F; ¦' ¦¦::• x

Reprinted from the
EDUCATIONAL RLVILW
April, 19 13
Copyright, 1913, by Educational Review Publishing Co., New York

ALEXANDER HAMILTON
Stenographic report of an address delivered at the Hamilton Club of
Brooklyn, N. Y., January ii, 1913. Printed by the
courtesy of the Brooklyn Eagle.

BY
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLE.R

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ALEXANDER HAMILTON1
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: You have summoned
me to a grateful and an honorable task. To a lover of Hamil
ton nothing could be more pleasing than to be asked to
speak of him on the anniversary of his birth, to a company
of gentlemen assembled in a club which bears his name, in
the borough on whose soil he received his baptism of fire in
the War of Independence, and now part of a city so devoted
to his personality and his political opinions that it was
called by his enemies Hamiltonopolis. But it is not pos
sible for me to say anything new about Alexander Hamilton.
Every American who knows his country's history, every
American who has penetrated beneath the surface of our
political life to an understanding of its making and its
fundamental principles, knows full well that Alexander
Hamilton has joined the company of the immortals.
You need not expect from me a severely critical estimate
of the man, of his service to our American life, or of his
place in history. I love him too well. I am too much under
the spell of his personality, of his eloquence, and too pro
found and convinced a believer in the doctrines of liberty
and of government that he taught and made to live in
institutions on this soil, to speak of him in words of cautious
and hesitant criticism. You will have to accept from me
the reflections of a convinced believer in Hamilton as the
one supremely great intellect yet produced in the western
world ; as the only man whose writings on political theory
and political science bear comparison with the classic work
on politics by the philosopher Aristotle. I am prepared to
defend the thesis that the two great epoch-making works
in the whole literature of political science are, for the an-
* Stenographic report of an address delivered at the Hamilton Club of
Brooklyn, N. Y., January ii, 1913. Printed by the courtesy of the Brooklyn
Eagle.

cient world, the Politics of Aristotle, and, for the modern
world, those contributions known as The Federalist and the
various letters and speeches which taken together represent
Hamilton's exposition of the American Constitution and
the American form of government.
There is nothing that I can say about Hamilton which
will be novel to members of a club that bears his name.
Yet after the passage of all these years, what a splendid
memory that personality suggests, what a romance that
life was, what a revelation of human power and of human
service his contributions to mankind and to the progress of
civilization !
I like to think of the strands that entered into the
making of that personality and that character. There was
the high-purposed, rugged determination of the Scot,
together with the almost fanatical devotion and enthusiasm
of the Huguenot; these strands not meeting and inter
twining under ordinary circumstances or under a gray and
unfriendly sky, but under the bright sun of the West
Indies on a little point of rich volcanic land, representing,
perhaps, the ambition of mother earth to thrust herself up
thru the blue waters of the tropical ocean in order to make
a fit birthplace for a political genius. I like to think of the
youthful beginnings of his boyish life, of the admiration of
his mother for her brilliant child, who, in infancy, had the
maturity of an experienced philosopher; a boy who, at nine,
was writing letters worthy of a sage, and at thirteen was
managing an important business for a distant client in the
province of New York. I like to remember that when that
dying mother felt the hand of death upon her at the early
age of thirty-two, she summoned the little boy to her bed
side and said to him: 'My son, never aim at the second
best. It is not worthy of you. Your powers are in har
mony with the everlasting principles of the universe.'
Was ever a child, an orphan child, sent out from an island
home to seek his fortune in a new and strange and troubled
land with higher prophecy or with more beneficent bene
diction?

