.W. Farmer), that the best means of mending the rift between Britain and the American colonies was by “remonstrance and petition,” Hamilton declared that such pacific measures were doomed to inevitable and repeated failure. In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress sent such an appeal to the king begging for relief from burdensome taxation, “in the most loyal and respectful manner [.]” The result was “contempt and neglect,” and the same again when the First Continental Congress sent a similar petition in 1774. As Hamilton explained in the previously-quoted fourteenth paragraph, “The total repeal of the stamp act, and the partial repeal of the revenue acts, took place not because the complaints of America were deemed just and reasonable, but because these acts were found to militate against the commercial interests of Great Britain.” Parliament and the Crown, Hamilton knew all too well, regarded their colonial dependencies more as branches of a large and complicated business enterprise than as members of a close and cherished family. Profit and efficiency guided British decision-making vis-à-vis its colonies to a far greater extent than any species of familial or sentimental attachment. In all instances but the most severe crises, Hamilton argued, a British government would invariably pursue the most advantageous policy possible. To do any less, to change course in the face of mere public agitation, would have meant losing face and sacrificing opportunity. Hamilton ascribed this exact type of thinking to the reigning Prime Minister, Lord North (1732-1792), and his behavior towards the colonies when he declared in paragraph eighteen that, “Nothing but necessity will induce him to abandon his aims.” North had set himself on a course of action, justified it to the fullest extent of his considerable power, and, “Advanced too far too recede with safety.”

For his part, Hamilton considered the logic behind this kind of unsympathetic self-interest far from mysterious. British governments and British ministers preferred to alienate and potentially impoverish their American cousins rather than lose respect at home or sacrifice potential profit simply because they chose to obey the basic dictates of self-preservation. The American colonies may have been members of the same linguistic and cultural family as their nominal British overlords, “Being allied to us,” Hamilton admitted, “by ties of blood, interest, and mutual protection [,]” but this did not necessarily entitle the colonists to the same level of consideration as if they were residents of Britain proper. “Humanity does not require us to sacrifice our own security and welfare to the convenience or advantage of others,” he cautioned in paragraph twenty-two,

Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature. When our lives and properties are at stake, it would be foolish and unnatural to refrain from such measures as might preserve them because they would be detrimental to others.

Residents of the colonies or their ancestors had removed themselves from Britain to America by choice. In so doing, Hamilton evidently believed, they had placed themselves beyond the sphere of Britain’s practical concern. Within this sphere, a person could rest easy in the knowledge that their priorities were consequential to the government of the day and that their interests would therefore be attended to; beyond the sphere, physical distance and the associated costs made the desires and aspirations of the average person of limited interest to the powers-that-be. As callous as this manner of administration might have seemed, Hamilton avowed to his readers that it was entirely consistent with human nature and human instinct. To expect the ministry of Lord North, or indeed any British government, to behave in a contrary manner, as A.W. Farmer believed they would, was therefore both unrealistic and naïve.

            This realization, coupled with the nature of the ongoing dispute between the colonies and the British government, placed the people of British America in an unenviable position. Were they to submit, as Hamilton believed his opponent A.W. Farmer intended, by refusing to dispute that Parliament indeed possessed the right to tax the colonies “in all cases whatsoever,” it would be useless for the colonists to hope for a return to peace and prosperity in the years to follow. Guided as ever by avarice and emboldened by America’s consent, Britain would inevitably proceed on a course towards enriching itself by draining the wealth and vitality from its American dependencies. “A vast majority of mankind is entirely biased by motives of self-interest,” Hamilton accordingly reminded his readers in paragraph thirty-seven;

Most men are glad to remove any burthens off themselves, and place them upon the necks of their neighbors. We cannot, therefore, doubt but that the British Parliament, with a view to the ease and advantage of itself and its constituents, would oppress and grind the Americans as much as possible.

This kind of matter-of-fact, cynical evaluation of human behavior and human motivation speaks to Hamilton’s disinterest in philosophical abstraction. Whereas someone like Thomas Jefferson was inclined to characterize an active American response to British intransigence as a consequence of Britain having broken an unspoken “social contract” – thereby invoking a philosophical concept native to the 17th century – the future Treasury Secretary advocated a far simpler line of reasoning. The American colonies, he argued, could not hope to thrive so long as they were viewed by Britain as the source of that distant island’s mounting prosperity. The self-interest of the one would inevitably conflict with the self-interest of the other, and some manner of breach would be the unavoidable result.

            In spite of the evident bleakness of this prognosis, particularly in light of the manifest ways powerful empires had of enforcing their will in the world, Hamilton was quick to point out in A Full Vindication that Britain’s high regard for profit and expediency presented the colonists with a significant potential advantage. Though the members of Parliament may have been largely immune to entreaties from the benighted colonies that sought to stimulate their tenderness, the British love of commerce made their empire vulnerable to economic disruption. “There is an immense trade between [Britain] and the colonies [,]” Hamilton accordingly pointed out in paragraph thirty-eight;

The revenues arising from thence are prodigious. The consumption of [British] manufactures in these colonies supplies the means of subsistence to a vast number of her most useful inhabitants. The experiment we have made heretofore shows us of how much importance our commercial connection is to [Britain], and gives us the highest assurance of obtaining immediate address by suspending it.

A similar statement appeared in paragraph fifty. “Every man,” Hamilton therein declared,

The least acquainted with the state and extent of our trade, must be convinced it is the source of immense revenues to the parent state, and gives employment and bread to a vast number of his Majesty’s subjects. It is impossible but that a suspension of it, for any time, must introduce beggary and wretchedness, in an eminent degree, both in England and in Ireland.

America, Hamilton was keen to point out, enjoyed a far stronger position vis-à-vis its mother country than many in the colonies had theretofore been given to believe. Ties of dependence ran in both directions, and it remained only for the colonists to come to a realization of their power for it to be fully at their disposal.  


In making this argument to his fellow colonists, Hamilton demonstrated an acute awareness – particularly for one so young – of the economic disposition of the British Empire and the manner in which economic considerations could, and did, affect policy-making. Not only did Britain depend on raw materials from its colonies, but it counted on the same distant populations to consume the various manufactures goods its industry produced. Threatening to cut off a source of both supply and demand therefore represented a significant incentive to British cooperation with colonial demands. Hamilton was likely more attuned to this kind of matter-of-fact economic reasoning than many of his contemporaries because of his experiences as a merchant clerk in the West Indies. This he seemed to hint at in paragraph fifty, which concluded with an assertion of the absolute dependence of Britain’s Caribbean possessions on American resources. “I am the more confident of this,” Hamilton added, “Because I have a pretty general acquaintance with their circumstances and dependencies.” This strain of argument – Britain being vulnerable to economic disruption – therefore brought together Hamilton’s own personal experiences, sound, straightforward logic, and an understanding of the human instinct of self-preservation. To this was also added a note of precedent. “The experiment we have made heretofore” doubtless referred to the non-importation agreement the colonies had adopted in 1765 in response to the passage of the Stamp Act. Said boycott, proposed by a congress very much like that which met in 1774, proved highly successful in getting the offending legislation repealed. It was therefore eminently reasonable, in Hamilton’s estimation, to expect that a similar policy would achieve a similar effect.

