1. Jefferson's doctrine of nullification and his opposition to the North's attempt to ban slavery from Missouri as a condition of entry into the Union (which he regarded as a Northern Federalist plot aimed at “consolidation”) did not comport with Lincoln's own views.

2. Lincoln, Abraham, “Address at Cooper Institute,” 27 02 1860, in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865, ed. Fhrenbacher, Donald E.(New York: The Library of America, 1989), p. 117 (emphasis added)Google Scholar.

3. McDonald, Forrest, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979), pp. 121, 212–13Google Scholar; West, Thomas G., Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class and Justice in the Origins of America (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997), pp. 5, 8, 12Google Scholar; Finkelman, Paul, Slavery and the Founders, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2001), pp. 105–128Google Scholar; Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric, The Age of Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 99Google Scholar.

4. Cooke, Jacob Ernest, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1982), p. 45Google Scholar; “Neither Hamilton Nor Jay boldly championed the cause [of abolition].” Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770–1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 172Google Scholar.

5. Jaffa, Harry V., Crisis of the House Divided (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 324Google Scholar. See also Storing, Herbert J., “Slavery and the Moral Foundations of the American Republic,” in Toward a More Perfect Union: The Writings of Herbert J. Storing, ed. Bessette, Joseph M. (Washington D.C.: The AEI Press, 1995), pp. 142–44Google Scholar.

6. Davis, , Problem of Slavery, pp. 260–69Google Scholar; Finkelman, , Slavery and the Founders, pp. 39–40Google Scholar; Huston, James L., Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 7–23Google Scholar; Kammen, Michael, “The Rights of Property, and the Property in Rights': The Problematic Nature of ‘Property’ in the Political Thought of the Founders and the Early Republic,” in Liberty, Property, and the Foundations of the American Constitution, ed. Paul, Ellen Frankel and Dickman, Howard (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 8–11, 14Google Scholar; McDonald, Forrest, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1985), pp. 53–5Google Scholar.

7. Hamilton, Alexander, “A Full Vindication,” in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Syrett, Harold C. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 1: 51. Hereafter cited as PAH, volume and page numberGoogle Scholar.

8. Ibid.

9. Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II, ¶ 4, 6–8, 17, 22–3, 25–7, pp. 269–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Jaffa, , Crisis of the House Divided, pp. 323–27Google Scholar; Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 202–51Google Scholar; MacPherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 194–262Google Scholar. There are, of course, other interpretations of Locke, but the Hobbesian or bourgeois interpretation of both Locke and the principles of the Revolution dovetails with the allegation that many founders were more concerned about the rights of property (self-preservation) than the rights of slaves (justice). Davis (Problem of Slavery, pp. 268–9Google Scholar), for example, explicitly draws on C. B. Macpherson. Nevertheless, my interpretation of Hamilton is broadly consistent with the interpretations of Locke found in: Dworetz, Steven M., The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Zuckert, Michael P., Natural Rights and the New Republicanism(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, Launching Liberalism (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002)Google Scholar.

11. Locke, , Two Treatises of Government, II,¶ 6, p. 271Google Scholar.

12. Hamilton, , “A Full Vindication,” PAH, 1:51Google Scholar.

13. Jaffa, , Crisis of the House Divided, p. 326Google Scholar.

14. Hamilton, , “A Full Vindication,” PAH, 1:51Google Scholar.

15. Ibid., p. 53 (emphasis added).

16. Hamilton, , “The Farmer Refuted,” PAH, 1:156Google Scholar.

17. Hamilton, , “A Full Vindication,” PAH, 1:64Google Scholar.

18. Hamilton, , “Second Letter From Phocion,” PAH, 3:545Google Scholar (emphasis added).

19. Hamilton, , “The Farmer Refuted,” PAH, 1:87Google Scholar.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid (emphasis added).

22. Ibid., p. 88 (emphasis added).

23. Ibid., p. 122.

24. Ibid., p. 104.

25. lbid. (emphasis added).

26. lbid., p. 122.

27. At the time of Hamilton's writing, “moral” causes or power referred to both ethics as well as the realm of man as distinct from nature (i.e., moral or “man-made” causes had not yet been drained of ethical content).

28. lbid., p. 134 (emphasis added).

29. Notably, Hamilton uses “sacred” and natural interchangeably when referring to man's natural rights, a convention which Hobbes and Locke do not adopt. Compare Pufendorf, Samuel, On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), bk. 1, chap. 3, ¶ 9–12, pp. 35–37Google Scholar.

30. New-York Historical Society, New York Manumission Society Records, 6:3–4, 9Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as NYMS Records, volume and page number. The overtly religious language probably reflects the significant presence of Quakers in the society.

31. Hamilton, , “The Vindication No. III,” PAH, 11:472Google Scholar.

32. Ibid.

33. Hamilton, , Letter to John Jay, 14 03 1779, PAH, 2:17–19Google Scholar.

34. Library of Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, 1 Jan.-22 04 1779 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909), 13:387–8Google Scholar.