3.
And then the boy crosses the sea to the province of New i
York. He casts about for an opportunity of obtaining an
education. He is thirsting for information. He had read
a few great books, books far beyond the capacity of an ordi
nary boy of his age. He was seeking direction, instruction,
opportunity, and he presented himself to President With
erspoon of Princeton College. He said that he wanted to
become a student there; that he had no time to devote four
years to the very moderate course of instruction of that day,
but that if he were allowed to pursue the course in less time
and to complete it earlier he would be glad to enter his
name. The president told him — after the fashion of college
presidents — that there were rules that could not be broken
and that his proposal was impossible. Did the boy enter
himself at Princeton for four years? Not in the least. He
moved on to New York and appeared before Myles Cooper,
the scholarly Tory who was president of King's College, and
made the same proposal to him. Myles Cooper, trained at
Oxford and more a man of the world, said that it could be
arranged; and it was. So Alexander Hamilton became a
pupil in King's College over yonder, on the King's farm,
just beyond where Trinity Church now stands and not far
from the churchyard where his ashes lie.
It was well that he did so, because within a year the angry
mob of New York rebels, stirred to anger by the actions of
the British Government and by reports from across the sea,
as well as by the Tory president's pamphlets in defense of
British policy, appeared at the college doors and demanded
the punishment of President Myles Cooper. This stripling
of eighteen stood on the college steps and held them at bay
with his eloquence while the president of the college escaped
by the rear gate, and was taken off by a boat to a British
ship lying in the Hudson. If Alexander Hamilton had
gone to Princeton, Myles Cooper would have been lynched.
And then I like to think of him at that early age, a boy,
a mere child, putting down in the notebooks which have
been preserved for us, the list of things he was interested in
and the books that he read. In them you come upon this

item: 'Read particularly Aristotle's Politics, chapter 9,
Definition of Money.' You begin to see the shadow of the
first Secretary of the Treasury, of the author of the Report
on Manufactures, of the author of the Report of the National
Bank, and of the man of whom it was truly said afterward
by Webster that he struck a blow on the rock of the na
tional resources and revenue gushed forth for the people of
the United States. At seventeen, then, Hamilton was
reading the greatest work of antiquity on the science and
art of government among men.
I like to think of him strolling on the Common yonder,
at the head of what we now call Bowling Green, with the
youth of his time, eager and enthusiastic; then writing
pamphlets in defense of the rebel position, that attracted the
attention of the whole country in answer to the Westchester
Farmer, one of the learned men in the Colonies, the boy
concealing his own identity. In two short years after
coming from his West Indian home, so completely had he
entered into the feelings and aspirations and hopes of the
Colonists, so thoroly had he mastered the problems before
them, that even before they knew his name or his age, they
were hailing the writer of those pamphlets as their deliverer
from the oppression of Great Britain. I submit that in the
whole history of government there is nothing to be found
like this. We have seen great and precocious genius in
literature, as, for example, in Chatterton; we have seen
great and precocious genius in music, as, for example, in
Mozart; but where in the affairs of men, where in those large
matters that have to do with the organization of liberty,
the establishment of government, and the perpetuation of
everlasting standards of right among human beings — where
from the dawn of history have we before seen a youth of 19
leading the thought of a people and laying the foundations
of a nation?
Then I like to think of his part in the army during the War
of Independence, of his close association with Washington and
of his admiration for him, and of Washington's dependence
upon the younger man. I like to think of his eager and

exultant defense, by voice and by pen, of every act of the
new people, and of his part in shaping the slowly-forming
government that the thirteen colonies were feeling their
way, tentatively, toward building into a visible and perma
nent form. I like to think that at no single step in the pro
cess did Hamilton fail to take a most conspicuous part.
At no time did he fail to strike the heaviest blow. Never
was he found anywhere but among the leaders, the real
leaders, of political opinion in the American Colonies.
Whether it was in New York, in Massachusetts, in Virginia,
or in South Carolina the American people of that day doffed
their hats to Alexander Hamilton as the one supreme genius
in intellectual leadership and in exposition that they had
among them.
As soon as the war was over he found his place at the
bar and in the Congress of the Confederation. He warmly
defended the treaty with Great Britain. He insisted that
it must be lived up to even tho unpopular; that even a
young nation could not afford to be false to its pledged
word. He insisted that our people never would be free and
never would be safe until they had formed a real govern
ment with real powers, and had made themselves, not a
loose federation of independent units, but an integral, in
dependent, self-respecting, self-supporting, self-defending
nation. That was Hamilton's task. He had to compete
with men otherwise minded, to overcome prejudices and to
answer reasonable as well as unreasonable objections. He
had to meet all these; and then he had to combat the selfish
and the self-seeking as well. He was tireless, this stripling
only then in the twenties and early thirties; tireless with
voice and with pen in making men understand what the
United States might be and what America ought to be.
Finally, almost by a subterfuge, he got a constitutional
convention. In those days you could not easily persuade
the several colonies to come together in conference for any
purpose, lest they might, in some way, as a result of con
ferring, sacrifice a measure of their independence and their
sturdy separateness. He persuaded some of them, how-