Friday, May 20, 2016

A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, Part II: Confidence and Deliberation

            In spite of his age, the shortness of his residence in America, and his inexperience with formal political discourse, Alexander Hamilton’s A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress demonstrates a remarkable degree of sophistication in tone and content. Published in December, 1774, when the young Caribbean immigrant was not yet 20 years old, the pamphlet sought to address the recent written agitations of “A Westchester Farmer,” anonymous critic of the First Continental Congress. In spite of the fact that he had arrived on the continent but two years earlier, Hamilton waded into a political conflict that had been simmering since at least the mid-1760s with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. Seeking to foil “the Farmer” at every turn, he deployed, in A Full Vindication, a mix of structure, repetition, logic, rhetoric, and flattery, all buttressed by a healthy dose of haughty, youthful bravado. It is alternately polished and transparent – between accounts of the economic disposition of the British Empire and rather naked appeals to the pride of New York’s farmers – yet it never loses a sense of strong coherence and energy. Indeed, what seems to define A Full Vindication is the manner by which Hamilton was able to combine such seemingly disparate elements in a way that did not appear sporadic or uncoordinated. His answers to the arguments of his opponent were clearly laid out, reiterated often, accompanied by facts and figures on trade between Britain and its colonial possessions, and augmented by rhetoric that sought to exaggerate certain elements, draw attention to others, and remind the reader again and again of the significance of the debate at hand. It is undoubtedly the work of a young man – though one of uncommon gifts – and it is undoubtedly the work of Alexander Hamilton.

            Before delving into what either of those statements means, however, the prudent course would suggest a brief discussion on a few points of fact. The First Continental Congress to which “A.W. Farmer” (as Hamilton referred to his opponent) was so vehemently opposed was not the first of its kind to be summoned by the various colonies of British North America. The Albany Congress (convened in June, 1754) and the Stamp Act Congress (convened in October, 1765) laid the groundwork for subsequent efforts at inter-colonial cooperation by establishing a precedent for summoning delegates from across British North America in order to formulate a united response to common complaints. Though the former proved generally ineffectual, the latter resulted in the publication of a Declaration of Rights and Grievances – which declared that the British House of Commons had no right to tax those it did not represent – as well as the establishment of a boycott on all British manufactured goods being imported into the colonies. When the British government responded to American protests against further attempts to tax the colonies with a series of draconian punishments, a third convention was summoned to meet in Philadelphia in September, 1774. This so-called “Continental Congress,” attended by delegates from twelve colonies, adopted another statement of principles and protest (in this case referred to as the Declaration and Resolves) and establishing another boycott on the importation and consumption of all British goods. Unless the offending acts of Parliament were repealed by September 10, 1775, this non-importation agreement was to be joined by a pact among the participating colonies not to export any American products (produce, timber, fish, etc.) to Britain, Ireland, or the British West Indies.

Though the majority of the twelve delegations present in Congress supported the non-importation campaign, the response from the diverse demographics across the dozen colonies affected was generally somewhat mixed. Samuel Seabury, under the name A Westchester Farmer, was among those who wrote critically of the efforts of Congress. A native of Connecticut, graduate of Yale, and longstanding member of the Anglican clergy in America, Seabury had been ordained as a priest in Britain while studying there in the 1750s. He proved himself, upon his return to the colonies and the subsequent emergence of tensions between local governments and the British Parliament, a strong supporter of the traditional prerogatives of the Crown. To that end, Seabury penned two anonymous letters in 1774 decrying the actions of the delegates recently convened at Philadelphia, the first of which was entitled Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress. Therein, in a style of plain, direct prose, he castigated the members of Congress for having usurped the prerogatives of the people they claimed to represent, and for dealing a severe blow to the lives and livelihoods of the farmers and merchants of New York with their continental boycott. “O shame to humanity!” Seabury declared, “Hold up your heads, ye Committee-men of New-York! Deny the charge if ye can. But remember, the instant ye deny it, ye forfeit all pretensions to truth or conscience.” Though Alexander Hamilton was not aware that Seabury was the author of Free Thoughts when he penned his reply, he and many others rightly suspected that A.W. Farmer came from among the colony’s loyalist-dominated Anglican clergy.

With such a lofty, if anonymous, personage in mind, Hamilton spent three weeks in late 1774, crafting a deliberate, step-by-step refutation of the various claims and accusations made by Seabury’s Westchester Farmer against the actions of the First Continental Congress. In spite of being the product of an intellect still very much in the process of formation, it demonstrated on its author’s behalf a remarkable degree of coherence and rhetorical energy that belies the youth of the penman and the ostensibly dry nature of the subject under discussion. There are a great many specific points, passages, or excerpts that attest to the extraordinary competence therein displayed – to which further attention will be paid shortly – yet the impact of the piece and the skill inherent in its creation is perhaps best appreciated by first surveying the whole of the thing. To that end, there are several recurring elements or themes that Hamilton made use of in A Full Vindication that give evidence of the freshman pamphleteer’s approach to discourse, his understanding of his audience, and his political and philosophical sympathies.

Foremost among these elements is Hamilton’s highly structured approach to debate. While attention to proper composition is a common trait among many examples of political commentary from the Revolutionary Era – owing no doubt to the education received by many of the Founders which prioritized rhetoric and logic – Hamilton’s use of the same remains notable chiefly because of his age and inexperience. Though he had been studying in the colonies since very near his arrival in the autumn of 1772 – first at a grammar school in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and then under tutor Frances Barber – his time at Kings College had as yet been very brief. And previous to this formal schooling the greatest part of his education had been self-administered via the books he had inherited from his mother’s estate. That he should have acquired the knowledge, let alone the confidence, to put into practice tested methods of written discourse after such a disjointed education would seem to indicate the prodigious nature of Hamilton’s talents. A Full Vindication, far from the emotional, undisciplined screed one might expect from a teenager anxious to make a name for himself, clearly lays out and follows through on a series of arguments with composure, determination, and a close attention to detail.

When attempting, for example, to demonstrate that the measures enacted by the late Congress constituted “good policy,” Hamilton first defined the essential components of the concept itself (paragraph twenty-nine) and thereafter proceeded to explain how each of them weighed upon the fitness of a non-importation agreement to achieve the ends desired by the affected colonists (paragraphs thirty, thirty-one, and forty-seven). A framework of argument thus established, Hamilton thereafter began to quote at length (beginning in paragraph forty-nine) specific passages from the two letters published under the name A.W. Farmer and providing responses and refutations that relied on logic, the exposure of contradictions, and appeals to the economic disposition of the British Empire and the American colonies. This pattern – argument and counter-argument, claim and repudiation – continued through to paragraph one hundred seventeen of one hundred twenty-five. Over the course of this extended back-and-forth, Hamilton delved into discussions of, among other things, the practical effects of British taxation on American farmers, the ability of Britain to support itself and its colonial dependencies absent American produce and markets, and the potentially beneficial effects of the colonies being forced to develop their domestic manufacturing capacities. No doubt Hamilton intended that every contradiction A Full Vindication offered to the arguments of Seabury’s Westchester Farmer would chip away at some small portion of the latter’s legitimacy so that by the pamphlet’s conclusion any validity formerly possessed by the pseudonymous Loyalist would appear entirely baseless.

Accompanying the very structured argumentative format seen throughout A Full Vindication is a highly didactic method of communicating certain ideas. This method takes the form of repetition, of words, phrases, and concepts, as a means of reinforcing their importance and continually reminding the reading audience of the practical terms of the ongoing debate. One notion in particular, of profound importance to the larger debate then raging about the true nature of the British Empire, appears at numerous points during the course of Hamilton’s various claims and declarations. The arguments of the “restless spirits” who publicly opposed the actions of the Continental Congress were faulty, Hamilton claimed, because at base they insisted that the dispute between the American Colonies and the British Parliament was, “Founded entirely upon the petty duty of three pence per pound on East India tea [.]” This was plainly untrue, so A Full Vindication declared, because, “The whole world knows it is built upon this interesting question, whether the inhabitants of Great Britain have a right to dispose of the lives and properties of the inhabitants of America, or not.” The above excerpted passage appeared in the second paragraph of A Full Vindication, and though it was accompanied by other supposed falsehoods that critics of Congress had endeavored to perpetuate, the reappearance of the same argument in the pages that followed marked it out as of particular importance to the broader message of Hamilton’s novice pamphlet. Indeed, similar expressions can be found in paragraphs eight, eighty-two, eighty-three, and one hundred four, each of which repeat the fundamental claim that the dispute between the colonists and their British cousins was not over certain specific taxes but concerned the theoretical right of taxation that Britain claimed to possess.

