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“A Second Bounaparty?”: A Reexamination of Alexander Hamilton during the Franco–American Crisis, 1796–1801 by Coleman, Aaron N. is a Social Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

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Writing to her husband in the summer of 1798, Abigail Adams, first lady of the United States, believed she noticed something particular in the eyes of Alexander Hamilton. ''Oh, I have read his heart in his wicked eyes,'' she wrote, ''the very devil is in them.'' On another occasion, Mrs. Adams noted that Hamilton, already possessed by the Devil and overweening ambition, had the potential of becoming a ''second Bounaparty.'' Although it is easy to dismiss these invectives as an overreaction based on personal animus, an extensive historiographical tradition has echoed the First Lady's sentiments toward Hamilton, considering him a bogeyman of the early republic. Nowhere is this interpretation of Hamilton more prevalent than in studies of the Quasi-War with France. 1 Arguments over Hamilton's motivations during the Quasi-War rest on the rather basic dichotomy that he was manipulating the crisis to establish a European-style standing army for the purpose of crushing domestic opposition, while zealously supporting the passage and enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Hamilton, according to his critics, also controlled Adams's cabinet as well as former president George Washington, A

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Author

Coleman, Aaron N.

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press; Project MUSE; Society for Historians of the Early American Republic; JSTOR (ISSN 0275-1275)

Published

2008

Language

EN

Field

Social Sciences