After the Revolution

When Alexander Hamilton was 26, and approximately two years before the end of the American Revolution, he was already thinking about how the nation should be governed if and when it achieved freedom. According to Ron Chernow, when American entered the revolution, “People continued to identify their states as their 'countries,' and most outside the military had never traveled more than a day's journey from their homes.” (157) While the war somewhat diminished this lack of unity, Hamilton saw how this separateness made finding enough soldiers and money a problem for winning the war and accomplishing other goals. So in 1781, Hamilton begins to address this issue. Here is how Chernow describes it.

[Hamilton] introduced a critical theme: the dynamics of revolutions differed from those of peacetime governance; the postwar world had to be infused with a new spirit, respectful of authority, or anarchy would reign: “An extreme jealousy of power is the attendant of all popular revolutions and has seldom been without its evils. It is to this source we are to trace many of the fatal mistakes which have so deeply endangered the common cause, particularly that defeat which will be the object of these remarks, a want of power in Congress.” where revolutions, by their nature, resisted excess government power, the opposite situation could be equally hazardous. “As too much power leads to despotism, to little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people.” (158)

This seems relevant to the issues of the day and it is still difficult to achieve the right balance.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Penguin Books, 2004.