Alexander Hamilton: American Patriot
Hamilton, Gifted Immigrant, Student, and Soldier
Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) was born in the West Indies on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, descended from the laird of Grange in Scotland on his father’s side and from French Huguenots on his mother’s side. Hamilton was brought up in relative poverty and was orphaned at the age of 13. Hugh Knox, a Presbyterian minister in the islands, recognized Hamilton as a child prodigy. As an extremely proficient clerk at a Counting House in St. Croix, Hamilton’s employers also acknowledged his precocity and intelligence, and soon came to appreciate his business acumen. A few years later, Knox arranged for him to receive financial assistance from admiring islanders, who backed his travel to America and study on scholarship. Hamilton was 17 years old when he arrived in America, a land in turmoil and on the verge of revolution. After completing schooling at Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey, he entered Kings College in New York City (now Columbia University). While a student there, Hamilton found himself embroiled in the heat of politics and revolution. When open rebellion erupted in America, he joined the ranks of the revolutionaries.
As a young revolutionary, Hamilton wrote incendiary articles, orated for the revolution, and when war finally came, served as an artillery officer in the New York militia. Discovered by George Washington, Hamilton was made a military adjutant and promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the Revolutionary Army. Commissioned at age 21, he served six years under General Washington (1776-1782), becoming a hero at the Battle of Yorktown (1781).
In mid-July 1782, the 27-year-old Alexander Hamilton was elected to the Continental Congress as a delegate from New York. At the Congress, Hamilton met another like-minded delegate named James Madison. Both men “shared a continental perspective, enjoyed a congruent sense of missions, and served together on numerous committees.”
Hamilton, the Profound Statesman
A few years later in 1787, Hamilton and Madison famously collaborated on the writing of The Federalist Papers with John Jay. Together, the three men wrote 85 essays explaining and defending the U.S. Constitution and supporting ratification. Hamilton alone wrote 51 of the essays in an energetic effort to win over his home state of New York.
In one his essays, Hamilton wrote that the people not only had a right to limit the power of government but also had a right to revolt against and even to prevent the inception of tyrannical government. And in defending ratification, Hamilton reassured Americans that the Constitution would be the supreme law of the land.
Throughout George Washington’s two terms as president, Hamilton served brilliantly as the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury (1789-1795). Interestingly, Hamilton had not been Washington’s first choice for the office. That honor, explained the historian Ron Chernow, had been offered “to the man synonymous with patriotic finance, Robert Morris, the Philadelphia merchant who had pledged his personal credit on behalf of the Revolution.” In declining the position, Morris had politely stated: “My dear general, you will be no loser by my declining the secretaryship of the treasury, for I can recommend to you a far cleverer fellow than I am for your minister of finance in the person of your former aide-de-camp, Colonel Hamilton.”
To a surprised Washington, who acknowledged Hamilton’s “superior talents” but admitted he was unaware of his “knowledge of finance,” Morris added, “He knows everything, sir. To a mind like his nothing comes amiss.”
During the Adams administration, when tensions flared with France following the XYZ Affair, Hamilton returned as Deputy Chief of the U.S. Army (Major General: 1799-1800). He served as “second in command under Washington” and as inspector general of the Army. And, after Washington’s death in 1799, Hamilton served as the “Army’s senior officer” until 1800.
Sadly, and catastrophically for the new nation, Alexander Hamilton died on July 12, 1804, as a result of wounds sustained in a senseless and needless duel with Aaron Burr, the Vice President of the United States. On the rocky ledge of Weehawken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City, the men met early on the morning of July 11. Historian Willard Sterne Randall noted:
[After the fatal shot rang out,] Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury of the United States, the author of the Federalist Papers, George Washington’s strong right hand, the financial genius who had created Wall Street, and as inspector general of the U.S. Army, fell to the ground, clutching his dueling pistol.