By relying on a rhetorical device of this nature, Hamilton served to impart a deliberate and methodical character to A Full Vindication. Rather than sweep back and forth across the hazy spectrum of theoretical philosophy, as some of his more academic-minded colleagues were inclined to do, he never strayed too far from the topic at hand before returning once more to a simple declaration of what he knew to be the root of the present crisis. This resort to repetition, at chosen intervals, doubtless permitted Hamilton to venture into discussions of topics less immediate to a consideration of the validity of the non-importation agreement decreed by Congress without fear of losing the attention of his audience. Not only did this likely imply a degree of discipline on the part of the author of A Full Vindication, an impression which no doubt strengthened its potential acceptance, but it also seemed to acknowledge the limitations of the pamphlet’s desired audience. As Seabury adopted the pen-name “A Westchester Farmer” in order to ingratiate himself with New York’s sizeable agricultural population (Westchester Country at that time being largely rural), so Hamilton showed a conspicuous awareness of the nature and temperament of his readership by continually reminding them what, at base, was really being discussed. The moderately educated, or indeed uneducated, farmers of New York might reasonably have found themselves at sea amid the facts and figures Hamilton dispensed concerning the disposition of the Irish textile industry, the productive capacity British Canada, and the resource needs of the West Indies. Relating these tangents back to the aforementioned claim – the “us vs. them,” taxes vs. the right to tax disagreement – was no doubt intended to alleviate any potential confusion and make it as clear as possible that the position adopted by Congress had a very straightforward basis in logic that was supported by any number of practical economic arguments. This strong sense of the disposition of his audience seems also in evidence in the basic structure Hamilton chose for A Full Vindication.

Of one hundred twenty-five paragraphs total, the first seventy-six of Hamilton pamphlet are addressed to a presumed general audience and concern themselves mainly with refuting the claims put forward by A.W. Farmer in strongly logical terms. Rather than attempt to discredit his chosen opponent by relying on invective, or by calling into question his character or his motivations, Hamilton evidently chose in this section to restrict his arguments against the expressions of his Loyalist foe mainly to those that undermined their basis in rational thought. To the assertion, for instance, that Britain was inclined to respond favorably to petitions against the taxes recently levied upon the colonies because Parliament had in the past lifted similar taxes in response to repeated requests, Hamilton declared that said imposts were previously repealed only, “Because these acts were found to militate against the commercial interests of Great Britain.” It was not out of a sense of tenderness that the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, or the Townshend Duties had been rescinded, he avowed, but rather in reaction to united American resistance to the same in the form of commercial boycotts. The preservation of British industry had been the only motivation for previous instances of British mercy; the relevant Parliamentary debates had made this quite clear, and to claim otherwise was an unaccountable folly. Arguments of this type predominate in the first half of A Full Vindication, and bring to bear against the claims of the Westchester Farmer a veritable fusillade of hard-headed, pragmatic assertions about the true strength of the united American colonies, the delicate balance inherent in administering a complex global empire, and the ruthless self-interest that lay at the bottom of all British decision-making. As an introduction to a new voice on the colonial American political scene, such an effective resort to the logical deconstruction of an opponent’s position doubtless left its mark on those who read it. Hamilton’s fondness for realpolitik, discussed at length in previous weeks, was unusual among the political discourse of the period, and seems to have formed an essential component of his earliest foray into public debate.

Similarly characteristic of Hamilton’s approach to political discourse, heavy use of emotionally-charged rhetoric is the dominant element of the second half of A Full Vindication. Though the arguments that followed his declaration that he was, “Now to address [himself] in particular to the Farmers of New York,” (paragraph seventy-seven) still made use of practical economic examples as evidence for the validity of the boycott proposed by Congress, pragmatism was far outweighed by emotional appeals, haughty exaggeration, and no little degree of fearmongering. As his later career would prove, Hamilton was certainly not above making use of such tactics in order to manipulate the perceptions of his audience. His share of the Federalist Papers, for example, show a remarkably sophisticated grasp of the anxieties of the American public and a willingness to tweak their fears, aspirations, or aversions. A Full Vindication gives evidence of this exact tendency, though in a form far less polished – one might even say clumsier – than Hamilton would later achieve. In the aforementioned seventy-seventh paragraph, he managed to decry Seabury’s attempt to masquerade as a farmer – “He is some ministerial emissary,” he declared, “That has assumed the name to deceive you, and make you swallow the intoxicating potion he has prepared for you” – while attempting to both flatter the same constituency and appeal to their sense of pride. “I have a better opinion of you than to think he will be able to succeed,” Hamilton informed his pastoral readers, and further added, “You would be a disgrace to your ancestors, and the bitterest enemies to yourselves, and to your posterity, if you did not act like men, in protecting and defending those rights you have hitherto enjoyed.” Though such a nakedly sycophantic expression may not have succeeded on its own in swaying the pamphlet’s intended audience, the combination of rhetoric with grounded, logic-laden arguments doubtless provided a sense of balance and equilibrium that neither component could have achieved alone. By thus appealing to his audience’s clinical and emotional aspects, Hamilton doubtless greatly increased the likelihood that one or another of his arguments would hit home.

Another hallmark of the Hamiltonian style of debate present in A Full Vindication is the overwhelming sense of the author’s confidence in his own abilities and the rightness of his convictions. Never a shrinking violet, America’s inaugural Treasury Secretary was often cited – and frequently despised – for the self-assured manner in which he conducted his public affairs, and his written discourse gives ample evidence of the high estimation he perennially afforded himself and the contempt with which he frequently viewed his opponents. Hamilton’s first venture into public debate was no exception. In fact, his customary hauteur appears if anything augmented by the youthful bravado one might reasonably expect from an adolescent prodigy who feels as though they have something to prove. While a similar sentiment was likely not beyond an older, more poised Hamilton, it may thus reasonably be chalked up to youthful impudence when in the first paragraph of his first published pamphlet he declared of the attempts of Loyalists like Samuel Seabury to cast doubt upon the efforts of the First Continental Congress,

The impotence of such insidious efforts is evident from the general indignation they are treated with; so that no material ill-consequences can be dreaded from them. But lest they should have a tendency to mislead, and prejudice the minds of a few, it cannot be deemed altogether useless to bestow some notice upon them.

With these two sentences alone, Hamilton dismissed his opponent out of hand, declaring that they were of no consequence and thus not to be feared, and then deigned to offer his insight as though it was particularly magnanimous of him to do so. For a young man of 18 or 19 years this represents an impressive assertion indeed.

