#1580 Ten Things about the Hamilton-Jefferson Relationship

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

This week on Listening to America, Clay’s conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervensky about two of the greatest of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson knew of Hamilton’s war heroics and his importance as aide-de-camp to George Washington, but he didn’t actually meet Hamilton until the spring of 1790 when they were two of the four members of George Washington’s cabinet. They were yin and yang. Jefferson was an agrarian and a strict constructionist, a man who was obsessed with peace. Hamilton was an urban man who wanted the government to support American industry, a broad constructionist of the Constitution who believed war could bring glory to himself and to the nation. They crossed swords in the Washington Cabinet but each found a good deal to admire in the other. In the end, Hamilton helped secure the Presidency for Jefferson, not because he thought Jefferson was right for the job, but because he knew that Aaron Burr was an unstable demagogue.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everybody to this podcast introduction to this week's listening to America,
0:04.7	a conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chirvinsky about 10 things relating to the relationship,
0:10.4	I won't call it friendship between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
0:15.2	Hamilton was born in 1757 we think, I mean he fudged that a little bit, we think. Jefferson was certainly born in 1743.
0:24.8	Hamilton died in July 1804.
0:27.5	Jefferson lived all the way to 1826.
0:30.2	Jefferson was not the last of the founders. Now that would have been James Madison, but he was there for a long period, lived 83 years, and was able to shape the history and the discourse of the early national period in a way that most of his
0:44.4	adversaries and friends were not able to do.
0:48.0	So it's a fascinating subject.
0:49.8	We talk about a whole range of issues today. Number one, the bank bill in 1791, where
0:56.2	Hamilton got the National Bank of the United States against the objections of the strict
0:59.8	constructionist Thomas Jefferson. Number two, the Moriah Reynolds sex scandal
1:04.7	in Jefferson's complicity in the leaking of that
1:07.6	to the public.
1:08.5	We did not really talk about Hamilton's collaboration
1:10.5	with Madison, but it sort of came up implicitly a couple of times.
1:13.7	Hamilton's anxiety about his illegitimate birth, he was born illegitimate in the Caribbean,
1:19.2	and it kind of haunted him, more him than I think others, but it was used against him and sometimes even by the Jeffersonians.
1:25.8	Jefferson's and Hamilton's competition for the love and support of the great father, George Washington.
1:30.6	You know, Washington had no sons.
1:32.2	Both Hamilton and Jefferson had no fathers by the time they met in the Cabinet of the United States
1:37.6	in 1790.
	...

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