35. Hamilton, , Letter to John Jay, 14 03 1779, PAH, 2:18Google Scholar.

36. Ibid. (emphasis added).

37. Ibid. (emphasis added). 38

38. Ibid.

39. Hamilton, , Eulogy on Nathanael Greene, 4 07 1789, PAH, 5:351.Google Scholar

40. Hamilton, , 1777 Pay Book, PAH, 1:403–404Google Scholar.

41. Hamilton, , Letter to William Loughton Smith, 10 04 1797, PAH, 21:33,39Google Scholar. Hamilton did not submit a plan similar to Laurens's during the Quasi-War with France presumably because of the Deep South's opposition to one during the Revolution, the Constitution's explicit protection of slavery until 1808, and especially the “probable” loyalty of slaves to France. See Letter to Pinckey, Charles Cotesworth, 21 04 1800, PAH, 24:418Google Scholar; Letter from Bentley, William C., 19 09 1799, p.438n1Google Scholar. It is also notable that the New York Manumission Society helped to procure the freedom of black slaves of French immigrants from the West Indies who entered the United States after the 1794 French decree (with Hamilton sitting on a committee to establish the society's procedure for doing so). See NYMS Records, 7:172,196–200; 9:69.Google Scholar

42. Locke, Mary Stoughton, Anti-Slavery in America: From the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619–1808) (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1901), pp. 82–83Google Scholar.

43. Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, The Federalist Papers, ed. Rossiter, Clinton, intro. Kesler, Charles R. (New York: Mentor, 1999), No. 30, p. 159Google Scholar.

44. Hamilton, , Remarks in the N.Y. Ratifying Convention, 20 06 1788, PAH, 5:24Google Scholar. During the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton proposed that representation in the national legislature be based solely on the number of free inhabitants. Farrand, Max, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:36Google Scholar.

45. The Federalist Papers Nos. 6–8, 11, pp. 21–39, 59Google Scholar.

46. See also Robinson, Donald L., Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 425Google Scholar.

47. Hamilton, , “Opinion On the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a National Bank,” PAH, 8:105Google Scholar.

48. Ogden, Gibbons v., 9 Wheat 1, 6 L. Ed. 23 (1824)Google Scholar. An inlet for the federal government to interfere with slavery within the states comes from Marshall's reservation to the states only such commerce that is “completely internal” to a state. Since the products of slave labor did cross state lines, they, and therefore slavery, might be eligible for regulation by the federal government. Compare Wickard v. Filburn (1942)Google Scholar.

49. Hamilton, , “Opinion On the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a National Bank,” PAH, 8:102–103, 98Google Scholar.

50. Madison, James, Letter to Robert Walsh, 27 11 1819, in James Madison: Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1999), p. 740Google Scholar.

51. Hamilton, , “Opinion On the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a National Bank,” PAH, 8:129Google Scholar.

52. Hamilton, , Letter to Theodore Sedgwick, 2 02 1799, PAH, 22:452Google Scholar.

53. Finkelman, , Slavery and the Founders, p. 121Google Scholar; Robinson, , Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, pp. 347–77Google Scholar.

54. Hamilton, , Letter to George Washington, 19 11. 1792, PAH, 13:171Google Scholar. The French government was likewise unstable. Hendrickson, Robert A., The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1981), pp. 504–505Google Scholar.

55. Hamilton, , Letters to Timothy Pickering, 9 & 21 02 1799, PAH, 22:475, 492–93Google Scholar. Historians frequently fail to mention that Pickering received his instructions in this matter (as in most matters) from Hamilton.

56. Finkelman, , Slavery and the Founders, pp. 121–23Google Scholar.

57. Bemis, Samuel F., Jay's Treaty (New York: Macmillan, 1923), pp. 96–102Google Scholar; Combs, Jerald A., The Jay Treaty (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), p. 83Google Scholar; Locke, Mary Stoughton, Anti-Slavery in America, p. 84Google Scholar.

58. Hamilton, , “Remarks on the Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation lately made between the United States and Great Britain,” PAH, 18:417Google Scholar; “The Defence,” No. III, PAH, 18:513–23Google Scholar.

59. Locke, Mary Stoughton, Anti-Slavery in America, pp. 97–98Google Scholar.

60. Census figures for 1790 show New York with 21, 193 slaves, or 6 percent of its population. While certainly not on the scale of the South, New York's relatively large slave population undermines the view that slavery would inevitably be extinguished there. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Study 00003: Historical Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: U.S., 1790–1970 (Ann Arbor: ICPSR)Google Scholar, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/censusbin/census/cen.pl.

61. “Attendance at a Meeting of the Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves,” 4 02 1785, PAH, 3:597Google Scholar. For a history of the society, see Moseley, Thomas R., “A History of the New-York Manumission Society, 1785–1849” (Ph.D. diss., Nwy York University, 1963)Google Scholar.

62. NYMS Records, 6:29–31Google Scholar.

63. Ibid., 6:61.

64. McDonald, , Alexander Hamilton, p. 373n12Google Scholar.

65. Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1974), pp. 35–36Google Scholar; Ballagh, James Curtis, A History of Slavery in Virginia (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1902), pp. 130–31Google Scholar.

