(1757-1804)
[Illustration: Alexander Hamilton. [TN]]
The parentage of Alexander Hamilton is given by his son and biographer
as of mingled Scottish and French ancestry--Scottish on the father's
side, Huguenot on the mother's. Students of the doctrine of temperaments
may find something to ponder over in such a fusion under the genial ray
of the southern sun. Given the key, they may unlock with it many
cabinets in the idiosyncrasy of the future Hamilton; Scottish
perseverance and integrity, French honor and susceptibility, tropical
fervor. Be that as it may, Alexander Hamilton first saw the light in the
West India island, St. Christopher, January 11, 1757. His father was a
trader or captain, sailing between the islands of the archipelago, whose
business brought him into relation with Nicholas Cruger, a wealthy
merchant of Santa Cruz, in intimate relation with New York, in whose
counting-house the son was placed at the age of twelve. He was a boy of
quick intellect, in advance of his years, and had already made much of
limited opportunities of instruction, as we may learn from an
exceedingly well-penned epistle, addressed thus early to a school-fellow
who had found his way to New York. In this remarkable letter, the boy
seems to have written with prophetic instinct. "To confess my weakness,
Ned," he says, "my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the
grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune
condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character,
to exalt my station.... I mean to prepare the way for futurity.... I
shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." This may be regarded
as a boyish rhapsody; but all boys are not given to such rhapsodies.
The clerk had his hours for study as well as for the counting-room, and
doubtless practised his pen in composition, for we hear of his writing
an account of a fearful hurricane which visited the island, a narrative
which appears to have been published, since it attracted the attention
of the governor. These evidences of talent determined his friends to
send him to New York to complete his education. He came, landing at
Boston in the autumn of 1772, and was received at New York by the
correspondents of Dr. Knox, a clergyman who had become interested in his
welfare in Santa Cruz. He was immediately introduced to the school of
Francis Barber, at Elizabethtown, where he enjoyed the society of the
Boudinots, Livingstons, and other influential people of the colony. He
studied early, and at the close of the year presented himself to Doctor
Witherspoon, at Princeton, with a request to be permitted to overleap
some of the usual collegiate terms according to his qualifications. As
this was contrary to the usage of the place, he entered King's College,
now Columbia, in New York, with the special privileges he desired. In
addition to the usual studies, he attended the anatomical course of
Clossey. Colonel Troup, at this time his room-fellow, testifies to his
earnest religious feeling, a very noticeable thing in a youth of his
powers. He wrote verses freely--among them doggerel burlesques of the
productions of the ministerial writers of the day.
The Revolution was now fairly getting under way, and in the opening
tumultuous scenes in New York, strong hands were wanted at the wheel.
Hamilton, at the age of seventeen, in 1774, did not hesitate in making
his decision. He entered the field against the dashing young president
of the college, Myles Cooper, of convivial memory, in a reply in Holt's
_Gazette_ to some Tory manifesto of that divine. About this time, after
the adjournment of Congress, at the close of the year, he also published
a pamphlet in vindication of the measures of Congress, against the
attacks of Seabury and Wilkins. The contest, however, was one which was
not to be decided by the pen alone. The old prerogative lawyers and
divines were not to be shaken out of their seats by the constitutional
arguments of such young counsellors as Hamilton and Jay. The hard hands
of the committee of mechanics were much more demonstrative. Myles
Cooper, Seabury, and their brethren very naturally suspected the logic,
and laughed at the novel measures of the day by which the popular party
in their restrictive, non-importation measures proposed to dispense with
the wisdom of Lords and Commons, and starve themselves into
independence. It is well sometimes to look at that side of the question,
too.
But all the pooh-poohing in the world over the best wine in the colony,
was not to stop the affair which had commenced. Volunteers were
drilling, men of sound heads and stout hearts were getting ready for
action. There were certain cannon to be removed from the Battery;
Hamilton was engaged in the duty with his comrades, "Hearts of oak" they
called themselves; a boat approached from the man-of-war Asia, in the
harbor; the citizens fired; the fire was returned from the ship, and one
of Hamilton's company was killed. The Liberty Boys spread the alarm and
gathered in a mob, threatening to attack the college and seize its
president, Myles Cooper. Hamilton, who was no friend to riot, little as
he was afraid of discussion or of force, interposed with a speech from
the college steps, while the president, roused from his bed, half naked,
took refuge on the shore, wandering over the island in the night to the
old Stuyvesant mansion, whence he was the next day finally removed from
America in his Majesty's vessel, the Kingfisher. The royal governor,
Tryon, took refuge in the Asia shortly after.
