It's always a dangerous thing to look back and 'judge' what previous generations did, having the luxury of hindsight and a more modern understanding of 'cause and effect'. Most comments I've read online that pillory those-who-wrought-such-devastation fall into this trap...and seem unwilling to make the effort to delve into the context of the times, which in this instance indeed, wasn't just a Hamilton-thing, but a mindset that had taken over North America and the entire world at this point, a mere two decades after our second world war in just over thirty years. People were clamouring for change more than they were for retaining (and respecting) the past.
Here's a good place to start, in terms of background information:
http://id.erudit.org/revue/uhr/2009/v37/n2/029577ar.pdf