Since Washington’s first presidential term with Jefferson as his Secretary of State and Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury, a conflict of two competing visions for our great nation has existed: Jefferson’s agrarian republic filled with staunchly individualistic yeoman farmers, with broad states rights and a limited central government versus Hamilton’s dreams of a commercial society with a strong centralized government and limited state’s rights.
In his book Frederick Bastiat: A Man Alone, George Charles Roche III writes of these conflicting ideas:
For the past two centuries, the Western World has been torn by a continuing debate: Does the well-being of society as a whole stem from the freedom of enlightened individuals to pursue their own interests; or must government intervene in the lives of its citizens to assure the greatest collective good?
During that period after the Revolutionary War and before the signing of our current constitution, much debate was had over the nature of the Constitution itself. The Federal Farmer wrote:
The plan of government now proposed is evidently calculated totally to change, in time, our condition as a people. Instead of being thirteen republics, under a federal head, it is clearly designed to make us one consolidated government. … whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars; whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country — time only can determine (the italics are mine)
Early in our nations history, the conflict of these two ideologies drove us to a great civil war as the seeds of of our long contention took root and flowered. At that time, the United States was comprised of around 25 million freemen and women and nearly 4 million slaves. In that war, between 600,000 and 700,000 men died, about 2 1 percent of the entire population. More men were lost in that war than in all our other wars combined. It was a terrible tragedy for our country.
What did this war accomplish? The practice of slavery was abolished, and the south was through reconstruction firmly yoked to the now solidified central government, but the ideas that drove us to the conflict yet remained.
In America today these conflicting visions are with us still. Hamilton’s star is currently ascendant, but will it always be so? I wonder.
The Vermont Farmer's Blog 