Why Thomas Jefferson Doesn’t Have His Own Musical

I will try hard to not make this into a book review. Having recently read Joseph J. Ellis’s American Dialogue, and having spent my quarantine in a colonial town named after a Founding Father, I have been thinking a lot about the differences and similarities between 1787 and 2020. Most who have recently brushed up on their Founding Fathers probably did so by seeing the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. Sadly I’m ignorant in this regard, for two reasons: 1) I haven’t tried hard enough to get tickets 2) I am not the biggest Alexander Hamilton fan. And so let’s begin.

The Great Divide in American History

The divide that we see in America today has actually been around since days of the Constitution, most notably stemming from the differences between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The split since then has typically, though imprecisely, come down to party lines — Unionists vs. Confederates in the 19th century; Republicans vs. Democrats in the 20th century — in the 21st century, the split now appears to be between the Establishment and Populists.

It’s not to say that all of the sides would have agreed with their analogs across history, but there is one fundamental item that they probably would have agreed on and that is the role (or size) of government. Occasionally, the two opposing philosophies get misused, creating a multi-decade branding problem. Confederates cited small government in order to preserve slavery. The Establishment cited big government in order to expand public surveillance post 9/11. In both cases, the Constitution was leveraged to weave a story of urgency and protect the public’s alleged interest.

Despite some accomplishments after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the key issue of slavery was largely left unresolved. The role of government was addressed through compromise and concessions, after it was recognized that the middle path was the one of least resistance. This provided stability and union to the states for several years. Throughout America’s history this is a familiar pattern and as a strategy it has typically worked, but only for moments at a time. The peripheries temporarily retreat. Later on they reengage and come back, forcing new compromises to new issues, all over again.

So that in a nutshell, has been the setup of the American landscape for more than 300 years. Compromise, consensus, and a temporary power structure — which gets rocked every once in a while by the peripheries carrying the new ideas of the day and age.

Federalists, Alexander Hamilton, and New York

The Declaration signers and early settlers were undoubtedly Anti-Federalists. The colonists broke away from an authoritarian European rule that largely stifled growth and innovation since the Middle Ages. They set up satellite colonies, in which they mostly had freedom to live and freedom to engage in commerce. Being a colony was always going to be a stepping stone for independence.

While the Spirit of ’76 was instrumental in weaving together America’s romantic values, the Constitutional Convention had a different feel. For one, many of the 1776 individuals were either no longer at the table or were less influential. Thomas Jefferson was in France serving as trade minister. Ben Franklin was old. Other key Declaration of Independence signers chose not to attend. “I smell a rat!” Patrick Henry proclaimed. Seizing the opportunity, the Federalists, who sided with the British and thought the Declaration of Independence was too French, set the agenda.

If Jefferson was the man of the people, then Hamilton was the champion of New York. Married into New York wealth, Hamilton came to the Convention with a mission to establish a strong, authoritarian government that would allow for the upper echelon of society to have its appropriate influence of our the US government. “Our real Disease . . . is Democracy,” wrote Hamilton in his last letter of his life.

Whether by coincidence or by virtue, Hamilton’s core values seemingly left an impression on today’s New York. Unsurprisingly, Cato — the think tank that for all intents and purposes is orthogonal to Hamilton’s values — has persistently ranked New York as the “least free state” (Cato also happens to be the name of one of the authors of the Anti-Federalist Papers, the counterpart to Hamilton’s Federalist Papers).

Jefferson’s Flaw

Thomas Jefferson was an Anti-Federalist and in weaving the Fabric of America his most tragic flaw was his failure to abolish slavery. “By the time he reached the presidency, his self-imposed paralysis had evolved into an official policy of silence … He was in a unique position as president to seize the most fortuitous opportunity history ever offered to implement a gradual emancipation policy that would put slavery on the road to extinction but he failed to do so,” Ellis wrote about Jefferson.

Both overtly and covertly, Jefferson denounced slavery. Overtly, Jefferson made statements such as “this abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.” Covertly, Jefferson amended John Locke’s phrase of “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. And yet, Jefferson inherited a slave plantation. And allegedly later on he could not free his slaves because he had used them as collateral for his debt with British and Scottish bankers. To further confuse Jefferson’s moral compass, it is widely believed that Jefferson had six children with Sally Hemings, a slave on his plantation.

