Happy birthday, Alexander Hamilton!
Given all the attention he’s gotten in recent years, I don’t think I can add much to the already rich narratives about Hamilton and his meaning for the 21st century. But I’ll try.
As the images of today’s #stampoftheday show, Hamilton – who was an advocate of a strong national government, a powerful chief executive, and pro-business policies – has had an illustrative run on American postage stamps. He appeared for the first time in a series of stamps issued in 1870 that were the first stamps to portray anyone other than Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Andrew Jackson. In addition to Hamilton, the new faces on the stamps were Edwin Stanton, who served as Secretary of War during the Civil War); Henry Clay, one of the era’s leading Senators; General Winfield Scott, who led major American campaigns in the Mexican-American War; and Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry, who led American forces to a decisive naval victory on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Stamps portraying Hamilton were included in three subsequent versions of the series issued (with minor modifications) in the 1870s and 1880s.
But Hamilton was dropped from a new series issued in 1890. He didn’t reappear on a US postage stamp until 1956, when he was pictured on $5 stamp that was part of the 24-stamp “Liberty” series issued between 1954 and 1965. It’s an understatement to say this is an eclectic series: in addition to seven presidents, eight stamps portrayed other luminaries—including Hamilton, Robert E. Lee (!!) and Susan B. Anthony (who was the only woman in the series) – while nine pictured historic sites such as the Bunker Hill Monument, the Statue of Liberty, the Alamo, Hermitage (President Jackson’s home) and the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe.
Hamilton made a return appearance less than a year later, when he appeared on a 3-cent stamp issued on January 11, 1957 to commemorate his 200th birthday. (Historians have since concluded that he actually was born in 1755.)
The stamps (and Hamilton’s reemergence via Miranda’s musical) reflect changing views and attitudes not only about Hamilton but also about the role of the national government, the chief executive, and immigrants.
The diverging views go back those who knew and dealt with Hamilton. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a prominent French diplomat, for example, wrote, “I consider Napoleon, Fox, and Hamilton the three greatest men of our epoch, and if I were forced to decide between the three, I would give without hesitation the first place to Hamilton.” On the other hand, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson viewed Hamilton as unprincipled and dangerously aristocratic.
Hamilton’s star waned in the first half of the nineteenth century with the ascendance of leaders like Jefferson and Jackson, who tended to disagree with Hamilton’s views on both populism and the national government’s powers. I suspect that his pro-business views led to his emergence as a figure to be honored on the stamps issued in the 1870s and 1880s. I think he disappeared from postal view because stamps increasingly honored former presidents and more visible military heroes and public officials.
Nevertheless, Hamilton’s support for a strong national government won him many fans among leading turn-of-the-century progressive Republicans, such as Theodore Roosevelt. But his reputation waned in the mid-20th century when many leading historians looked to Jefferson and Jackson as models for a populist democracy and tended to denigrate Hamilton as something of an elitist. (This is the general view I grew up with.)
It’s not clear why Hamilton reemerged on postage stamps in the mid-1950s. I suspect it’s due to the fact that the president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a pro-business Republican who also saw the need for a strong national government. Illustratively, stamps honoring Andrew Mellon, George Eastman, and Andrew Carnegie were all issued during his presidency.
Although there hasn’t been a Hamilton stamp since the 1950s, his reputation has grown in the 21st century, particularly after Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of Hamilton that became the inspiration and basis for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical. Writing in 2010, historian Sean Wilentz noted that scholars were increasingly likely to see Hamilton as the visionary architect of the modern liberal capitalist economy and of a dynamic federal government headed by an energetic executive and to see Jefferson and his allies as na•ve, dreamy idealists.
Jefferson’s reputation has been further damaged by the fact that he not only owned slaves but also that he fathered but didn’t acknowledge several children with Sally Hemings, who was a slave. In contrast, Miranda’s musical underscores the fact that Hamilton was a penniless, orphan immigrant who was born out of wedlock, probably to a mixed-race mother. (Recent scholarship, however, has also made it clear that Hamilton also owned slaves.)
Given his views on the need for a strong executive, I wonder what Hamilton would have made of Donald Trump’s assertions that the constitution gave him virtually unlimited power. In April, Jeffrey Rosen, the President & CEO of the National Constitution Center, addressed this question, in an Atlantic article headlined “Hamilton Would Not Have Stood for Trump’s New Constitutional Theory.” The subhead added: “Even the Founding Father with the most expansive view of executive power would have found Trump’s recent constitutional ideas troubling.”
Thinking about all of this, I also began to wonder which song (if any) from “Hamilton” seems most appropriate at this fraught but also hopeful moment in our history. I considered “You’ll be Back,” but settled on “The Story of Tonight,” which includes the following lyrics:
“Raise a glass to freedom
Something they can never take away
No matter what they tell you
Let’s have another round tonight
Raise a glass to the four of us
Tomorrow there’ll be more of us
Telling the story of tonight
Let’s have another round tonight”
Be well, stay safe, raise a glass to freedom, fight for justice, and work for peace.