Hogeland and Newton on Hamilton in New York

On Thursday, 12 July, the author William Hogeland will speak at the Federal Hall Monument in New York City.

Hogeland’s topic will be “The Hamilton Scheme: Enemies and Allies in the Creation of an American Economy.” This midday talk is part of a series cohosted by the Museum of American Finance and the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society titled “CelebrateHAMILTON 2018,” but it may not be that celebratory.

Hogeland will speak on how Alexander Hamilton’s national financial plan worked, why the public remains generally unaware of the details, and why opponents such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Albert Gallatin couldn't fully dismantle it during sixteen years of Republican administration.

He promises to address these questions:

• What was the Hamilton scheme anyway?
• Why did Hamilton himself find the scheme so thrilling?
• What were the astonishing, even unsettling measures he was willing—eager!—to take in its service?
• Why don’t Americans know anything about how our founding economy worked?
• Who were the populists who opposed the scheme, and what did they do about it?

There will be time for discussion.

Hogeland is the author of an essay in Historians on Hamilton (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Founding Finance, The Whiskey Rebellion, and most recently Autumn of the Black Snake. His next book will be on Hamilton.

This talk will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 P.M. at Federal Hall National Monument, 26 Wall Street. It is free and open to the public (which Hamilton wasn’t always).

The very next afternoon—Friday, 13 July—Michael E. Newton, author of Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years, will speak at the same venue on the topic “Son of a Whore?: The Extramarital Affair of Alexander Hamilton’s Mother.” Drawing on his finding of court records from St. Croix in old Gothic Danish script, Newton will discuss the real details of Rachel Faucett’s extramarital affair. Was her estranged husband’s characterization fair and accurate?

Newton’s Federal Hall talk is also part of the “CelebrateHAMILTON” series, and it’s more likely to laud the man himself. This talk is also free, with questions and reception to follow.