America’s first partisan battle: What we can learn from Hamilton v. Jefferson

Like many Americans, Mónica Guzmán grew up with a vision of the American founders as enlightened statesmen after the war — “basically white wigs and genius.” Bloody revolution and duels notwithstanding, she assumed that debates over the nation’s fate took place “over tea and pound cake, and that the conversation sparkled with civility.”

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

As Guzmán explored in this week’s episode of the “A Braver Way” podcast, “How to fight right with Hamilton and Jefferson,” Americans today might take away some invaluable lessons from this nation’s “first fierce partisan political rivals.”

Tensions as old as time

However concerned Americans are right to be with escalating tensions around us, there is some wisdom in breathing deep and appreciating that we’re not the first generation to face aching conflict. As written in Ecclesiastes , “what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Alexander Hamilton, founder of the Federalist Party, was infamous for his lack of self-restraint and hot temper. “Hamilton was boundless in his energy and his efforts on behalf of whatever plan it was that he was pursuing,” historian Lindsay Chervinsky, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said more generously.

In an August 1793 cabinet meeting, Thomas Jefferson writes that Hamilton gave an extended, uninterrupted speech for three quarters of an hour, two days in a row — each very grandiose, with lots of “gesturing and lots of pacing,” as though he were speaking to a jury.

Jefferson presented himself with more patience, Chervinsky said, but he was willing to be calculating and undercut rivals behind the scenes. That included drafting documents allies could use in Congress against Hamilton, based on his notes from cabinet meetings together and hiring a newspaper publisher into the State Department so that he could have an easy pipeline for stories critical of Hamilton and his party.

Upon learning this, Hamilton responded by writing anonymous articles in a competing newspaper. In December 1793, Jefferson quit George Washington’s cabinet to keep building the nation’s first opposition party against Hamilton.

Surprisingly, all this is actually encouraging to the historian, who takes heart in the common humanity witnessed in their grappling with similar fierce conflicts — no doubt, thanks to our common nature and the universally important questions we all face.

This sense of perspective can help us feel grounded when we hear others speaking in hyperbolic language about who wins the election, noted April Lawson, Director of Debates and Public Discourse at Braver Angels.

“We have this idea that there’s like this golden age of politicians when everyone acted nicely and that does not exist,” stated Chervinsky, author of award-winning “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.”

Washington the peacemaker

America’s first president is certainly best known for leading the early colonial forces in the Revolutionary War victory. Less known, though, is Washington’s penchant for peace of different kinds — from his storied retreat at Mount Vernon to his cherished book project, “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior In Company and Conversation.”

Included in Washington’s list of guidelines for civility are some reminders of basic decorum humorous by today’s standards, such as rule No. 4: “In the presence of others sing not to yourself with a humming noise, nor drum with your fingers or feet,” and rule No. 5: “If you cough, sneeze, sigh, or yawn, do it not loud but privately; and speak not in your yawning, but put your handkerchief or hand before your face and turn aside.”

One favorite, rule No. 6: “Sleep not when others speak, sit not when others stand, speak not when you should hold your peace, walk not on when others stop.”

But most important was his first rule , which Washington sought to follow and encourage in his cabinet: “Every action done in company, ought to be with some sign of respect, to those that are present.”

At one point, Washington reprimanded Hamilton and Jefferson because of their constant complaints about each other’s behavior, Chervinsky noted.

“For a long time, Washington tried to exercise patience. But then at one point he basically said to both of them, ‘You are both patriots (and) I want you both in my cabinet. I believe in you both. Stop it.’”

At one point, in the middle of one especially heated debate, Washington suggested that the entire cabinet go and talk further over a “family meal,” as they called it.

That didn’t succeed in softening Jefferson and Hamilton toward each other, and Chervinsky detects sadness and hurt in Washington’s journaling about that particular event.

Stronger together

Despite all this friction, Washington intentionally sought out both Hamilton and Jefferson for his administration and “worked hard to keep them in the cabinet because he wanted both perspectives and told them as much.”

“He was very explicit about this,” Chervinsky said — recounting how he would present a series of questions in cabinet meetings. If disagreement existed, the president would ask for written opinions — allowing him to study matters and make a decision with sufficient time, after gathering all the information.

“He wanted to make sure he understood the different arguments.” Washington had developed that strategy during the Revolution, when he found war councils with his officers so helpful.

The earlier success, Chervinsky believes, is “because they were fighting against a common enemy. And so no matter how much they disagreed, they could kind of put that aside and fight against this common enemy.”

The cabinet couldn’t catch the same vision, partly because their vision of problems and solutions alike were so very different.

Competing views of danger

Like Americans today, these early leaders did not agree on the true threats to the nation — seeing the problem “so differently that they saw danger coming from different places,” Chervinsky said.

Jefferson, for instance, “disliked and distrusted Great Britain,” seeing larger cities as “spaces of sin and corruption and cronyism” — positions opposite to Hamilton. This was quite a contrast to the Revolution, she said, where the problem was “clearly the British army. There’s no question that it’s the British army.”

As a result, these leaders were “often fighting different things and at different purposes,” which, Chervinsky said, “feels very similar to me in this, our current moment” — where Americans also reach completely opposite conclusions on true threats facing the republic and democracy itself.

Competing visions for what America should be

It wasn’t just in making sense of problems where their visions differed — but in what directions the entire country should move. Hamilton believed the federal government should be big and strong and that it should invest in military, trade and infrastructure, which led him to see Great Britain as an important trade partner.

