On Jefferson, Hamilton, and the Elasticity of America’s Founding Document

The year is 1790. The ink on the Constitution is barely dry, and already its meaning is up for grabs. At the heart of the young republic’s first major political schism lies a deceptively simple question: If something isn’t explicitly stated in the Constitution, can the federal government do it anyway? This was not just an abstract concern—it was the question behind the creation of a national bank, a fiscal necessity to some and a constitutional betrayal to others.

Enter Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, two men whose interpretations of the Constitution would set the precedent for every debate on federal authority to come. Jefferson, rigid in his reading, believed the Constitution was a strict ledger of do’s and don’ts. If it didn’t say “create a national bank,” then you had no business creating one. Hamilton, ever the pragmatist, saw the Constitution as a framework—flexible, adaptable, capable of being stretched in service of national interest.

This clash wasn’t just a policy disagreement; it was a philosophical confrontation between two visions of governance. Jefferson viewed government power as a fire to be tightly contained. Hamilton saw it as a tool—dangerous if misused, but essential for building anything lasting.

When Hamilton proposed the establishment of a national bank to stabilize the fledgling economy, Jefferson responded with alarm. To him, the federal government creating a bank was nowhere authorized in the Constitution. Such a move, he warned, would set a dangerous precedent of implied powers. What’s to stop the government from doing anything it feels is necessary if not expressly forbidden?

Hamilton answered with what would become one of the foundational doctrines of American constitutional interpretation: the doctrine of implied powers. If the Constitution grants the federal government the authority to collect taxes and regulate commerce, then a national bank—being useful, even necessary, to carry out those tasks—was within bounds. Not every power had to be written down in black ink, he argued, if its exercise was reasonably connected to an enumerated one.

President George Washington, caught between these intellectual heavyweights, sided with Hamilton. The national bank was established. Jefferson, dismayed but not defeated, would spend the rest of his career warning of federal overreach and the creeping erosion of republican ideals.

Yet history vindicates neither man entirely. Hamilton’s bank served the nation well—until its second iteration collapsed under accusations of corruption and concentrated power. Jefferson’s suspicion of centralized authority, once dismissed as paranoia, now reads as cautionary wisdom in an age of sprawling bureaucracies.

What’s left is the deeper question that still haunts American political life: what do we do when something feels nationally necessary but isn’t explicitly permitted by the Constitution? Can necessity justify silence? Does absence imply prohibition? Or is the Constitution, by design, a living document—meant to be reinterpreted to meet the evolving needs of a nation?

This is more than historical curiosity. The tension between textual literalism and interpretive flexibility still defines battles over healthcare, surveillance, reproductive rights, executive orders—you name it. We are still trapped in the same fight Hamilton and Jefferson started, arguing over the elasticity of a document that was never meant to be either brittle or boundless.

So no, it’s not in the Constitution. But perhaps the most constitutional act of all is to ask whether it should be—and who gets to decide.

~ Amelia Desertsong