Willard Sterne Randall on Alexander Hamilton & Founding Era Political-Economy

The Learning Curve Willard Sterne Randall

[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Well, hello again everybody. This is Albert Cheng coming at you with a brand new episode of the Learning Curve podcast, and this week I’m joined by Justice Barry Anderson. Justice Anderson, welcome back to the show.

[00:00:37] Justice Barry Anderson: I’m delighted to be here for those who might not be up on my history. I served in the Minnesota Supreme Court for 19 years, recently retired, actually retired in 2024, and I’m delighted to be joining you today to be talking about, among other topics, Alexander Hamilton.

[00:00:54] Albert Cheng: That’s right, and I’m not gonna make you sing Justice Anderson, but I’m looking forward to this show too.

[00:00:59] Justice Barry Anderson: Our audience will be pleased to hear that

[00:01:02] Albert Cheng: we’re gonna have Professor Willard Sterne Randall join us. Before we get to Alexander Hamilton and Professor Randall, let’s talk some education news, Justice Anderson.

[00:01:11] So what did you find?

[00:01:13] Justice Barry Anderson: I’d like to discuss an interesting article that appeared in the uh, real Clear Education blog by Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt. Ah. College is facing widespread closures. There are a couple interesting things about this lengthy and thorough piece. One is that we’ve been discussing for some time the issues relating to declining numbers of students and some concerns about cost of higher education and its effectiveness driving down student enroll.

[00:01:41] And the predicted apocalypse hasn’t yet arrived, but it does appear to be on the horizon. And they are noting in this piece that about one college is closing or merging every week, and the expectation is 20 to 25% of institutions will merge or close within the next several years. And what they discuss here is what are institutions doing to face these challenges?

[00:02:05] And they discuss a variety of innovative approaches focusing on more job related activity, perhaps working in closer communication with the business community and, and other stakeholders. So it’s a really interesting piece. My only concern, having read the thing is that I do think that they’re identifying some real issues, but one of the things that they’re not focusing on is a lot of these institutions are public institutions.

[00:02:32] Some are kept alive simply because there’s, you know, great political support for them, and that’s an issue nobody wants to talk about and something that is very much out there.

[00:02:42] Albert Cheng: Yeah, I, being in higher ed, have certainly a vested interest in this, but I, I suppose it’s not about me.

[00:02:48] Justice Barry Anderson: You know, it’s, what’s interesting about it, Albert, is that, for example, when the Minnesota Community College system was set up, now going on 60 years ago, the idea was it’s pre-internet, of course, and all of that.

[00:03:00] The idea was that there’d be an institution that would be, you know, within a half an hour or an hour, hour and a half of nearly any point in Minnesota, and with the declining number of students, and of course declining population in rural areas, I’m not sure all these institutions are going to be saved.

[00:03:16] Yeah, yeah. No matter elevated, they are, and I don’t think this article faces that particular issue, but it’s actually from a book that the authors wrote that I recommend to people called From Upheaval to Action, What Works in Changing Higher Ed from Johns Hopkins University Press. So if you’re interested, find the book, because I think they go into this in greater detail.

[00:03:36] Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, looking forward to that content. And I think these are critical issues to think about, you know, the changing face of our institutions amidst largest societal changes. So thanks for bringing that to our attention. I wanna flag an article about the old North Church in Boston. I dunno if you’ve ever visited Justice Anderson.

[00:03:54] Justice Barry Anderson: I have been there and it is worth doing.

[00:03:56] Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah. Uh, anyway, it’s, it’s an article that talks a bit about the history and just some of the things that they’re doing to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country. You know, I was really intrigued by one bit of history that was discussed in the article, which was that at the time of the revolution, I mean, obviously there was an actual congregation that met there.

[00:04:15] That congregation was actually divided about what to do, whether, you know, to declare independence from Great Britain or to remain a colony. So I can’t imagine what the dynamics of being a part of that congregation might have looked like, but it did maybe put a positive view on this. You know, it kind of gave me a little bit of hope that, you know, a lot of our churches these days and a lot of our other, our institutions are divided as well.

