Alexander Hamilton vs Thomas Jefferson

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Half of the Republican Party when it was founded came from the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian egalitarian mindset. It is no accident that the GOP was started in WI/MI, by Free Soilers who were almost all former Democrats. Truman mentioned Hamlin who came from Maine. Maine was a Democratic state against the Whigs.

The Conscience Whigs, people like Seward and Stevens joined later. In MA, the GOP was formed primarily from Know-Nothings, after that party split over slavery in 1856. The Whig elites (who came from a Federalist tradition) were smashed to pieces in 1854, and some of them joined the Republicans, some of them retired into nothingness while John C Winthrop the last Whig Speaker and some even joined the Democrats.

Yes, the GOP were the economic successors to the Whigs and the Federalist, but doesn't work in revers and it is easy to make that mistake. This is true for both the Whigs and the Federalists. And it was not just the North-South divide. There was a large band of Whigs in the North, Winthrop, Fillmore, and Webster who were hardly abolitionists and hence why they became targets for accepting the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law (a big factor in unifying the North against slave power).

While I am on the subject of Webster, since Truman mentioned Calhoun beginning as a Hamiltonian National Republican, Webster became as a free trading Jeffersonian who only became a National Republican/Whig after he moved to Massachusetts. He was originally from NH, a staunchly Jeffersonian state and one that would remain a Democratic stronghold until the 1850's.

The Federalists were an 18th century Conservative Party. They were elitist and aristocratic, and thus opposed expanded voting and preferred to keep property and wealth requirements. The French Revolution created a Red Scare like mindset as well, that drove Federalists to fear the masses and popular politics, the kind of politics that Jefferson thrived in.

That was the major dividing line in 1790's politics, elitist right versus egalitarian left.

People just struggle to understand the politics and ideologies of the past. This is especially so when it comes to what Truman said, "IT is possible to be liberal and racist". Consider this, if slavery is not a dominant issue and everyone is a racist by our standards, then that means there is a whole block of people on the left of politics as defined by period standards, who are thus by default racist.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NC Yankee, how would you respond to someone who argued that--while the Federalists were clearly the more conservative party during the First Party System, and Republicans have been the conservative party since the beginning of the Fourth--it was considerably more nuanced during the Second and Third Party Systems? 

The Whigs were the more conservative party without a doubt in the second party system.

As for the Republicans, I would say by the mid 1870's. the Republicans had settled in on being the Whig successors as the party of economic nationalism with the added Civil War legacy/bloody shirt rhetoric to give it more appeal. You still have the puritan influence from the days of the Federalists (though as we are discussing in another board, that was fading by the late 19th century). 

Hayes was a former Whig, Grant was apolitical prior to the War.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

While I am on the subject of Webster, since Truman mentioned Calhoun beginning as a Hamiltonian National Republican, Webster became as a free trading Jeffersonian who only became a National Republican/Whig after he moved to Massachusetts. He was originally from NH, a staunchly Jeffersonian state and one that would remain a Democratic stronghold until the 1850's.

I broadly agree with the most of the rest of what you're saying, but I don't think it's the case that Webster was ever a Jeffersonian or that NH was staunchly Jeffersonian. It's true that NH became a Democratic stronghold in the Second Party System (i.e. 1828-1852), but it voted for the Federalist candidate in four of the six presidential elections from 1796 to 1816; the only time it voted for the Jeffersonian was in the landslides of 1804 and 1816. By contrast, it voted for the Democrat in every election from 1832 to 1852. So New Hampshire may have been staunchly Jacksonian, but at the very least it would be an exaggeration to call it staunchly Jeffersonian during the time Webster lived there.

As for Webster, Remini's 1997 book on him states both Webster and his father were Federalists (at least by the time Webster attended Dartmouth in his late teens) who strongly supported John Adams, feared the radicalism of the French Revolution, and favored a strong central government. IIRC the part you mentioned about trade is true, though; he didn't start to favor high tariffs until much later in life.

I meant to say Jacksonian.


As for Webster's early years I was probably just misremembering from his trade evolution since he started out more moderate on the issue before becoming a devout protectionist.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You still have the puritan influence from the days of the Federalists (though as we are discussing in another board, that was fading by the late 19th century).