“He tended to cozy up to merchants and bankers and he lived in city centers and believed that cities were going to be a place where ingenuity and trade and the market flourished in the future.”

Jefferson had more of a “yeoman farmer vision,” with an image of financially independent families across the nation. Consistently, he didn’t want the government super large — avoiding huge military investments or government interference in industry. He also wanted the nation to be closest allies with France, not Britain.

These “diametrically opposed” visions were on everything from financial policy to foreign policy, becoming the basis for the first political parties.

You as my enemy

With these profound differences in vision, combined with their personal resentments, “They [both] began to view the other as this mortal threat” Chervinsky said — each persuaded that the other was going to “destroy the nation.”

On one hand, Jefferson thought that Hamilton was going to turn it into another Britain and reinstate a monarchy — with standing armies marching through the streets. On the other hand, Hamilton thought Jefferson was going to tear everything down and there was going to be mob violence, anarchy and slave uprisings.

Much like today, these leaders — both seeking to do what’s best for America — genuinely “believed that the other had to be defeated if this republic was going to survive, which they had devoted their, basically their entire lives to trying to create.”

The safety in counterbalancing perspectives

Were they simply naive? That’s what Guzmán asked Chervinsky: “Do you think either of them were right in the degree to which they saw the other as a mortal threat to the republic?”

Interestingly enough, Chervinsky said yes — explaining that if either vision had been pursued unchecked and become predominant in these early years, it could have been disastrous. “If Hamilton had had his way, the United States would have been at war with France in 1798, which could have been fatal to the republic. If Jefferson had his way, then the United States would have probably been at war with Great Britain earlier and that could have been fatal.”

“So there were real dangers in both perspectives if they were pursued to their extreme ends” — which explains the wisdom of our first president. “Washington was much better off and much better president, made better choices by having both perspectives and often finding a middle line in between the two of them.”

Chervinsky underscores, “Almost all of our best presidents are fairly moderate because they believe in compromise. They believe it’s important to pull from multiple different perspectives.”

Integrating differences into one America

This is at the heart of what America is, says Liz Joyner, national director of the Village Square — noting that it’s in our DNA to have diverse people coming together to self-govern.

And the nation is better off because they spent that time together in the cabinet “ticking each other off that long,” Chervinsky affirmed after Guzmán posed another question.

First of all, you can see some ways these long debates led to persuasion and compromise. So for example, Jefferson had opposed the National Bank Hamilton advocated. But once Jefferson became president, he acknowledged that the bank was actually quite useful and he kept it and he used it and it made his presidency better.

Although the tensions are still “very with us” Guzmán notes, Chervinsky secondly highlights how in the end both of their visions won — “because if we look at the world we live in, it’s very much Hamilton’s world. We have technology and infrastructure and the internet and cities and trade and we live in this international community.”

“But when we talk about, you know, there’s always the like average American or the ideal American. And that ideal tends to conjure up white picket fence, little house for every family, yard, and that is very much Jefferson’s creation.”

“And so in some ways, they are both really responsible for the American identity.”

Not giving up on each other

One final lesson, April Lawson points out on the podcast, is that a passion to engage in these debates is a positive, hopeful thing. When people bring their passion to political discussions, it’s because “we care” — suggesting that “the real death of our democratic republic is when we stop caring, when we stop engaging.”

Imagine, she said, if either Hamilton or Jefferson had actually said, “Forget it! I’m done!”

“The biggest lesson that I drew” from this early history, Lawson concludes, is “that they stayed in the room.”

“It was five guys in a hot Philadelphia, second floor room (for multiple hours per day) — often in the summer. Which sounds like, you know, a small version of hell.”

“And we have air conditioning,” Guzmán adds. “What’s our excuse?”

“You can imagine like Hamilton is going on and it’s minute 35 of 45 and Jefferson is like, ‘Oh my gosh, stop,’” Lawson said.

“But he doesn’t leave. He doesn’t get up and say, ‘I will not deal with this kind of person. I will not tolerate this kind of speech. I will not, you are violating my boundaries.’”

“It would just be super fun if someone passed a bipartisan bill,” Guzmán interjected, “that every so and so, the head of the Democratic party and the head of the Republican party have to be in a room for six hours, and there has to be witnesses in there that they are talking about the real stuff.”

“Because if they’re acting like courage is avoidance, then I’m done with that excuse. I am.”

While the lesson we often assume is that “everybody calm down, turn down the temperature,” she adds that one lesson from these past stories may also be, “Turn it up! So that you can be real and you can get angry. But don’t avoid each other. Stay in the arena. Stay in the heat. Let it cook and do it for the good of what at least we say we’re trying to build together.”

Don’t forget, this is about something bigger than you

Although both leaders were combative during election years, Chervinsky points out that “when it was really close to all falling apart (in) the election of 1800, they ultimately prioritized the Constitution over their own political interests and their own party’s interests.”

“They demonstrated civic virtue,” she said, “which is recognizing that the thing they were trying to save was much larger than them as a person or their political aims.”

Chervinsky believes these early leaders would encourage everyone else to do the same, remembering to take the long view and not forget “one person’s political outcome is way less important than the survival of the nation.”

Guzmán adds, “Raise a glass to Hamilton and Jefferson because, hey, it’s been 231 years. We’re still kicking.”