Alexander Hamilton, A Man of Many Hats

Founding Fathers Fervor

What makes so many of the Founding Fathers of this country so great ? One of the common characteristics of so many of them is that they had an intellectual ability in so many pursuits. For example, Alexander Hamilton was a military hero (successfully battled the British so that Washington could get his forces out of New York City when the British took over), was a brilliant lawyer (wrote a great majority of the Federalist Papers to convince states to adopt the Constitution of the United States because the Articles of Confederation paralyzed any form of national government), and was a financial genius that created our First National Bank of the US as well as the US Mint who understood the importance at the time of building Manufactures (wrote 3 significant works on economics including: The Importance of a US Mint, The Importance of Manufactures, and A Report of the US Economy that detailed out why a national bank was necessary). He understood that for our infant, fledgling country to be successful we had to have a robust, healthy economy. When our first national financial crisis hit in 1791, as Secretary of the Treasury he injected large capital into the banking system that reached small businesses and consumers and turned around the recession in less than a year. In the midst of our country’s present economic depression, I can’t help but think of him. It is most unfortunate that our bankers don’t feel as patriotic as the bankers of the 1790s. Now it seems Wall Street is consumed by greed. Great giants like Hamilton acted not just out of ideological passion but necessity. Ours was a country back then that lacked what we take for granted now; however, in order for our country to remain prosperous we must all do our part to stay feverishly productive. We must all create, work, and toil to produce goods or services that have value. The worst thing for our fellow man is that we sit back like kings: usurp and lose our passions and needs because we have ruined ourselves with intellectual starvation and physical gluttony. Now; like the great men before us, is our time to rise up to new challenges.