A passage in paragraph ninety-nine demonstrated a similar degree of self-possession, whereby Hamilton declared, “By this time I flatter myself you are convinced that we are not disputing about trifles. It has been clearly proved to you that we are contending for everything dear in life [.]” Rather than formally submit his case to the prudence and good judgement of his readers, as many among his contemporaries often explicitly did, Hamilton stated three-quarters of the way through his first piece of public discourse that he had succeeded, and that his case had been “clearly proved.” Then, in paragraph one hundred six he affirmed in response to a claim of A.W. Farmer’s he fancied he had just refuted, “The gentleman who made the objection must have known these things as well as myself; but he loves to crack a jest, and could not pass by so fair an opportunity.” So convinced was Hamilton of his own talents, the cogency of his arguments, and the success of his inaugural venture into written debate, that he felt comfortable diminishing the knowledge of his anonymous opponent by stating that their errors must surely have been in jest. By appearing to give A.W. Farmer the benefit of the doubt, he was in fact doing anything but. Paragraph one hundred eighteen was perhaps the most casually dismissive of all. It states, in its entirety,

By Him–but, with your leave, my friends, we’ll try, if we can, to do without swearing. I say, it is enough to make a man mad to hear such ridiculous quibbles offered, instead of sound argument; but so it is–the piece I am writing against contains nothing else.

With feigned gentility Hamilton declared a wish to avoid offending the sensibilities of his readers by taking God’s name in vain, though the efforts of his opponent to call into doubt the intentions of Congress inclined him very much in that direction. While thus seeming to apologize for his near-resort to profanity, he managed to slip in an exceedingly casual dismissal of Seabury’s no doubt sincere admonishments. “It is enough to make a man mad to hear such ridiculous quibbles,” he explained, in two words summing up all that his opponent had to say and tossing it (and him) effortlessly aside.


            This kind of aggressive rhetoric was not altogether uncommon among 18th century pamphleteers and political commentators. As the satire dispensed with mischievous glee by Benjamin Franklin or the fiery invective that was Thomas Paine’s stock in trade demonstrates, the literary world of the Revolutionary Era was not without certain ungentlemanly aspects. Men, and more than a few pseudonymous women, were perfectly willing to manhandle their opponents in an attempt to appease or appeal to an audience that appreciated a public feud as well as any serial viewed of modern reality television. Indeed, the delivery of a cutting insult was for many a skill to be cultivated; a tool by which one could more effectively diminish their opponent and make their point. With this in mind, Alexander Hamilton’s willingness to cunningly dismiss or deride Seabury’s A.W. Farmer was not altogether so remarkable for the period. That being said, absolutely worth noting is the tender age at which Hamilton sought to stake his claim to this particular literary tradition. If A Full Vindication is any kind of proof, brio was not something he earned with his accomplishments. He was not a confident debater and a deliverer of stinging written reposts in 1774 because he was flush with success. At 18 years old, fresh off the boat and doubtless still stinging from a childhood deprived of many basic comforts, Alexander Hamilton was nobody. And yet, all logic to the contrary, the confidence was there. Later achievements doubtless augmented, channelled, and directed it, but its source was evidently internal. To understand this is to understand something fundamental about one of the single-most influential members of the Founding Generation. 

Friday, May 13, 2016

A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, Part I: Context

            Much to my surprise – and to some extent my delight – recent months have witnessed the stunning success and popularity of a piece of musical theatre based on the life of one of America’s Founding Fathers. I confess I have not seen it myself and may never – owing more to circumstances than inclination – but all the same I find myself both fascinated and unsettled. That any of the Founders should have proven themselves suitable fodder for such a lavish form of artistic expression would, I have no doubt, been a source of puzzlement for the men in question. Farmers, lawyers, merchants, and printers toiling on the ragged frontier of a vast empire, they seemed far less sensible of their own significance than that of the endeavor they were collectively engaged in. I find that I too am similarly perplexed. Having worked for what seems like many more years than is truly the case in this little corner of American history, to find a subject that I have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time and resources grappling with suddenly embraced by the popular imagination is a sensation fraught with distinctly mixed emotions. I am pleased that a man who has, in spite of his great importance, been ill-known by the general public is now having the story of his life retold night after night before packed audiences. And I am also hopeful that this production, by allowing Americans to connect with the experiences of one of the founders of their nation on a personal, relatable level, will help promote a deeper and more complex appreciation of the American Founding among the general population.

            Yet I am also sensible – perhaps unnecessarily – that by repackaging the life experiences of a member of the Founding Generation in an entertaining fashion, and in a form that takes on a reasonable length, certain details and nuances may effectively be lost. With all due credit to the creator of the show, who has gone to significant lengths to portray many specific incidents from the life of his subject, it may just be that musical theatre is not the ideal forum for discussions of philosophy, banking, or constitutional theory. With this in mind, I find I cannot shake the apprehension that some audience members may come away from a performance with an altogether incomplete idea of the man and his world. Additionally, and in a far more shameful admission, I must confess to feeling a degree of territoriality. Reams of scholarship have been written on the subject of the production in question, by some of the most incisive minds of their respective generations. I have, in the course of my formal studies, become acquainted with more than a few such works, and it rather pains me to think that most of them will remain on shelves collecting dust while the general public absorbs their history through song and dance numbers. I will own that most academic histories are dry, repetitive, and dense, and would almost certainly bore the average person into a state of unconsciousness were they forced to read them. And I will also freely acknowledge that popular theatre is a perfectly legitimate forum for communicating about very important topics. Call it academic jealousy. This thing that I felt some ownership over has appeared to slip beyond my grasp, and I cannot help but feel that it will be misunderstood by those not adequately informed. I should give people more credit, I know.

As I’m sure my “clever” attempt to talk around the subject of this post has grown tiresome, I might as well state outright that what follows will be in part inspired by the success of the musical Hamilton, written and headlined by the incomparable Lin-Manuel Miranda. While I must again confess a degree of disbelief that the production has been so successful thus far, I simultaneously cannot deny that the enigmatic and ambitious Alexander Hamilton makes for a very intriguing protagonist. With that in mind, and in the spirit of embracing the resulting public interest in the man, I’d like to take the next few weeks to dig into another piece of Hamilton’s written work. The piece in question, titled A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, was first published in New York City in December, 1774 when Hamilton, then a mere stripling at 17, was a student at King’s College (now Columbia University). Written in response to the pro-British pamphlets of Anglican minister and Loyalist Samuel Seabury (1729-1796), A Full Vindication represents the first foray into political discourse of a young immigrant from the Caribbean who would, through hard work, ambition, talent, and luck, go on to play an instrumental role in reshaping the future of the continent and the lives of untold millions.

In spite of his youth and the fact that he had arrived in America only two years previously – in the autumn of 1772 – Hamilton’s first ever partisan publication is surprisingly structured and makes use of a highly coherent style of argument that would seem to presage his later development as a lawyer, pamphleteer, legislator, and government minister. Also worth noting is his use of rhetoric, both subtle and otherwise, as a means of shifting or manipulating the terms of the debate at hand in a favorable direction. As with his love of structure, this early example of Hamilton’s fondness for appealing to the emotions or prejudices of his audience would seem to foreshadow the skilled debater and essayist he would become. That being said, the Hamilton that penned A Full Vindication, while obviously sympathetic to the Revolutionary cause, had yet to fully embrace either its more radical implications or the role he would shortly thereafter determine to play. The document in question thus serves as a record the political awakening of one of the luminaries of the Founding Generation.

Hamilton’s background has been delved into once before during this series, and so the need to establish the proper context for the discussion to follow will perhaps best be served by reiterating some basic biographical information while also drawing attention to certain specific facts or incidents. To that end, it ought first to be recollected that Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis (now part of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis) in either 1755 or 1757. His parents, a woman of French Huguenot stock named Rachel Faucette and a perennially unlucky Scottish merchant named James Hamilton, were not married at the time of his birth. This fact drastically effected how young Alexander was treated by the community and eventually led to James’ departure at some point in the 1760s. After relocating with his mother and elder brother to the St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, then a Danish colony, Hamilton was then twice orphaned by the death of Rachel Faucette in 1768 and the suicide of his legal guardian and cousin Peter Lytton in 1769. Alexander, then fourteen, was subsequently adopted by Nevis merchant Thomas Stevens and taken on as his apprentice. After serving under Stevens for a little less than three years, and growing very close to his son Edward, the bastard orphan Hamilton became the beneficiary of a scholarship fund established by community leaders in Christiansted who had been impressed by an essay of his that was published in the Royal Danish-American Gazette. He thereafter departed the Caribbean and arrived in New Jersey in October, 1772. In the fall of 1773 he began his studies at King’s College, and formally matriculated the following spring.  

