What was alexander hamiltons vision for the united states

It is no accident that Hamilton was a revered figure during the Gilded Age, seen by presidents such as James Garfield , Benjamin Harrison , and other Republicans as the most impressive Founding Father.

Kevin R. He points to republican principles championed by Jefferson such as local control of education, democratizing land holding and decentralized government. In addition, he says the Louisiana Purchase orchestrated by Jefferson is the primary reason that America became a trans-continental country, which allowed it to eventually become an economic, military and diplomatic superpower.

Gutzman also points to the principles in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that was drafted by Jefferson and widely copied by other states and incorporated into the U.

Constitution by James Madison. Prior to the founding of the University of Virginia, university curriculums were more aristocratic, according to Gutzman. Every post-secondary school in America is now the University of Virginia. Hamilton Argues for the Constitutionality of the National Bank, February 15, Hamilton defended his call for a national bank.

Hamilton's Report on Manufactures Hamilton's third report envisioned a nation of factories. Medal of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, This medal and its motto reflect the Jeffersonian vision. Students can track their online quiz scores by setting up their own Student Gradebook. The bank was also opposed on constitutional grounds.

Adopting a position known as "strict constructionism," Thomas Jefferson and James Madison charged that a national bank was unconstitutional since the Constitution did not specifically give Congress the power to create a bank. Hamilton responded to the charge that a bank was unconstitutional by formulating the doctrine of "implied powers. In , Congress passed a bill creating a national bank for a term of 20 years, leaving the question of the bank's constitutionality up to President Washington.

The president reluctantly decided to sign the measure out of a conviction that a bank was necessary for the nation's financial well-being. Finally, Hamilton proposed to aid the nation's infant industries. Through high tariffs designed to protect American industry from foreign competition, government subsidies, and government-financed transportation improvements, he hoped to break Britain's manufacturing hold on America. The most eloquent opposition to Hamilton's proposals came from Thomas Jefferson, who believed that manufacturing threatened the values of an agrarian way of life.

Hamilton's vision of America's future challenged Jefferson's ideal of a nation of farmers, tilling the fields, communing with nature, and maintaining personal freedom by virtue of land ownership. Alexander Hamilton offered a remarkably modern economic vision based on investment, industry, and expanded commerce.

Most strikingly, it was an economic vision that had no place for slavery. Before the s, the American economy--North and South--was intimately tied to a trans-Atlantic system of slavery. States south of Pennsylvania depended on slave labor to produce tobacco, rice, indigo, and cotton.