[00:04:40] And perhaps there’s something to learn from the congregation of the Old North Church about how to make our way together through our disagreements and still be united around something. So that was the main thought that leapt out at me for further reflection and exploration from this article.

[00:04:56] Justice Barry Anderson: Well, and you know, one of the interesting pieces of American history is that there is, to echo the biblical phrase, nothing new under the sun.

[00:05:04] Yeah. So when you talk about being divided, for example, those of us of a certain age have the 1960s and seventies to reflect back on. And if you’re concerned that no president seems to be able to get a majority of the popular vote, which of course is a meaningless legal concept. But if you’re concerned about that, I refer to you to the 1870s, to the early 19 hundreds where I don’t believe that any presidential election resulted in, in a so-called majority vote, or maybe just one. But anyway, the point that I’m making here is that nothing new under the sun. Yeah, it’s been, we’ve been here before.

[00:05:36] Albert Cheng: Yep. Yep. And we will make our way through it. So let’s keep reflecting on this history by inviting our guests, professor Willard Sterne Randall, to talk to us about Alexander Hamilton.

[00:05:48] So folks, stick around. This is coming up on the flip side of the break.

[00:06:03] Willard Sterne Randall is Professor Emeritus and former distinguished scholar in history at Champlain College who has written numerous biographies about America’s founding fathers. His books include Thomas Jefferson, A Life, George Washington, a Life Alexander Hamilton, A Life, Ethan Allen, His Life and Times, Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution. The Founder’s Fortunes how Money shaped the Birth of America, and most recently, John Hancock. First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence Between His Careers. As an author and investigative journalist, Randall received the National Magazine Award for Public Service from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the Hillman Prize, the Loeb Award, and three Pulitzer Prize nominations.

[00:06:51] Mr. Randall earned a Master’s of Arts in American History from Princeton University. Professor Randall, thanks for being on again. And you’re, you’re the accomplished biographer of America’s founding fathers, including Alexander Hamilton. So, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, could you open by briefly explaining who Alexander Hamilton was and how his career in public service helped create the United States?

[00:07:19] Willard Sterne Randall: Alexander Hamilton is the man who created the entire financial system of the United States out of whole cloth at the end of the revolution when the country, the new country, was so deeply in debt. That he had to invent a way to make debt a blessing. And what he did was come up with a, a plan that has endured from that time on.

[00:07:50] He is actually the creator of the American Economy.

[00:07:56] Justice Barry Anderson: Professor, you write in Alexander Hamilton, a Life quote. Alexander Hamilton grew up surrounded by the whirling windmills that crushed the sugar cane. And then you go on to say his boyhood was filled with the fragrance of fields where ginger root and cinnamon nutmeg and avocados grew. Could you tell us about his complicated and turbulent early life family background, informative, educational experiences on the British West Indies Island of Nevis?

[00:08:26] Willard Sterne Randall: His boyhood was filled with fragrance of fields. Yes. He had a complicated early life because of the laws of the time, which discriminated against women.

[00:08:38] His mother was descended from French ot, French, Protestant exiles who went to the Caribbean. His father was descended from a minor branch of Scottish nobility. But he was number four son, which meant he could not inherit unless the first three died. His mother married a merchant who came to Nevis after selling his dry goods business and his plantation.

[00:09:15] Hamilton’s mother was beautiful and had a dowry. They married and her husband went through their money. Left them deeply in debt and abused her. He had her put in jail for refusing him his quote duty. She was gotten out and he was able to be helped by her family’s relatives on the island of St. Croix.

[00:09:47] Albert Cheng: Alexander Hamilton would write, quote, who talks most about freedom and equality? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for the ARIGHT slaves? In the other end? Quote, the British West Indies were the crown jewel of the 18th century British empire driven by a brutal high profit and slave based sugar plantation economy.

[00:10:09] Could you discuss Hamilton’s early firsthand experiences with slavery and how did this impact his lifelong opposition to it?

[00:10:17] Willard Sterne Randall: The British West entities were only one of the jewels in the crowns of the European monarchy, so there was slavery all around a brutal system. His mother, for example, inherited slaves that she rented out when she died of yellow fever.

