"...the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions." [George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796]

When Alexander Hamilton joined the staff of George Washington in March, 1777, it began, quite possibly, the most productive collaboration in the history of the United States. Certainly, there were to be many other grand partnerships (Jefferson/Madison from the same era, Nixon/Kissinger from ours) in the chronicle of our nation but this pairing was a match made in political heaven. At no time in our history were two such men as distinctly opposite as Washington and Hamilton to balance the ship of our nation in such creative and decisive ways. Ironically, one is remembered (rightfully) as the "father of our country and the other, tragically, generally forgotten and summarily excluded from the pantheon of the "founding fathers".

It should not be thus. In truth, excepting Washington himself, Alexander Hamilton was, arguably, the most crucial man in the American pageant that unfolded in the last 25 years of the 18^th century. Without his military, diplomatic and inventive insights, the United States most probably would not have survived the first crucial quarter-century of its infancy. Without his singular and precocious genius, our nation’s history would be a radically different story. To remove Hamilton from the early years of our republic would be to rob the familiar fable of one its most integral and enigmatic leaders.

Two more different men could not possibly be partnered. Washington was ice; Hamilton was the fire. The six-foot three inch first-President was the epitome of Virginia aristocracy. He could trace his ancestors back to 1657 and, like his father, "Gus" (Augustine), he was a physical (not to say, mental) "giant" for that age. He was poorly educated but through good fortune (his older brother bequeathed him Mount Vernon) and a fortuitous marriage (Martha Custis was the richest widow in Virginia) he rose to the top of the gentry in the Old Dominion. He was practical. He knew that his chance for fame laid in military accomplishments. He served conspicuously (alongside British troops) in the Virginia militia during the French-Indian War, reaching the rank of colonel. He represented his state at the Second Confederation Congress and, wearing his uniform every day, was nominated (by John Adams) to lead the colonial army (such as it was) after hostilities broke out in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

In contrast. Alexander Hamilton could not have come from a less auspicious background. He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish trader and a woman of low station on the island of St. Croix. His father abandoned his mother and she, herself, died when Hamilton was only thirteen. He took work with a local shipping company and, after a few years, had impressed his seniors such that they sent him to New York to get an education. He arrived in New York in 1772 and was turned down at Princeton but accepted at King’s College (Columbia University). It was there that he began life as the most upwardly-mobile immigrant of the 18^th century.

After Washington and his "army" managed to drive the British from Boston, he went to New York where British commander General Howe was expected to mount the next invasion. And it was this conjunction of the planets and stars that brought about the most productive partnership in the history of American government. Hamilton, commanding a artillery company in the New York militia helped Washington evacuate Long Island and escape to New Jersey. He later took part in the daring Christmas Eve raid on Trenton. Washington (one of the best political "talent scouts" ever) asked the 21 year old Hamilton to join his staff. He served as the commanding general’s aide-de-camp for 5 years and took part (as an officer of the line) in the siege and eventual surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

After the war ended, both Washington and Hamilton returned to private life. Washington famously resigned his commission and returned to Mount Vernon. Hamilton returned to New York and, after just 6 months of self-education, passed the bar and began a practice of law. But there were much greater things in store for this pair. Hamilton actually leapt into the politics of the new United States before his mentor. He served as a "congressman" at the 1782 Continental Congress and, there, met James Madison from Virginia. Hamilton and Madison struck up a friendship and both agreed that the Articles of Confederation were insufficient for the governing of the new nation. Through a complex dance, championed by Hamilton and Madison, the states sponsored the Annapolis Convention in 1786 which, in turn, led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So began the second phase of the great collaboration between Hamilton and Washington, fire and ice. When Washington was elected the first President, the new Constitution made no mention of a cabinet for Presidential advisors. Playing it by ear (as so many things were in 1788, Washington named Hamilton his "Secretary of the Treasury." In this role - and with the unchallenged authority of Washington to back him up - Hamilton took the reins of the fragile government and began to guide it to safer ground. He had earned his mentor’s abiding faith in his talents and became, for all intents and purposes, Washington’s second-in-command. Hamilton had unrivaled power and influence in the emerging federal government, much to the dismay of Vice-President John Adams and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who became his lifelong detractors and political enemies.

The self-assured (some would venture "cocky") Hamilton cared not a whit about the hostilities of Adams, Jefferson or anyone; he was a man with a vision and a power structure to implement it. He knew, from the years in the Army and, later, as a representative under the Articles of Confederation, that the finances of the nation were in shambles. He set out to correct this deformity. With the full support of President Washington, Hamilton began to mold the infant federation into a stable, funded system. In his first "Report on the Public Credit." Hamilton set about binding the states together. He proposed to assume all the debts incurred by the separate states during the Revolutionary War, uniting them financially, if in no other way. Opposed by Jefferson (and Madison), he managed - with Washington’s considerable endorsement and a little good old American "horse trading" - to push it through Congress.

His Second Report on the Public Credit was even more audacious. In this report, the Secretary called for the establishment of a Bank of the United States, modeled after the Bank of England. He met significant opposition (primarily, from the growing ranks of southern aristocracy, i.e. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe) but, again with the vocal support of the President, the measure passed. The first Bank of the United States was chartered for 20 years - 1791-1811. It stabilized the money system of the new nation and did much to lend legitimacy to the fiances of the nascent republic.

Despite the warnings of the President concerning the dangers of political parties (see quote above), the aggressive innovations of his own Secretary of Treasury was integral to the fracture of early American political thought. Hamilton’s machinations for a strong federal government led to the rise of the Federalist (Hamilton, Washington, Adams) and Anti-Federalist - soon to be Democratic-Republican - political parties. These fledgling partisan factions would do battle over many issues (national stance on the French Revolution and, later, the war between England and France, the response to the Whiskey Rebellion, The Jay Treaty and, finally, the successor to Washington in the 1796 election) at the turn of the 18^th century. The brutal election campaigns of 1796 and 1800 set the tone for the viscousness and scandal-mongering that thrives today in campaign and party politics.

The original "odd couple" - Hamilton and Washington - set the stage for American political thought over the ensuing two centuries. The battle for the hearts and minds of the voting populace continues even today. The Federalists (strong central government and the "nanny state") have evolved into the contemporary Democratic Party; the Anti-Federalists (tightly restricted governmental power, states’ rights) are now the Republican Party. The philosophical struggle is the same; only the names and faces have changed.

We owe much to the Founding Fathers. We owe them our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We owe them the offices of the cabinet, the Coast Guard, U.S. Army and Navy, the Federal Reserve, and for many other countless achievements. We also owe them - particularly, Hamilton - for one dire negative: the rancor and virulence of political faction. The "two-party system" springs directly from the earliest days of our electoral system and continues, virtually unchanged (if even more polarizing), through to the present time.

While political factions were well-known even in the 18^th century and certainly pre-date American government, it was not wrong of the founding Fathers to dread the growth of parties in the virgin soil of the new Republic. Certainly, it was a chimera for Washington and Adams and Jefferson to hope that they could be avoided in our new democracy. Hamilton, on the other hand, reveled in the clash of ideas and philosophy. He is the only Founding Father who would be right at home in the contemporary climate of party discord and political warfare.

Washington was the first and, sadly, the last President to be elected to office without party affiliation. Would that setting that precedent were as long-lived as his other "firsts".