Quotes & Sayings About Hamilton Vs Jefferson

The Jefferson of the cabinet, of the vice presidency, and of the presidency can be best understood by recalling that his passion for the people and his regard for republicanism belonged to a man who believed that there were forces afoot - forces visible and invisible, domestic and foreign - that sought to undermine the rights of man by reestablishing the rule of priests and nobles and kings. His opposition to John Adams and to Alexander Hamilton, to the British and to financial speculators, grew out of this fundamental concern. Like — Jon Meacham

Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton never saw the creation of America as a magical leap across a chasm to an entirely new landscape, and he always thought the New World had much to learn from the Old. Probably — Ron Chernow

Roosevelt was a Hamiltonian--a conservative in the eighteenth century sense of the word. Rather than urging the American people to "pursue happiness," as Jefferson the liberal did in the Declaration of Independence, Roosevelt admonished them to live the "Strenuous Life" of duty, toil, and strife, and to avoid "ignoble ease"--advice Hamilton would have heartily approved. — Daniel Ruddy

We have left behind the rosy agrarian rhetoric and slaveholding reality of Jeffersonian democracy and reside in the bustling world of trade, industry, stock markets, and banks that Hamilton envisioned. (Hamilton's staunch abolitionism formed an integral feature of this economic vision.) He has also emerged as the uncontested visionary in anticipating the shape and powers of the federal government. At a time when Jefferson and Madison celebrated legislative power as the purest expression of the popular will, Hamilton argued for a dynamic executive branch and an independent judiciary, along with a professional military, a central bank, and an advanced financial system. Today, we are indisputably the heirs to Hamilton's America, and to repudiate his legacy is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world. — Ron Chernow

(Jefferson) was deeply suspicious of Hamilton's assumption plan (by which the nation would assume responsibility for the states' individual war debts.) He feared this was yet another example of the avaricious hand of the unscrupulous money powers, the sprawling, hydra-headed creature associated with banks, stock markets and devious speculators, especially in New York, Boston, and the City of London, not to mention unrepublican, unAmerican attitudes of all kinds - everything he despised. — Jay Winik

Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all. — Richard Brookhiser

The heirs of Jefferson and Madison would be the Democratic-Republicans, the heirs of Hamilton and Adams would be the Federalists. But the heirs of Washington would be all Americans. — John P. Avlon

The first presidential veto, by George Washington, was a veto of Alexander Hamilton's formula for apportioning the House, and the one that Washington preferred was one that Thomas Jefferson produced, and that was one partisan issue. The apportionment formula that Jefferson produced gave an extra seat to Virginia. Everybody knew what that game was. Look, partisan interest in the census is simply nothing new. — Kenneth Prewitt

With only three executive departments, each secretary wielded considerable power. Moreover, departmental boundaries were not well defined, allowing each secretary to roam across a wide spectrum of issues. This was encouraged by Washington, who frequently requested opinions from his entire cabinet on an issue. It particularly galled Jefferson that Hamilton, with his keen appetite for power, poached so frequently on his turf. In fact, Hamilton's opinions were so numerous and his influence so pervasive that most historians regard him as having been something akin to a prime minister. If Washington was head of state, then Hamilton was the head of government, the active force in the administration. — Ron Chernow

Conservatives are people who worship at the graves of dead radicals. Stop to think about that. The people who started this country, George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, these were not conservatives; these were the radicals of the time. In fact, conservatives always look back on people who they despised and make them into heroes. If you were to listen to the religious right today, they would make you believe that Martin Luther King was one of their flock. In reality, they hated him and did everything they could to destroy him. — Tony Campolo

I do not believe that Mr. Jefferson ever hated me. On the contrary, I believe he always like me: but he detested Hamilton and by whole administration. Then he wished to be President of the United States, and I stood in his way. So he did everything that he could to pull me down. But if I should quarral with him for that, I might quarrel with every man I have had anything to do with in life. This is human nature ... I forgive all my enemies and hope they may find mercy in Heaven. Mr. Jefferson and I have grown old and retired from public life. So we are upon our ancient terms of goodwill. — John Adams

Intellectuals love Jefferson and hate markets, and intellectuals write most of the books. Intellectuals often think that they should, for the benefit of mankind, act as fiduciaries for the clods who don't have to be intellectuals, and I suspect that has to do with [why historians love Jefferson and not Hamilton, even though Hamilton's vision of America's commercial future was vastly more accurate than Jefferson's]. — John Steele Gordon

