Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration
Completing the Founding or Betraying the Founding?

This book is an intensive study of the constitutional and political arguments between Hamilton and Jefferson in Washington's cabinet.

Carson Holloway (Author)

9781107109056, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 October 2015

354 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.64 kg

'Carson Holloway's book offers a detailed account of the debates between two compelling figures of the Founding era. … the text covers the first term of the Washington Administration and the crucial period in which both Hamilton and Jefferson remained part of it.' Simon Gilhooley, The Review of Politics

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.

1. Introduction
Part I. A Debate between Cabinet Colleagues: 2. Establishing the public faith: Hamilton's Report on Public Credit
3. First signs of division: assumption and the Back Pay Bill
4. Establishing energetic government: Hamilton's Report on a National Bank
5. Defending limited government: Jefferson's critique of the constitutionality of the national bank
6. Defending energetic government: Hamilton on the constitutionality of the national bank
Part II. A Clash of Rival Party Leaders: 7. Securing American independence: Hamilton's Report on Manufactures
8. The revolution, alienation of territory, and the apportionment bill
9. Aiming for monarchy: Jefferson's critique of Hamiltonianism
10. Tending toward anarchy: Hamilton's critique of Jeffersonianism
Part III. Founding Foreign Policy: 11. Two views of the French Revolution
12. Faith among nations I: Jefferson's opinion on the French treaties
13. Faith among nations II: Hamilton's opinion on the French treaties
14. The constitutional and political theory of Hamilton's Pacificus papers
15. Jefferson, Madison, and Helvidius' critique of Pacificus
16. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]