From within this brief recitation of names and dates a few points of interest ought to be expanded upon. One should first endeavor to shake the image of Hamilton’s Caribbean upbringing, tragic though it seemed in the main, as having taken place against a sleepy, obscure, or idyllic backdrop. Though Nevis and St. Croix may now appear to be little more than calm tropical backwaters, they were, in the 18th century, at the centre of one of the most contested regions in the Great Power struggle for territory and resources. Sugar was the cash-crop of choice on Nevis – amounting to 20% of total British production in 1700 – and this afforded the island a value far in excess of all of Britain’s North American possessions combined. The Royal Navy was therefore a permanent fixture, along with merchant fleets, hordes of sailors, and representatives of some of the wealthiest trading firms in the British Empire. Being raised in an environment thus saturated with palpable symbols of global trade and colonial power-brokering, a young man of modest means like Alexander Hamilton might have very easily and very quickly gained a practical appreciation for the ruthlessly acquisitive dimension of 18th century statecraft. This tangible sense of his community’s place in the large world of European imperialism was no doubt also molded by the social and economic disposition of his fellow islanders.     

With the cultivation of sugar on Nevis came the inevitable importation of cheap labor to fill the needs of the island’s small number of wealthy planters. Initially this resulted in the 17th century resettlement of whatever vagrants and petty criminals British authorities managed to coral and deport from cities like London. White, poor, and selectively moral, these hardscrabble early residents were mainly employed as indentured servants or plantation overseers. As demand for sugar in Europe increased and planters struggled to keep pace, slaves imported from either Africa or neighboring Caribbean islands like Jamaica or Antigua began increasingly to dominate the Nevis labour market. By the time of Hamilton’s birth in the 1750s the island was accordingly host to approximately 1000 White residents and 4000 Black slaves. The White population was in turn divided between the wealthy planter elite and a marginal community of former indentured servants and their middling offspring. Hamilton’s family was a part of the former cohort, though their means much more resembled the latter. His mother was the child of a physician and minor plantation owner named John Faucette who, upon his death in 1745, left her the whole of his modest wealth and property. This inheritance, hardly a grand endowment to begin with, was subsequently frittered away by Rachel’s first husband, Danish merchant and aspiring planter Johann Michael Lavien. Blessed with more ambition than talent, Lavien was one of many European fortune seekers who came to the Caribbean with dreams of easy wealth in the sugar trade; Hamilton’s father was another.

In spite of his notable parentage – he was the fourth of eleven children born to a member of Scotland’s minor nobility – and comfortable upbringing, James Hamilton’s limited personal ambitions were time and again stymied by poor judgement and worse luck. Having languished under an apprenticeship to one of his elder brother’s merchant friends, he became enchanted by the tales of easy wealth which accompanied the shiploads of raw sugar then pouring into the port of Glasgow and set out for the island of St. Kitts sometime after 1741. Seeking to establish himself as a trader in supplies to and sugar from the local plantation owners, James soon ran afoul of the razor thin margins that accompanied the life of a Caribbean merchant and began a steady downward spiral of capital and social standing. By the time he met Rachel Faucette on St. Kitts in the early 1750s she had been the victim of a similar series of setbacks; accused of adultery, she suffered a brief period of imprisonment, and then left her husband and their child behind on St. Croix. Because of the respective disgraces they carried – hers social, his financial – James and Rachel were effectively exiled from the rarefied company of the planter elite. The birth of their two children – out of wedlock and to a woman still married to man she had left behind – in many ways further compounded the stigma the pair already suffered under. As a consequence their sons were forced to endure the sting of illegitimacy, and in a community whose only means of social support for the underprivileged White community was an established church that did not look kindly upon adulterous unions. Alexander and his brother James were therefore refused enrolment in the Anglican-run school and received their education from whatever tutors the family could arrange.

In light of the circumstances and experiences described above, it seems likely that the perspective Alexander Hamilton brought with him to King’s College in 1774 was unlike that of many of his American contemporaries. In contrast to those who professed themselves loyal to the Crown and waxed poetic on the many and various ways that citizenship in the British Empire was a measure of prosperity and civilization, Hamilton had seen the machinery of imperialism firsthand. There was nothing noble in the rapacious method by which the planter elite of the British West Indies traded the lives of their slaves for the increasingly profitable sugar harvests that made their prosperity possible. Nor was their much to be grateful for in the social conditions that this insatiable striving for ever-greater yields engendered. Granting that the thousands of enslaved Africans suffered under the worst conditions, poor Whites and middling merchants fared only marginally better. Fortunes could turn on a dime, particularly for those naïve Europeans who believed a short stint in the Caribbean would provide a gateway to wealth and prosperity at home, and destitution and disgrace never seemed much farther than one bad harvest or tropical storm away. Hamilton’s parents were both victims of these precarious conditions, and the experiences of his early life were the direct result of their combined loss of social and financial capital. It would thus seem quite natural for him to have developed an understanding of the British Empire, its priorities, and its supposed virtues that was far less sympathetic than that which residents of New York, Massachusetts, or Virginia might have cultivated.

It seems at once unlikely, however, that Hamilton would have come away from his time in the Caribbean with entirely the same appreciation for Enlightenment philosophy, natural law, and “the rights of Englishmen” that his later Patriot colleagues would go on to profess. Even in an environment dominated by slave-based plantation agriculture, it was possible for a resident of 18th century Virginia – like Thomas Jefferson or George Washington – to develop a political and philosophical outlook that was rooted in concepts like liberty, equality, and the preservation of certain fundamental rights. Likely this was a consequence of education, the perpetuation of inherited social behaviours, and the existence of an elected legislature whose operation cultivated certain philosophical norms (i.e. that people had a role to play in government, that political representation was a basic right, and that public service was a virtue to be sought after). People so conditioned could be expected to respond to perceived violations of their accustomed rights by reiterating what they believed those rights and their philosophical foundations to be. Unlike Virginia, however, or New York, or Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania, the corner of the British Caribbean from which Hamilton originated was defined by a fundamentally different social and political order.

The purpose of Nevis, or St. Kitts, or Saint Croix, was to supply its European overlords with as much of a given commodity as possible. The planter elite owned all the land that was fit to cultivate, leaving only the narrowest economic niche for landless Whites to fill. The threat of raids by stateless pirates or foreign powers ensured a constant military presence, and the lack of access to higher education prevented the emergence of a local political class. Commerce was the governing principle of places like this, a lesson which Hamilton doubtless learned at a young age while clerking for Thomas Stevens in the early 1770s. Slaves were imported, sugar was exported, men and woman won and lost fortunes, and profit was the one true measure of a person’s success. Having spent the first decade-and-a-half of his life in a social environment so defined, it would seem logical for Alexander Hamilton to have developed an understanding of the world that was hardnosed, utilitarian, and rigorously pragmatic. The experiences of his benighted parents, the effects of his unstable youth, and the constant presence of merchants and traders attempting to carve out a living amidst the ruthlessness of European Great Power economics doubtless wrought their effects on the young man from Charlestown. Among the lessons his time in the Caribbean likely taught him, the most obvious would seem to be that social hierarchies were rigid, failure was always an option, and the only refuge from destitution and death was sound finances.

