Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757-1804) was among the first of the great American Protectionists with his famous Report on Manufactures forever immortalizing him in the history of American protectionism. The influence of Hamilton’s report on later American Protectionists is unquestionable. Mathew Carey declared, for instance, “that Alexander Hamilton was the real founder of the American System,” and was so impressed with Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures, that he declared that if “all those works [in the corpus of political economy] were annihilated,” this document “alone would be sufficient to enable a statesman to trace the route that leads… his nation [to] the highest degree of prosperity and happiness.” Similarly, in 1820, Daniel Raymond also declared that “the only American book that has the semblance of a treatise on political economy, is Hamilton's reports, as Secretary of the Treasury.” Even as late as 1892, the Boston-based Home Market Club remarked how “Alexander Hamilton is generally recognized as the father of the protective system in America, [and] it is well for all students of this branch of political economy to go to the fountain-head. His famous Report on Manufactures.”
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Hamilton accomplishments, however, extend well beyond his contributions to the theory of protection. Aside from George Washington, Hamilton was perhaps the most important figure in the history of the early republic. Hamilton was a decorated soldier during the Revolutionary War, serving as Washington’s aide-de-camp. Hamilton then served as a representative for New York at the Confederation Congress between 1782 and 1783. This experience further confirmed Hamilton’s opinion that the Articles of Confederation were wholly inadequate for the successful execution of government. Hamilton would later attend the Constitutional Conventions in Annapolis in 1789, and Philadelphia in 1787, where he partook in the drafting of the Constitution of the United States. And although many his proposals were rejected at the convention, Hamilton would later become the Constitution’s chief advocate. His famed Federalist Papers, which he wrote along with James Madison and John Jay, served as an unparalleled defense of the Constitution and later became one of its leading interpretations, and is quite possibly America’s most important document after the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. Though the scope of the Federalist Papers are broader in scope than economics, several of the Federalist essays also offer keen insights into Hamilton’s economic thought.
On September 11, 1789, Hamilton was appointed by President Washington as the Secretary of the Treasury in the first federal cabinet. Hamilton’s influence within the Washington Administration was considerable. As one Hamilton historian has commented, “[Hamilton] assumed an influence in Washington’s cabinet unmatched in the annals of the American cabinet system… He was more than merely Secretary of the Treasury. He was in fact Washington’s prime minister.” It was during this time that Hamilton produced his major state papers; these being the two Reports on Public Credit, the Report on the National Bank, The Report on the Mint, and The Report on Manufactures (the latter of which was co-authored with Tench Coxe).​