66. NYMS Records, 6:124, 142; 9:4, 7, 30, 53, 75, 95, 113Google Scholar.

67. Ibid., 6:121.

68. Ibid.,6:17,19.

69. Ibid., 6:37,44; “Memorial to Abolish the Slave Trade,” 13 03 1786, PAH, 3:654Google Scholar.

70. Locke, Mary Stoughton, Anti-Slavery in America, p. 121–22Google Scholar. Manumission acts did not free slaves, but eased the restrictions and requirements for manumission. The most onerous of these was requiring a slaveholder to post a bond before manumitting a slave in order to prevent the freed slave from becoming a public charge.

71. NYMS Records, 6:94–95Google Scholar.

72. Ibid., 6:240.

73. Locke, Mary Stoughton, Anti-Slavery in America, 123–24, 128Google Scholar; Monaghan, Frank, John Jay: Defender of Liberty (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1935), p. 422Google Scholar.

74. NYMS Records, 6:80–91Google Scholar. See also Andrews, Charles C., The History of the New York African Free-Schools (New York: Mahlon Day, 1830; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

75. NYMS Records, 6:123Google Scholar; The Federalist Papers, No. 11, pp. 58–59Google Scholar.

76. Andrews, , The History of the New York African Free-Schools, pp. 34–35, 38–39, 44–49Google Scholar.

77. NYMS Records, 6:8–13Google Scholar.

78. Ibid., 6:239, 264; 9:13, 39, 65, 80–81.

79. Ibid., 6:72–74.

80. Locke, Mary Stoughton, Anti-Slavery in America, p. 101Google Scholar.

81. The Federalist Papers, No. 51, p. 290; No. 9, p. 40Google Scholar.

82. Ibid., No. 10, p. 46.

83. “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Seventh Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies Established in different parts of the United States, Assembled at Philadelphia on the Third of June, One Thousand Eight Hundred and One” (Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson, Jr., 1801), pp. 37, 41Google Scholar.

84. There has been a vigorous academic debate over whether commerce by itself would have put an end to slavery. For an excellent bibliographic essay on the subject, see Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the America Civil War (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), pp. 61–75Google Scholar.

85. Hamilton, “1777 Pay Book,” PAH, 1:403Google Scholar.

86. Hamilton, , “The Defence No. XX,” PAH, 19:332Google Scholar.

87. Ibid., pp. 332–33.

88. Ibid., 333.

89. Hamilton, , “A Full Vindication,” PAH, 1:53Google Scholar.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Cohler, Anne M., Miller, Basia C., and Stone, Harold S. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), part 1, bk. 4, chap. 8, pp. 40–41Google Scholar.

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96. Hamilton, , “The Defence No. XX,” PAH, 19:332Google Scholar.

97. The Federalist Papers, No. 6, pp. 21–28Google Scholar. See also Walling, Karl-Friedrich, Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free Government (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999), pp. 176–85Google Scholar.

98. Hamilton, , “The Defence No. XX,” PAH, 19:333Google Scholar.

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100. McCoy, Drew R., The Elusive Republic: Political Economy In Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980), chaps. 5, 8Google Scholar; Kennedy, Roger G., Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 12–16, 78–81Google Scholar.

101. Hamilton, , “The Defence of the Funding System,” PAH, 19:40Google Scholar.

102. Hamilton, , “Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” PAH, 10:256Google Scholar.

103. Ibid., p. 259.

104. Hiram Caton makes a similar point: “The Report [on Manufactures] had two further political implications that Hamilton did not stress. … Hamilton might reasonably hope that the growth of manufactures would in the long run dilute the influence of the rural interests and the dangerous localisms of husbandmen” (The politics of Progress: The Origins and Development of the Commercial Republic, 1600–1835 [Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1988], p. 477)Google Scholar.

105. Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, part 3, bk. 13, chap. 8, p. 252Google Scholar.

106. Hamilton, , “1777 Pay Book,” PAH, 1:402Google Scholar (emphasis added).

107. Hamilton, , “Report on Manufacturers,” PAH, 10:270Google Scholar.

108. Hamilton, , “A Full Vindication,” PAH, 1:53Google Scholar. “Sorry I am to say that mine is still backward in the encouragement of manufactorys or artists, but I trust it will soon get better as the Slavery by blacks decreases & by Emigration from these Countrys we get betterd as to a free tenantry.” Digges, Thomas to Hamilton, , 6 04 1792, PAH, 11:242Google Scholar.

109. Hamilton, , “Second Draft of the Report on Manufactures,” PAH, 10:54Google Scholar. The passage quoted refers to farmers rather than slaves, but it applies to slaves with even more force. See also Smith, Adam, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, Edwin (New York: The Modern Library, 1937), bk. 4, chap. 9, p. 648Google Scholar.

119. Hamilton, , ”Report on Manufactures,” PAH, 10:251–52Google Scholar.

111. Ibid.

112. Ibid.