Reviewed by J. R. Pole | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.2

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Reviewed by J. R. Pole | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Federalists Reconsidered. Edited by Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg. (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998.Pp. xi, 310. $47.50 cloth; $17.50 paper.) Reviewed by J. R. Pole , St. Catherine's College, Oxford University
The American equivalent to the English concept of the whig interpretation of history must surely be the notion that American destiny was essentially Jeffersonian.¹ Jefferson's victory in 1800 thus swings open the gates to America's natural self-fulfillment. Defeated by a popular floodtide, the Federalists sink into historical anachronism. From its very beginning, however, this view faces a curious anomaly; it can only mean that the first two presidencies grossly misrepresented their own electorate—an unusual beginning for a representative government. But the Federalists did not share this sense of anachronism; as the essays in this well-conceived and persuasively reasoned collection make clear, they were convinced that it was they who represented the new nation's true identity. Clearly, many American voters—perhaps a majority—agreed. The triumphalist Jeffersonian view barks its shins on a salient (though frequently ignored) counterfactual: the Federalists were victims in 1800 of the flaw by which their own Constitution distorted the fundamental principle of majority rule. If it had not been for the morally indefensible federal ratio, John Adams would, in fact, have won the election of 1800. Jefferson's "great revolution" would not have occurred.²	1
It was Alexander Hamilton who did more than any other to give federalism a political direction. Two essays are deservedly devoted to him. Herbert E. Sloan traces Hamilton's drive to copy the British lead in fiscal policy (though the Bank of England is strangely neglected³) and avoids the trap of thinking that respect for British institutions and methods made him pro-British. He also reminds us of Hamilton's and Tench Coxe's plans to induce British technicians to promote American technology and manufactures. The program was an American program, the policy was conceived in the spirit of a thoroughly nationalistic neomercantilism. The authenticity of Hamilton's Americanism overturns the Jeffersonian canard that he wasn't a "true" American. (Why? Because he was born on Nevis? Or because he was illegitimate? One recalls the late Henry Commager passionately averring that Hamilton never understood this country—a statement he forgetfully made in England!) But the program was premature. Sloan concludes that Hamilton's thinking was too advanced, too European, for the simpler conditions of the American continent. Hamilton, of course, welcomed a national debt as a political cement; but, Sloan argues, Hamilton, in language closely tracking David Hume and Adam Smith, was well aware that the national debt, desirable in principle, must not become excessive. But even here an important counterfactual needs attention: Robert Morris, not Hamilton, had been George Washington's first choice as secretary of the treasury. Whether Morris would have fashioned a national party and, in so doing, have aroused an opposition on lines of a rival political party is not answerable from the records.	2
A dynamic economy must draw on all its resources. Perhaps this reasoning as well as the recollection of his own humble origins made equality of opportunity as important for Hamilton as it was for Jefferson. More so, perhaps. "The door ought to be equally open to all," he thunders in a powerful passage of The Federalist, No. 36 (1788). Moreover, in what proved his last contribution to American public life, as counsel for an editor prosecuted for criticizing Jefferson's administration, Hamilton mounted a defense of press freedom comparable to Thomas Erskine's great speech in the celebrated case of the king against the dean of St. Asaph twenty years earlier in the halls of Westminster.	. . .

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