1791 was one of the most momentous years in all of American history. That year, Alexander Hamilton succeeded, under President George Washington, in creating the First Bank of the United States. This move was fiercely opposed by Thomas Jefferson as an unconstitutional expansion of federal power and a threat to his vision of an agrarian democracy. Thus was born the two irreconcilable visions for the United States that have flowed down to us.
This bank controversy and related issues (such as Hamilton’s excise tax and assumption of state debts), ultimately led to the formation of America’s first political parties: The Federalists (led by Hamilton) and The Democratic-Republicans (led by Jefferson and Madison). 1791 thus marks the origins of organized, oppositional politics in the U.S., a shift from the hoped-for nonpartisan unity of the early republic, embodied for a time by George Washington.
So, on one side we had Hamilton, who believed in a strong federal government, industrial growth, and an urban, merit-based elite. On the other side we had Thomas Jefferson, who believed in the strength of the yeoman farmer, states’ rights and a republic rooted in rural virtue and suspicion of centralized power. This original divide still marks the enduring fault line of American politics.
Today, we call these camps by different names: blue and red states, liberal and conservative, urban and rural, progressive and traditional, but the deeper conflict remains the same. The United States is still divided between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. The core conflict between their visions involves one favoring complexity, cosmopolitanism, and centralized progress while the other holds on to simplicity, localism, and tradition.
The strongest, most reliable blue states, New York, California and Illinois, contain the nation’s three largest cities. That’s no coincidence – Hamiltonians like to live in cities or their outskirts. They are statistically more likely to hold college degrees and to hold jobs in finance, tech, education, or healthcare, sectors fueled by abstract thinking and credentialed expertise.
They embrace diversity and globalization. They value institutional authority, even as they might seek to continually reform it. Hamilton’s descendants believe in planning, development of infrastructure, financial investment, and the federal state as a means for overall improvement for the benefit of everyone.
The Democratic Party, particularly since FDR’s New Deal, has become the torch bearer of this worldview. Democratic strongholds are often coastal cities: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle (I would argue Chicago is coastal too, especially since it owes its origin to the building of the Eerie Canal, which connected it via Lake Michigan to the East Coast for purposes of trade). These are all areas of capital, culture, ideas, and immigration.
These are cities built on Hamiltonian ideology: a belief in educated experts, coordinated systems and upward mobility. Hamiltonian compassion could be described as “systemic” with programs like universal healthcare, public education funding and climate policy, because of the belief in scalable solutions to our collective problems.
Hamiltonians have sometimes been accused, by Jeffersonians, of elitism, abstraction, and a disconnection from the everyday lives and concerns of working-class Americans. Indeed, the paternalism a Hamiltonian might be accused of may reflect the early Federalists’ love for but slight suspicion of the masses, which they thought capable of irrational “mob rule”.
Jeffersonians, by contrast, distrust and would like to dismantle, as much as possible, federal power. They prize individual liberty, local control, and tradition. Their ideal would not be the educated and affluent urbanite but, perhaps, the self-sufficient family rooted in land ownership and Christian faith/fundamentalism. Jeffersonians are disproportionately rural or exurban, often skeptical of higher education and the cultural authority it bestows. Most believe strongly in what they see as religiously grounded moral order.
The Republican Party, especially since its 1960s realignment, has become the torchbearer for this Jeffersonian outlook. The “red states” of the South, Midwest, and Mountain West reflect Jefferson’s agrarian aspirations and his suspicion of centralization. Even Republican presidents who did not share Jefferson’s philosophical and personal sophistication, e.g. Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, appealed to his ideals: decentralization, individual toughness, and the belief that government is more of the problem than the solution.
Jeffersonian compassion seems to be more personal than structural: charity over welfare, community over bureaucracy. It sees state intervention as not just unnecessary and inefficient, but also as a threat to freedom and moral independence. They tend to believe that Hamiltonian programs create dependency and make the dignity of self-reliance impossible.
FDR was a quintessential Hamiltonian, using the power and authority of government to help Americans survive and beat the depression. Lyndon Johnson was Hamiltonian with his Great Society program. So was Barack Obama, a technocrat with urban sensibilities. Bill Clinton was a Southern Jeffersonian by birth who governed like a Hamiltonian.
Ronald Reagan was pure Jeffersonian theater: rural optimism, small-town speech patterns and a relentless mistrust of government. George W. Bush and his “folksy” image continued that tradition even as some of his policies (like No Child Left Behind) dabbled in Hamiltonian reforml.