ever, to convene at Annapolis to settle questions relating
to the navigation and use of Chesapeake Bay. Having
brought them into conference he persuaded them to call a
constitutional convention. He did not quite call it by that
name — had he done so it might never have been held — but
he persuaded them to call another conference to devise a
more adequate plan of government. He went back to
Albany and got himself elected as one of the three delegates
from New York; the other two, being convinced opponents
of the whole undertaking, outvoted him in the convention,
so long as they remained in it. At the psychological ¦ mo
ment Alexander Hamilton took the floor in the convention.
Was he in doubt about the making of a constitution?
Not in the least. He had a constitution all ready; he pro
posed it. For five hours, as Madison tells in his journal, he
held spell bound this convention of the ablest men ever
gathered together in one room for a like purpose, while he
explained the principles on which the nation's government
should be organized. The major portion of that plan of
government is contained in the Constitution of the United
States in this year of grace 1913. Other plans were pro
posed; long debates ensued, but that genius, that patience,
that persistence, that skill of exposition never failed. His
two colleagues from New York left the convention in disgust
when they saw that the Constitution was going to be made;
but he remained and signed it as the sole representative of
what is now the Empire State. Had it not been for Alex
ander Hamilton the name of the State of New York would
not have been included among the members of the Con
stitutional Convention who accepted and recommended for
adoption the great instrument and the form of government
that were the result of their deliberations.
Then came the heaviest task of all; how to get this
Constitution ratified by the people of the several States?
It was provided, as you know," in the instrument itself that
it should become operative when ratified by nine States,
but no one knew better than Alexander Hamilton that nine
States would not do. He knew that that provision was a

mere device, and that every State must ratify if the Con
stitution was to become effective and the supreme law of the
land. There followed what I venture to think is, perhaps,
the greatest forensic triumph of modern times. The Con
vention of the State of New York met at Poughkeepsie.
There were sixty-five delegates from the various counties
of the State. Nineteen of them, including Hamilton and
the other delegates from New York, Kings and Westchester,
were committed to the Constitution. The remainder were
followers and friends of George Clinton, who bitterly op
posed it. Chancellor Kent has told us what happened.
Long after, nearly half a century after, Chancellor Kent
wrote his recollection of what took place. He went to
Poughkeepsie and sat in the gallery of the convention and
listened to every word of the debates for six weeks. He has
told us what Hamilton said, what Jay and Livingston said,
what was said in reply, and how obdurate and stubborn and
insistent was the opposition to the ratification of the
Constitution. Hamilton sent a runner out to the east so
that he might report at the earliest moment the news
whether or not New Hampshire had ratified. He sent a
runner out to the south to report at the earliest possible
moment the news from Madison as to whether Virginia had
ratified. Finally, by sheer force of intellect, by the display
of political genius of the first and most enduring order,
Hamilton wore away all opposition and the Poughkeepsie
Convention ratified the Constitution on behalf of the State
of New York by a majority of three. That, Mr. Chairman,
was before the days of bosses ; it was a time when men had
to be won over from one side of a proposition to the other
by force of argument and by intellect; and Hamilton wore
down the powerful and determined opposition by no other
instruments than those.
The Constitution was made. What was the govern
ment? Where were its resources, and what scheme of
taxation was it to employ? How was it to differentiate its
scheme of taxation from that which supported the several

