But unlike Mount Vernon or Monticello, those temples to the memory of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, hardly anyone visits. It sits, in the countryside no more, on Convent Avenue in Upper Manhattan, wedged between a church and an apartment building. Liberals and conservatives have been moving in to pick up pieces of him, like speculators looking for a good investment. But even this credit is grudgingly given. The most cited essays in the Federalist, on checks and balances, were written by Madison, and while everyone learned in high school that Hamilton saved the republic's finances after George Washington appointed him as the first secretary of the Treasury, such knowledge does not inspire warmth.
Few people love their accountants.
A towering intellect. Hamilton's new defenders want the world to know that there was far more to him. He was actually the impresario of the entire Federalist Papers and wrote two thirds of them. Hamilton was a profound legal thinker who originated the doctrine of judicial review. Yet he was no cloistered intellectual, either.