What other board is this being discussed in?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=350412.0

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Slavery in the 1790s was not publicly at the forefront of the national debate, but it lurked behind the defining question of the federal vs the state governments. I'd argue that Jefferson supported liberal policies not out of principled support for the French Revolution, but rather out of terror at the Haitian Revolution. He greatly feared that an expanded national government might one day have enough power to emancipate the slaves, and thus dressed up his arguments against federal authority by pretending to support the common man. Since the Federalists supported greater federal power, admittedly out of self-interest and elitism, this set them against the Slave Power. Yes, there were some states in the South like South Carolina where the local Federalist party was stronger, but by-and-large most slave owners correctly recognized the threat posed to them by a powerful federal government and thus supported the Jeffersonians.

You severely underestimate support for Federalism among slaveholders in the 1790s. Again, I'll state that it was by no means as obvious as you suggest that federal power was a threat to slavery (the constitutional provisions you cite are one reason many slaveholders felt this was not the case), as evidenced by strong support among the planters of the Carolinas and the Mississippi River Valley for the Hamiltonian Federalists and their successors, the Whigs. Even if for the sake of the argument we accept your thesis that Jefferson was motivated only by a desire to protect slavery, and not any genuine liberal sentiment (we'll ignore his authorship of the Northwest Ordinance and his career-long opposition to the slave trade), that does not explain the widespread popularity of Jeffersonianism with those who were not slaveholders, nor does it explain Republican advocacy for universal (white) manhood suffrage and other democratic policies in their quarter-century reign. But the major problem I have with your argument is that it is unprovable: maybe Jefferson was lying to everyone about his motives, including to close friends and confidants in private correspondence, but it would be impossible to prove that case with the available documentary evidence. By contrast, people like Calhoun and the leaders of the Confederacy explicitly stated their goal was to defend slavery: while we are easily able to establish that Jefferson was not an abolitionist, that all his efforts in public life were an elaborate charade to mask a single-minded concern for the future expansion of slavery is not only unsupported by primary sources —it is reductive to the point of incredibility.

I consider Hamilton to have been an abolitionist, as he supported freeing slaves during the Revolution to arm them and was also a member of the New York Manumission Society.

That's just not what the word means, though. Robert E. Lee on several occasions recommended promising freedom to slaves who would fight for the Confederacy; was he an abolitionist? Manumission and abolition were distinct, and after 1840 fiercely opposed, philosophies on the slavery issue. (Prior to 1840, abolitionism as a national sociopolitical movement did not exist.) The advocates of the former supported individual, voluntary and gradual emancipation of the slaves by their masters; abolitionists argued for the universal and immediate emancipation of all slaves, everywhere. While manumission was a frequently-advocated "moderate" solution to the slavery question favored by many elites, abolition was radical and reviled by polite (and impolite) society. To call Hamilton an abolitionist is to redefine the term to denote anyone vaguely opposed to slavery; you might as well call anyone who favors any degree of regulation of the economy a socialist and anyone who does not personally slaughter their own livestock a vegetarian.

If the Federalists were so undemocratic and conservative, then why was the Federalist-dominated Massachusetts statehouse filled with farmers and common men?

Well, this is a bad argument. "If the GOP is so undemocratic and conservative, why are Trump rallies filled with union members and working-class voters?" Class politics in the 1790s were a lot more complicated than a bilateral dichotomy of slaveholders and yeomen farmers; the Massachusetts General Court was made up of commoners in the sense than none were landed aristocracy, but it's dishonest to suggest that there was not still a strong element of classism that prevented the very lowest—immigrants, wage laborers, and the working poor—from serving or being represented.

I've already stated the South was an antidemocratic hellscape, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up again —though I will point out that while many slaveholders were Republicans, most Republicans were not slaveholders. Was the New Deal also a front for racism because segregationists in the Solid South voted for FDR?

You have to realize Truman, that there is a desire for pure political antecedents and for various reasons, the modern left is uncomfortable embracing Jefferson and would rather engage in historical revisionism to turn the Federalists into some kind of proto-progressive party, because strong central gov't.

Elites everywhere, be it slave owners in the South or trade merchants loved the Federalist Party and while we mention the French Revolution, this mindset of "OMG The plebs are coming to kill us" began with Shay's Rebellion. Hell Samuel Adams of all people advocated for a heavy hand against the Shay's Rebellion, largely because of merchant (read business) influence.

If your alter how this presented and turn everything into some kind of conspiracy to enhance slave power, it both undermines the founders generally and also helps make embracing the Federalists easier, in spite of all of the finance backing, elite promoting, commoner suppressing and what not. It is much easier to swallow the beige and buff pill if you cover up the real and obvious Federalist impetus of "keeping the pitchforks at bey" and replace it with a Jeffersonian "keep the slaves in chains".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NC Yankee, how would you respond to someone who argued that--while the Federalists were clearly the more conservative party during the First Party System, and Republicans have been the conservative party since the beginning of the Fourth--it was considerably more nuanced during the Second and Third Party Systems?  