I’ll grant that I'm perhaps reading too much into the surface conditions of life in the 18th century British West Indies and drawing connections to Hamilton’s later live that simply aren't borne out by the facts. History being in many ways an interpretive discipline, one always runs this risk. That being said, it would seem extraordinarily coincidental that one of the most rigorous and innovative financial minds of his generation grew up in one of the most economically cutthroat regions of the British Empire without it having affected him. Massachusetts and Virginia most certainly left their stamp on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and to say otherwise of Alexander Hamilton and his home country would make for a rather odd exception. More to the point, however, this brief examination of some of the specific circumstances of Hamilton’s upbringing is meant to weigh on a discussion of one of his early political writings rather than on his later life and career. The man who helped craft the United States Constitution, campaigned for its ratification, and served as chief financial officer of the resulting government had enjoyed an eventful existence in America, between marriage, the military, and practicing at the bar. The young man – and barely that – who put pen to paper in an effort to respond to the declarations of someone twice his age was conversely but a few short years removed from his time in the tropics. However subsequent experiences served to transform Alexander Hamilton into an American, at the time A Full Vindication was published in 1774 he was still a low-born immigrant from the West Indies whose existence had been defined by the precarious economics of his homeland. 

Friday, May 6, 2016

Draft Constitution for Virginia, Part XI: the Tyranny of the Grave

The final element of Jefferson’s draft constitution for Virginia to be examined in this series, before what I'm sure certain readers would agree is a long-overdue adjournment, speaks once more to the Sage of Monticello’s particular concern with the influence of property on the social and political health of a republic. As last week’s post examined in some depth, part of what Jefferson evidently aimed to accomplish by redrawing the political map of Virginia in 1776 was a broadening of the public sphere by distributing land grants – and the political responsibilities that accompanied them – to any citizen who qualified. This mass dispersal of property – up to 50 acres per person – also likely represented a first attempt by Jefferson to strengthen the virtue of his fellow Virginians and render them more suitable for republican government in keeping with his personal conviction that people who owned land were more sensitive of their rights and more willing to defend them. In spite of how radical such a provision might appear, it is worth noting that the lands to be distributed were only those left unappropriated or that had been forfeited. The property of Virginia’s planter class – of which Jefferson was a notable member – was not to be seized and reallocated, and thus their wealth was in no danger. Or at least, it was in no danger from that particular provision of Jefferson’s draft constitution. As mentioned previously, there was a second clause in said document which affected the ownership of property in Virginia, and which can most clearly be traced to the Sage of Monticello’s personal convictions rather than the influence of the history or philosophy that formed his education.           

This second clause, located at the end of the section concerned with land and its ownership, simply stated that, “Descents shall go according to the laws of Gavelkind, save only that females shall have equal rights with males.” For those unacquainted with arcane medieval legalese, “descents” should be taken in this instance to mean “inheritance,” referring to the ability of property to be transmitted from one person to another upon the expiration of the former. Gavelkind was in turn a form of inheritance law, practiced in slightly different forms in the English Earldom of Kent and the various fiefdoms of medieval Wales, which mandated that upon death an individual’s property was to be divided equally among their nearest living male descendants. The clause quoted above was thus intended to indicate that, upon the adoption of Jefferson’s proposed constitution, property in Virginia was to be subdivided upon the death of its holder and distributed equally among their children regardless of gender. Unlike the land grants which the draft constitution also authorized, this reform would have affected the wealthy and modest alike, and in time would likely have wrought massive changes to the overall character of Virginia’s culture and politics. Again, this was probably what Jefferson intended, and speaks once more to how fundamentally he sought to reshape the society in which he lived as it transitioned at the dawn of the Revolution from British colony to American state.

The reason that the clause in question represented such a significant alteration to the status quo in Virginia stems from the way inheritance law had theretofore operated. Being in origin an English dependency, Virginia had operated since its foundation in 1609 under a distinctly English Common Law framework. Among the provisions native to this structure of traditions and practices – trial by jury and habeas corpus being two particularly noteworthy examples – was the law of intestacy. The basic principle of intestacy determined that upon the death of an individual whatever remained of their estate once their debts and expenses had been paid became “intestate.” An estate that was intestate was thereafter to be disposed of according either to the laws of inheritance then in force or in accord with whatever testament the deceased individual had seen fit to make. The latter practice, of devising the settlement of property in the form of a will, became law in 1540 with the passage of the Statute of Wills. Prior to this and in instances wherein a will was absent, property was transmitted via the principle of primogeniture, which held that the eldest male-line descendant of the deceased (meaning his or her closest male-descended relative) stood to inherit the latter’s intestate property.

The disposition of property in English Common Law jurisdictions was further affected by the concept of “fee tail” or “entail.” A Norman concept enshrined in English law by the Statute of Westminster (1285), entail was a form of conditional inheritance whereby an estate was declared by a deed – or after 1540 a will – to be the sole property of a given individual “and the heirs of his body.” In practice, because the “heirs of his body” had to be his legitimate children and their direct descendants, the use of entail limited the ability of an estate to be divided or freely disposed of by its owner. An estate held in entail thus existed in a form of trust; rather than belong to its present holder “in free and absolute dominion,” it was theirs only to hold and cultivate until such time as it was to be passed in full to their legal, blood-related heir. Combined with the principle of primogeniture, entail ensured, among other things, that the source of a family’s wealth could not be divided or destroyed, even by its legal owner, but would instead pass from eldest son to eldest son in perpetuity.

In colonial Virginia, the practical result of the continued observance of such hallowed English legal principles was the continued prosperity of the slave-owning planter class. Estates, certainly by Jefferson’s lifetime, were almost all protected by entail from being dispersed, and as each generation of Virginia gentlemen added by purchase to the lands (and slaves) they had inherited, so these protected estates grew in size and the families in question grew in power and prominence. These families – the Lees, the Braxtons, the Harrisons, and the Randolphs, to name a few –wielded tremendous power in the colonial political sphere, partly as a result of the land (and tenants) they controlled, and partly due to their ability to sway or impress the voting public with displays of generosity or extravagance during periods of election. Jefferson was certainly of the same class as these extended clans and enjoyed many of the same advantages, but his perspective on the distinction of Virginia’s landed gentry was affected by slightly different circumstances. Whereas the families named called the Tidewater region (along the Atlantic coastline) their home, where rich soil made plantation agriculture exceedingly profitable, the Jefferson family had settled in the Piedmont region (a plateau extending between the Atlantic coast region and the Appalachians), where rocky, clay-heavy earth and hilly terrain made it much harder to specialize in a single cash-crop like tobacco. Piedmont farmers were certainly capable of amassing wealth based on their ownership of land – the details of Jefferson’s upbringing attests to the many advantages he enjoyed – but they were not, to coin a phrase, “Tidewater rich.” Taking these facts in hand, and noting as well that the affluence of the Tidewater planters had allowed them to dominate the House of Burgesses for generations, it is perhaps somewhat easier to understand why protecting familial land holdings might not have seemed quite as important to someone like Jefferson, and why he so often proved willing to attack the root of the Virginia elite’s inherited wealth.

