Whiskey rebellion and foufoung finance. He is a contributor to a recent uponly case, historians on hamilton. Hes penned many essays and articles that you can read in places like the atlantic monthly, the new york times, boston review, but none more important than our own magazine, financial history. You can find that magazine at moaf. Org, American Museum of American Finance. So, it should be no surprise that the topic of williams next book is Alexander Hamilton. Its my pleasure to introduce him, william hogland. Thanks a lot. I know the accost ickes in here boom a little bit. Can anyone hear me . Okay, thank you. Thats good to know. I think some of you know that maybe its a little bit im a little bit of a fish out of water here. I would like to point out that the museum of American Finance has had mess speak this , this third time. My first talk on Alexander Hamilton was sponsored by the museum. For my very first book, and that was back in 2006. So its i think some of you already now that my its celebrate hamilton time right now and celebrate is not exactly what i do, generally speaking. I those of you who know my work know that i think critically and i write critically. I write and think critically about everything, because thats just how i think. People sometimes think because im not celebrating that im filled with hatred for these people that i we are about. You dont spend your life in the company of these people because you hate them. But nonetheless, for those of you that dont know my stuff, youll note the irony of some of my approaching. Here we are in the Federal Building and here we are on wall street, we could say were conveniently located right now at the corner of money and government and what i want to talk about is how hamilton began to form those connections between money and the United States government. And so i dont talk so much about some of the things that have sparked such great interest lately, for the obvious reason of the phenomenal cultural event that is the musical. I dont talk about dueling. I dont talk about his relationships with his family members. I dont talk about his infidelity. I i feel like a lot of people dueled, i think you know that. Some of you have looked into this. You read about it, hopefully, in joann freemans book. And of course a lot of people have family relationships and upbringings and all of the things that people have. Im interested in what made hama Dynamic Force that he was, that was not like what everyone else did, if you know what i mean. I am looking very specifically at what i guess i would call the great sort of creative phenomenon that he was, that occurred at a certain time. I will dated 17821795. You could dated a little date it a little differently. Im going to take that span. Something happened there, of course with everything that went into his life before he arrived in the Continental Congress, he brought all of that baggage and inspiration and everything that made him, but something happened that was different from what everything from what everyone was doing. He was not alone, but things he saw that others did not necessarily see. Dreams he had, visions he had that others did not necessarily have. Sums some were very much opposed to. He saw nuts arent and bolts on a level i dont think anyone else saw appeared and then there were the lengths he went to an action. Sometimes, quite unsettling lengths i think, to bring those things about. The decisive effects he had on the founding, how we think about money and government today is what fascinates me about hamilton. To me, its almost like he gets born in 1782, the phenomenon i am talking about, the Creative Force im talking about starts about there. Im looking at the arc of an action, not just thinking and ideas, but an action that has some very compelling drama to it, some of which, as we say today, is highly problematic, but without which we might not be here as the nation that we are. In a sense, hamilton created the nation. In an economic sense. The thing is, the details of that story get left out. You would not think they get left out, it is the reason he is famous, secretary of the treasury. You would not think they would get left out, there have been a lot of biographies of hamilton, and yet they do get left out because people not here, the museum of American Finance, necessarily, but people do not necessarily like to hear the words the economic nation, or the word finance. I am writing a book on this subject and my agent said to me when i was pitching it to him, i would say, the financial he would say, dont say finance. We are trying to pitch a book here that people might want to read dont say finance. I am like, ive got you. Every once in a while, the buzzer goes off when i see the word. Hamilton would use the word, that the connotations without are not his. To hamilton, this is money, power, wealth, greatness, size, scope, expansion. Things that are actually highly active and dramatic. Greatness. I mean like dominance. Making the nation into america, the empire, that is a word he and many of his contemporaries would use. Making it into the great thing that he envisioned early it could be. When you say economic nation, to him, that is the nation. That is the nation in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways, i think he was right about that. What gets left out one people say, he did all of these things, but it kind of gets buried in all of the other things about his life, i call it for the purposes of this talk, something we could describe as the hamilton scheme. I think i have water here somewhere, yes i do. The hamilton scheme. Scheme is obviously a loaded term. It can mean a plan, any sort of thought of something, a schema, it can be value neutral. We also use it to mean a scheme, he is scheming in the backroom, my nefarious plans. Only talk about hamilton, we have to talk about that he had a major plan, it goes beyond the plan, it does intubation and a nuts and bolts means of building