The Whigs were the more conservative party without a doubt in the second party system.

As for the Republicans, I would say by the mid 1870's. the Republicans had settled in on being the Whig successors as the party of economic nationalism with the added Civil War legacy/bloody shirt rhetoric to give it more appeal. You still have the puritan influence from the days of the Federalists (though as we are discussing in another board, that was fading by the late 19th century).  

Hayes was a former Whig, Grant was apolitical prior to the War.

If the Federalists and Whigs were "conservatives", then so am I, as I would've heavily supported them over the Jeffersonians and Jacksonian Democrats. Then again, I would've supported the Tories over the Whigs for foreign policy reasons around the turn of the 18th century, so I guess it's not so unusual for me to support classically conservative parties.

Coincidentally, been listening to this all day since you mention 18th century British foreign policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bs07OvqXp4

If you want to be Jacobite Tory, there is nothing wrong with that. There are a number of far right Catholic traditional Conservatives who would agree with you.

As a Burkean ironically, that puts me to your left as I support both the Glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian accession, as well as their Whig backers.

You also have to remember that prior to 1896, most silverites were Republicans and most goldbugs Democrats. Though most in both parties supported the gold standard, there were some silverites amongst the Republicans since they did well out West. So the way I see it, Republicans were more liberal than the Democrats not just on race, but also on economics.

And you have to remember that the Federalists and Whigs were in favor of financial interests and these financial interests, especially by the Whig era were very much in favor of loose money. The Jacksonians were against loose money and favored Gold because these speculative crashes often crashed commodities prices and led to collapses in agricultural hurting the poor farmers that Truman has spent the better part of this thread establishing as the base for both Jeffersonian and Jacksonian politics.

Loose money in the form of bimetallism, only began to curry favor in the latter part of the 19th century, especially after the crash of the silver mines in the panic of 1873 and the Long Depression. By this point, the farmers were heavily in debt and thus the strains of being in debt outweighed the risk of loose money and thus why the populists, and then William J Bryan, representing very much the same Jeffersonian/Jacksonian base, heavily pushed for Silver while Jackson had favored gold. Context man! Economics is always in flux, and to presume what benefited one group at the expense of another would remain the same over a period of 60 years is folly.

As for the topic at hand, one point I forgot to make in my last post is that I don't see how anyone can stomach supporting a candidate whose electoral victory hinged on something as notoriously racist as the Three-Fifths Compromise.

Do you know who caused the creation of the Three-Fifth's Compromise? The North!!! The South wanted to count the slaves as a whole person to expand their voting power in Congress, the North objected because this would obviously over balance the South's political power and the South wanted to have it both ways, counting them for census and not allowing them to vote. The North didn't want them to count at all and argued if VA could count slaves, then by their own logic on slaves, MA should be able to count horses and cattle.

The compromise was thus to please the North.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

By the way it looks like the peasant scum is winning this poll over the forces of neo-Monarchism.

And yes, I just put both sides down.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You have to realize Truman, that there is a desire for pure political antecedents and for various reasons, the modern left is uncomfortable embracing Jefferson and would rather engage in historical revisionism to turn the Federalists into some kind of proto-progressive party, because strong central gov't.

Elites everywhere, be it slave owners in the South or trade merchants loved the Federalist Party and while we mention the French Revolution, this mindset of "OMG The plebs are coming to kill us" began with Shay's Rebellion. Hell Samuel Adams of all people advocated for a heavy hand against the Shay's Rebellion, largely because of merchant (read business) influence.

If your alter how this presented and turn everything into some kind of conspiracy to enhance slave power, it both undermines the founders generally and also helps make embracing the Federalists easier, in spite of all of the finance backing, elite promoting, commoner suppressing and what not. It is much easier to swallow the beige and buff pill if you cover up the real and obvious Federalist impetus of "keeping the pitchforks at bey" and replace it with a Jeffersonian "keep the slaves in chains".

