The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton

The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father

Douglas Ambrose, Robert W. T. Martin

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780814707708
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

Revolutionary War officer, co-author of the Federalist Papers, our first Treasury Secretary, Thomas Jefferson’s nemesis, and victim of a fatal duel with Aaron Burr: Alexander Hamilton has been the focus of debate from his day to ours. On the one hand, Hamilton was the quintessential Founding Father, playing a central role in every key debate and event in the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. On the other hand, he has received far less popular and scholarly attention than his brethren. Who was he really and what is his legacy?

Scholars have long disagreed. Was Hamilton a closet monarchist or a sincere republican? A victim of partisan politics or one of its most active promoters? A lackey for British interests or a foreign policy mastermind? The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton addresses these and other perennial questions. Leading Hamilton scholars, both historians and political scientists alike, present fresh evidence and new, sometimes competing, interpretations of the man, his thought, and the legacy he has had on America and the world.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The Life and Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton

DOUGLAS AMBROSE

EVERYONE knows the face. It gazes out from the ten-dollar bill, confident, strong, thoughtful. Most Americans know the face of Alexander Hamilton from that ten-dollar bill, and most would probably acknowledge that he rightly occupies a place among the pantheon of those we call “the founders.” But of all those founders, Hamilton remains the most elusive. For as much as Americans may recognize the face on the bill, few really know the man. And many who think they know him find it hard to embrace him with the same enthusiasm that they do a Washington, a Jefferson, a Madison, an Adams. Hamilton remains both enigmatic and suspect; important, yes, but somewhat tarnished by his supposed lack of idealism, his crass realism regarding economics, finance, military power, and national authority.

Scholars and commentators have not neglected Alexander Hamilton. From before his death in 1804 to the present, historians, political scientists, economists, and others have explored the ways in which Hamilton contributed to the course of American history. And those accounts demonstrate that Hamilton has always functioned as a lightning rod. During his life he embroiled himself in nearly every major political development from the Revolution through the election of 1800. He did so as an active public servant, serving as military officer, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and first Secretary of the Treasury, and, especially, through his writing. His prolificacy staggers the imagination: at his death at the age of 49 he had produced enough material to fill 27 volumes.¹ Hamilton produced much of that voluminous writing in the contentious debates over everything from the treatment of the Continental Army to the electoral crisis of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes and the House of Representatives had to choose who would become president. Hamilton, as most of his biographers have noted, neither shied away from confrontation nor always acted as discreetly as he might have.² As a result, he made many enemies who accused him of being everything from a monarchist to an embezzler. John Adams’s famous characterization of Hamilton as “a bastard Bratt of a Scotch Pedlar” aptly captures how acid could be the perception of Hamilton by his political and personal enemies. Yet others, notably but not exclusively his Federalist friends such as Fisher Ames and John Marshall, found Hamilton to be not only brilliant, but dedicated to the nation he helped found and a man of high moral character.³

But if Hamilton was a figure who aroused strong feelings among his contemporaries, he has been no less so for scholars. As Stephen Knott demonstrates in his essay in this volume and in his book Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth, those who have written about Hamilton, like his contemporaries, have provided us with portraits that range from damning to hagiographic.⁴ This volume offers a variety of portraits and perspectives that reflect, in part, the persisting enigmatic character of Hamilton. But the essays below also demonstrate that whatever the disagreements about who Hamilton was and what his influence may have been, he remains a central figure in our continuing effort to understand both the founding era and its legacy on subsequent American history. He demands to be studied because his actions, his motives, and his achievements indelibly shaped his world and ours.

Hamilton’s Life

Hamilton had, most certainly, one of the most unusual personal histories of the founders. His lineage, as Adams suggested in his biting quip, did not foretell greatness. He was born on January 11, 1755, on the British island colony of Nevis to Rachel Faucett Lavien and James Hamilton. Five years prior to Alexander’s birth, Lavien, who came from a respectable family, had walked out of an unhappy marriage to Johann Michael Lavien, leaving behind both her husband and their young son, Peter. By 1752 she was living with James Hamilton. Through James Hamilton, the fourth son of a Scottish nobleman, Alexander could—and did—claim a distinguished bloodline. But by the time James Hamilton began cohabiting with Rachel Faucett Lavien, he had little more than that bloodline left. He had come to the British West Indies in 1741 as a 23-year-old seeking his fortune. He never found it. What he did find was a meager if not impoverished life as a merchant, a life marked by “too large a portion of indolence,” as his son Alexander put it.⁵ James and Rachel had two children, James Jr. born in 1753 and Alexander born in 1755. When Alexander was 10 years old, his family migrated from Nevis to the nearby island of St. Croix. James Hamilton then abandoned his family; he would never return. Three years later, Rachel died. Her son Peter Lavien inherited all she had, leaving James Jr. and 13-year-old Alexander with nothing. A probate court placed them under the guardianship of their cousin Peter Lytton. An unstable individual, Lytton committed suicide less than a year after taking the boys in.⁶

