Alexander Hamilton died too soon

The argument

The claim is epistemic rather than historical: not that Hamilton's financial plan neglected the nation, but that the evidence needed to settle the question was never produced. Hamilton was killed prematurely in a duel, and the argument turns on what that death removed. A statesman who leaves office and lives on ordinarily supplies a second body of material about his own tenure, the reconsiderations, admissions and defences offered once the dust has settled and the immediate political stakes have passed. Hamilton never got that opportunity. He never returned to the decisions he made in office from a distance that would have allowed a more objective appraisal of his performance. Why this matters bears on the particular question asked. Whether the plan put America first is not a question about its effects, which can be traced in the record, but about what was at the core of Hamilton's decision-making, which is to say about motive. Motives are established, where they are established at all, largely from what the agent says about them, and the most informative such statements are retrospective ones, made when there is no longer anything to be gained from the account given. Defences offered at the time are made while the policy is still being fought over, and are shaped accordingly. That is the material the duel destroyed. Without a retrospective account from Hamilton himself, many of the motives behind his financial plan and his decisions as an early American statesman remain obscured, and what survives is compatible with more than one reading: a plan framed for the nation and a plan serving narrower ends would look much the same in the documents that exist. Proponents conclude that the question is not merely unresolved but unresolvable on the available evidence, and that it is therefore almost impossible ever to really know.

Context

Hamilton died prematurely in a duel, robbing him of the ability to publish essays or memoirs in later life explaining the motive behind his decisions as Secretary of the Treasury. As history is written by the victors, and the victors were Hamilton’s political opponents like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, we will never truly know the motives for Hamilton’s financial plan.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Hamilton wrote extensively during the 1790-1792 period. His Report on Public Credit, presented to Congress in 1790, outlines Hamilton’s goals to restructure domestic debt, revealing that he anticipated future crises and sought to establish a mechanism through which the government could allow liquidity injections to calm speculators and stabilize the markets. Similarly, his Report on the National Bank was comprehensive in its nature. Hamilton’s own thoughts on the creation of a national bank can also be found in the arguments he made to George Washington to defend his proposal in February of 1791. Finally, although the least related to fiscal policy, Hamilton’s Report on Manufacturers also reveals a great deal about the economic policies Hamilton held dear and his reasoning behind them. In his recommendations, he proposed concepts such as defining the US dollar in set terms of gold, silver and foreign currencies, which reveal his desire to establish the US as a world leader in economic and financial development. There is no dearth of information on Hamilton’s policies and motives from Hamilton’s own hand. He was an enthusiastic writer and did not shy away from producing extensive reams and tracts promoting and defending his ideas in the face of scrutiny. In addition to the aforementioned reports, Hamilton also published work anonymously in the Independent Journal under the Publius pseudonym. These essays eventually became known as the Federalist Papers and formed the ideological basis for many elements of the constitution. These anonymous essays provide further introspection into Hamilton’s ideology, political beliefs and precursory motives for his financial plan for the nation.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] There is plenty of evidence to determine Hamilton's motives.