Hamilton now turned his attention in earnest to military affairs, making
choice of the artillery service, in which he gained some instruction
from a British soldier, and by aid of the popular leader, McDougal,
received from the convention the appointment of captain of the
Provincial Company of Artillery. He had only recently completed his
nineteenth year. It was early, but not so very early for a man of
genius; for the child in such cases is the father of the man, and youth
is an additional spur to exertion. But this was not all. The young
captain was engaged, not only in the gymnastics of drilling recruits,
but he was reading, thinking, and working out problems in political
economy for himself--and the future. Dr. Johnson said that he learned
little after eighteen; Hamilton would seem to have laid the foundation
at least, of all his knowledge before twenty. "His military books of
this period," says his son, "give an interesting exhibition of his train
of thought. In the pay-book of his company, amid various general
speculations and extracts from the ancients, chiefly relating to
politics and war, are intermingled tables of political arithmetic,
considerations on commerce, the value of the relative productions which
are its objects, the balance of trade, the progress of population, and
the principles on which depends the value of a circulating medium; and
among his papers there remains a carefully digested outline of a plan
for the political and commercial history of British America, compiled at
this time." There is the germ in all this of the Secretary of the
Treasury.
The battle of Long Island now ensued on the vain attempt to resist the
landing of Howe and his British troops, followed by the masterly retreat
of Washington, in which Hamilton brought up the rear. The subsequent
American proceedings in the evacuation of the city, the passage from the
island to Westchester, and the subsequent retreat before Cornwallis
through the Jerseys under Washington, if they had little of glory, at
least required their full share of military determination and endurance.
Hamilton was active throughout the campaign. At White Plains and on the
Raritan, at Trenton and Princeton, his artillery did good service. When
he entered Morristown, his original company of a hundred was reduced by
the accidents of war to twenty-five. Here, on March 1, 1777, leaving the
line of the army, he became attached to the staff of Washington as his
aid. This was the commencement of that half military, half civil
relation which identified Hamilton in joint labors and councils with the
Father of his Country.
Hamilton became, in fact, the right-hand man of Washington, not only
during the war, but throughout his subsequent political career, and no
better proof than this can be had at once of the sagacity of Washington
in selecting his instruments, and of the honor and worth of Hamilton in
so long and so successfully maintaining this distinguished position. In
the staff of the commander-in-chief, Hamilton, we are told, acquired the
title, "The Little Lion." His spirit and courage were shown in numerous
instances, particularly in the battle of Monmouth, where Lee exposed
bravery to such violent hazards, an affair out of which grew a duel
between that officer and Colonel John Laurens, one of Washington's aids,
in which Hamilton was the second of his friend and associate. Nor was
Hamilton's counsel less serviceable in interviews with the French
officers, and those frequent negotiations with the different portions of
the army, and with Congress, which were among the hardest necessities of
Washington's campaigns.
The relation of Hamilton to Washington, as a member of his military
family, was suddenly brought to a termination at head-quarters on the
Hudson, in February, 1781. The difference arose in a momentary
forgetfulness of temper on the part of Washington. For some purpose of
consultation he required the presence of Hamilton, who was detained from
keeping the appointment on the instant, for it appears to have been a
delay of but a few moments. Washington, however, was impatient, and
meeting Hamilton at the head of the stairs, angrily exclaimed, "Colonel
Hamilton, you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten
minutes; I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect." Hamilton
firmly replied, "I am not conscious of it, sir; but since you have
thought it necessary to tell me so, we part." "Very well, sir," said
Washington, "if it be your choice," or something to that effect, and the
friends separated. Washington immediately opened the way for the
Secretary's continuance at his post, but, without any feeling of
asperity, the overture was declined. Hamilton, however, proffered his
services and counsel. With no other man than Washington, indeed, could
the subordinate relation have continued so long, and Hamilton had often
thought of renouncing it; but he saw in Washington the man for the
times, the great representative of a great cause, for which minor
considerations must be sacrificed. Writing at this moment to Schuyler,
he says, "The General is a very honest man; his competitors have slender
abilities and less integrity. His popularity has often been essential to
the safety of America, and is still of great importance to it. These
considerations have influenced my past conduct respecting him, and will
influence my future. I think it is necessary he should be supported."
Hamilton was now desirous to resume active service in the line, and
after some discussion as to rank, received the command of a New York
battalion of light infantry, which he led right manfully at the siege of
Yorktown. He was anxious to signalize himself at this crowning act of
the war by some distinguished exercise of bravery, and when, at an
advanced period of the approaches, a redoubt was to be stormed, he
eagerly solicited the forlorn hope from Washington. Advancing to the
charge with characteristic spirit, at the point of the bayonet, exposed
to a heavy fire, he struggled through the ditch, and surmounting the
defences, took the work in the most brilliant manner. He gallantly
arrested the slaughter at the first moment, and thus placed his humanity
upon a level with his bravery.