Now, Donald Trump. A multi-millionaire from New York City, he has cloaked himself in Jeffersonian populism and seems to be doing what he can to dismantle government as far as it is possible. His “genius” has not been new and visionary policy but cultural signaling: attacking the press, academia, and urban elites, he has played into the rural White voters’ sense of grievance and their desire for cultural recognition. Like Jefferson, Trump has promoted a vision of America as self-reliant and wary of foreign entanglements, but while Jefferson’s approach was rooted in Enlightenment idealism, Trump’s is grounded in economic nationalism and populist grievance.
Based on what we know of him publically, Trump was not a Jeffersonian in his personal life; if anything, in certain regards, he resembled a Hamiltonian. Yet his political posturing and performance have been largely Jeffersonian. He presents himself as a Hamiltonian who realized the movement had gone in the wrong direction, away from the common sense of, essentially, poor White Americans and he must now be their champion. His presidency has revealed how deeply cultural identification, perhaps even more so than ideology, can shape American politics and, perhaps, lead to demagoguery.
What we call the “culture war” is a 21st-century manifestation of the Hamilton-Jefferson conflict. It is a war pitting two visions of the good life against each other: one that embraces change and pluralism, the other that seeks constancy, order and nativism.
Hamiltonians believe in progress through systems: climate treaties, social safety nets, science-based policy. Jeffersonians believe in progress through government restraint letting families, churches, and communities do their own thing.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed these different approaches fully. Hamiltonians wore masks, kept their distances, got their shots, trusted science, and expected federal intervention. Jeffersonians did not wear masks, feared vaccines, resisted mandates, questioned medical and governmental institutions, often denied the virulence of the problem and defended personal freedom. Both sides claimed high ideals as the source of their actions.
One side wished to protect and support the vulnerable, while the other side claimed to be taking a stand for liberty. Both sides believed the other side was harmful to the American people.
This forces us to ask ourselves how a “house-divided” could have lasted for so long. Perhaps there are, basically, two types of people in the USA. Some want a meaningful and productive governmental structure, urban complexity, and sustained reform; the other type seeks their own moral clarity and certainty, tradition, and personal freedom.
Jeffersonians worry that Hamiltonian arrogance might lead to governmental overreach. Hamiltonians worry that Jeffersonian resistance might lead to reactionary denial and insurrection. Perhaps we have been able to survive as a house divided because, at the very least, each side has served as a type of check on the other. Who knows, this might just be the best possible system out there.
A one-party governmental system, by definition, is anathema to democracy. As painful as it might be, these days, to be a Hamiltonian living under a Jeffersonian executive, legislative and judicial branch, as long as the safeguards against tyranny stand, the discomfort of divided government may be our best defense against something far worse. After all, disagreement is not the enemy of democracy, it is its lifeblood.
There is a brilliance and sometimes a tragedy inherent in an America born of such contrasting visions. The Constitution itself is a Hamiltonian document, mitigated by Jeffersonian and Madisonian beliefs. The balance of powers, Bill of Rights, debates about government involvement, all reflect a country constantly at war with itself, once, literally, between 1861 to 1865, but still, somehow, moving forward and often leading the world.
To ask whether Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians can ever fully reconcile is to probably ask whether America can ever stop being America. So perhaps the goal should not be reconciliation. Perhaps we should, instead, be shooting for a basic toleration and understanding, while also playing the essential role of fierce loyal opposition, until Hamiltonians regain the reigns.
It might not be the best approach for Hamiltonians to believe that Jeffersonians are, basically, ignorant or cruel; I try to see them as animated by what they consider a genuine love of freedom. Jeffersonians should realize that Hamiltonians are not arrogant or elitist; we are driven by a sincere hope that intelligence and cooperation and effective institutions can solve our country’s big problems. It might be vitally important for all of us to realize that neither side wants to hurt the American people.
I guess it didn’t help that Jefferson’s Vice President shot Hamilton in a duel. Not exactly a model of bipartisan cooperation. But those two had it out for each other going back quite awhile, with Burr feeling he had no choice but to defend his reputation against Hamilton’s relentless personal and perhaps defamatory attacks.
So let this be a cautionary tale: perhaps we can think about the extent to which we can bury our egos, stop demonizing one another, and relegate the dueling pistols to a museum. Maybe we can all pretend we’re in a big, fabulous Frank Capra movie, and embrace the role of loyal opposition for now, and accept those in the role of loyal opposition when political power shifts again, as it always seems to do in the USA.
Both visions are American and have existed since, at least, 1791. Both are rooted in founding ideals. Until we all accept that, both sides will go on mistaking neighbors for enemies, when in truth they are simply the other half of a very old and necessary conversation.
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Constantino Brumidi Oil on Plaster 1872 Room S-213
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