For readers of Ron Chernow''s Alexander Hamilton, the spellbinding history of the epic rivalry that shaped our republic: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and their competing visions for America.The decade of the 1790s has been called the -age of passion.- Fervor ran high as rival factions battled over the course of the new republic-each side convinced that the other''s goals would betray the legacy of the Revolution so recently fought and so dearly won. All understood as well that what was at stake was not a moment''s political advantage, but the future course of the American experiment in democracy. In this epochal debate, no two figures loomed larger than Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.Both men were visionaries, but their visions of what the United States should be were diametrically opposed. Jefferson, a true revolutionary, believed passionately in individual liberty and a more egalitarian society, with a weak central government and greater powers for the
