Save Alexander Hamilton

There is something sad and shockingly misguided in the spectacle of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew acting to belittle the significance of the foremost Treasury secretary in American history, Alexander Hamilton, by demoting him on the ten-dollar bill. In announcing the move Lew implied that Hamilton wouldnt disappear altogether from the bill, but would somehow share the space with an illustrious woman. Since the two would obviously look awkward side-by-side, the strong likelihood is that the female personage will be emblazoned on the front with Hamilton banished to the murky back side.

The desire to elevate a woman into the select pantheon of Americans on our currency is altogether laudable and I, for one, would be thrilled to see Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Susan B. Anthony grace the twenty-dollar bill. But to pounce on Hamilton as the victim of this long-overdue change is to correct one historic injustice by committing another.

And talk about bad timing! What makes Lews decision so woefully ironic is that Hamiltons standing has risen sharply in recent years, assisted by a slew of favorable biographies, my own included. And now, with its vibrant young, multiracial cast, the magnificent new musical Hamilton, created by the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda, is introducing a new generation to his manifold accomplishments. Miranda has done something miraculous, making early American history hip, cool, and erudite. Oddly enough, I received the news about Lews decision as I headed out for the first rehearsal of Hamilton, which is inspired by my book and is now en route to Broadway in July. Lews action threatens to undo the shows splendid work in rescuing Alexander Hamilton from the historical shadows and restoring his luster.

For a long time, Hamilton was a misunderstood and overlooked figure, consigned to a curious limbo. Among the major founders, he was, aside from Ben Franklin, the one who never made it to the White House and therefore lacked the reverent attention we bestow on presidents. He was also reviled by a succession of political enemiesJohn Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroewho made it to the top and conspired to slant our long-term view of him. As a result, Hamiltons face was never chiseled on Mount Rushmore, nor did he receive a fancy memorial in Washington. The statue of him outside the Treasury Department is risibly small. The one distinction he could claim was an honored niche on the ten-dollar bill, lifting him into the rarefied company of political immortals.

Hamilton was undeniably the most influential person in our history who never attained the presidency. That he started out as an illegitimate, effectively orphaned, and penniless immigrant from the Caribbean, who didnt know a soul when he arrived in North America at the start of the American Revolution, makes his story worth celebrating in a nation of immigrants. His contributions to forging our country were gigantic and pervasive, starting with his starring role in the Revolutionary War, when he served as aide-de-camp and chief of staff to George Washington, and as a battlefield hero at Yorktown.

After the war, he personally issued the appeal for a Constitutional Convention, attended it, and was the sole New York delegate to sign the resulting document. To help ratify the new constitution, he spearheaded the writing of The Federalist Papers, publishing fifty-one of those eighty-five luminous essays. They remain the classic gloss on our Constitution and the documents most frequently cited by the Supreme Court. At the New York State Ratifying Convention, Hamilton spoke twenty-six times during a grueling six-week marathon and got the constitution ratified by a narrow margin in a key state.

In 1789, George Washington tapped the thirty-four-year-old Hamilton as the first Treasury secretary. With its tax collectors and customs inspectors, Hamiltons Treasury Department eclipsed in size the rest of the federal government combined, making him something akin to a prime minister. Drawing on a blank slate, Hamilton arose as the visionary architect of the executive branch, forming from scratch the first fiscal, monetary, tax, and accounting systems. In quick succession, he assembled the Coast Guard, the customs service, and the Bank of the United Statesthe first central bank and the forerunner of the Federal Reserve System. Most significantly, he took a country bankrupted by revolutionary war debt and restored American credit. All the while, he articulated an expansive vision of the Constitution, converting it into an elastic document that could grow with a dynamic young country.

One reason Hamilton was vilified by his enemies is that they feared him as an agent of modernity at a time when his Jeffersonian opponents espoused an American future that stressed traditional agriculture and small towns. In a stupendous leap, Hamilton argued for a thriving nation populated by cities, banks, corporations, and stock exchanges as well as traditional agriculture. In his famous Report on Manufactures, he enumerated how government could foster manufacturing and provide employment for immigrants. He shaped, in a virtuoso performance, Americas financial infrastructure in its entirety. On the Wall Street of the early 1790s, only five securities were traded: three issues of Treasury securities, the stock of the Bank of the United States, and the stock of the private Bank of New Yorkall created by Alexander Hamilton.

Especially pertinent in the controversy over the ten-dollar bill is that Hamilton was the figure in our history most identified with paper money. In 1791, he published his Report on the Mint, acting to establish the rudiments of our currency. He endorsed the dollar as our basic currency unit with smaller coins used on a decimal basis and first proposed putting presidential faces on coins. The banknotes of Hamiltons Bank of the United States counted as the first paper money issued by the new government. Arguably no one ever put a greater stamp on the currency we all use today, and which has become the worlds premier currency as well.

So where to put a deserving woman on it? The figure obviously ripe for reevaluation is Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. For all his populist achievements as president, which were considerable, he was as hostile to the world of modern finance as Hamilton was prophetic. Where President Jackson owned a hundred slaves, Hamilton was an abolitionist who co-founded the New York Manumission Society in the 1780s. And where President Jackson oversaw the forced removal of Indians from the eastern seaboard in the infamous Trail of Tears, killing an estimated four thousand Cherokees, Hamilton lent his name and prestige to the creation of an academy in upstate New York designed to educate native-Americans.

So, yes, by all means, let us have a debate about the political figures on our currency and, yes, let us now praise famous women. But why on earth should we start that debate by singling out and punishing Alexander Hamilton, who did so much to invent our country and is finally enjoying his long-awaited moment in the spotlight?

Ron Chernow is the author of Alexander Hamilton (2004) and several other books. He won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 2011 for his biography of George Washington, Washington: A Life.

Source: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/save-alexander-hamilton-119176.html