the country so that it could do the things he wanted it to do. But other people saw it as a scheme of corruption, a scheme designed to destroy democracy. So the various uses of the word scheme are throwing here just because i think in this room, no doubt, and if you talk to people outside of this room about hamilton, you will get a wide variety of of use. Whether it was a scheme in a good sense or bad sense. So that is what i want to try to tell you about today, how the scheme worked. And you can all think about, you probably have before, what kind of scheme you sink it is you think it is. When i set up an invitation to this talk and description of what i would be doing, i promised an efficient fiveminute trip through efficient 45 minute trip through everything you would need to know about the hamilton scheme. I realized as i approached the talk, that was a slight exaggeration or a boldfaced lie, he give there is no way in the time we have today that we can do a deep dive on anyone of these topics. What i am going to do now that i have learned you have lured you in here, im going to give you a superficial sense of what the various topics are. Anyone of them at various times, maybe we can do a deeper dive and i can backup some of the things i am saying rather than just saying them, which is what im going to do today. Realize the sales pitch was a sales pitch and we are going to get a more general view of what i think the hamilton scheme involves. One thing that is funny, he became treasury secretary under washington and put his scheme into effect in the first half of the 1790s, but im going to focus today much more on the 1780s because that is when he developed the scheme and when the issues that drove him and the opposition to it began to form, and the tension we still have today in society between money and government started to form. While there is a lot to say about what he did in the 1790s, to get at what he was trying to do in the 1790s, you have to go back to his first efforts and politics in the 1780s, i think. And see him develop it and figure out what is going on, if he could ever get himself into a position to bring it about. Somewhat surprisingly, i will be focusing largely on what he did in the 1780s to develop the scheme. He comes to the Continental Congress right after his service in the war, the revolutionary war, the war of independence, and this is some thing and dont really talk to much about, yorktown. Everyone knows about it now, and the defense of the redoubt. To me, that is like juvenilia, now he comes to do what he is really going to do what other people could not do. He comes to the Continental Congress, which at that time was meeting in philadelphia. Interesting because the war is going to be over quite soon. With the war almost ever, the revolution almost ever, victory in a sense on the horizon, we might think, and out of this, this great victory, comes the fantastic building of nationhood, a country will emerge full unified and ready to take on the world. What is actually happening as he arrives in the Continental Congress, because the war is about to end, the country is about to fall apart. That is because what is holding the country together, these various states, various entities, they are confederated, they are not a nation. What is holding them together has been this war. The unity of the country is around this war. What hamilton sees when he comes to congress is that is a it is about to crash and burn. And there is such a potential to do something different, to pull it all together and create an amazing, new phenomenon. And expanding, even in pure phenomenon. That is an outlandish thing to envision for a 20 somethingyearold man arriving with his elders and superiors come up many of them committed to different visions at that time. But he began to see it. He was not alone in that, he had a mentor in that vision, Robert Morris. A name that while it is known at the museum of American Finance, is not widely known by the people who watch the show or read biographies. Morris is a problematic character for a lot of reasons. I think he is hamiltons most important mentor in the area i am interested in. Of course, there are other areas of hamiltons life. This creative period. But morris is sometimes a difficult character to deal with because he spent his vast wealth on financing the revolution out of this pocket, some people would say the revolution also financed him. He did not have a problem with mingling private and public funds. He was probably the richest men in america, casually corrupt, obese, witty, charming, and quite a character. Really the first major banker the country had. This was someone who saw the brilliance of young hamilton, and to whom hamilton gravitated. They were looking at the issue of how to keep the country together, and what were really talking about here is how to keep the country together as a political force, but the way they saw it, and this was the genius the way they saw it, and this was genius, keeping the country together as a financial phenomenon. What they were talking about here is what is known as the revolutionary war debt. Which is to say, it is an incredibly complicated topic, and when i study it, smoke comes out of my ears as i try to get a handle on all of the aspects of the debt, but the country needed money to fight the war. The part that morrison hamilton were interested in took the form of bonds issued to a small number of very wealthy people of the Robert Morris type, who were expecting, hoping to get paid 6 interest on their bonds. There was no tax on that at the time, a nice rate of return. That was supposed to finance the war. This was an interstate kind of investing class, lending class. The merchants, the people with actual money in gold and silver, or the equivalent in possession. So the war debt, and this is what is fascinating with people talking about debt now and hamilton, the war debt is pulling country together as far as the people who