8
colonies, now States? How was this new national unity
to develop? How was it to make itself real? Obviously,
the center point of the fighting line was the Department of
the Treasury ; and to that department Alexander Hamilton
went at George Washington's call. There he sat for the
six most fateful years of the history of the government of
the United States. One great report after another was
poured in upon the Congress. It consisted of clever and
intelligent men, but they were almost stupefied by the wealth
of information, the rush of argument, the appeals that were
made to them to formulate a system of taxation, to charter
a bank, to raise revenue, to organize a treasury system and
to call the latent forces of a nation into action for purposes
of national support and for national administration. No
one doubts — no one can — that Hamilton did every atom of
work in connection with all this. The Congress had hardly
anything before it of great magnitude but his proposals.
It had nothing to do but to accept, to amend or to reject
them; you may read the history of those Congresses for
yourselves. They accepted in principle, and almost in
detail, every great fundamental recommendation that he
made; and that is how the government of the United States
was built. There was no use in making a government that
was a framework of bones and skin alone ; these bones must
be covered with flesh; these arteries and veins must be
filled with blood; there must be food to assimilate, power
to gain nourishment, ability to act. Hamilton saw to it
that all this was done. Read the history of the first three
Congresses. Read the communications made to them;
read their debates, their votes ; read the history of Washing
ton's administration, and tell me whether Alexander Hamil
ton did not make the government of the United States in
body and in spirit, just as truly as he had planned and
constructed it in form.
Hamilton withdrew from the service of the Government
at thirty-eight. At thirty-eight this great epoch-making
work was done. At an age when most men, even those of
talent, of power, of training, are just ready for the active

and constructive work of life, Alexander Hamilton was
thru as the builder of the greatest government of any
people that the world has ever seen. He withdrew to the
practise of the law. He lived over across the river in Wall
Street at No. 58, in a little house almost opposite the great
building which was formerly the Custom House, wellknown
to all of us. It was in passing that house that no less a
person than Talleyrand, on his visit to New York said,
when he saw the light burning in Hamilton's study window
at midnight : ' I have seen the eighth wonder of the world.
I have seen a man laboring at midnight for the support of
his family who has made the fortune of a nation. '
Hamilton's career at the bar was without an equal. As
an advocate and in exposition, particularly in defense of
fundamental principles of justice and equity and human
liberty, the testimony is that he was a marvel of lucidity
and of power. Long afterward — in 1832, I think it was —
Chancellor Kent wrote a striking letter to Mrs. Hamilton.
Hamilton had then been dead twenty-eight years and Mrs.
Hamilton was an old lady. She wrote to Chancellor Kent
and asked him whether he would not put on record some of
his reminiscences of her husband; whether he would not
tell her, what he, Kent, thought about Hamilton's relations
to the making of the Constitution; what he, Kent, thought
about his work at Poughkeepsie where Kent had watched
him, and what he, Kent, thought about his work at the
American bar. Kent wrote in reply one of the most
beautiful and charming analytical eulogies that one human
being could write of another. Remember that Kent was,
with Marshall, the greatest of American jurists; remember
that Hamilton had been dead and gone for twenty-eight
years; remember that the shadow of the great contest as
to slavery was aheady projecting itself over the land;
remember that new men and new issues were in the places
of prominence, and that there was nothing, due to Hamilton
but the dispassionate, fair and honorable judgment of
history. Kent rendered this judgment in one of the most
memorable documents of our American literature. I can-

IO
not now recall its striking passages and its phrases, but I
commend it to every student of American politics. It tells
us what James Kent, that maker and interpreter of American
law, thought about Alexander Hamilton as the guide,
philosopher and friend of the Government, the bench and
the bar of his day.
I have wondered sometimes whether Kent must not have
overheard one of Hamilton's most charming sayings, many
years before, when they were on circuit together — as I
remember it, in Orange County in this State — Kent as
judge, Hamilton as barrister. They found themselves
spending the night in an uncomfortable and ill-furnished
tavern in a country town. Hamilton awakened in the
night, shivering because of the insufficiency of his covering;
he got up from his bed and with his covering in his arms
carried it into the room where Kent was sleeping, and quietly
and softly spread it over him, saying, 'Sleep well, sleep
warm, little judge; we cannot afford to have harm come to
you. ' I have often wondered whether Kent in his sleep
did not hear these affectionate words, and whether he did
not fifty years afterward reflect, in his judgment to the
stricken widow, something of the feeling of affection and
regard which the great barrister, the great constructive
statesman, felt for him.
Then came Hamilton's end; that tragic, fateful end,
to be ascribed, as we look back on it now, to the false sense
of honor that prevailed a century ago, which made men
think that it was necessary for them to kill each other in
order to avenge a fancied or a real insult. In this con
nection, too, I recall now another interesting story of Kent.
Kent had been a friend of Aaron Burr, but the devoted
admirer of Hamilton. He never saw Burr for years after
this terrible calamity until one day when Kent was walking
up Nassau Street, in New York, he saw Burr coming down
on the other side. The little Chancellor crost the pavement
and went over to Burr and said, ' Mr. Burr, you are a dam
ned scoundrel. Sir, you are a damned scoundrel!' Burr
looked steadily at him, took off his hat, and replied with

