New York Times

Hamilton’s “Hypomanic Edge?”

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I recently came across a 2005 business psychology book by John D. Gartner entitled The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot Of) Success in America.

Gartner states:

Hypomania is a mild form of mania, often found in the relatives of manic depressives. Hypomanics are brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas. They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly. Anyone who slows them down with questions “just doesn’t get it.” Hypomanics are not crazy, but “normal” is not the first word that comes to mind when describing them. Hypomanics live on the edge, betweeen normal and abnormal.

The Harvard Mental Health Newsletter states:

The formal DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for hypomania require at least three of the following symptoms for at least four days: inflated self-esteem or grandiosity; decreased need for sleep; increased talkativeness; racing thoughts or ideas; marked distractibility; agitation or increased activity; excessive participation in activities that are pleasurable but invite personal or fiscal harm (shopping sprees, sexual indiscretions, impulsive business investments, and the like).

Gartner’s theory is that “America has an extraordinarily high number of hypomanics,” and that a majority of successful entrepreneurs and innovators have hypomanic characteristics. Gartner also states that hypomania creates a situation in which:

“the drives that motivate behavior surge to a screaming pitch, making the urgency of action irresistible. There isn’t a minute to waste– this is going to be huge– just do it! This pressure to act creates overachievers, but it also leads to impulsive behavior…”

Hamilton is featured prominently in the book as Gartner attempts to analyze Hamilton’s life “through the eyes of a clinician.” Gartner’s theory is that “Hamilton was bipolar, but more important, that if he hadn’t been, he couldn’t have led the charge to launch a nation. Hamilton’s hypomania was an essential ingredient in his accomplishments.” Gartner finds examples of hypomanic behavior throughout Hamilton’s career: his willingness to lead his troops into dangerous battle, his relentless energy in pushing forward the Constitution, and his vision for the Department of Treasury. Gartner states that Hamilton’s grandiose vision was transferred to his “radical and unswerving vision” of America. Gartner points to Hamilton’s unstoppable energy and ability to work on very little sleep for long, intense periods as symptomatic of hypomania.

Gartner has an interesting take, but I don’t fully buy the idea of applying a psychiatric diagnosis to any individual without any firsthand observation.

The first chapter of the book is available here, via the New York Times.

Hamilton’s Views on Race and Slavery: An Introduction

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Paul Finkelman recently wrote a fascinating piece in the New York Times focusing on Thomas Jefferson’s views on race. Finkelman states:

Jefferson was always deeply committed to slavery, and even more deeply hostile to the welfare of blacks, slave or free. His proslavery views were shaped not only by money and status but also by his deeply racist views, which he tried to justify through pseudoscience.

There is, it is true, a compelling paradox about Jefferson: when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, announcing the “self-evident” truth that all men are “created equal,” he owned some 175 slaves. Too often, scholars and readers use those facts as a crutch, to write off Jefferson’s inconvenient views as products of the time and the complexities of the human condition.

But while many of his contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the revolution — inspired, perhaps, by the words of the Declaration — Jefferson did not. Over the subsequent 50 years, a period of extraordinary public service, Jefferson remained the master of Monticello, and a buyer and seller of human beings.

Rather than encouraging his countrymen to liberate their slaves, he opposed both private manumission and public emancipation. Even at his death, Jefferson failed to fulfill the promise of his rhetoric: his will emancipated only five slaves, all relatives of his mistress Sally Hemings, and condemned nearly 200 others to the auction block. Even Hemings remained a slave, though her children by Jefferson went free.

Nor was Jefferson a particularly kind master. He sometimes punished slaves by selling them away from their families and friends, a retaliation that was incomprehensibly cruel even at the time. A proponent of humane criminal codes for whites, he advocated harsh, almost barbaric, punishments for slaves and free blacks. Known for expansive views of citizenship, he proposed legislation to make emancipated blacks “outlaws” in America, the land of their birth. Opposed to the idea of royal or noble blood, he proposed expelling from Virginia the children of white women and black men.

I was discussing the issue this weekend with Rand Scholet at the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society, and it is truly remarkable how progressive Hamilton’s views on race were compared to many of his contemporaries. Hamilton grew up in the West Indies and was surrounded by slavery: slaves accounted for almost 90% of the total population. He participated in the slave trade on an administrative basis as a young clerk, and developed a disgust towards the entire institution. When Hamilton was involved with the Revolution, he advocated allowing blacks to join the Continental Army, despite opposition from many of his contemporaries. Hamilton’s philosophies on race were comparatively extremely progressive. I plan to write a series of blog posts highlighting Hamilton’s stance on slavery and other racial issues including the incorporation of black soldiers into the Continental Army, the New York Manumission Society, and the rebellion in Haiti. For more background on this issue, see James Oliver Horton’s Alexander Hamilton: Slavery and Race in a Revolutionary Generation.