This documentary study of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton focuses on their differing views of society and government in the formative years of the new American nation. Interweaving more than 40 documents into 7 chronological chapters, the text follows the lives and careers of the two men from their youth, through the Revolutionary War, to the death of Hamilton in 1804. In each chapter, generous excerpts from their public papers and private letters reveal the two men's often divergent views on government and the Constitution, economic and foreign policy, and the military, and illustrate the roles they played in the emergence of political parties. Reading Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, the Report on Public Credit, the Kentucky Resolutions, and a host of other documents, students can explore first-hand the two men's philosophies and the impact these had on the emerging nation. 

NOBLE E. CUNNINGHAM, JR is Curators' Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and his research and writing is focused on the early national period of American history.