View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

aScholars whose interests include the political, diplomatic, and economics aspects of the early republic will find these works rewarding additions to their reading.a
--"Journal of the Early Republic"

aThis book. . . achiev[es] a badly needed analysis of Hamiltonas impact on his and later times.a
--"The Historian"

"Talleyrand, who was acquainted with all of the statesmen of Europe, once remarked that he had never encountered anyone 'equal to Alexander Hamilton.' Hamilton may, in fact, have been the greatest of the American Founding Fathers. He was certainly one of the most important. Despite this, he has rarely been given his due. This superb collection of essays goes a considerable distance towards redressing the balance and towards restoring an American statesman to the central place that he occupied in his own time."
--Paul A. Rahe, author of "Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution"

"Here are many fresh thoughts by many of the most innovative scholars at work on Alexander Hamilton today. Every student of the new republic and many general readers who are captivated by the subject will want to read this volume."
--Lance Banning, author of "Conceived in Liberty: The Struggle to Define the New Republic, 1789-1793"

"This supberb collection of essays goes a considerable distance towards redressing the balance and towards restoring an American statesman to the central place that he occupied in his own time."
--Paul A. Rahe, author of "Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution"

Revolutionary War officer, co-author of theFederalist Papers, our first Treasury Secretary, Thomas Jefferson's nemesis, and victim of a fatal duel with Aaron Burr: Alexander Hamilton has been the focus of debate from his day to ours. On the one hand, Hamilton was the quintessential Founding Father, playing a central role in every key debate and event in the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. On the other hand, he has received far less popular and scholarly attention than his brethren. Who was he really and what is his legacy?

Scholars have long disagreed. Was Hamilton a closet monarchist or a sincere republican? A victim of partisan politics or one of its most active promoters? A lackey for British interests or a foreign policy mastermind? The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton addresses these and other perennial questions. Leading Hamilton scholars, both historians and political scientists alike, present fresh evidence and new, sometimes competing, interpretations of the man, his thought, and the legacy he has had on America and the world.

"The most thorough examination we have of how early Americans wrestled with what types of political dissent should be permitted, even promoted, in the new republic they were forming. Martin shows the modern relevance of their debates in ways that all will find valuable-even those who dissent from his views!"-Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania Democracy is the rule of the people. But what exactly does it mean for a people to rule? Which practices and behaviors are legitimate, and which are democratically suspect? We generally think of democracy as government by consent; a government of, by, and for the people. This has been true from Locke through Lincoln to the present day. Yet in understandably stressing the importance-indeed, the monumental achievement-of popular consent, we commonly downplay or even denigrate the role of dissent in democratic governments. But in Government by Dissent, Robert W.T. Martin explores the idea that the people most important in a flourishing democracy are those who challenge the status quo. The American political radicals of the 1790s understood, articulated, and defended the crucial necessity of dissent to democracy. By returning to their struggles, successes, and setbacks, and analyzing their imaginative arguments, Martin recovers a more robust approach to popular politics, one centered on the ever-present need to challenge the status quo and the powerful institutions that both support it and profit from it. Dissent has rarely been the mainstream of democratic politics. But the figures explored here-forgotten farmers as well as revered framers-understood that dissent is always the essential undercurrent of democracy and is often the critical crosscurrent. Only by returning to their political insights can we hope to reinvigorate our own popular politics.

View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

aScholars whose interests include the political, diplomatic, and economics aspects of the early republic will find these works rewarding additions to their reading.a
--"Journal of the Early Republic"

aThis book. . . achiev[es] a badly needed analysis of Hamiltonas impact on his and later times.a
--"The Historian"

"Talleyrand, who was acquainted with all of the statesmen of Europe, once remarked that he had never encountered anyone 'equal to Alexander Hamilton.' Hamilton may, in fact, have been the greatest of the American Founding Fathers. He was certainly one of the most important. Despite this, he has rarely been given his due. This superb collection of essays goes a considerable distance towards redressing the balance and towards restoring an American statesman to the central place that he occupied in his own time."
--Paul A. Rahe, author of "Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution"

"Here are many fresh thoughts by many of the most innovative scholars at work on Alexander Hamilton today. Every student of the new republic and many general readers who are captivated by the subject will want to read this volume."
--Lance Banning, author of "Conceived in Liberty: The Struggle to Define the New Republic, 1789-1793"

"This supberb collection of essays goes a considerable distance towards redressing the balance and towards restoring an American statesman to the central place that he occupied in his own time."
--Paul A. Rahe, author of "Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution"

Revolutionary War officer, co-author of theFederalist Papers, our first Treasury Secretary, Thomas Jefferson's nemesis, and victim of a fatal duel with Aaron Burr: Alexander Hamilton has been the focus of debate from his day to ours. On the one hand, Hamilton was the quintessential Founding Father, playing a central role in every key debate and event in the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. On the other hand, he has received far less popular and scholarly attention than his brethren. Who was he really and what is his legacy?

Scholars have long disagreed. Was Hamilton a closet monarchist or a sincere republican? A victim of partisan politics or one of its most active promoters? A lackey for British interests or a foreign policy mastermind? The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton addresses these and other perennial questions. Leading Hamilton scholars, both historians and political scientists alike, present fresh evidence and new, sometimes competing, interpretations of the man, his thought, and the legacy he has had on America and the world.

"The Free and Open Press ought to be required reading whenever anyone questions the meaning of the Founding Fathers, the framers of the Constitution, or other early American icons of liberty."
--"Journalism History"

"Robert W. T. Martin revitalizes a debate over the status of press rights in eighteenth-century America that had grown tiresome over the past 20 years...all scholars of American political thought and constitutional development should read this book."
--"American Political Science Review"

"Martin uses a number of fresh quotations and a helpful arranging and packaging of many ideas on a momentous topic."
-- "American Historical Review"

"Martin is not the first to examine that familiar topic, but his is the most heavily contextualized discussion of the topic yet and the most ambitious in scope."
--"The Journal of American History"

"In a welcome contrast to many recent studies (and museum exhibitions), Martin sees a clear, prima facie party distinction on the issue of press freedom."
--"William and Mary Quarterly"

The current, heated debates over hate speech and pornography were preceded by the equally contentious debates over the "free and open press" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus far little scholarly attention has been focused on the development of the concept of political press freedom even though it is a form of civil liberty that was pioneered in the United States. But the establishment of press liberty had implications that reached far beyond mere free speech. In this groundbreaking work, Robert Martin demonstrates that the history of the "free and open press" is in many ways the story of the emergence and first realexpansions of the early American public sphere and civil society itself.

Through a careful analysis of early libel law, the state and federal constitutions, and the Sedition Act crisis Martin shows how the development of constitutionalism and civil liberties were bound up in the discussion of the "free and open press." Finally, this book is a study of early American political thought and democratic theory, as seen through the revealing window provided by press liberty discourse. It speaks to broad audiences concerned with the public square, the history of the book, free press history, contemporary free expression controversies, legal history, and conceptual history.