I WANT A SHOT AT REDEMPTION!:

US Exhibit Raises Profile of Often Overlooked Alexander Hamilton (Barbara Schoetzau, 07 Oct 2004, VOA News)

He was one of the giants of American history: a hero in the American Revolution; the new nation's first Treasury secretary; architect of the nation's monetary system; an early and vociferous opponent of slavery. Yet recent history has often bypassed Alexander Hamilton's contributions to the formation of American society. Now, on the bicentennial of his death, a new multi-media exhibition aims to reassess the reputation of one the United States' founding fathers.

The New York Historical Society is calling its exhibition "Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America." Documentary filmmaker Ric Burns, a member of the Historical Society's board, says none of the founding fathers is less well-known or more relevant to the contemporary world than Hamilton.

"He was in many ways the first modern American," he says. "He was a bastard from the Caribbean and an immigrant, a man who believed in and thrived on flux and change and new New York was the capital of those things. He was the ultimate upstart in the ultimate upstart city. He was a man who came to epitomize the spirit of the society that was coming to teach itself that who you were and where you came from, mattered far less than what you could do and where you were going."

One of the best aspects of the Right revival over the past twenty years has been the rehabilitation of the most conservative Founders--Washington, Hamilton & Adams--who when we were kids were pretty much reviled by the heavily Marxist history profession.

MORE (via Mike Daley):
Our Father the Modernist (EDWARD ROTHSTEIN, 9/10/04, NY Times)

[H]amilton always weaved between opponents' volleys as the federal government was formed and American political culture took shape.

But his accomplishments can almost seem effortless. A Caribbean-born orphan,
Hamilton was appointed to Gen. George Washington's staff in the
Revolutionary War at 20; he became a lawyer and a New York delegate to the
1787 Constitutional Convention; with James Madison and John Jay, he wrote
the classic "Federalist Papers." As Washington's Treasury secretary he
created the American banking and tax systems. And in his construction of
financial institutions, his defense of a strong executive, his arguments
against slavery, his belief in a diverse manufacturing economy, he could
plausibly be called, as the exhibition's subtitle puts it, "The Man Who Made
Modern America."

But his enterprise was neither effortless nor preordained. Hamilton was
ambitious, argumentative, relentless. He was himself a party to 10 different
challenges that involved the threat of duels. A few years before his death,
his son was killed in a duel defending Hamilton's honor (using the same
pistols). Hamilton confessed to an adulterous affair while secretary of the
Treasury, an affair that led to his paying hush money to a conniving
swindler. And he was roundly detested by some of the most considerable
figures of the day. John Adams said Hamilton was "the most restless,
impatient, artful, indefatigable and unprincipled intriguer in the United
States, if not in the world."

Hamilton was accused of being a monarchist, of plotting to restore British
rule, of harboring disdain for democracy. In fact, Hamilton's successes as
Treasury secretary may well have been the catalyst for the two-party system
in American politics leading to a decade of vituperation and machination
that makes the current era look pastoral.

The exhibition, in claiming a central role for Hamilton, also takes a stand
in the charged space of contemporary American politics and does so on a big
scale. More than $5.7 million was raised for the exhibition; two-thirds of
its items come from the Society's own collection, with materials on loan
from such sources as the Library of Congress, the Museum of the City of New
York and even Credit Suisse First Boston.

The show is also meant to have an expansive presence. The Society is
offering a series of lectures by major Hamilton scholars. A traveling
exhibition (displaying reproductions, not originals) will be seen in 40
cities over the next three years. A Hamilton curriculum will be distributed
to 40,000 teachers along with a gallery guide, a documentary by Ric Burns, a
DVD of a play about Hamilton by Don Winslow and copies of Mr. Brookhiser's
book along with the Library of America's Hamilton volume. A Web site,
alexanderhamiltonexhibition.com, provides information and will expand over
time.

By Society standards, the show, which will run through February, is a
blockbuster, all the more imposing because it is being presented by an
institution that once faced financial ruin and has been reconstituting
itself with a new board and a new president, Louise Mirrer.
Some of the controversy, though, has arisen over that new direction. A year
ago, Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, wealthy businessmen, joined the
board, lending the Society their extraordinary collection of historical
documents, building a $1 million vault to store it and moving the Gilder
Lehrman Institute of American History into the building. James G. Basker,
the president of the institute, is the Hamilton exhibition's project
director.

This has led to concern over undue influence, as if the donors, like
Hamilton with his establishment of the American banking system, were
instituting an economic regime in which capital was displacing more genteel
forms of commerce. And indeed, the Society's financial goals have increased;
so have ambitions for attendance.

And just as Hamilton's views inspired political opposition, so too has Mr.
Gilder's and Mr. Lehrman's involvement; they have been accused of steering
the society toward their version of political conservatism even in the
choice of subject. Hamilton, partly because of his creation of the
institutions of American capitalism and partly because of his philosophical
ideas, has become the favored Founding Father for contemporary
conservatives.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 9, 2004 3:26 PM