In order to discuss how these two documents reflect Jefferson and Hamilton’s respective visions of “America’s future and national character in the new republic,” we must first understand what ideas those two men had on this subject.
Thomas Jefferson was the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party. This party believed that the United States should build its economy on small farmers. It believed that the best possible country was one dominated by individuals who farmed for themselves. They believed that only this would make a country virtuous and allow it to be democratic.
Alexander Hamilton was one of the leading thinkers in the Federalist Party. The Federalists believed in a mixed economy. They wanted to have farming, of course, because all countries in the world needed farming, particularly in the days before refrigeration and ways of transporting crops quickly over long distances. However, they believed that it was also important to have manufacturing. They did not believe that a country could become wealthy if it was dominated by small farmers. They did not worry a great deal about the virtue of the country or its ability to maintain a democratic system of government because they did not think those things would be problematic in the kind of economy they wanted.
Having seen what Jefferson and Hamilton believed about the future and the character of the United States, let us see how their ideas are reflected in the two documents to which you have linked.
Jefferson’s document is by far the shorter, but even so, it clearly sets out Jefferson’s ideas. It tells us that Jefferson wanted the US to be dominated by small farmers. Jefferson says
While we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff .
By this, he means that Americans should work as farmers, not as manufacturing workers. Mostly, Jefferson is concerned with the character of farmers. He talks at length about how farmers are morally good, saying, among other things:
Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
Jefferson believes that small farmers are the best kind of people because he believes that they are independent. They fend for themselves and do not need anyone to support them. He says that people who work for others depend on their bosses, and he argues that
Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
What this means is that people who work for other people can never really be independent or virtuous and they cannot be good members of a democracy because others can use them as “tools” of their ambitions.
By contrast, Hamilton does not really dwell on character or democracy. What he cares about is wealth. He wants the country to become rich and he is not worried that its people will lack virtue or be unfit for democracy. What Hamilton focuses on is how to make money and how to make Americans more competitive.
For example, between lines 30 and 40 in the document, Hamilton talks about how much harder manufacturers will work. He says that farmers have long period of time where they do not have to do much work. He says that they can sometimes succeed without working too hard just because they have good land. By contrast, he says, “the artisan” has to work hard all the time. Hamilton wanted people to work hard and to compete with one another. In other words, he wanted something like our modern system of capitalism.
Hamilton believed that manufacturing would make America richer. Around line 47, Hamilton talks about how much more efficient manufacturing is. He says that machinery allows countries to produce more things using fewer workers. It also allows a country to make more economic use of its women and children. Because of these things, he says,
the trade of a country which is both manufacturing and agricultural will be more lucrative and prosperous than that of a country which is, merely agricultural.
This is what is really important to Hamilton. He wants the country to be rich.
From all of this, we can see the differences between Jefferson and Hamilton’s visions. Jefferson cared most about the character of the people. He wanted small farmers who could be independent and virtuous. Hamilton was most concerned with wealth. He wanted the people in the country to work as hard and efficiently as possible and, thereby, to make the country wealthy.
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