envision a future for the country. You have all of the richest people in the country, or many of them, invested in these bonds. So it is funny to think about National Unity being equated with more war and public debt, but that is the way they looked at it for obvious and cogent reasons. What people say about hamilton frequently is he was confronted with all this debt after the revolutionary war as treasury secretary and he had to wrestle with this and get it paid off because they had to spend all this money. That is the opposite of what happened in the 1780s. As you probably know, hamilton is responsible for funding the debt, and assuming all of the state debts. Hamilton funding assumption. Funding a debt and paying off a debt are not the same thing. They are in some ways opposites. We know this when we make payments on credit cards, we are not paying them off when we make the minimum payment. This is a funny thing that has happened to hamiltons legacy. It is not just that most people dont get it. I will breach you something quickly from the internet. If you put in a few search terms around hamilton, debt, etc. , you can get this. Paying for the revolutionary war was the start of the countrys debt, true. Some of the Founding Fathers formed a group and borrowed money from france and the netherlands to pay for the war. That is also true, that is where that entry stops on the war debt. John adams went over there, he negotiated, blah blah. The foreign debt is not the important part of the debt. The domestic debt is what drives all of the issues we still deal with today it was substantially larger in numbers and overwhelmingly more important. But the fact that some website gets this wrong should not surprise anybody, except that this website is called treasury direct kids. It is supposed to educate kids about physical matters. It is the bureau it is the department hamilton founded. It is describing his approach to debt in wrong terms. What fascinated him, what got him up in the morning to us, might sound boring, public debt. It was a thrilling opportunity and a domestic debt, the debt to rich americans that was the driver of everything i have been trying to talk about. Here are some liberal scholars writing a piece about something unrelated. Theyre trying to fill you in on the background of hamilton and debt. They say the most pressing issue is what to do about the new nations debt. Continental congress and individual states accumulated massive debts during the war. Hamilton, now secretary of the treasury, wanted the new federal government to assume the states and pay them back in full this sort of general sense of he came into office, we have run up so much debt and i have to pay it off. I dont know exactly where that comes from. If he heard that we were saying things like that he would be like wow, all of these years later and they still dont get the brilliance of what i was trying to bring about. I dont know how he would feel about that but i find it fascinating that we dont want to know about his real relationship to the debt. He didnt try to hide it it wasnt scheming. He put forward in a brilliant manner an entire Program Based on this very idea. Now, the risk to all this visionary stuff that they were working on, a central bank, federal bonds, getting the state debts into federal hands as well. Coalescing this massive Economic Force through government. The threat to all of this in the 1780s is guess what . Peace. The absence of war. What is the Congress Going to do, they think they are sovereign entities. They are not going to make good on these bonds. They might ignore them or cancel the debt. Peace is definitely a problem, to the extent that Robert Morrisassistant wrote a letter to general washington requesting that he keep the war going a little bit longer. The idea frequently with Robert Morris was when he was able to get requisitions and get money, pay the bondholders. It was not about paying the soldiers and troops. Pay the bondholders. If you do not pay the bondholders, if you force the bondholders to take too big of a haircut, anarchy will prevail, stability will falter. First you pay the bondholders. That is i you keep things together. This is an idea that Robert Morris had. The idea was to get a tax going. A national tax. There was no nation, but a National Style tax. If the states to agree to go beyond the powers they were granted in the articles of confederation. And impose an impost they called it on imported goods. He told them it was just the beginning. If we can get them to do that we will have other kinds of Domestic Taxes as well as. This is the vision for forming nationhood. You can tie it together by collecting in an interstate manner, taxes earmarked for federal bonds. That doesnt sound exactly what we think of when we think of a unified nation. That is what they thought would gather up all of this Economic Force, all of this wealth, all of this power, and make it grow and become dynamic. That is a really skeletal idea of the things they began to develop in the 1780s. Hamilton fought in a far more nuanced way than morris could have probably. Put into effect in the 1790s, i will check with my watch and see how we are doing. I will sip some water. In 1783 they this is hamilton to my mind. I see him being born in 1782, which is my conceit about this whole thing. His first formative Political Action on a countrywide stage was to involve himself in a conspiracy. It was to threaten the Continental Congress, to threaten the states with a military coup in order to bring about the very scheme i described. This is fortuitous in some ways. Because the officer class had not been paid, they were very fed up about that. They sent officers to philadelphia to demand payment. Hamilton and morris and their crew were finding it very difficult to get this tax passed to have the effect of creating the unification of the country around the bonds. They seize on this opportunity that is presented by the angry officer class