Oh, I know. A part of the desire to recast Hamilton as a progressive hero ahead of his times I'd argue can be traced to how the liberal coalition has evolved since the 70s; it's much easier to make peace with the New England petite bourgeoisie when those people are your most dependable voting bloc and the poor farmers and wage laborers in western Pennsylvania and upstate New York are backing the opposition. In fairness, I will say that some of this is an overcorrection to how American history was taught fifty years ago, when Jefferson was practically a god and the founders mostly were given a pass on slavery because 'nobody knew it was bad back then' Washington was a 'kind master' who freed his slaves in his will. Unfortunately, what we've gotten is not a more nuanced view of history but the same reductive "good guys v. bad guys" narrative with the sides reversed. So it goes.

We have generally traded the dominant Reconciliation/Lost Cause duality in historical thought regarding the Civil War with one of history based on political correctness. This would naturally spill over to other periods of history and thus you get historical revisionism based as such and yes it is the same good versus evil narrative, just with a new criteria.

It is a shame because we should be able to do better than jumping from one group of biased revisionists right to another.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You have to realize Truman, that there is a desire for pure political antecedents and for various reasons, the modern left is uncomfortable embracing Jefferson and would rather engage in historical revisionism to turn the Federalists into some kind of proto-progressive party, because strong central gov't.

Elites everywhere, be it slave owners in the South or trade merchants loved the Federalist Party and while we mention the French Revolution, this mindset of "OMG The plebs are coming to kill us" began with Shay's Rebellion. Hell Samuel Adams of all people advocated for a heavy hand against the Shay's Rebellion, largely because of merchant (read business) influence.

If your alter how this presented and turn everything into some kind of conspiracy to enhance slave power, it both undermines the founders generally and also helps make embracing the Federalists easier, in spite of all of the finance backing, elite promoting, commoner suppressing and what not. It is much easier to swallow the beige and buff pill if you cover up the real and obvious Federalist impetus of "keeping the pitchforks at bey" and replace it with a Jeffersonian "keep the slaves in chains".

Oh, I know. A part of the desire to recast Hamilton as a progressive hero ahead of his times I'd argue can be traced to how the liberal coalition has evolved since the 70s; it's much easier to make peace with the New England petite bourgeoisie when those people are your most dependable voting bloc and the poor farmers and wage laborers in western Pennsylvania and upstate New York are backing the opposition. In fairness, I will say that some of this is an overcorrection to how American history was taught fifty years ago, when Jefferson was practically a god and the founders mostly were given a pass on slavery because 'nobody knew it was bad back then' Washington was a 'kind master' who freed his slaves in his will. Unfortunately, what we've gotten is not a more nuanced view of history but the same reductive "good guys v. bad guys" narrative with the sides reversed. So it goes.

There's also the quite obvious fact that the internet libertarians fetishized Jefferson.

Libertarians are un-evolved Classical Liberals. It makes sense for them to love Jefferson, he's their guy.  

That doesn't mean modern Liberals don't trace their lineage from him, especially on things like religious tolerance, egalitarianism, opposition to financial interests etc.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don’t think that the morality of historical politicians should be determined by how conservative or liberal they were.

Obviously, but the questions is where and how do you apply that standard?

Are you implying that Jefferson or Hamilton is more or less moral than the other? The factors that weigh one way or the other in this regards will often take on a left versus right context.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You have to realize Truman, that there is a desire for pure political antecedents and for various reasons, the modern left is uncomfortable embracing Jefferson and would rather engage in historical revisionism to turn the Federalists into some kind of proto-progressive party, because strong central gov't.

Elites everywhere, be it slave owners in the South or trade merchants loved the Federalist Party and while we mention the French Revolution, this mindset of "OMG The plebs are coming to kill us" began with Shay's Rebellion. Hell Samuel Adams of all people advocated for a heavy hand against the Shay's Rebellion, largely because of merchant (read business) influence.

If your alter how this presented and turn everything into some kind of conspiracy to enhance slave power, it both undermines the founders generally and also helps make embracing the Federalists easier, in spite of all of the finance backing, elite promoting, commoner suppressing and what not. It is much easier to swallow the beige and buff pill if you cover up the real and obvious Federalist impetus of "keeping the pitchforks at bey" and replace it with a Jeffersonian "keep the slaves in chains".

Oh, I know. A part of the desire to recast Hamilton as a progressive hero ahead of his times I'd argue can be traced to how the liberal coalition has evolved since the 70s; it's much easier to make peace with the New England petite bourgeoisie when those people are your most dependable voting bloc and the poor farmers and wage laborers in western Pennsylvania and upstate New York are backing the opposition. In fairness, I will say that some of this is an overcorrection to how American history was taught fifty years ago, when Jefferson was practically a god and the founders mostly were given a pass on slavery because 'nobody knew it was bad back then' Washington was a 'kind master' who freed his slaves in his will. Unfortunately, what we've gotten is not a more nuanced view of history but the same reductive "good guys v. bad guys" narrative with the sides reversed. So it goes.