II

mock politeness, 'Mr. Chancellor, your judgments are
always entitled to be received with respect. '
It is not possible for us — even for those of us who
remember the taking off of Lincoln, the killing of Garfield
•or the murder of McKinley — to picture the feeling of this
country — then a mere strip on the seaboard to be sure,
without telegraphs, without telephones or rapid post —
when it was learned that Hamilton was dead. It did not
seem possible to the people of the United States of that day
that this very symbol of power and vitality, this center of
the constructive force of the nation, who seemed able by
his charm and persuasiveness and potency to ride down
every obstacle, to conquer enemies and to bring the great
mass of the population to the support of his specific projects
— it did not seem possible that at 47 Alexander Hamilton
had past from earth. And yet he had.
Before venturing to speak to you on this subject, I have
been reading over again the records of that time, in order
to get back into the atmosphere of the period, to catch
something of its feeling, and to refresh my memory as to
some of the men and events of those years. In doing so I
came upon the funeral oration delivered two weeks after
Hamilton's death by the Henry Ward Beecher of that day,
by Dr. Mason, senior minister of the Collegiate Dutch
Church in New York, who was the favorite pulpit orator
of this part of the United States. He had been selected
to deliver the funeral oration on Hamilton before the So
ciety of the Cincinnati at a great meeting called in New
York. I wrote down a few paragraphs from that oration,
and I ask the privilege of reading them in order to take
you back with me into the atmosphere of July, 1804, when
it was known that Hamilton was really dead.
After describing Hamilton's career, what was then so
fresh, so new, so full of suggestion, and after tracing the
whole history of the making of the Constitution, Dr. Mason
concluded his oration with these words :
" The result is in your hands. It is in your national existence. Not such,
indeed, as Hamilton wished, but such as he could obtain, and as the States
would ratify, is the Federal Constitution. His ideas of a government which

12
should elevate the character, preserve the unity, and perpetuate the liberties;
of America, went beyond the provisions of that instrument. Accustomed to
view men as they are, and to judge of what they will be, from what they ever
have been, he distrusted any political order which admits the baneful charity
of supposing them to be what they ought to be. He knew how averse they
are from even wholesome restraint; how obsequious to flattery; how easily
deceived by misrepresentation; how partial, how vehement, how capricious.
He knew that vanity, the love of distinction, is inseparable from man; that
if it be not turned into a channel useful to the Government, it will force a.
channel for itself, and if cut off from other egress, will issue in the most cor
rupt of all aristocracies — the aristocracy of money. He knew, that an ex
tensive territory, a progressive population, an expanding commerce, diversi
fied climate, and soil and manners, and interest, must generate faction; must
interfere with foreign views, and present emergencies requiring, in the general
organization, much tone and promptitude. A strong government, therefore;:
that is, a government stable and vigorous, adequate to all the forms of national
exigency, and furnished with the principles of self-preservation, was un
doubtedly his preference, and he preferred it because he conscientiously be
lieved it to be necessary. A system which he would have entirely approved
would probably keep in their places those little men who aspire to be great;
would withdraw much fuel from the passions of the multitude; would diminish
the materials which the worthless employ for their own aggrandizement;
would crown peace at home with respectability abroad; but would never
infringe the liberty of an honest man. From his profound acquaintance with
mankind, and his devotion to all that good society holds dear, sprang his-
apprehensions for the existing Constitution. Convinced that the natural
tendency of things is to an encroachment by the States on the Union; that
their encroachments will be formidable as they augment their wealth and
population; and, consequently, that the vigor of the general Government will
be impaired in a very near proportion with the increase of its difficulties; he
anticipated the day when it should perish in the conflict of local interest and
of local pride. The divine mercy grant that his prediction may not be verified !'
"He was born to be great. Whoever was second, Hamilton must be first.
To his stupendous and versatile mind no investigation was difficult — no
subject presented which he did not illuminate. Superiority, in some particu
lar, belongs to thousands. Pre-eminence, in whatever he chose to undertake,.
was the prerogative of Hamilton. No fixed criterion could be applied to his
talents. Often has their display been supposed to have reached the limit of
human effort, and the judgment stood firm till set aside by himself. When a.
cause of new magnitude required new exertion, he rose, he towered, he soared ;.
surpassing himself, as he surpassed others. Then was nature tributary to-
his eloquence! Then was felt his despotism over the heart! Touching, at
his pleasure, every string of pity or terror, of indignation or grief; he melted,
he soothed, he roused, he agitated; alternately gentle as the dews, and awful
as the thunder. Yet, great as he was in the eyes of the world, he was greater
in the eyes of those with whom he was most conversant. The greatness of
most men, like objects seen through a mist, diminishes with the distance; but
Hamilton, like a tower seen afar off under a clear sky, rose in grandeur and
sublimity with every step of approach. Familiarity with him was the parent

