History on Proper Principles: The Legacy of Forrest McDonald

By |2024-01-07T09:40:44-06:00January 6th, 2024|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Featured, Federalist Papers, Forrest McDonald, History, Literature, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]

Luther Martin of Maryland & the Constitutional Convention

By |2023-02-19T21:31:02-06:00February 19th, 2023|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Featured, George Mason, George Washington, History, John Marshall, Timeless Essays|

Luther Martin understood human nature with a genius of sheer power, foresight, and brilliance. He believed that there can be no union without subsidiarity because without it, governments run with the cyclical and typical tyrannies of humankind. Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, The Life of Luther Martin, by Bill Kauffman (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008) “Happiness is [...]

The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton

By |2023-07-12T00:40:41-05:00September 26th, 2022|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Political rhetoric of the Founders has received scant scholarly attention, but Alexander Hamilton’s style of rhetorical reasoning enabled him to educate and persuade. The political rhetoric of the Founders of the American Republic has received scant attention from scholars. The relative neglect is understandable. On the one hand, the very concept of rhetoric has, in [...]

The First and Second Banks of the United States

By |2020-05-19T14:21:25-05:00May 19th, 2020|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Economic History, Economics, History, Senior Contributors|

The First Bank of the United States influenced much more than mere economics. Many scholars indeed believe that divisions caused by the Bank led to the creation of the first real political divisions in the country. By the standards set by the Second Bank of the United States, the First Bank was tame. The precious [...]

“Poison Under Its Wings”: The Constitution and Its Defects

By |2020-01-01T00:00:05-06:00January 1st, 2020|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Freedom, Patrick Henry|

The plan for government that came from the Philadelphia convention was what Patrick Henry referred to as a beautiful butterfly with “poison under its wings.” The parchment barriers erected against monarchy and consolidation, he held, would only be as effective as the force backing them. The beginning of the American political order goes much further [...]

New York’s Admission to the Union

By |2021-04-22T17:54:59-05:00July 25th, 2019|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, History, John Jay|

New York showed its wealth of wisdom in ratifying the Constitution and becoming the 11th state in a fledgling nation. While the Empire State’s ratification was not required under the new Constitution for there to be a United States, had the vote gone the other way, the United States may have been for naught before [...]

History on Proper Principles: The Legacy of Forrest McDonald

By |2019-09-24T15:31:53-05:00January 7th, 2019|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Federalist Papers, Forrest McDonald, History, Literature, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]

Was Alexander Hamilton a Great Man?

By |2020-09-01T13:38:04-05:00February 5th, 2018|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, Books, Forrest McDonald, History, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald’s biography of Alexander Hamilton most likely will prove indispensable. What Hamilton thought, and how he came to think it, is nowhere else so plain as here. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography by Forrest McDonald (464 pages, W.W. Norton & Co., 1982) That Alexander Hamilton was among the most luminous and creative of the Founding Fathers every [...]

Thomas Jefferson & the American “Provincial” Mind

By |2021-04-30T16:51:24-05:00September 17th, 2017|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, Books, History, Philosophy, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

The cosmopolitan Jefferson—enlightened, tolerant, humane—is at the same time the best example of the sensitive provincial. And in getting back to the provincial Jefferson, the essential Jefferson, we recover one of the valuable links of our national heritage. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join David Hoeveler as he [...]

The Foreign Policy of George Washington

By |2021-04-22T19:27:52-05:00August 20th, 2017|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, Constitution, Featured, Federalist Papers, George Washington, James Madison, War|

The war between France and Great Britain was the first major crisis faced by the country under the new Constitution. It was a test that the Washington Administration helped the nation pass with flying colors. The following essay is an examination of the Washington administration’s handling of the first major foreign policy crisis facing the [...]

The American and French Revolutions Compared

By |2020-06-24T09:57:48-05:00May 7th, 2017|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, History, Revolution, Timeless Essays|

Americans turned to the concrete lessons of history and experience to guide them in securing their liberty. The French, on the other hand, deified Reason above not only experience, but also above religion and divine revelation. One of the many differences between the American and French Revolutions is that, unlike the French, Americans did not [...]

Jeffersonianism & the Roots of American Conservatism

By |2021-11-07T15:42:33-06:00November 4th, 2016|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, History, Thomas Jefferson|

What is true conservatism? That question, more than anything else, is the argument raging in the Republican Party today–one side fully represented in the party’s establishment wing, while the other resides in the hearts of true patriots at the grassroots, those who carry the American Revolution’s sacred fire of liberty. Yet most true conservatives may [...]

Hip-Hop Hamilton

By |2019-11-21T15:30:13-06:00July 27th, 2016|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, Audio/Video, Barbara J. Elliott, Featured, Music|

The musical Hamilton is star-spangled patriotic and worthy of attention, even though hip-hop may not be the favorite musical genre of most Imaginative Conservatives. Why? Intelligence finds the answer to a question, but genius answers a question no one else has thought to ask. The genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda leapt across three centuries to answer [...]

The Remedy for the Instability of Republican Government

By |2019-11-07T10:47:33-06:00July 11th, 2016|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, Constitution, Featured|

Editor's Note: Alexander Hamilton delivered the following speech in support of the Constitution to the New York Ratifying Convention on June 24, 1788. I am persuaded, Mr. Chairman, that I in my turn shall be indulged in addressing the committee. We all, in equal sincerity, profess to be anxious for the establishment of a republican [...]

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