to suggest that they should also become bondholders. They should join in the fight to get the bonds funded via the tax. If the officer class of the army were to refuse to lay down their arms with peace, you have the strongest lobby, literally the strongest that there is. You have an armed force behind this. This was a very dangerous thing to try and do, as washington told hamilton a little later. This was a threat potentially to the republican nature of the country that was supposedly being formed to the states. They did it though, they tried. Think of the incredible audacity, the incredible fearlessness, the incredible ability to take risks with his future reputation and maybe his life. His relationships with his fatherinlaw, if this had come to light in the way that it could have, think of the incredible high wire act this was. Hamilton goes as far as to try and get washington involved and to lead this effort. Washington demurrers. What happened is by the way, people city nuremberg crisis was a failure, in many ways it was, washington was not deposed by angry officers. The system continued, the army happily continued under civilian command. All that was good. Really, what happened partly was the officer class did get added to the bond holding class. It was the compromise, washington supported that. Now you have the other components of the scheme, you have the officer class of the armed forces involved in the same economic dynamic relationship. You can see the nuernberg conspiracy as a failure. You can also see it as a success. Coming out of the conspiracy he kind of sets the table for what he is going to do in the 1790s. He has a new relationship with george washington, and you might think because washington counseled hamilton, an army is a dangerous thing to play with. You would think that washington had thought, well hamilton is crazy, i had to better stay away from him. Actually, their correspondents after the conspiracy is a fascinating study in the dynamics of their always fascinating tents and important relationship. Washington makes it clear he is 100 in favor of being sure the country is being in a position, this is again towards leading towards nationalism, the country is in a position to pay the public creditors. This is a vision that washington shared. We have this sort of picture of the hamilton scheme. The concentration of american wealth in a bonded Government Debt to the rich and obligation to the rich, all in federal rather than state hands. It is hard, they felt they were not getting anywhere sometimes. An interstate obligation to align with the interest of the rich. Also, the financial interest in general and the social interest. It is a puzzle you are trying to put together, this system, to make it perfect or complete. You have the final click piece which is the concentration of military power in this same bonded debt. This combines a wealth with government, with force. Actual, literal force. This leads to the idea of tax collection. Pulling the country together and tax enforcement pulling the country together. There you have the basis i would say of the hamilton scheme. I think here, we might begin to see how some people at the time could consider this whole thing a bit of a scheme, a bit of a scam even. When i said he whole thing, i mean the american revolution, the war of independence. What is about to happen was the forming of the nation itself as a mechanism for in reaching rich at the expense of the poor and ordinary. You could see how some people might take that position given everything i have just described. Hamilton had enemies. I think you know he had enemies, because we know about the division in american culture. This is jefferson versus hamilton basically, or jefferson and madison versus hamilton. I want to tell you i want to complicate that story a little bit. There are other enemies that come first. If were still talking about the 1780s, jefferson and hamilton were not enemies in the 1780s, they did not have anything to do with each other. They come into the cabinet and they will Work Together in the 1790s. You meet people on a new job and you are like hi, nice to meet you. Then you realize this person is like my enemy. And think this person will ruin everything. Madison, who became hamiltons more effective enemy in the legislature. Madison and hamilton were close allies in everything i told you about except maybe the newburgh thing. Madison was very committed to all of the things we just talked about. They were the two hot shot lawyers in the Continental Congress pouring over the Continental Congress to find ways to expand the federal power. You know madison was committed to the federal power and to nationhood. Only later did the differences between hamilton and madison become so overwhelming. The enemies that hamilton had in the 1780s are a group of people whose names are not super well known, but they represent a movement, a populist movement. It had its own ideas about finance, if i may use that word. About money, american wealth, accountability to the people, they meant themselves, the ordinary people. These are people frequently without the vote. Of course, you had to have property to have the vote. To run for office you had to have even more property. They wanted the vote, they wanted to vote for white men. They wanted the vote for white men without property. What they wanted to do was do things like breakup government monopolies, fix prices, stop the foreclosures, enable smallscale credit for ordinary people. In that sense they would build their own Financial System in what they would consider a more democratic way. Without the vote, they rioted. They did all kinds of illegal things. We get this torches and pitchforks idea of the mob at the time. They tore down peoples houses. There was violence involved in this. Along with the torches and pitchforks image, they wrote resolutions, they said that they wanted. What they wanted was democracy. Of course, this is anathema to the