13
of veneration. Over these matchless talents Probity threw her brightest
luster. Frankness, suavity, tenderness, benevolence, breathed thru their
exercise. And to his family — but he is gone. That noble heart beats no
more; that eye of fire is dimmed; and sealed are those oracular lips. Ameri
cans, the serenest beam of your glory is extinguished in the tomb ! "
That, Mr. Chairman, is the contemporary judgment;
spoken, to be sure, under stress of great feeling and deep
sorrow, the contemporary judgment of one of the greatest
orators of his day, voicing the opinion of men of intelligence,
high spirit and good will everywhere as to the man who
was killed by Burr's bullet on the shelf of the Palisades.
I said to you a few moments ago that I could tell you
nothing new about Hamilton. This is all a twice-told tale.
This is part of the warp and woof of our American history;
this is part of the very fabric out of which we are made and
of the institutions under which we live. And yet, Mr.
Chairman, who would have supposed that after the lapse
of a hundred short years the work of Alexander Hamilton
must be done all over again? That, sir, is the condition
which confronts the American people in these opening
years of the twentieth century. What Alexander Hamilton
taught of civil liberty, of freedom and of order; what he
taught of effective, responsible government, of its purpose,
its organs, its instruments, has become so familiar, so built
into our daily life and into the fabric of our business, that we
have forgotten, many of us, that it is essential to our wel
fare and to the perpetuity of our Government. Yet today,
from one voice and another, meeting a fair measure of ap
proval all over the land, come attacks upon these very
fundamental principles of our Government, until many
of us cry aloud for the spirit of Hamilton to come back to
us and lead this great empire of ours still farther forward
in the fight for the permanent upbuilding of civil liberty!
When the Constitution of these United States was
framed, our fathers staked out clearly two great fields of
activity and conduct. On the one hand, they formulated
a plan of government. They constituted it of an executive,
a legislative and a judicial branch, and they ascribed to
these their several functions. Then they marked out just

14
as clearly the field of civil liberty. They forbade the
Government to invade it, and they erected great courts
of justice to see to it that it was not invaded. Never before
in the history of mankind, and never since, has that been
done. In no ancient state, in no medieval state, in no
modern state but ours, is civil liberty a part of the funda
mental law of the land. The nearest approach to it is in
the Constitution of the German Empire; that Constitution
written after the war with France, in 1871, under the guid
ance of Bismarck. Neither the Constitution of France nor
the unwritten Constitution of Great Britain — none of these
modern constitutions of which you read, not one of them —
defines and protects the field of civil liberty as our fathers
did 125 years ago. Today it is proposed to us as an advance,
as a step forward, that we should unite to throw away the
only thing which distinguishes us from the other nations
of the world; to put civil liberty into the melting-pot; to
make it subject to any majority, however temporary,
however fickle, whether at the polls or in the Legislature,
and to make it possible to strip a man of his property, his
liberty and freedom; and that, if you please, by any mere
rush of tumultuous passion !
Never has a more preposterous, never has a more
ignorant, proposal been made by anybody. In absolute
defiance of history, in utter ignorance of the history of
Europe, in ignorance even of the history of the United
States, without any appreciation of what we have been
doing these 125 years, we are now asked to strip ourselves
of the one great fundamental protection which the fathers
won for us, and to which the enlightened peoples of the
world have been looking for a century and a quarter as the
greatest evidence of political progress that mankind has
ever seen !
I submit, Mr. Chairman, that it requires not only a
large measure of ignorance, but a total lack of the sense of
humor, to propose such a program in the name of advance.
This new program may be a wise one, but then put upon
it the name that belongs to it — reaction ! Say frankly that

