by
Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, New York, NY.
This is Hamilton as Major General — second in command to Washington — during the Quasi-War
with France from 1798 to 1800.
Alexander Hamilton, c. 1798—1801
The Federalists of the 1780s had a glimpse of what America was to become — a scrambling business society dominated by the pecuniary interests of ordinary people — and they did not like what they saw. This premonition of America’s future lay behind their sense of crisis and their horrified hyperbolic rhetoric. The wholesale pursuits of private interest and private luxury were, they thought, undermining America’s capacity for republican government. They designed the Constitution in order to save American republicanism from the deadly effects of the private pursuits of happiness.
The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (2011)