founding generation. If you think about what this really meant at the time, with the populists wanted to do was break the connection between property and dissipation. Citizenship in that sense. They wanted to break the Property Connection between property and rights, property and liberty. That is an ancient connection as far as the famous Founding Fathers are concerned. Breaking it is a horror show, you have mopped rule, you have anarchy. These names are not names that have gone down in history the way the names of the famous founders are. I will tell you anyway to get them on the record. Thomas young, a doctor and activist. James cannon, a math teacher. Christopher marshall, a pharmacist, they were both labor organizers. Liam finley a weaver who became a lawyer. And herrmann who had a vision about an egalitarian american society. He wanted to end slavery, stop stealing indian land. He started writing about this in the 1760s. He believed in progressive taxation. He believe there should be some form of taking care of people when they get too old to work, which we might call social security. He wanted Government Credit programs. The end to dynastic wealth, regulation, they actually called it regulation of the power of wealth. The thing about husband, i would like to get this on the record, he was not alone. He saw these things. Literally he had the kind of mind, where he actually saw these things. He had literal visions. Everything i said that sounds like the new deal, he saw them. He spent his life on a exodus of the book of daniel. The populists were not in our terms necessarily, they were not modern, rational, scientific liberal types. There is a certain illiberalism to use a term around right now about some of their visions. Like you might see in the abolitionist movement. It is not like a we did a study and it is more effective if you dont have slavery. It is a moral calling from a vision that might seem outside of the enlightenment vision that i would say hamilton represents among others. There is an opposition for you, we wont have time to get to the jeffersonmadison opposition. I want to get this other triangulated peace and. With the hamilton scheme coming on strong, about to get put in place, it is about to come in the constitution. He is about to become the secretary of treasury. The opposition is this White Working Class of the day. In a interesting scope between socialistic ideas and small capitalistic ideas. A dire opposition to that, that is what sets off a lot of the explosions that i believe, amended on this note so we can get some questionandanswer in here. There are still with us in many ways today. I will leave it at that. Thank you for your very kind attention today. Thanks a lot. [applause] as we are about to do the question and answer let me say one more thing. I want to thank the museum of American Finance for its tolerance of my eccentric and eccentric approach. Also the Alexander Hamilton awareness society. I dont know if you will still be speaking to me after this, even if you are not i thank you very much for your liberal approach to these kind of dissenting views. How are we doing this q a . Is there a microphone going around . I have a proposal, i run a blog on hamilton. The proposal for a substitute for the word finance, credit. Since hamiltons work was all devoted to the idea of public credit, i suggest that gives a higher concept to the kind of machinations he was carrying out. The purpose of the credit, of letting the financial class to the government was to develop the country. He had tremendous support from some workingclass people as you know from the constitutional activities here in new york. The great ship hamilton that was sent down broadway in support of the constitution. Because it was going to build the country. That is what i would suggest. I think credit is a better word. Im not sure it is going to sell copies of my book. I would agree it is the more accurate term. Was hamilton a bondholder himself . Im glad this came up. People spent a lot of time i think that raises a question about personal corruption. I would like to make this clear, it is very interesting. While he hung out with a lot of the people who would very directly benefit, he wanted to hang out with them, he wanted to encourage them to make things better for them. That is how he was building the country. People spend a lot of time, jefferson, madison, others, trying to prove that hamilton was personally corrupt. That he was personally scheming and would benefit from his own project. I think it is fascinating that they totally failed to prove that. I think they failed because his vision robert morse was scheming and didnt think there was anything wrong with it. If he hadnt, i dont know if wed be here right now. He was scheming for sure. Hamilton had a much more faulting vision. He wanted to author an empire. He wasnt looking to get a few bucks on the side. Im glad that came up. When people accuse him of corruption, if they wanted to accuse him of corruption, they should have been a reigning the system, not his personal interests. This gentleman is carrying a microphone. Thank you for your lovely talk. I went to get some insight into his early, formative years. I have the greatest esteem for him. I wondered if you could give us more information on the development of his character, being born out of wedlock. He was denied access to christian education. I cant give you. Partly because as i was saying, that aspect, there he is, michael, that man in the back has his hand up. He can tell you everything i would say there is to know about that. He is working on that now. As i was saying, my interest just does not lie in the back story. I talk about his relationship with washington for a second, i could do a long, deep dive on that. I find it won the most fascinating relationships there is. I am not interested in how that might relate to his father issues or whatever. Not because i dont think it is an interesting subject, again