Upon learning of Hamilton’s death, there was general lamentation in New York and other Federalist strongholds, including the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. Charles Biddle, Aaron Burr’s friend, admitted, “there was as much lamentation as when George Washington died.” Alexander Hamilton’s public funeral was financed by the merchants of New York. Chernow described the funeral procession:
That Saturday morning, guns fired from the Battery, church bells rang with a doleful sound, and ships in the harbor flew their colors at half-mast. Around noon, to the somber thud of military drums, New York militia units set out at the head of the funeral procession, bearing their arms in reversed position, their muzzles pointed downward. Numerous clergymen and members of the Society of the Cincinnati trooped behind them. Then came the most affecting sight of all. Preceded by two small black boys in white turbans, eight pallbearers shouldered Hamilton’s corpse, set in a rich mahogany casket with his hat and sword perched on top. Hamilton’s gray horse trailed behind with the boots and spurs of its former rider reversed in the stirrups….
Hamilton, the Financial Builder of America
Alexander Hamilton established the basis for the economic powerhouse that the United States of America became. During his lifetime, he had been a passionate and controversial figure. It seemed there was no middle ground for the sentiments he evoked. He was either loved or strongly disliked, and capable of either a close friendship or an epic feud.
Nevertheless, friends and foes alike marveled at his genius. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story stated, “I have heard Samuel Dexter, John Marshall, and Chancellor (Robert R.) Livingston say that Hamilton’s reach of thought was so far beyond theirs that by his side they were schoolboys—rush tapers before the sun on noonday.” Reverend John M. Mason called Hamilton “…the greatest statesman in the western world, perhaps the greatest man of the age….”
Occasionally, even Hamilton’s political opponents rendered subtle praise. John Quincy Adams—son of one of Hamilton’s most vociferous critics, John Adams—admitted that Hamilton’s financial system “operated like enchantment for the restoration of public credit.” About the time of the debate on the Jay Treaty (a winning political issue for the Republicans), Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend and collaborator, James Madison: “[Hamilton] is really a colossus to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is a host [i.e., an army or multitude] within himself… We have had only middling performances to oppose him. In truth, when he comes forward, there is nobody but yourself, who can meet him.”
Madison did not accept Jefferson’s challenge. He continued to oppose Hamilton legislatively but not in verbal sparring; and the Jay Treaty was approved for the good of the country, which was totally unprepared for war.
When Jefferson became president, he charged Albert Gallatin, his new Secretary of the Treasury, to rifle through the files and dig up any financial material in the department incriminating Hamilton of malfeasance. Gallatin, who had been a political foe of Hamilton and had tangled with him in the past, went at it with gusto. Years later, Gallatin wrote about Jefferson’s disheartened reaction: “ ‘Well Gallatin, what have you found?’ [Jefferson asked]. “I answered: ‘I have found the most perfect system ever formed. Any change that should be made in it would injure it. Hamilton made no blunders, committed no frauds. He did nothing wrong.’” Despite their criticisms, both Jefferson and Madison as presidents left the Hamiltonian economic system largely in place.
Hamilton championed the executive branch of government and an independent judiciary, strengthening the national government. He succeeded with almost all the programs he conceived, including the establishment of the Bank of the United States, which promoted commerce; the funding of the national debt that provided financial confidence in the new nation; the American tax system that funded constitutional government; the regulation and control of the efficient U.S. Customs Service, responsible for the collection of customs duties; the inception of a revenue marine service, the precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard, responsible for the collection of import tariffs and guarding against smugglers; the founding of America’s oldest, continuously-published daily newspaper, the New-York Evening Post(now the New York Post)—in short, the creation of America’s financial and commercial systems. And, as Deputy Chief of the U.S. Army, Hamilton promoted the peace and prosperity of the new nation.
During a dinner meeting of the American Revolution Round Table, held in 1993 at the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York City, historian Willard Sterne Randall, was asked, “Who was right about America, Jefferson or Hamilton?” To that question, Randall responded briefly, “Jefferson for the eighteenth century, Hamilton for more modern times.”
