Similarities Between Hamilton And Jefferson

The United States of America in the Post-American Revolution was overflowing with joy, fear and cautious optimism. The world had held its breath as it watched thirteen small imperial colonies succeed in defeating the British Empire and wining its long sought after independence. Unfortunately, the defeat of Britain was only the beginning of the woes America would face. It would come down to two prominent political intellectuals of the time, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, to take it upon themselves to heed this danger. Together they sought to persuade their colleagues and the masses through secret and not so secret writings and meetings.
Both Hamilton and Jefferson understood that their new found freedom came with the heavy cost of internal and external issues. The most demanding of these issues though primarily dealt with foreign policy during the …show more content…
He, like Hamilton, understood that the rebellion in France would soon spread throughout Europe and abroad. Unlike Hamilton, however, Jefferson believed that the spread of radical French ideologies was tantamount to preserving the American constitution, “I consider the establishment and success of their government as necessary to stay up our own and to prevent it from falling back to that kind of Halfway-house, the English constitution” (108). Comparatively speaking though, Jefferson’s idealistic stance on American and French relations proved more dangerous to the U.S. than Hamilton’s. His initial views were, in retrospect, Machiavellian in that he believed that the ends would ultimately justify the means, “The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?” (109). Jefferson’s idealist position here is both powerful and dangerous in that no one can determine how far they might go for freedom nor how far they would go to maintain