15
we have gone ahead too fast; that we have staked out
territory that man is still incompetent to occupy; that we
are not ready for liberty; that we should go back to the
days of Francis I and Henry IV and Henry VIII, and,
substituting the many for the one, turn over our civil
liberty to the tender mercies of a tyrant. That is what is
seriously proposed to the American people today.
This is not a party question; it rises far above faction
or names or personalities, or political parties. I beg you to
believe that I should not speak of this matter in this pres
ence, on an occasion such as this, did I not believe that it
goes to the very roots of our American life, and that those
things with which the great names of Hamilton and Jeffer
son and Washington and Madison and Marshall and Web
ster and Lincoln are associated, are at stake. They are all
at stake in the issues that are being debated before the
American people today.
You may, if- you choose, solace yourselves with the
optimistic thought that everything will come out well.
Hamilton never did. He saw to it that it came out well.
He addrest himself to the Constitutional Convention lest
error be made. He later addrest himself to the New York
Convention at Poughkeepsie lest the Constitution be re
jected. He addrest himself to the Congress of the United
States lest we have no adequate financial system, no na
tional income and no properly ordered system of taxation.
He was never content to let matters drift. He saw to it —
trusting as he did, and as every American must, in the good
faith, the honor and the intelligence of the American people
— he saw to it that the facts were laid before them with
such clearness, the arguments adduced with such cogency,
the objections answered with such overwhelming force,
that they were led to walk in the straight and narrow path
of national safety.
• The building of this nation has been a long, a solemn
and a sacred task. It is the work of four generations of
men who have conceived lofty ideals, and who, without
regard to party, religious faith or section, whether up in

i6
the pine forests of Maine or over across the continent in
the orange fields of California, or down on the plantations
of the sunny South, have wrought for freedom, for liberty,
for stability, for justice. The American people have, in a
singular sense, regarded themselves as the instruments of
Providence in the working-out of a great government and
a mighty civilization. Almost alone among the govern
ments of the world, they have been in the habit, from the
beginning, of invoking the Divine blessing upon the delibera
tions of their legislative bodies, and they have seen to it
that religion has been represented on every great occasion
of national festivity or rejoicing. They have felt that here
in this Western World, with an endowment by Nature the
like of which history has never recorded, the opportunity
has been given to try on a huge scale, opening their arms to
all who would come, the fateful experiment of self-govern
ment. Many men of all types and kinds, soldiers and
sailors, jurists and teachers, legislators and executives,
philosophers and popular leaders, have contributed to that
great end. But out of them all I name six men who stand
forever in the American Pantheon as supremely important
among all those who have builded the nation's government.
I do not speak now of those who have made other and
important contributions; I have not in mind those who
have led great parties, who have accomplished important
acts or have set in motion great and fine and lasting currents
of thought; but I speak of six men who, one after another,
have struck the blows that were necessary to the construc
tion of our great American ship of state — the nation's
builders. The first is George Washington. Without his calm and
•even temper, without his serene and unruffled mind, which
was as influential because of what he refrained from doing
as because of what he did, the existence of this American
nation is unthinkable. His is, beyond all comparison,
the great self-sacrificing character in political history.
Washington, thru his personality, drew the people of
these colonies together, made them feel loyalty to a single

