Jefferson vs. Hamilton: the debate persists

Had a serendipitous surprise on my morning commute today. I’m listening to the audiobook of The American Future, in which Simon Schama makes the point that yes, rebuilding societies after we’ve bombed them into submission actually IS the mission of the Army. Universally-admired Generals like Eisenhower and Marshall didn’t flinch at the idea, and they probably would’ve squinted and looked at you like you were an ugly, rude little thing if you’d suggested otherwise. These were men that knew how to get things running, as Simon says, ‘to build democracy.’ They were cut from the grey cloth of the West Point that founder Thomas Jefferson envisioned (I hadn’t known that little bit either; is there anything Jefferson didn’t do?), a place that would teach its students not just to efficiently and scientifically conduct war, but more importantly to wield those same skills to build the infrastructure and foundations of the new country.

The serendipitous part was that I was about a mile as the crow flies from Detroit’s Fort Wayne when it was mentioned in the book as an example of the sturdy work of Montgomery Meigs, one of the first and best examples of the Jeffersonian West Point engineers. If I hadn’t been running late, I would’ve sat in the parking structure to hear more about his years here, building a fort and barracks which still stand after almost 200 years. Meigs has captured my attention in the book, not least for his ‘establishment’ of Arlington National Cemetery, done out of spite toward his old commander, friend, and fellow early West Point grad Robert E. Lee. When he heard of what he believed was the odious betrayal of Lee accepting the position of General of the Army of Northern Virginia, Meigs suggested using the family mansion of Lee’s wife as a burial ground for the Union dead. The first men (soon to include Meigs’ son) were buried next to Mrs. Lee’s beloved rose bushes; ‘If they ever spend another night there,’ Meigs fumed, ‘they’ll sleep with the ghosts.’ It doesn’t get any more American Gothic.

But that’s a digression from saying that, yes, the military does need to be in the business of rebuilding that which we tear down. As I was listening to Schama, I remembered some of my own experiences with my fellow enlistees and this funny and smart TED Talk by Thomas Barnett, who proposes a new way of dealing with this problem: split the military into two wings, one for tearing down, the other for building up. Given the complexity of the overlapping missions of the military, I believe Jefferson would have been fine with it. Definitely give it a listen.



Side note: If you're a political history nerd, Schama also outlines the debate between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton regarding the mission of the Army as well as the function of government. Its applicability to the current tropes of both parties (but especially modern conservatism) is profound.