While it generally isn't the policy of this series to project forward from the time a document under examination was first made public, in this case a slightly broader view seems necessary in order to establish Jefferson’s avowed hostility toward inheritance laws that tended to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few. Law reform was a favored subject of the Sage of Monticello – one he revisited often as a legislator, governor, and president – and entail and primogeniture seemed particularly to gnaw at his sense of what was just and equitable in a republican society. Partly, this seemed to be for personal reasons. In 1774, Jefferson sought to dispose of 1200 acres that had been entailed to him in by his wife’s father, the lawyer and planter John Wayles (1715-1773). He accordingly applied to the House of Burgesses to break the entail – the only legal means to dispose of the stipulation – and received a ruling in his favor. Unfortunately the order also required the signature of the Governor in order to become valid; likely as a consequence of his then-ongoing conflict with the lower house of the General Assembly, Lord Dunmore never got around to approving Jefferson’s request. In spite of the fact that he was the sole legal owner of the land in question, established law thereby prevented him from selling it as he pleased. There was, Jefferson considered, something profoundly unjust about this turn of events, made all the more galling by the fact that entail chiefly benefited a very small percentage of the colonial population.

When Jefferson returned to Virginia in September, 1776 to take his place among the newly-elected House of Delegates (the lower house of the General Assembly under the state’s new constitution), he accordingly set about proposing bills for the abolition of both entail and primogeniture inheritance. Though both measures were successfully adopted, such an open attack upon the prerogatives of the landed elite could not help but raise the ire of certain of Jefferson’s planter contemporaries. Edmund Pendleton (1721-1803) and Carter Braxton (1736-1797), both Tidewater planters (and the former an ally of Jefferson), raised strenuous objections to the Sage of Monticello’s evident disregard for their accustomed preeminence. An ideological conservative, reluctant revolutionary, and one of the largest landowners in Virginia, Braxton went so far as to declare Jefferson’s reform attempts, “Chimerical Schemes,” and, “wild flights of these fanciful Genius’s.” Pendleton, who was at heart a moderate, proved more amenable, though he still suggested that Jefferson allow the elimination of entail to be voluntary on the part of property owners and permit the oldest son to inherit twice what was owed to his siblings. Jefferson refused to countenance either suggestion, offering in the latter case to allow Pendleton’s proposition to go forward only if it could be proved that the eldest son in question consumed twice as much food as his siblings. Stymied, Pendleton gave way, and entail and primogeniture were thereafter abolished in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This represented a significant victory for Jefferson in his ongoing attempt to reform the society and culture of Virginia along distinctly republican lines. Not only were two legal traditions which prevented a person the free exercise of their property abolished, but a means by which a pseudo-aristocratic party had concentrated and preserved their wealth was dismantled. That being said, even such a well-earned success didn’t signify the end of Jefferson’s personal interest in property, inheritance, and intergenerational relations. 
       
Many years later, in the late 1780s, the Sage of Monticello still actively ruminated on the significance of inheritance laws that privileged the rights of the dead over the needs of the living. In a letter dated September 6th, 1789, written during the last months of his residency in Paris as Minster to France, Jefferson communicated to friend, frequent collaborator, and fellow Virginian James Madison (1751-1836) a number of his concerns to that end. This missive, a kind of philosophical reflection on the moral and legal significance of debt, testifies quite effectively to the depth of thought the Sage of Monticello was inclined to devote to the subject of generation obligation and its relationship to personal liberty. Far beyond attacking concepts like inherited debt or entail out of a need to rationalize personal enmities or memorialize past victories, Jefferson’s approach seemed to come from a place of genuine concern for the fate of his distant countrymen.

Unlike the European fiefdoms he had observed in his extensive travels, many if not most of which permitted the excessive accumulation of wealth and the inheritance of crushing debt, Jefferson was anxious that the United States, then in the midst of establishing a new government under a new constitution, take steps to prevent a similar fate from unfolding. “I set out on this ground,” Jefferson wrote with characteristic confidence, “Which I suppose to be self evident “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;” that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.” In this case the term “usufruct” was intended to refer to the legal right to own a thing and derive profit from it. The Sage of Monticello also declared in the same letter, in echo of this sentiment, that, “The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead [,]” and that, “One generation is to another as one independent nation to another.” Clearly though his successful repeal of what he regarded as prejudicial inheritance laws in Virginia was some 15 years in the past, the line of thought from which his efforts had sprung had hardly been laid to rest. Indeed, the moral component of intergenerational relations would remain a topic of contemplation for Jefferson for the better part of his life.     

 For those of you wondering what in God’s name the last several paragraphs have to do with Jefferson’s draft constitution for Virginia, please allow me to connect the dots. From the above outline of Jefferson’s thoughts and actions relating to inheritance law in Virginia – and the general principle of intergenerational obligation – it should hopefully be clear that the way one generation interacted with the next and the practical effects that resulted in the larger culture was a topic of great concern to the Sage of Monticello. Debt, responsibility, privilege, freedom; all of these concepts were wrapped up in the way pre-Revolutionary Virginia law perceived the disposition of property. Entail was a manifestation of this perception. Indeed, it would seem to say a great deal about a culture that it was willing to permit the concept of private property to be circumscribed in such a way that benefited an already favored minority. Jefferson recognized the injustice inherent in supporting such a practice, for personal as well as philosophical reasons, and acted accordingly. In spite of resistance from powerful colleagues who stood to benefit from the perpetuation of entail and primogeniture, the Sage of Monticello managed to successfully orchestrate the abolition of both these long-protected legal norms, in the process helping to set in motion the transformation of Virginia society into one more in line with his vision of the ideal republic. In spite of this victory, Jefferson was still contemplating the impact of inherited obligation 15 years later, at a time when the United States was in the midst of another drastic transformation, and manifested sincere concern that every generation of Americans should not be burdened by the debts and dictates of their predecessors.

The clause of Jefferson’s draft constitution for Virginia quoted above would seem to slot quite neatly into this timeline of reflection and reform. For reference, it read in full, “Descents shall go according to the laws of Gavelkind, save only that females shall have equal rights with males,” and was devised at some point during the late spring and early summer of 1776. This would place its point of origin several years after Jefferson’s 1774 attempt to break the entail on some of his property and several months before his successful attempt at property reform in September, 1776.  It should be noted – as no doubt someone will have noticed by now – that while this sentence would have abolished the practice of primogeniture in Virginia it would not have prevented individuals from freely disposing of their property in a will. The law of descents would only have applied to estates that were intestate wherein no will was present. A wealthy gentleman of Virginia could thereby not have been prevented from leaving all of his property (including land and slaves) to his firstborn son so long as he made a testament to that effect. This clause would also seem not have been devised with the explicit intent of disqualifying deeds of entail. Read plainly, it would only have shifted the default law of inheritance in Virginia from primogeniture to absolute gavelkind. In light of Jefferson’s later attempt to have entail legally nullified in Virginia, this constitutional provision would seem a half-measure at best.
    To this criticism – not without merit – it must be said that a constitution is not quite the same things as a regular law. A bill that is passed in the regular business of a legislature possesses the full force of a state’s authority, enjoys the use of all the mechanisms of state enforcement, and remains in operation until explicitly repealed or contradicted. Laws devised and supported in this fashion are intended to address the ever-changing needs of the population they act upon. A prime example of this principle can be found in the history of the Homestead Act (1862) and its various successors. Passed during the opening phase of the American Civil War, the original Homestead Act encouraged settlement in the nation’s western extremities by promising qualified applicants 160 acres of federal land in exchange for its cultivation and improvement. This endeavour on the part of the United States government to both populate the American West and meet the desire for self-sufficiency of many of its citizens proved highly successful, and was supplemented by subsequent acts passed in 1866, 1873, 1904, 1909, 1916, and 1930. In 1976, however, a shift in federal priorities led to the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, effectively abolishing homesteading. Though the granting of federal land to prospective settlers had by then been going on for over a century, the Homestead Act and its successors were deemed no longer advantageous and done away with. This, in essence, is the potential fate of all regular laws; they are passed, they are in force, and they are repealed or replaced. Jefferson’s successful endeavour to legislate entail and primogeniture out of existence in Virginia was theoretically subject to this same lifecycle. Subsequent generations of Virginia lawmakers could have reinstated either or both of these practices, perhaps in greatly strengthened forms, without in any way violating existing legal norms or procedures. Doubtless Jefferson would have been dismayed by such an eventuality, though he surely would not have questioned the right of a sovereign people to dispose of their laws without undue regard to the wishes of those that preceded them.       
             
