Jefferson vs. Hamilton on Views of Government

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Whose side would you have been on in the 1790s, Thomas Jefferson’s or Alexander Hamilton’s? Both of these men served under George Washington in the first presidential cabinet, yet they had very different views of what government should be (Davis 86). My objective in this research essay is to inform the reader of why there was so much controversy between these two founding fathers, and to determine which side had the better views for our newly forming country.

After Washington became president, people started forming political parties based on how they thought the government should be run. Washington did not like the idea of the country being divided into “factions,” as he called them. But the problem was that this was happening within his own cabinet, with Thomas Jefferson on one side and Alexander Hamilton and John Adams on the other (Davis 86). I agree with Washington that the country should be united as one. However, I do feel that you need two sides to solve a problem and come to a compromise when it involves the lives and fate of the people of an entire nation.

Jefferson, secretary of state, and Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, had different ideas on almost every topic. It mainly seemed to do with how they viewed people in general, and their ability to govern themselves. Hamilton basically thought that ordinary people weren’t intelligent enough to run the country, and therefore he felt that a few professional politicians should run the government (Davis 86). He brought this topic up at the Constitutional Convention by saying that people divided themselves into two groups, “the wealthy and well born” and “the mass of the people.” He went on to say that “the people are turbulent and changing” and “they seldo...

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...n on which it is based, I tended to side more with Jefferson’s Antifederalist beliefs. If we were to allow only the elite to rule, then our fight for freedom would have been meaningless. Therefore, I also agreed with his stance on the need for public education and the ability of the people to govern themselves. As Thomas Jefferson himself once stated, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free… it expects what never was and never will be (Davis 54).”

Works Cited
Brodie, Fawn M. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974.

Cerami, Charles A. Young Patriots. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2005.

Davis, Kenneth C. Don’t Know Much About Thomas Jefferson. New York, New York:

HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.

Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.

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