The war being now brought to an end, Hamilton turned his attention to
the law, and in a few months' ardent devotion--the devotion of Hamilton
was always ardent--at Albany to the study with the aid of his friend,
Colonel Troup, and the stimulus of his recent marriage, qualified
himself thoroughly for the practice of the profession. He was admitted
to the Supreme Court at its July term, 1782. About the same time, at the
solicitation of Robert Morris, the financier of Congress, he accepted
the appointment of receiver of the continental taxes in the State of New
York, with the understanding that his exertions were to be employed in
impressing upon the Legislature the wants and objects of the Government.
In pursuance of this, he urged resolutions which were unanimously
adopted in July, 1782, recommending the call of a convention for the
purpose of revising and amending the Articles of Confederation. He was
also elected by the Legislature of this year a member of Congress. He
bore an active part in its debates, and was greatly employed in its
important financial measures.
On the final departure of the British from New York, in 1783, Hamilton
became a resident of the city with his family, and devoted himself
assiduously to the practice of his profession. He was constantly,
however, looked to as a public man. We find him, in 1784, appealing to
the public under the signature of Phocion, in favor of more liberal and
enlightened views in regard to the loyalists of the late Revolution, and
their rights of property. In 1786 he is a member of the State Assembly,
and in September of the same year among the delegates of the five States
which, at the instance of Virginia, met at Annapolis to confer on the
commercial interests of the country; a too limited representation,
indeed, to achieve the objects in view, but the precursor of the great
Federal Convention at Philadelphia of the following year.
We have seen Hamilton's early studies of the theoretical workings of
government. His practical experience, in the army of Washington, of the
imperfections of Congress and the defects of the old confederation, was
not likely to let him forget the subject. Authority in government, rules
in legislation, financial measures, taxes, loans, and a bank, were
topics constantly before his mind. The Convention of 1787 gave him, at
length, the wished-for opportunity to enter upon a full discussion of
his plans in a cause and before an audience worthy of his powers.
Washington was the presiding officer, Franklin was in attendance; it was
a congregation of notables--Rufus King, Oliver Ellsworth, Roger Sherman,
William Livingston, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, John Dickinson,
Luther Martin, James Madison, George Wythe, John Rutledge, and others as
worthy. Much has been said of Hamilton's course in this Convention, and
of his advocacy of monarchical views. It is true that a plan of
government which he supported in a speech of length and eloquence,
provided several features, as the life tenure of the President and
senators, and the appointment of State officers by the General
Government, which, in the interpretation of some minds, as Patrick Henry
used to express it, "was an awful squinting toward monarchy;" but, on
the other hand, it should be remembered that the Convention was a
meeting for consultation, with closed doors, in a committee of the
whole, in which perfect freedom in the interchange of views was
desirable; that, in the view of our own day, other members displayed
heresies quite as obnoxious, and that in the final resolves of the
Constitution, Hamilton, with the others, yielded his prejudices, and
became the firm defender of the instrument as it was adopted, and
substantially now stands.
Remember the age of Hamilton at this time--twenty-nine; a greater
prodigy in the Convention at Philadelphia than the youth in the army of
Washington. To no one probably are we more indebted for the Constitution
than to Hamilton. The Convention which laid the instrument before the
country for its adoption had scarcely adjourned, when, in company with
Madison and Jay, he took up the pen in its explanation and defence, in
the celebrated series of papers, "The Federalist," originally published
in the New York _Daily Advertiser_. Hamilton began and closed the work.
Of its eighty-five papers much the greater portion, it is believed, were
written by him.
The discussion of the financial and military powers, the executive and
the judiciary, fell to his pen. In the New York Convention he was again
the efficient advocate of the adoption of the Constitution. In a
separate series of papers, signed Philo Publius, published in another
journal, Hamilton, assisted by his friends, met various objections, the
discussion of which would have marred the unity of "The Federalist,"
which was thus left a classical commentary upon the Constitution.
Having been thus instrumental in forming the Constitution, Hamilton was
destined to be one of the most active agents of its powers. When the new
government went into operation, under its provisions he was summoned by
Washington, to the discharge of one of the most onerous duties of the
department, in his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury. He
continued in office six years, marking his administration--for such it
was in his province--by his report and measures for the funding of the
public debt, the excise revenue system, which he was called upon to
assert in arms during the insurrection of Western Pennsylvania, and the
creation of a National Bank. His reports on these subjects, and on
manufactures, in which he advocated protection, are among the most
important contributions of their kind to our national archives. In
allusion to the financial measures of Hamilton, and their success at the
time in the welfare of the country, Daniel Webster, in a speech at New
York, half a century afterward, exclaimed: "He smote the rock of the
national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He
touched the dead corpse of the public, and it sprung upon its feet."
The measures of Hamilton, however, were not adopted without opposition.