i am interested in my father issues. If i knew some of you better i would be interested in yours. Everybody has them. I am always looking for the things about him that makes him different. There are obviously other ways to look at this. Michael has a lot of that information. Sorry, the microphone has been handed away, i dont think we can hear you. How did the revolutionary war soldiers, enlisted soldiers fear under the scheme . I understand that the officers became bondholders, enlisted soldiers, how did they fare . Theres a long complicated answer which i cannot go into. In their opinion, they did not fare very well. They were not made gentlemen. Many of them went home unmade. They began to get a sense, whether you agree with them or not, that this whole long seven years of war had did nothing for them. Only for enriching the class of people who were already rich. Who they already knew as their local creditors. There already indebted to at rates we would consider use risk and work userus and work already foreclosing properties. Anyone else . Hi. Behind the statue of george washington, there is this bundle of sticks wrapped up, it is a roman symbol for strength and unity. They come from the word of fascist. It is not useful of course to call hamilton a fascist. Is what youre talking about a combination of financial power and military power, is it not on the spectrum so to speak . It is not useful to me. Partly because i dont think i know enough technically speaking about fascism to apply it. Also, it is not an 18thcentury term. I have seen arguments where people are saying exactly what youre are saying. If you are trying to enrich the richest number of families and manage the economy that way from the top down, maybe. I guess i would go with your statement that it is not really useful. Categorizing is not really what i try to do when i am talking, when i am writing books about this stuff are talking about it. What i try to do is make it my own interpretation, my own imagination, my own engagement with the material. I tried to make it like it is coming alive. That term would not have existed. It has so many connotations that are for obvious reasons damming. I just wanted to feel more like, what was it like for them . How excited was hamilton when he saw the opportunities . Other people can do that. Other people can decide and had these debates and analyses. Maybe this is ironic because im taking you to places that are quite critical. It is not because i am scared to use the term because people wont like me or be angry. I have been accused of that. Im not scared to use it. I just dont think it helps bring anything to life. I do think it is a good line of thought and worth pursuing. Thank you for bringing it up. I have to watch the microphones, i cannot just call on people. I am watching. I am watching. This gentleman. Yes. I think i do not understand something, because what you just explained, i dont know why the hamilton Awareness Group would hate you for that. What is bad about this . Or am i just a hopeless capitalist . You may be. I was just kidding. My take on hamilton as obviously critical. Yuck there is nothing necessarily bad about it, but some people i mean this is what is so interesting. I wrote in the whiskey rebellion and my first book. Hamilton played a major role. I did not have time to talk about in detail today. People who read that, some of them said to me, i finished that book and i hate that guy. I hate him. I thought, well, that was not my intention. I get why you could find him frightening in some ways and overly intense, and you might not subscribe to his vision for the country, and a lot of people then did not. I do not hate him. I think sometimes major enthusiastic do not like the are hot people, here i am. I would also say i do think some of the big enthusiastic at the moment are touchy when you bring up some of the nuts and bolts realities of how the stuff actually worked or seemed to work for those who did everything they could to stop it. I do not think it is necessarily bad. I just think some people think it is. One more. Not all of us hate you. Im not saying anybody here hates me. That was a joke. When you talk about hamilton and his effect on the economy and the dichotomy between the soldiers and the upper classes, hamilton actually believed that corporations should be citizens have the same rights. The founders and my understanding were totally against that. However, the Supreme Court has just put that into play in other probusiness things that deal with the Federalist Society and going back to the original intent of the constitution, and you have written about that quite a bit. How long do we have here . 30 seconds for this one . Heres what i want to say about that. I will not delve into the whole corporations people thing. I will say that the federalists 78 are loved by many. He makes quite explicit his belief that one of the things of the independent judiciary can do is sort of slap down more democratic fiscal legislation. Since you bring up the Supreme Court, since we are all thinking about that right now, liberalism and modern liberalism has placed a lot of faith in the defendants of the Supreme Court and house for a number of years and important issues. That is not necessarily the way hamilton thought that was supposed to work. Independence of the judiciary can often make undemocratic decisions, and in some ways to him, that was a lore for getting people to ratify the constitution. Would you say we are wrapped up . Thank you again. Thank you for everyone who sponsored this. Thank you all for coming out. applause the session up next features Yale University history and studies professor joanne freeman, editor of the essential hamilton. Good morning. Im a professor of history at the university of Central Florida and a proud member of the board of the National Council for history education. I trust all of you are doing well and keeping safe. These are very strange times. Even for his