[00:10:40] He was 10 years old and he went to work, but he was deprived of any of inheritance because he was declared illegitimate. But he learned the business, he learned how to deal with these slave based sugar plantation owners.

[00:10:58] Justice Barry Anderson: Professor Alexander Hamilton is the only immigrant among the founding fathers. Could you briefly summarize how he arrived in New York? Got himself educated and within a few years was a key aid to General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, and leader of the American cause of Independence from Great Britain.

[00:11:20] Willard Sterne Randall: Alexander Hamilton is the only immigrant among the founding fathers.

[00:11:26] Only if you understand that there was no United States, so all of the founding fathers were born. While they were British subjects or from another country, when he arrived in New York, he had a scholarship from the counting house in St. Croix where he had worked. From the time of his mother’s death, he had learned the business and he had lost track of his own father who had left them to avoid his mother being accused of bigamy.

[00:12:02] So, he wrote a long letter describing a hurricane that devastated St. Croix, and it got published. And merchants in St. Croix were so impressed that they put together a scholarship for Hamilton to go to New York and become educated. So sugarcane harvested by slave labor put Alexander Hamilton through a prep school in New Jersey.

[00:12:35] And then what is now Columbia University. Enough money for four years of education. He went to, it was called King’s College, it’s now Columbia.

[00:12:47] Albert Cheng: While serving under General Washington Hamilton, educated himself about the relationship between constitutional commerce, manufacturing, trade, and banking. I mean, you read lots and lots of works. Could you discuss some of the intellectual influences behind Hamilton’s ideas?

[00:13:04] Willard Sterne Randall: We really can’t say educated himself while serving under Washington because he was also an artillery officer, an infantry officer, a DECAMP and spy master for Washington. But he had been reading The Economist for many years.

[00:13:24] From the time he had been working in the store, he was learning about the theories of business and how to carry out a business successfully. He was mostly influenced by the French economist, Jacque Care, and he followed a lot of the cares reforms and introduced them in the United States.

[00:13:52] Justice Barry Anderson: In the 1780s, the newly independent nations first constitutional government under the Articles of Confederation began to falter.

[00:13:59] This alliance of states couldn’t pay its foreign debts from the revolution, lacked a strong executive or judiciary, and could barely raise an army. Would you talk about how Hamilton joined James Madison and others for a stronger federal government, which in 1787 through 1788, led him to author 50, one of the 85 Federalist Papers to promote the ratification of the US Constitution?

[00:14:24] Willard Sterne Randall: The articles of the Confederation never got off the ground. They had too many objections from one state or another. Most of all, the states, the confederation couldn’t pay its foreign debts from the revolution. It lacked an army or a navy. It lacked a strong executive or a judiciary. But he joined forces with James Madison, who both decided there had to be a strong federal government. And when the Constitution was passed, it needed to be ratified and Madison and Hamilton together wrote the Federalist papers to promote ratification, hamilton did 51 out of 85 of them.

[00:15:17] Albert Cheng: Some of Alexander Hamilton’s more famous Federalist papers include number 78 on judicial review. Number 70 on a single executive and number 84 arguing against the necessity of a bill of rights.

[00:15:30] Really, these essays focus on executive power, the judiciary and military defense among lots of other topics. Could you tell us about Hamilton as a legal, constitutional and political writer?

[00:15:42] Willard Sterne Randall: Hamilton’s Federalist papers were published, uh, once a week in New York newspapers. And he focused on executive power, the judiciary and military defense.

[00:15:58] He was steeped in research on each of these issues. He objected to the Bill of Rights, especially because he said it was a list of rights and it might give the impression that Americans had no other rights. He was very strong on a single executive. He thought that had have the advantage of being able to make decisions without the possibility of factions or disagreements, especially in a crisis such as a war.

[00:16:35] He insisted there had to be judicial review of the branches of government by a separate court. So he is really the one behind the idea of a Supreme Court and a federal court system.

[00:16:49] Justice Barry Anderson: Under President George Washington, Hamilton served as the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, and he was the architect of the nation’s early economic system, establishing the foundations of American finance, banking, debt, and credit.