But constitutions are not just laws. By framing the essential form of a government and declaring the powers it is to possess, a constitution effectively establishes the legal norms that come to define its operation and sets the prime example for all subsequent acts of law formed under its authority. A constitution is thus, as the saying goes, “the supreme law of the land,” and thus acts as the yardstick by which all other laws are measured for their compliance or contradiction. A statute which violates the provisions laid down in a constitution is thereby rendered null and void, regardless of the legislative support it received in its passage. That being said, the process of determining the compliance of regular law with constitutional law is not an exact science. Because a constitution must remain reasonably flexible if it hopes to remain in force for very long, constitutional provisions and clauses tend to be sparingly phrased so as to allow for some degree of continuous interpretation. A constitution may therefore fairly be characterized as a compendium of laws deemed absolutely essential to the operation of a given form of government and ideals intended to guide the formation of all subsequent laws. Constitutional provisions which are too specific can potentially rob successive generations of their rightful ability to determine how best to approach a given issue, while an abundance of imprecision can alternately lead to the fundamental form and spirit of a constitution being gradually undermined. There is a balance to be struck, as in so many things, and locating it represents an exceedingly challenging task for any prospective framer.

It seems clear enough, based on his subsequent actions, that Jefferson was by the spring of 1776 inclined to eliminate the practice of entail in Virginia. The fact that he did not attempt to do so by including an explicit provision in his draft constitution was likely not the result of a lack of interest or initiative on his part, but rather a reflection of his own attempt to create a frame of government that was appropriately balanced and enjoyed a hope in hell of being ratified. Eliminating entail by constitutional fiat would almost certainly have met with significant resistance from the planter class who were its chief beneficiaries, and who had long dominated the General Assembly. Doubtless Jefferson did not fear such opposition, in light of later battles with his planter colleagues, but it may well have been his determination that the debate which would inevitably have following the introduction of his draft constitution was not the place to hash out certain of Virginia’s simmering social conflicts. Though often celebrated and/or decried for his radical politics, Jefferson was also a canny strategist who understood better than most gave him credit when to exercise caution. Keeping his distaste for entail – and its larger cultural ramifications – out of what was supposed to be the new governing charter of Virginia may thus have been a tactical consideration on the part of the Sage of Monticello in order to best ensure its successful adoption.

Alternately (or perhaps additionally), Jefferson may have chosen to exclude a prohibition of entail from his draft constitution because he felt it would have been hypocritical of him to do otherwise. Granting that he was, in the course of his life, no stranger to hypocrisy, it may have seemed inappropriate to insert a declaration in the paramount law code of Virginia banning a practice that itself was the target of disdain because it held individuals to legal and personal standards not their own. In fairness, this is essentially what all constitutions do; set a standard which all succeeding generations must adhere to. But for Jefferson to disqualify a practice that he vilified because it held the living to standards set by the dead by in turn setting a standard that would be followed long after his own demise might perhaps have been seen as so mockingly insincere as to be beyond contemplation. Proposing legislation to abolish entail, as the Sage of Monticello did in September, 1776, no doubt appeared to be a preferable alternative because it would have allowed for a debate on that issue alone. Rather than tie the success of his draft constitution to the willingness of a particular class of men to accept a provision that attacked one of the roots of their wealth, the continuation of entail could be discussed and voted on at a time and place when nothing more was at stake than that. In yet another potential sighting of Jefferson as political strategist, it is also possible that he regarded the provision of his draft constitution quoted above as reasonably sufficient to eliminate the practice of entail in the long term.

As aforementioned, constitutions act as yardsticks by which the laws passed under their authority are measured. This process of measurement is both ongoing and often highly interpretive, and the results can often seem unexpected or abstract to the casual observer. Several clauses of the United States Constitution – the Necessary and Proper Clause and the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to name only two – have often been construed in such a way as to validate government actions or inactions that a literal reading would not otherwise support. Though constitutional interpretation can potentially lead to dangerous and unintended distortions of codified law, the process is undeniably necessary if the “supreme law of the land” is to continue to maintain its relevance. While it may not appear that Jefferson’s attempt to make Gavelkind the default form of inheritance in Virginia would have affected property law in any other way, the interpretive lens of succeeding generation might have perceived otherwise. Had Jefferson’s constitution been successfully adopted without significant alterations, all property that was not devised by a final testament or entailed would have been divided equally among the heirs of the deceased. If, some years following the establishment of the government Jefferson framed in 1776, a suit had arisen between the heirs of a given estate, and if that suit subsequently appeared before the Court of Appeals, it seems entirely likely that the relevant provision of the state constitution effecting inheritance law would be consulted. Acknowledging that said provision declared Gavelkind to be the default form of inheritance in Virginia, the Justices of the Court of Appeals might reasonably have asked themselves what the intent behind such a clause was meant to be.

The clause begins with the word “descents.” Was this intended to signify that it applied only to the operation of the law of descents, or could it be construed to affect that broader principle of inheritance? If the fundamental, catch-all law by which property was to be transferred upon death necessitated an equal division among proven heirs, did not the perpetuation of a practice like entail constitute an exception? And if so, did not this exception confer a unique privilege upon a particular group? Did the constitution’s explicit support for Gavelkind inheritance not represent a stated intention to promote equality of inheritance? And if so, did bestowing a unique privilege upon a particular group run counter to this intention? Perhaps not all of these queries would have arisen within the scope of a single case, but it is not difficult to imagine that many of them would eventually have occurred to the relevant judicial authorities. Generation upon generation of justices, building upon the investigations and debates of their predecessors, might thus have eroded the constitutional justification for entail to the point of it being entirely nullified. This would certainly not have been a rapid process, and the end result would have been left largely up to chance. All the same, it would have been a nonintrusive way to address inheritance law in Virginia, and perhaps most important of all it would have allowed Virginians to decide for themselves which practices and customs were in keeping with their social, moral, or legal ideals. Jefferson’s constitution would, in this case, act as a legal and philosophical framework that could effectively shape the outlook of proceeding generations without appearing overbearing or rigidly proscriptive.

            Though in fairness the above-described scenario is not overly likely to have been the case – and is practically impossible to validate anyway – it is nonetheless important to think about the long-term effects and the core intentions of a constitution like the one Jefferson proposed. To attempt to formulate the fundamental legal framework of a given society is to take on a monumentally complex task. The number of elements to consider, and how they interact, and the level of specificity, and the lasting implications; successfully pulling together all of these pieces represents a staggering undertaking for even a well-resourced committee of scholars and experts. That Thomas Jefferson attempted to craft a constitution for his beloved Virginia by himself, and arrived at a reasonably balanced (if still flawed) result speaks volumes about the man’s raw ability and ambition, as well as the scope of his vision for republican America. At the same time, the document itself arguably serves as an effective primer for Jeffersonian democracy. The provisions and clauses he saw fit to include, the structures he embraced, and the language he deployed all give evidence to how 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson understood power, liberty, sovereignty, law, morality, and justice. Most assuredly his views on any number of these concepts changed over the course of his life, but being able to understand what he felt were the most important elements of a stable, successful republic at such a pivotal moment in his life and career is potentially invaluable to developing a thorough understanding of Jefferson himself.

    But of course that’s just my opinion. See for yourself: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffcons.asp