Reviewed by: Original Intents: Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the American Founding by Andrew Shankman Peter S. Onuf (bio) Original Intents: Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the American Founding. By Andrew Shankman. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 176. Paper, $19.95.) Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison were all good republicans, united in their commitment to American independence. Their collaboration [End Page 557] culminated in the ratification of Madison's Constitution, Andrew Shankman writes in his succinct and engaging account of the founding, only to collapse with the inauguration of the new federal government and implementation of Treasury Secretary Hamilton's controversial financial system. Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson agreed that "the national government had to gain the power to tax, regulate trade, and enact laws that the states would have to obey" (15). But that agreement disguised fundamental disagreements about the constitution and character of a modern republic that would erupt in the 1790s, dividing Shankman's protagonists and nearly demolishing the "more perfect union" they sought to create. The vicious party battles of the 1790s reflected the founders' failure to recognize or reconcile fundamental philosophical differences. Reversing the logic of "originalist" interpretations of the Constitution, Shankman suggests that Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson were not—and could not have been—fully aware of their intentions before conflicts over controversial administration policies retrospectively revealed them. Jefferson and Madison launched a "mighty argument" over the new nation's future as they mobilized opposition to Hamilton's management of the Treasury. Republican critics and Federalist defenders of the administration imagined the worst in their opponents as they staked out conflicting interpretations of the Constitution. Their "battle to impose their original intents provides for us no legacy of singular constitutional original intent," Shankman concludes. It follows that "we should not trust any figure of the twenty first century who claims that the Constitution had one meaning for its framers" (145). Originalists who now focus on the Constitution's "public meaning" will not be troubled by Shankman's conclusion, for they focus on the text, not on its authors' putative intentions, whenever and however they were defined. What matters to them are the generally accepted understandings of the Constitution's language when the document was written and ratified—fixed understandings that constitute the regime's enduring foundation. Shankman and his fellow historians have little patience with such ahistorical formulations: What can or should be enduring about a bundle of sometimes sordid compromises designed, among other things, to perpetuate slavery? And Shankman is quite right to emphasize the ways in which Hamilton's design for an "energetic" fiscal–military state gave rise to conflicting conceptions of political economy and constitutional interpretation that would profoundly shape the future course of American history. [End Page 558] Original Intents will be recognized as a valuable contribution to our understanding of Hamilton's financial system and its impact on party formation. Jefferson and Madison agreed that preserving the union depended on the federal government's credit-worthiness in European financial markets. But Hamilton had more ambitious goals in mind. By assuming state debts, inducing monied men to invest in the government, transforming debt into a circulating medium, and establishing a national bank, the Treasury Secretary sought to secure "durable liberty" and suppress popular licentiousness (47). Enhanced state capacity would enable the new federal government to govern effectively and so restore order in the revolutionary republic. Under the aegis of a loosely interpreted Constitution, Federalists sought to "beat European monarchies at their own game," in Shankman's apt formulation, by "creating its own republican versions of those monarchies' financial institutions" (4). At first Hamilton played his hand well. After securing repayment of "the $13 million owed to foreign creditors," he rebuffed Madison's effort to discriminate between original holders of the domestic debt and the "few thousand people" who in 1790 "owned most of the $66 million" of the once nearly worthless paper (69, 68). Funding in hand, Hamilton leveraged the assumption of state debts, with the eventual relocation of the capital on the Potomac sweetening the deal. The subsequent incorporation of the First Bank raised constitutional issues that illuminated the implications of Hamilton's system. "If the power to tax could somehow...
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Aug 1, 2019
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