Thursday, October 15, 2009

"We forgot"



You don't often think of Alexander Hamilton as a funny guy, but Gordon S. Wood makes me wish I could have a drink with him:
During the Revolutionary era Hamilton had shed his youthful religious inclinations and had become a conventional liberal with deistic inclinations who was an irregular churchgoer at best. People even told stories about his joking references to religion. During the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 [Benjamin] Franklin proposed to call in a minister each day to lead the delegates in prayers "to the Creator of the universe" in order to calm the rancor of the debates. Hamilton is supposed to have replied that the Convention did not need any "foreign aid." When Hamilton was later asked why the members of the Convention had not recognized God in the Constitution, he allegedly replied, "We forgot."

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous5:06 PM

    Hi -- this is Seth -- the author of The Puzzle of Hamilton's Federalist No. 77. If you have a chance, please send me an email. My address is posted on SSRN.

    thanks,

    seth

    ReplyDelete

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