| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father. Ed. by Douglas Ambrose and Robert W. T. Martin. (New York: New York University Press, 2006. x, 300 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-81477-0714-2.)
Despite his elitist mistrust of democracy, many associate Alexander Hamilton with modernity. They point to his financial program, support for manufacturing, and apparent endorsement of social mobility and economic opportunity. Some contributors to this volume agree. Barry Alan Shain places Publius in a tradition of liberal political theory and argues that "his" essays endorsed a culture of individualism. John Patrick Diggins argues that Hamilton anticipated Abraham Lincoln; both were self-made men who prized mobility and opportunity, and they sought an open economic system that allowed people to rise as high as their talents allowed.	1
Essays by Robert W. T. Martin, Colleen A. Sheehan, and Carey Roberts provide, I believe, a more reliable discussion of Hamilton's ideas. They argue that Hamilton placed deep faith in a natural aristocracy and a hierarchical social order. He believed that republics were naturally disorderly, and "the solution to classic problems of republicanism was not a closer connection to the demos but a great reliance on the ambitions of the elite ... still generally thought of in terms of hereditary social and economic status, even if it now incorporated an aristocracy of merit ... " (p. 117).	. . .

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