As the most famous and consequential political rivalry in American history, the Hamilton–Jefferson feud has been the subject of numerous popular and scholarly accounts. The conflict itself has a classic flavor and symmetry. Alexander Hamilton scores a number of early victories over Thomas Jefferson, who moves into opposition and later resigns from the cabinet. His work complete, Hamilton returns to private life but seeks to direct the ship of state through his influence in Congress and the cabinet. The election of John Adams as president and Jefferson as vice-president—former friends and now foes—widens the ideological and partisan divide that had plagued the Washington administration. The secret intrigue of Hamilton (whom Adams despised) and the coordinated opposition of Jefferson and Madison create an explosive environment that Adams struggles to defuse. His success in avoiding war—and perhaps civil war—costs the embittered president reelection. Hamilton, who hopes to lead an army against France or Spain or Virginia, finds himself helpless to prevent Adams’ defeat, a man he publically vilified during the campaign. Faced with the prospect of an Aaron Burr presidency, Hamilton supports Jefferson as the lesser of two evils. Jefferson becomes president and Hamilton’s beloved bank survives, yet the former treasury secretary and his party are doomed. At the height of Jefferson’s popularity and success, his chief critic and rival is laid in the dust by Burr—“an American Catiline”—on “the cliffs of Weehawken.”

As the book’s title indicates, Carson Holloway’s account of the famed Jefferson-Hamilton rivalry covers only the three and a half years (1790–1793) they served together in the Washington administration. Holloway is particularly interested in the debates engendered by Hamilton’s domestic economic program as well as his defense of executive authority in foreign affairs. The former centers on the treasury secretary’s three major Reports—on Public Credit, the National Bank, and Manufactures—and Jefferson’s critical replies. The latter examines the debate over Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation and the subsequent exchange between “Pacificus” (Hamilton) and “Helvidius” (Madison) over the respective roles of Congress and the president in foreign policy. (Here Madison serves as Jefferson's surrogate). Through an “intensive examination” of Hamilton’s state papers and Jefferson’s responses, the author aims to “enrich our understanding of the founding,” “ourselves,” and “our political situation” (p. 3).

Holloway certainly delivers on his claim to provide the first thorough study of these debates. Indeed, his summary and careful analysis of the relevant documents is exemplary and leaves no substantive stone unturned. Yet those anticipating an answer to the question posed by the book’s subtitle may be disappointed. Was Hamilton “completing the founding” as he believed, or “betraying the founding” as Jefferson claimed? Holloway disavows any attempt at a “comprehensive evaluation of the merits of each man’s arguments,” but admits to being “generally more inclined to Hamilton’s position than to Jefferson’s” (p. 3, p. 4). This inclination is revealed throughout, and yet is so carefully qualified as to lack all conviction. In short, the author is fair and balanced to a fault.

Ironically, this even-handed treatment is sufficient to support what most historians and constitutional scholars consistently affirm: Hamilton’s arguments were superior to Jefferson’s. While the two men were intellectually on a par, Hamilton ran circles around Jefferson on the matter of constitutional construction. Hamilton, ever on offense, expounded the nation’s interests and fashioned administration policies as a “statesman educator” who aimed to make “a decisive contribution to the completion of America’s founding” (p. 20, p. 12). Jefferson, compelled to play defense, became increasingly convinced that his colleague sought to “betray the founding” by subverting the Constitution and the republic it established (p. 157). In hindsight, Jefferson’s fears seem exaggerated if not hysterical, and his attempt to straitjacket the federal government at its inception was ill-founded. In the duel over public policy and constitutional probity, Jefferson would win a few minor skirmishes, but Hamilton would win the major battles.

As a distilled record of these confrontations, Hamilton versus Jefferson will be of special interest to students of the early republic, particularly those disinclined to wade through Hamilton’s reports and Jefferson’s replies. There is no better scholarly account of these exchanges. And yet some readers may find the account incomplete insofar as Holloway writes as a political scientist as opposed to an historian. His interest is primarily in the arguments themselves as opposed to the broader historical context in which they took shape. As such it is difficult to account for the level of animus that developed between Jefferson and Hamilton without reference to the growing partisan rancor in Congress and out-of-doors. To cite but two examples, Holloway omits from his account the famous resolutions submitted by Virginia congressman William Branch Giles that censured Hamilton for “indecorum” in dealing with Congress and for mismanaging financial transactions at the treasury. The nine resolutions were culled from a draft penned by Jefferson himself and secretly passed to Giles. The Jefferson draft also contained a resolution charging Hamilton with “maladministration in the duties of his office” and calling for his removal. (All nine Giles resolutions—much to Jefferson’s chagrin—were soundly defeated.) The author also fails to note the active presence of Hamilton in the halls of Congress during the debates over his funding and banking bills, often packing the gallery with supporters. For Jefferson and others, this smacked of executive interference with the legislative branch, and along with the alleged corruption of congressmen gave Hamilton the appearance of an American Walpole. Add to this the more than five hundred officials under Hamilton at treasury (as opposed to only six at the state department) and Jefferson’s fears of an overreaching proto-monarchy appear somewhat more reasonable.

Many scholars have traced the constitutional and policy disputes between Jefferson and Hamilton to their competing visions of American society and republican government. Holloway mentions these “different visions” in passing but neither sketches them nor elaborates on the connection. He does, however, draw a prescient distinction between the two men’s views on republican government. “Jefferson . . . was more inclined to view it as a matter of natural right and a requirement of reason, while Hamilton tended to view it as a noble and beautiful thing where it could be established consistent with the rights of society” (p. 331). The two rivals may have considered their principles irreconcilable but their “serious differences,” Holloway maintains, “were not in fact fundamental” (p. 330). Both were sincere patriots and founding brothers—and they wronged one another as only brothers could. Yet certainly Holloway is mistaken when he claims that “the dispute was political not personal” (p. 1). This may be true of their official statements as cabinet members, but privately they held one another in contempt. As Ron Chernow has written, “both Hamilton and Jefferson came to see each other as hypocritical libertines, and this fed a mutual cynicism” (Alexander Hamilton, New York: Penguin, 2004, p. 316).

In his conclusion, Holloway looks to what lessons might be drawn from the epic battles between these two titans of the early republic. Obviously the debates reveal “no easy or simple lessons” (p. 325) nor can we “turn to the founders for a simple resolution of our differences” (p. 326). Still there is “positive value” in the “great seriousness about the principles over which they disagreed” so strongly (p. 327), just as there are “dangers” in an overzealous attachment to principle (p. 332). Ultimately, the Jefferson–Hamilton debates offer “an education in the kind of reasoning that is essential to enlightened statesmanship,” indeed, “an education in American political thought at its best” (p. 329). To have made this education accessible is a notable and welcome scholarly achievement.