Episode 58: Alexander Hamilton on Impeachment

03/04/20 • 45 min

No Founding Father thought more deeply about the presidency than Alexander Hamilton. He was an enthusiastic supporter of a strong chief executive and believed the president had a central and vital role to play in American government, both at home and abroad. Hamilton was also a realist when it came to the nature of politics and, unlike some of his contemporaries, did not shy away from the fact that politics can be a rough business. As a result, Hamilton jumped at the chance to define what impeaching the president would mean in The Federalist. We are still working within the parameters of the impeachment system as he understood it. This talk explains what Hamilton thought and how his ideas can shed light on the recent impeachment. This talk was given at the Down Town Association in New York City, with support from the St. Andrew's Society, the First Families of New York, and the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society.

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Episode 57: George Mason [The Virginians, Part 7]

In this final episode of the Virginians miniseries, Jay and Luke discuss George Mason, the godfather of Virginia republicanism. Mason was instrumental in writing the Virginia Constitution in 1776. He was the primary author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, upon which James Madison relied heavily for writing the Bill of Rights. Yet though Mason was a constructive participant at the Constitutional Convention, he eventually opposed the Constitution in strident and bitter terms because he thought it a bad deal for Virginia. Mason thus represents the competing instincts of the Founding Era — embodying a broadminded nationalism but also parochial prejudices.

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Episode 59: The Age of Federalism [The Federalists, Part 1]

Welcome to our three-episode miniseries on Federalism. We're taking a deep dive into America's first political party, which governed for the first twelve years under the Constitution, then collapsed entirely. Who were the Federalists? What did they believe? Why were they so dominant and then so completely destroyed? Our first episode takes a big picture look at their ideas, their coalition, the policy challenges they faced, and some of the novel solutions they developed for facing them. We look at Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Marshall, and other lesser-known Federalists and try to understand American politics at the end of the 18th century.