From a philosophical perspective, Jefferson could not abolish slavery because any projection of federal power would contradict revolutionary principles. Jefferson ultimately settled his conscience by stating “on the subject of emancipation I have ceased to think because it is not to be the work for my day.”

No one was more in tune with America’s founding principles than Thomas Jefferson. But in one glaring way, he also could also not have been any further from them. It was Jefferson’s teetering that ultimately cemented his legacy on the topic as a bystander.

A Sybil attack

Hamilton redirected the course of the American journey, and by filling a power vacuum at the Convention, he imposed his own personal views of the world onto a country that was still finding its way. To put this into internet terms, it was a Sybil attack. Of course, one could say there were other Founding Fathers that disproportionately influenced our founding. But Hamilton’s affinity for authoritarian rule was precisely what the Revolutionaries had fought against. (Some of this was balanced out by Anti-Federalists own soft rebuttal to the Constitution, drafting the Bill of Rights two years later.)

Nevertheless, Hamilton carries the reputation of a public abolitionist. Hamilton was a member of the Manumission Society, an organization promoting the eventual abolition of slavery. But historians have all but debunked this reputation. Like Jefferson, he was conflicted with the promotion of American and personal interests. And like Jefferson, he too was a hypocrite, buying and selling slaves for his in-laws.

Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton had a much more interesting story, one that is much more ripe for our time. Effectively an orphan, Hamilton grew up on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. The Church of England denied Hamilton membership because his parents were illegally married. A misfit, Hamilton would eventually end up In New York, as misfits sometimes do. Jefferson on the other hand, was a waspy white male living on a plantation. If Hamilton’s bio is of Netflix quality, then Jefferson’s is more of a PBS documentary in the 90s. Hence Hamilton had a path to Broadway and Jefferson did not.

While the bio is definitely interesting, anyone favoring big government and centralization would forever admire Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, with his own ambitions in mind, took the American Creed and steered it into a different direction. The play, and the book, are veneers for a much larger view of the world.

Application to COVID-19

The expansion of government at the moment is concerning (see expose 1, 2, 3, and 4). For better or for worse, the current administration has clearly taken an Anti-Federalist stance, by deferring to state governments on how to handle the epidemic. New York and California — some of the most populous, most progressive states — are taking on some of the most strict measures. North Dakota and Indiana — some of the more sparsely populated and conservative states — have been much more loose. How much do we value our civil liberties in the name of public health?

The state governments’ impact on the outcome has been a mixed bag. The reality is that a virus that does travel from human to human, is asymptomatic, and lingers on surfaces for extended periods of time, will only go away from a vaccine and/or herd immunity. Or put in completely different terms, it will only go away with time.

The American population agreed to shelter-in-place because we needed time to scope the enemy. It was a defensive posture and psychologically we agreed to sheltering through at most April. We now know our enemy and recognize that it will be a battle.

A word from Charlie Chaplin

My Hunch

The tension between decentralization and centralization (or put more bluntly, small government and big government) swings back and forth throughout America’s history. This already is a far cry from other countries where the pendulum simply doesn’t exist. Most modern governments are feudal democracies, at best. It is interesting to think about other places where this split resurfaces. Blown up onto a global level, I would suggest that Anti-Federalists and Federalists transform into Capitalists vs. Socialists (despite Capitalists sharing Federalists’ roots). In the world of sci-fi, Peter Thiel controversially floated that the split is even evident between Star Wars and Star Trek — Star Wars being the capitalist, decentralized version based on Hans Solo’s desire to pay back a debt and the subliminal rags to riches story that is seen across the Skywalker bloodline. While Star Trek “has a transporter machine that can make you anything need.” Even in the context of the COVID-19 vaccine, this dichotomy exists. Hydroxychloroquine, the “vaccine” of choice by the populists, a drug that is widely available in generic form with some, borderline anecdotal studies pointing to its early success; while remdesivir is manufactured by Gilead, and progressed in its reputation through a government-funded trial.

The history of America is definitely a little tangled. But also no other modern history has been scrutinized as much as ours. I recently wrote about advertising, dissecting why it was the original sin of the internet and what could be done about it; the original sin for America’s democracy no question was slavery. No amounts of reparations will fix the old. The only way out is to build new things, while learning from past tragedies.