This course examines the political actions and thought of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, arguably the two most important founders of the American republic. In their lifetimes, Hamilton and Jefferson understood themselves to have opposed understandings of what was good for America. We will explore this opposition and what it meant and means for the American Republic by studying what Hamilton and Jefferson had to say and what they did about the great issues of their day.
Instructors: Stephen Knott is Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval War College and the author of Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth. David Tucker is Associate Professor of Defense Analysis in the Naval Postgraduate School and the author of Enlightened Republicanism: A Study of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia.