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Was Alexander Hamilton a Machiavellian Statesman?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Karl Walling
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Many important scholars have seen significant similarities in the political thought of Alexander Hamilton and Niccolo Machiavelli, but the only two references to Machiavelli in Hamilton's papers suggest deep misgivings about the kinds of politics we now call Machiavellian. This essay attempts to clarify Hamilton's ambiguous relation to the sage Florentine by focussing on the problem of waging war effectively and remaining free at the same time in the thought of both statesmen. Although Hamilton understood at least as well as Machiavelli the necessity of dynamic virtù in princes and civic virtue in free citizens, he sought to establish a new order of the ages, a republican empire, which would supply an effectual moral alternative to the genuine Machiavellian regimes of his day.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , Summer 1995 , pp. 419 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1995

References

Nathan Tarcov, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Forrest McDonald, Robert Scigliano, and Michael and Catherine Zuckert supplied much needed advice for revising this essay. The Earhart Foundation supplied generous financial assistance.

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37. See Discourses, 1, 43: 286Google Scholar; Hamilton's, draft of Washington's “Speech to Congress,” 10 11 1796, Papers, 20: 384–85Google Scholar; the Report on a Military Peace Establishment, Papers, 3:391–92Google Scholar; and various proposals for reorganizing the military during the Quasi-War at Papers, 21: 83, 342–43, 362, 486Google Scholar; Papers, 22: 389–90Google Scholar; and Papers, 24: 70,310.Google Scholar

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39. Federalist, 8: 48.Google Scholar

40. Federalist, 8: 47–48.Google Scholar For an alternate view, which ignores the evidence of this essay and treats Hamilton as the leader of a militarist conspiracy, see Kohn, Richard H., The Eagle and the Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 252, 272–73, 284–86.Google ScholarElkins, Stanley and Mckitrick, Eric offer a slightly more balanced account in the Age of Federalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 715–19.Google Scholar

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42. See Hamilton's, “Design for a Seal for the United States,” 05, 1796, Papers, 20: 208–09.Google Scholar Hamilton spent the last years of his career as an American Churchill warning of a gathering storm in Europe which might soon cross the sea to America. His warnings are not often taken seriously, in part because the French claimed to fight for liberty, and Hamilton's party committed many excesses (which Hamilton sought to prevent) in dealing with suspected Jacobins in America. Moreover, the French invasion did not materialize, at least not during Hamilton's watch. Yet Hamilton's fears were not without foundation. Napoleon did in fact try to send two military expeditions to New Orleans via Haiti in the administration of Thomas Jefferson, who dismantled the forces Hamilton built to confront the best troops of Europe. Fortunately, the courage of rebellious slaves and the persistence of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Haiti inflicted so many casualties on the French expeditions that Jefferson was able to avoid the necessity of relying on his own arms. See Mcdonald, Forrest, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1976), pp. 62–64.Google Scholar

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