Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-01-11
Really q Colossus

It is fitting that our country Is
launching today, on the 200th anniversary
of his birth, year-long program de-
signed to pay both official and unofficial
homage to Alexander Hamilton. The
youngest of the Founding Fathers, he
also was the most brilliant in number of
ways. Before Aaron Burr'S bullet cut him
down at the age of At, he already had
established himself as a political genius
OF the highest order in that small COM
pany of extraordinarily great Americans
who astoniShed and inspired the world
with the marvellous Union they wrought
out of thirteen separate and intensely
jealous States
The greatness and grandeur of Ham
ilton'S role in that respect hardly can be
exaggerated. While still only 20, he served
Importantly in the Revolutionary War as
WaShington's secretary and aide-de-
camp. Thereafter, with his tremendously
gifted tongue and pen, he probably did
more than any other one man to persuade
the divided and haggling States to adopt
the Constitution that still governs us. His
powerful arguments to that end-notably
AAAo AAoSAAAAANCIlO CCuCI dlISJ eSSdyS-
endure up to now as classics of political
wisdom and amazingly far-seeing COM
mon sense Moreover, his many-faceted
genius enabled him to be an effective
practical politician in times of contention
with Congress- AS our first Secretary of
the Treasury, for example, he worked a
kind of miracle in putting the fledgling
Federal union on sound financial foot
ing, and what helped him to do so was
the deal he made with Southerners,
in exchange for their supporting votes,
to insure that the National Capital would
be located here on the Potomac instead
of in New York
To use one of his own phrases, Alex
ander Hamilton was often the target Of
"a torrent of angry and malignant pas
Sions." He was traduced by many of his
contemporaries, and to this day some of
the ancient calumnieS stick to his name,
such as the charge that he was at heart
monarchy-loving ariStocrat hostile to
democracy and the common man. Yet
1t is an incontrovertible historical fact
that throughout his too-brief lifetime he
was an ardent advocate of representative
government under strong, centralized
Federal direction. If he sometimes
seemed to miStruSt the masses, he did so
only in the sense of miStrusting popular
reaction to dazzling but dangerous takers
on horseback Thus, as he declared in
his opening "FederaliSt" essay, "of those
men who have overturned the liberties of
republics, the greatest number have be-
gun their career by paying an obSequiouS
court to the people; commencing dema-
gogueS, and ending tyrants"
Never himself demagogue, and al
ways foe of tyranny, he played deci-
sive part in making our country inher-
emily strong from the start with consti-
tutional system of checks and balances
superbly calculated to thwart potential
usurperS of power and perpetuate indi-
vidual and collective American freedom.
Small wonder that we find in Jefferson's
writings this tribute to the man: Ham
ilton is really colossus. Without
numbers he is an host within himself"
In honoring him now, we honor the sort
OF greatness that should everlastingly
inspire us as a people and govern our
deeds as a Nation