There's also the quite obvious fact that the internet libertarians fetishized Jefferson.

Libertarians are un-evolved Classical Liberals. It makes sense for them to love Jefferson, he's their guy.  

That doesn't mean modern Liberals don't trace their lineage from him, especially on things like religious tolerance, egalitarianism, opposition to financial interests etc.

Libertarianism is a bastardization of classical liberalism more than a direct progression; needless to say, the class motivations that drove American liberalism for most of the nineteenth century are very different from the reasons that lead people to become libertarians today. You won't find many radical egalitarians among the old Paul 2012 camp (excluding, of course, those famous reeducated libertarians of Atlas lore who became leftists by the time they were old enough to vote).

In the sense that they lost touch with the motivations or never had them to begin with? Certainly

And it is the gaining of them that makes them achieve their evolved form be it Modern Liberalism, or even more leftwing ideologies. In that sense they traverse a space that took politicians and philosophers a good 100 years trek across, but ironically following that same path that the ideology evolved in real life.

It should be noted that one of the most effective of the "Party Flip Theory Killers", Mechaman was indeed one of these Atlas Forum Libertarians who became a socialist and it was his socialist and class based approach to history that led to him making this thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=184903.0. Which was linked in the Party of Lincoln thread.

His OP is very relevant to this thread:

Hello everyone!

What is this you may ask?  Well it is simply a consortium of some very Historically Inconvenient facts for this forum at large.  This has been made due to the demand for a thread highlighting the hilarious modern attempts at interpreting historical politics.  Let me begin:

The Federalist Party: NO Coalition of Bleedingheart Liberals:

1. Alexander Hamilton, for all of his economic and fiscal mastery, was not a good man.  In fact he was an economic elitist who laid the groundwork for class warfare in America by instituting a regressive tax system that forced Scot-Irish Appalachian farmers into a generation of poverty while using minimum tax coercion on their urban neighbors.  Wow, this probably would've been okay not bolded, but I thought it was necessary to emphasize the class based nature of this.  The descendants of those people who had settled Ulster and then later the Appalachian backcountry were widely regarded as of "poor character" if not subhuman.  Hamilton, and his ilk, being defenders of the traditional British system no doubt inherited the economic elitism that came with it, instituting this sort of regressive tax policy that disadvantaged the poor and "uncouth" while benefitting the richer merchant classes of the urban areas of the country.  Washington's handling of the matter was the definition of moderatism and was a far cry from the "wipe them out" mentality that Hamilton and his supporters wanted to see happen after the initial tax resistance.

2. Hamilton's Federalist Party was not a principled anti-slavery party.  No one is going to deny the inherent hypocrisy of many Democratic Republicans being slave owners, okay?  But let's not pretend that the Federalist Party was an actively anti-slavery party outside of parts of New England (and even then . . . . . ).  Certain land owning elitists in the Carolinas were reliable supporters of Hamilton and his ilk throughout the early era of the nation.  Hamilton himself was anti-slavery, but he certainly made allowances in the company he kept and endorsed.  Thomas Pinckney, after all, was a very good friend of his.  This is the shortest point I'm going to make, as I believe even a casual stroll through Wikipedia will blow holes through this embarrassing misconception of American History.

3. Federalist dogma, ie conservative dogma, was in direct opposition to the ideals of liberalism. Why else would they be opposed so strongly to the French Revolution?  Regardless if you think the bloodshed in the Revolution was justified, it embodied the nature of liberalism both then and still now.  America was a Republic in an era when many European nations were ruled by monarchs. The Divine rule of Kings (or their advisors, depending on how you look at it) was unofficial doctrine of these states for most of recorded history.  In that vein, the conservatives in America, ie the Federalists, are actually liberals!  Sure, the Revolution was based off of conservative ideals, like "no taxation without representation" and the colonies wanting their rights as British citizens respected.  However, the end result can not, especially with the establishment of the Checks and Balances of American Government, be called "conservative" in the context of the times.  However, the end goal of the Federalists was a strong central American government that implemented and acted on policies that overwhelmingly favored the wealthy urban elites at the expense of practically everyone else.  Before this sounds like too much of a hack attack piece, supposedly by doing so the Feds believed that the prosperity of the upper classes would "trickle down" to the lower and middle classes and thus produce wealth.  By that observation, Ronald Reagan would have more in common with the old age Federalists than LBJ and FDR.  Liberal dogma of the time, which was defined as "upholding the Revolution!" was in direct contrast.  Liberalism was defined by an upholding and assertion of the rights of the non-elite (though of course, not always all of the non-elite, as exhibited by the grey area of slavery) and their rights to a vote and association.

