Hamilton Versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration: Completing the Founding or Betraying the Founding?

by Carson Holloway

By the middle of 1792, just a little more than three years after America's new government under the Constitution had been set in motion, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson - President George Washington's two most important cabinet secretaries and two of the most eminent men among the American founders - had become open and bitter political enemies. Their dispute was not personal but political in the highest sense. Each believed that the debate between them was over regime principles. Each believed that he was protecting the newly established republic, and that the other was laboring to destroy it. Carson Holloway's Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration examines Hamilton and Jefferson's differences, seeking to explain why these great founders came to disagree so profoundly and vehemently about the political project to which both were committed and had dedicated so much thought and effort.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

ebook

First published November 30, 2015

About the author

Carson L. Holloway teaches political science at the U of Nebraska & was a trustee of Shimer College & a visiting fellow at Princeton's James Madison Program. He's recipient of a John M. Olin Foundation faculty fellowship & of grants from the H.B. Earhart* & Wm E. Simon Foundations. He's a member of the Family Research Council, American Inst for History Education, CatholicVote.org & Board Member of NHE-PAC (home educators) & director of The Assn for the Study of Free Institutions (freestudies.org). He's contributed articles to The National Review, Catholic Social Science Review & The Witherspoon Inst. [*Earhart's provided funding to European organisations promoting right-wing/neoliberal agendas. Regular recipients include the Inst of Economic Affairs think-tank & the Atlanticist Centre for Strategic Studies at the Univ of Reading headed by former Reagan official Colin S. Gray.]

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carson Holloway shows in this work that he is among the very best scholars of the early American regime. He details the various political differences that separated Hamilton and Jefferson during Washington's presidency, finally giving these important disagreements the full attention they deserve. Though admittedly sympathetic to Hamilton, Holloway deals fairly and honestly with the arguments of both of his interlocutors, trying as much as possible to understand them as they understood themselves. Going forward, this book should serve as the definitive work on the disputes between Hamilton and Jefferson during the Washington administration. Americans today would do well to follow the example of both men in taking the Constitution seriously as the political and moral document that, in many respects, still governs the nation.