i7
person, and thru that person, to the idea which he repre
sented; and then he deftly withdrew his personality and
left them to worship the new and beautiful ideal that he
had given them.
By his side and with him was Hamilton, the supreme
constructive genius in political philosophy and in states
manship. He showed what to do and how to do it; how
the executive and the legislature could be adjusted to each
•other; how the nation's business could be carried on; and
how the various departments of government should be
-organized. He taught the great mass of the American
people what the fundamental principles were which underlay
this new and fateful project.
Next comes John Marshall, who, from his great place
-as Chief Justice of the United States, gave to the new
Constitution that interpretation — at a time when two
interpretations were possible — which welded the nation
together in unity and gave to it supreme power and legal
control over its several parts. But Marshall's work was
¦challenged. Thomas Jefferson petulantly put obstacles
in his way, and no less a man than Andrew Jackson said :
'John Marshall has made the decision, now let him execute
it. ' The people of the United States had to be taught that
when the nation spoke — whether by voice of the President,
the Congress or the Supreme Court, when a constitutional
interpretation was made, it was to be obeyed, even if it
took the whole of the nation's power to compel obedience.
That great act of public education was preformed by this
¦same rugged Andrew Jackson of Tennessee in his great
proclamation to the nullifiers of South Carolina. When
the distinguished gentlemen of South Carolina said they
would not enforce the tariff act, that they did not approve
of it, that they would not accept it for their State, Andrew
Jackson — speaking perhaps by the pen of the great jurist,
Edward Livingston of Louisiana — made a famous procla
mation to the nullifiers in which was conveyed the substance
of his reported personal message to John C. Calhoun, one
of the greatest of all American statesmen and political

i8
philosophers. This was that if one drop of blood was shed
in defiance of the laws of the United States, he, Andrew
Jackson, would hang the first nullifier he could lay his hands-
on to the first tree he could find. And so the laws of the:
United States were not nullified in South Carolina. The
decisions of the Supreme Court were undisputed thereafter,
and this nation took a long step forward toward real
nationality. Then came the eloquent voice of Daniel Webster, who,
for thirty years at the bar, on the platform and in the Sen
ate of the United States, educated public opinion to a point.
where resistance to the secession movement that had to
come, was both natural and necessary. We need not blink
the fact that without Daniel Webster the Civil War could
not have been fought to a successful conclusion. It was-
not possible to rest our national contention in that war
upon a purely legal basis, even upon legal propositions so-
clear and firm; for they were cold and rational only. Daniel.
Webster had for thirty years made them live. He burned
into the hearts of the American people the idea of nation
ality. Whether you take one great speech at Plymouth,
another at Boston, another in New York, or the great and
conclusive reply to Hayne in the Senate, it makes no dif
ference; they are all part of one great going to school by
the people of the United States to Daniel Webster. He-
taught them not alone in terms of constitutional law and
of legal definitions, but in terms of everyday thought and
feeling and action that this nation was one. It was he who
prepared the way for what followed.
Daniel Webster made it possible for Abraham Lincoln —
that sad, patient, long-suffering man — to carry this nation'
thru the final crisis of its birth throes; because he had
put under him and behind him the great body of opinion,
which believed that this nation was one, was to be kept.
one, was to live as one and was to live a free people.
These six men, Mr. Chairman, are both the symbols;
and the moving forces of the constructive nation-building
of the American people. They are drawn from all parts.

J9
of the United States, from different classes of society, with
varying political views, touching the people with different
interests and at different points. These six men are the
most prominent in the galaxy of our nation-building heroes.
Each one of them would be affrighted could he know from
his place in high heaven that at this late day it is seriously
proposed in the name of greater justice, of more effective
advance, to undermine and to break down the very foun
dations on which this government and the civilization of
this people rest.
And so, Mr. Chairman, as we mark this anniversary of
Hamilton's birth and pay to him the highest tribute, we can
give him his most just and well-earned recognition only if
we remember not alone what he was, not alone what he did,
but what bearing all that has upon the America of today;
what lessons his career and his teachings have in relation
to the great problems of politics, of economics and of the
development of civil liberty that are to be solved in the
future. There is no safe guide for the future but the ex
perience of the past. When we know what has happened
under certain conditions we may with some assurance pre
dict what will happen when those conditions are repeated.
When we see out of what a morass of medievalism, out of
what a morass of injustice and ignorance and squalor, the
people of the United States and their ancestors, have come;
to what heights they have mounted under their Constitution .
and their laws, their civil institutions, their liberty and
their freedom, it is to me inconceivable that as these people
come to know what the issue of the moment really is, they
will turn their backs on Washington and Hamilton and
Marshall and Jackson and Webster and Lincoln, and tear
their governmental structure down just to see what will
happen.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Columbia University