4. Which brings me to the fourth point.  The Alien and Sedition Acts were a natural consequence of an Anglo Protestant supremacist mentality. Everyone knows that the Acts were passed in regards to the anti-administration rantings of various Democratic Republicans against John Adams and other high up officials in the wake of the Quasi War.  What is really underscored here, is the portions of the legislation that negatively impacted many Americans, specifically French and Irish citizens and residents of the United States.  The earlier French Revolution was seen as horrifying to the many staunchly religious conservatives in the Northeast who saw the Revolution, as well as the sympathy many DRs had with it, as a grave threat to the stability of the nation and it's trade relationship with the mother country.  Democratic excesses, they felt, would lead to unintended consequences that would lead to the ruination of society, which is why voting, holding offices, and other democratic exercises should be limited to tax paying property owners.  Also unsaid is that many of these people believes strongly in a "rule by the few fit to rule".  The coinciding of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the passage of the Acts, signed by President Adams, is not as great of a mystery.  The Celts were widely regarded as subhumans who had a natural tendency towards crime, poverty, anarchy, and chaos.  This isn't a prejudice that was solely held by people who voted Federalists, but it was far more pervasive than in the egalitarian minded ethos of Democratic Republican voters.  The Rebellion therefore was cast as the natural slippery slope result of the revolutionary trend, going from well meaning concerned citizens who felt their rights weren't being represented to people demanding the heads of kings and queens to unfit and uncouth savages getting the idea that they could overthrow the rule of the noble races.  In short, the A and S Acts were the consequences of an elite that was bent on re-establishing the dominance and supremacy of their culture over the "Lessors" that had been so for generations before.
That this last point has been largely whitewashed in American History classes is a testament to the great revisionism inherent in the Ivory Tower class (who by their very nature are the real "victors").

5. And this is probably one of the big slam dunk points to be made in this thread: Hamilton and his cohorts set about events in motion that would encourage the formation of standing armies in America.  Washington and crew readily used army expeditions into the heart of the "west" to provoke attacks from Native American tribes on them in order to push for continual expansions of the American Army.  For a party that stated it's repeated opposition to expansion of the west this is both "ironic" and signs of dishonest intent.  Hamilton later used the ghost of a French invasion of the American mainland, which Federalist President John Adams called "as likely as a French invasion force landing on the moon!"  It is almost an unwritten truth that Hamilton was raising this army for future incidents like the Whiskey Rebellion to quell popular discontent where it may arise.  Hamilton's Machiavellian schemes in going about this in a way that can only be described as "Blofeldesque" certainly raises questions about his and other Federalist good intentions.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

most of the complaints people have about Jeffersonianism are confusions with its degenerated form, Jacksonianism.

I like the old quote about how Jackson regarded himself as a Jeffersonian and Jefferson regarded Jackson as a dangerous man.

In terms of Presidents elected 12/16 years after another leaves office. The equivalent would have been if Reagan were cognizant enough to call Bush a dangerous man in the late 1990's/early 2000's.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We know Jefferson was a great President so him.


If you just had to go based on ideology though- Hamilton

Actually, Jefferson's time of greatness was before he was President. His only great accomplishment, the Louisiana Purchase, was handed to him on a silver platter.

And that was only accomplished by deviating from Jeffersonian Republican principles and using Hamilton's system of finance to pay for it with borrowed money from Britain, and we know how much Jeffersonians loved Britain.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Adam Smith favored Jefferson’s economic ideas over Hamilton’s. What views would Adam Smith have today?

It is not surprising that Smith would favor Jefferson when you think about it. Jefferson was after all at least pre-embargo, a classical liberal on economics and thus would have been in line with Smith. Hamilton's economics was capitalist yes, but developmental capitalism with a great deal of government intervention in the form of tariffs, subsidies and the like. It thus invoked economic nationalism and some neo-mercantilist aspects though it would be a mistake to equate any form of capitalism with mercantilism without underlying the primary differences between the larger categories, namely that of finite wealth versus wealth generation.

To answer as to what views Smith would have today would be as difficult as answering that for Jefferson.