A more probing exhibition might set a very different Hamiltonian
relationship - that with Jefferson - into the larger context
of conflict and cooperation between Virginia planters and
New York merchants on the issue of slavery. The current show
settles for patting Hamilton on the back (deservedly so) for
his role in the New York Manumission Society, itself an artifact
of the city's mercantile elite long-in-gestation rethinking
of its reliance on un-free labor - spurred along, our exhibit
might make clear, by anxieties about slave rebellions dating
back to 1741, by a growing appreciation of the comparative
benefits of relying on free labor in an era of expanding immigration,
and by the contagion of Revolutionary ideals about liberty.
But our show wouldn't exaggerate these developments, and
would note that two-thirds of the city's merchant rich owned
human beings in 1790 (as did one of every eight artisans),
and that the absolute number of slaves in the city jumped
by 25% during that prosperous decade, with the bulk of new
owners being the big winners in the economic sweepstakes -
merchants, lawyers, bankers, brokers and speculators. If Hamilton
didn't own slaves himself - though as Chernow notes, this
remains an open question - his father-in-law and principal
patron certainly did, and his wife Eliza helped manage them.
The reticence of the current show on Hamilton's personal involvement
with the institution is odd, given that one of Brookhiser's
best curatorial interventions illuminatingly links a slave
shackle with a silver sugar bowl owned by the Schuylers. And
it is, after all, perfectly possible to own slaves while condemning
the slave system; half the Manumission Society members were
in this position. Of course, admitting this would require
lightening up on Jefferson.
But the mercantile elite's stake in slavery went far deeper
than personal ownership, and was about to get deeper still,
for while New York would abolish slavery at home (though only
in 1827), it would underwrite the expansion of bondage down
South. Gotham's businessmen would flourish mightily by trading
and financing slave-grown cotton, forging an economic alliance
that would complement the political partnership ratified by
the Constitution. At the same time, deep and growing differences
- political, cultural, ideological, and economic - would characterize
relations between merchants and planters. These divergences
were, in turn, crucial components of the vehement political
battles that emerged in the 1790s and 1800s between Federalists
and Republicans - battles in which Hamilton, and New York
City, were crucial protagonists.
A revised exhibition would feature a section
on these battles. It would touch on foreign (and military)
affairs, the role of the press (and suppressions thereof),
and crucially, the defection of the city's artisans from Hamilton's
Federalist coalition to Jefferson's Republican column.8
This transition, facilitated in no small degree by Aaron Burr,
came about in part because Hamilton, pace his fine words in
the Report on Manufactures, was unwilling to provide tariff
protection for infant industries, lest he alienate his political
base of Anglo-oriented merchants, or endanger the customs
revenues underlying his financial system, even after an exploding
trade with other Europeans had broadened the available income
stream. The election of 1800 in New York City - the central
cockpit of a key battleground state - was to a remarkable
degree a match fought ward by ward in the streets of Manhattan,
between Hamilton and Burr. The Republican victory, and Jay's
refusal of Hamilton's plea to reverse the outcome, precipitated
a fundamental realignment in American politics.9
The exhibition would set Hamilton's premature demise firmly
in this larger context, going beyond what's on offer now to
situate dueling within the changing political, military, cultural
and commercial universe. It would end with an exploration
of the latter-day impact of Hamilton's contributions, and
the vicissitudes of his reputation. If energy and space remained,
it could tie his fluctuating fortunes to Wall Street's roller-coaster
status in the national culture as it rose and fell with the
sine-curve variations of a capitalist economy.
This is, of course, a story line, not an exhibit plan, but
it suggests that the current array of artifacts, paintings
and documents might have been more fruitfully regrouped into
chronological/thematic clusters, each replete with abundant
but accessible explanatory material. The portraits whose heads
now hang uselessly in the introductory gallery could be worked
into the unfolding story at the point at which their subjects
became actors in the Hamiltonian drama. The device of having
debates between talking heads could be used throughout to
illuminate the era's real conflicts. The texts now lying inertly
on their altars could be re-housed in document stations within
each cluster that allowed visitors (using well-established
technology) to delve into the documents and bring them alive.
Every step of the way, designers could employ artful interactives
to involve the audience, making them active rather than passive
participants in the learning process - deploying the kind
of hi-tech devices that could have been easily invented and
built, given a 5.7 million dollar budget.
-6-
Conversely, it's hard to imagine how they did manage to
spend over five million dollars on the current version, given
its low-tech nature (the web site boasts of "state-of-the-art
interactive displays" but these are nowhere in evidence).
That's an astonishing amount of money for an exhibition, even
when the collateral components are factored in; perhaps some
of the money went into N-YHS capital improvements or its endowment?
But however many millions were actually expended on this relatively
threadbare show - subtract the big screens and you're left
with one gallery of paintings and six cases of artifacts,
nearly all from the Society's own collections - they got mighty
little bang for all those bucks.
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