The suspect nature of these stories can be seen in the anecdote Jefferson told of Hamilton visiting his lodging in 1792 and inquiring about three portraits on the wall. "They are my trinity of the three greatest men the world has ever produced," Jefferson replied: "Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke." Hamilton supposedly replied, "The greatest man that ever lived was Julius Casar. — Ron Chernow

To achieve these Jeffersonian ends, Alexander Hamilton - Jefferson's philosophical rival - devised an ingenious strategy that entailed a strong manufacturing base, a national banking system, a centralized federal government, and an export-led economic scheme protected by the U.S. Navy. — Patrick Mendis

Perhaps myself the first, at some expense of popularity, to unfold the true character of Jefferson, it is too late for me to become his apologist. Nor can I have any disposition to do it. I admit that his politics are tinctured with fanaticism, that he is too much in earnest in his democracy, that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principle measures of our past administration, that he is crafty & persevering in his objects, that he is not scrupulous about the means of success, nor very mindful of truth, and that he is a contemptible hypocrite. — Alexander Hamilton

But Hamilton lost the day, Jefferson won, and we have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that, as Hamilton feared, has increasingly been used to limit, rather than expand, the range of human rights American citizens can claim. And because it's in our Constitution, the only way other than a Supreme Court decision to make explicit "new" rights (such as a right to health care) is through the process of amending that document. — Thom Hartmann

So intense was the partisanship of the day, so much did the Federalists hate and fear Jefferson, that they were ready to turn the country over to Aaron Burr. Had they succeeded and made Burr the president, there would almost certainly be no republic today. Fortunately for all, Hamilton was smart enough and honest enough to realize that Jefferson was the lesser evil. He used his influence to break the deadlock. On the thirty-sixth ballot, February 17, 1801, Jefferson was chosen president and Burr was elected vice-president. It was an age marked by — Stephen E. Ambrose

Mr Jefferson meant that the American system should be a democracy, and he would rather have let the whole world perish than that this principle, which to him represented all that man was worth, should fail. Mr Hamilton considered democracy a fatal curse, and meant to stop its progress. — Henry Adams

Washington, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson had imagined the American experiment coming to all sorts of bad ends. They never imagined the Federal City overrun by frontiersmen who cared nothing for history and loved only cheap land and credit, whiskey, tobacco, guns, fast women, fast horses, and Jesus. Not necessarily in that order. — Walter A. McDougall

Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: 'It does nothing! It creates chaos! It's a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry!' — Adam Davidson

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson hated each other so much. But that hate that they had for each other did not come before the love of their country. — David Scott

It is more a mentality than the actual places people live, as Jefferson and Hamilton would argue about - city versus country. For example, someone could have an empty place mentality yet be living in a condo in Boca Raton. — Gail Collins

It may be that without a vision men shall die. It is no less true that, without hard practical sense, they shall also die. Without Jefferson the new nation might have lost its soul. Without Hamilton it would assuredly have been killed in body. — James Truslow Adams

Jefferson appeared to his enemies as an American version of Candide; Hamilton as an American Machiavelli. — Joseph J. Ellis

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. — David Brion Davis

Nope. Not even close. After writing this book, I'm convinced that Alexander Hamilton is one of the main reasons - maybe the reason - that we are the United States, not just some united states. He's the reason that we do more in America than just plant cabbage and herd sheep. With astonishing foresight that eclipsed every other Founding Father's - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, all of them - Hamilton envisioned the future of the United States. Then he made it happen. — Jeff Wilser

From that point on, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and a few other intimates made it their first priority to arrange a deal with Hamilton - letting him have his assumption plan, but hopefully in the form of a compromise that would force him to give up something in return. Chapter — Charles A. Cerami

We had so many different presidents, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln - there were other founders like Hamilton, Adams - who made it very clear that the courts can't make a law. The Constitution is expressly clear that that's a power reserved to Congress. — Mike Huckabee

What was surprising
and would largely be forgotten as time went on
was how well Adams had done. Despite the malicious attacks on him, the furor over the Alien and Sedition Acts, unpopular taxes, betrayals by his own cabinet, the disarray of the Federalists, and the final treachery of Hamilton, he had, in fact, come very close to winning in the electoral count. With a difference of only 250 votes in New York City, Adams would have won an electoral count of 71 to 61. So another of the ironies of 1800 was that Jefferson, the apostle of agrarian America who loathed cities, owed his ultimate political triumph to New York. — David McCullough

Americans could achieve Jefferson's democratic freedoms through Hamilton's economic development strategies and trade policies. — Patrick Mendis