[00:17:02] Would you outline for us the contours of Hamilton’s American system, as well as discuss his political compromises and frankly arguments, fights even with Washington Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson.

[00:17:16] Willard Sterne Randall: His system, his American system, he introduced as a series of reports written to the Congress. Each one outlined his ideas on finance, banking, debt and credit, but also paved the way for infrastructure investment by a federal government.

[00:17:40] Albert Cheng: So Professor Alexander Hamilton’s report on manufacturers was a foundational economic document that argued for the US industrial self-sufficiency through government support for manufacturing tariffs and infrastructure investments to compete with European powers, especially Great Britain. Could you tell us about how Hamilton’s more urban commercial and militarized vision of the American Republic was aligned with the industrial revolution and the intense global competition, uh, mercantilism and shifting military power balances among Europe’s empires.

[00:18:16] Willard Sterne Randall: The report on manufacturers. It’s actually the founding document of American economics and its doctrine of industrial self-sufficiency with government help for manufacturing, with income coming from tariffs, from customs, collections, and investments that may help the United States to compete with European rivals.

[00:18:46] It was really more closely allied with the events already underway in England in the Industrial Revolution, whereas Jefferson, who had been to London and seen the manufacturing in the way of life was opposed to it and wanted America to spread West over what he considered his greatest asset, a farmland.

[00:19:14] Justice Barry Anderson: Professor, I have the privilege of asking the last question today, and thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation. Hamilton writes, quote, men give me some credit for genius. All the genius. I have lies in this. When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly day and night. It is before me I explore it in all its bearings, my mind becomes pervaded with it. Would you close by sharing with us Hamilton’s most enduring legacy and how his historical biography differs from what we see of him in the 20th century and more recently with the famous musical Hamilton.

[00:19:55] Willard Sterne Randall: He objected when people called him a genius, and he said his only genius was that he studied a subject profoundly day and night, and we can actually see this.

[00:20:10] When as Secretary of the Treasury, he was working in his office late at night and the French Foreign Minister Ally Rand walked by and saw Hamilton at his desk by candlelight working when no one else in the government was. I don’t see any conflict with the play Hamilton. I think the wonderful thing about it is it exposed a new audience of Americans of all ages to the story of Alexander Hamilton and made them so much more interested to be engaged in America on his 250th anniversary.

[00:20:58] Albert Cheng: Professor Randall, thank you so much for your time today and and for letting us your expertise on, on Hamilton.

[00:21:05] Willard Sterne Randall: And it’s been an honor and a pleasure to work with you.

[00:21:21] Albert Cheng: Justice Anderson, I really enjoyed that interview. I hope you did as well. You know, I’m one of the few people in population that probably hasn’t sat through an entire performance of Hamilton, but hey, I sat through this interview and I really enjoyed it.

[00:21:35] Justice Barry Anderson: Hamilton is a fascinating figure and the professor’s grasp of, you know, how important he is to the founding era of the Republic was really fascinating when you think about Hamilton.

[00:21:46] He was a popular figure in his time, but he was really working with people who were actually the elected officials and relied on him. So he is to some extent, a supporting character. My gosh, how important he was to the success of the early American Republic and actually, you know, his role working with Washington during the revolution itself.

[00:22:06] So what a remarkable history and what was lost in that stupid duel. I mean, just a what a tragedy.

[00:22:13] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we can be left speculating on what the world might look like otherwise, but a last we’ll never know. Well, hey, Justice Anderson, I’m glad you’re here though, and I’m glad that you took time to co-host this episode with me. So thanks for being here.

[00:22:27] Justice Barry Anderson: My pleasure, and I look forward to the next opportunity.

[00:22:30] Albert Cheng: Yeah, and before we get to the next show, uh, let me give folks a tweet of the week. This one from NBC 10 Boston. Nearly 1 million revelers expected at South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We are recording this episode on St. Patrick’s Day, so you know, if you’re listening, maybe you can verify if it was really 1 million more or less. And make sure to tune in again for our next episode. We’re gonna have Professor Sarah Cohodes, who’s an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, and she’s gonna come talk to us about her work on charter schools. So hope to see you then. Until then, be well Be safe. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.