Jefferson was their persistent opponent; local interests and State
pretensions arose to thwart the measures of Government, and gave birth
to the party feuds of Federalism and its opponents. A growing element of
disaffection was added to the political caldron in the relations with
England and the disturbing influences of the principles of the French
Revolution. Hamilton bore the brunt of much of this popular opposition,
which came to a crisis in the discussions attending the British Treaty
of Jay, in 1794, as he defended its provisions in the papers signed
"Camillus," while it was before the country, and advocated its leading
neutrality principles in "The Letters of Pacificus," published by him
the previous year. When France had wearied out all indulgence by her
aggressions on the high seas, and by her treatment of our ministers at
Paris, and Washington was again called to the field in anticipation of
an expected invasion, Hamilton was appointed second in command, and now
employed himself in the organization of the army. On the death of
Washington he became commander-in-chief. On the conclusion of a treaty
with France the army disbanded.
In the intervals of these public duties, Hamilton was actively employed
in his profession in the higher courts of the State. The late Chancellor
Kent afterward recalled his "clear, elegant, and fluent style and
commanding manner. He never made any argument in court without
displaying his habit of thinking and resorting at once to some
well-founded principle of law, and drawing his deductions logically from
his premises. Law was always treated by him as a science, founded on
established principles. His manners were gentle, affable, and kind. He
appeared to be frank, liberal, and courteous in all his professional
intercourse."
The last important trial in which Hamilton was engaged, the case of the
People against Harry Croswell, in the Supreme Court, a few months before
his untimely death, is memorable also for his maintenance of the right
of juries to determine the law as well as the fact in cases of libel.
The party politics of the time had been broken up in the simplicity of
their outline by the administration of John Adams. Aaron Burr was the
most prominent intriguer in the field. He had attained the
vice-presidency, and the choice hung for a while suspended between him
and Jefferson for the presidency. Between the two, Hamilton, who had
formed an unfavorable opinion of the character of Burr, preferred his
old antagonist, Jefferson, and cast his influence accordingly. When Burr
afterward sought the office of Governor of New York, in a contest with a
member of his own Republican party, in which he relied upon the support
of the Federalists, he was defeated by Hamilton, who made no secret of
his opposition. Smarting under the failure of his intrigue, Burr
determined to challenge the honest man who stood in his way to power. He
had no ground of personal offence bringing Hamilton within any
justifiable pretensions even of the lax code of the duellist. The
expressions which he called upon him to avow or disavow, were vague, and
were based upon the report of a person who specified neither time,
place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was
alleged--evidently a wanton provocation to a murderous duel. Burr
demanded so broad a retraction from Hamilton of all he might have said,
that compliance was impossible. It was an attempt to procure an
indorsement of his character at the cost of the moral character of the
indorser. Hamilton despised the manoeuvre, but perceiving that a meeting
was forced upon him, and unhappily determining, contrary to his better
judgment, that his usefulness would be destroyed in the public affairs
of the times if he avoided the contest, fell into the fatal snare.
He executed his will, in which he made provision for his family and
creditors, thinking tenderly of his wife, enjoining his children to bear
in mind she had been to them the most devoted and best of mothers. On
the night preceding the appointment he wrote a paper declaring his
intention to throw away his fire, and acquitting himself before the
world of the malice of the duellist, while he rested his conduct upon
his usefulness to his country. The next morning, July 11th, they met at
Weehawken; the weapons were pistols, the distance ten paces. The duel
was fought within a few feet of the shore, in a woodland scene beneath
the cliff opposite the present inhabited portion of New York, at a spot
now traversed or closely approached by the river road, but then readily
accessible only by water. Hamilton fell at the first fire, mortally
wounded, his pistol-shot striking at random a twig some seven feet above
the head of his antagonist. Burr fled, a wanderer over the earth.
Hamilton was carried across the river, supported by Pendleton and Dr.
Hosack, to the house of his friend, Mr. Bayard, at Greenwich. He was
there enabled to take farewell of his family, and receive the last
consolations of religion from the hands of Bishop Moore. He died on the
afternoon of Thursday, July 12, 1804.
The reception of the fatal news sent a thrill of horror through the
community. The brilliant, fiery youth of Hamilton, which had lighted his
countrymen to victory and a place among the nations--Hamilton, the
counsellor of Washington, the consummate statesman of the Constitution,
the reliance of the State, the hope of the future: visions such as these
were contrasted in the popular mind with his wretched fall. We perhaps
darken the shades of the picture, for time and proof have added to the
greatness of Hamilton, and Burr waited not for death to exhibit the
penury of his fame. But the men who knew the heart of Hamilton, who saw
in him the bulwark of the State, his contemporaries, wept his fate with
no common lamentation. New York gave her public honors to his grave.
Gouverneur Morris, with strenuous words, delivered the funeral oration
by the side of his bier, under the portico of old Trinity; and Mason,
the pulpit orator of his time, thundered his strong sentences at the
crime which had robbed the world of Hamilton.