SOURCE: "The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton" in Rhetoric and American Statesmanship, edited by Glen E. Thurow and Jeffrey D. Wallin, Carolina Academic Press and The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1984, pp. 71-86.

In the following essay, originally a paper delivered at a conference in 1980, McDonald discusses Hamilton's language, his rhetorical strategies, and his literary style.

The political rhetoric of the Founders of the American Republic has received scant attention from scholars. The relative neglect is understandable. On the one hand, the very concept of rhetoric has, in modem times, all but lost its classical signification, and has come to mean empty verbosity or ornament. On the other, the political achievements of the Founders—the winning of independence, the establishment of a durable federal Union on republican principles, the creation of a system of government which is itself bound by law—were of such...