Young Alexander Hamilton somehow managed to overcome the volatility of his childhood. Although he received little formal schooling, he became a voracious reader and fluent in French while his mother was still alive. His intellectual abilities attracted the attention of two merchants, David Beckman and Nicholas Cruger, who employed him as a clerk in their firm in Christiansted, the main city on St. Croix. Hamilton quickly assumed more and more responsibilities for the firm of Beckman & Cruger; as a 16-year-old he ran the operation for several months while Beckman and Cruger were traveling on business. But it was the appearance in St. Croix of Hugh Knox, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister, that changed Hamilton’s life forever. Knox recognized that Hamilton’s talents extended well beyond mercantile affairs. He cultivated Hamilton’s intellectual faculties as best he could, but soon realized that his library could not satisfy Hamilton’s appetite. Hamilton’s precocious abilities gained wider attention in 1772 when a local newspaper published his vivid description of a hurricane that ravished St. Croix. Knox soon began to collect funds to send 17-year-old Hamilton to the mainland colonies for a formal education.

Soon after arriving at Boston, Hamilton found his way to the Elizabeth-town Academy in New Jersey. Here he prepared for admission to the College of New Jersey, today known as Princeton, by mastering Latin and Greek. The trustees of Princeton, however, denied Hamilton’s request that he be admitted with permission to advance as quickly as he could. He turned to King’s College, today’s Columbia, and enrolled in 1774, just as the imperial crisis reached a boiling point. Hamilton combined his studies with political writing, producing his first significant pamphlet, A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, in late 1774. More political writings followed in 1775 and Hamilton joined the New York provincial militia that same year. When New York’s Provincial Congress ordered the establishment of an artillery company in 1776, it appointed the 21-year-old Hamilton to be its commander with the rank of captain. Although military service cut short his academic career, leaving him without a degree, he embraced his new responsibilities and soon saw considerable action in the battles in New York and New Jersey in 1776 and early 1777, including George Washington’s surprise attack on Trenton and the subsequent Battle of Princeton.

Just as Hugh Knox had recognized Hamilton’s talents, so too did Washington. On March 1, 1777, Washington appointed Hamilton his aide-decamp and promoted him to lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army. For the next four years, Hamilton would be at Washington’s side; for the rest of his life, Hamilton would be a force in American public life. From 1777 to 1781 he functioned as Washington’s primary secretary, drafting letters and reports. He served with him in the field at Brandywine Creek and Monmouth Court House. He wintered with him at Valley Forge and Mor-ristown. He accompanied him to West Point just as Benedict Arnold’s treasonous plot unfolded. Yet as vital as Hamilton’s services were to Washington, Hamilton yearned to return to a field command. After Washington rejected several requests, Hamilton finally provoked a confrontation in 1781 that led to his resignation from Washington’s staff. He soon thereafter received an appointment as commander of a New York infantry battalion, and in October 1781 led a successful assault on the British fortifications at Yorktown.

Military service did not monopolize Hamilton’s life between 1777 and 1781. In 1780 he courted and married Elizabeth Schuyler, daughter of one of New York’s most prestigious families. They would have eight children together; the first, Philip, was born in January 1782. Hamilton also remained active in political debates, primarily through essays and letters to newspapers. As early as 1780, Hamilton determined that the new national government under the Articles of Confederation required strengthening, and he even called for a national bank and a convention to revise the Articles. Upon leaving active service in late 1781 and returning to New York, Hamilton commenced both the study of law and an active political career, receiving an appointment in 1782 from the New York legislature to serve as delegate to Congress. In Congress he first met and worked with James Madison. Although he left Congress in 1783, his brief experience there further convinced him that the government under the Articles needed revision.

Hamilton then embarked on a legal career, moving to New York City and opening a law office. Through both his legal career and his pen, Hamilton remained deeply engaged in the politics of his state and country. In a series of pamphlets he criticized New York laws that punished Loyalists, and he defended Loyalists in court against suits based on those laws.⁷ In 1784 he helped establish the Bank of New York and became one of its directors, and in 1785 he helped found the Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves. He returned to active political life in 1786 when he was elected to the New York assembly for the following year. Before his term began, the assembly in 1786 appointed him as a delegate to the Annapolis Convention, which met to discuss the problems of interstate commerce under the Articles of Confederation. Although only a few states sent delegates and the convention resolved no problems, it did adopt a resolution, drafted by Hamilton, that urged that another convention assemble in Philadelphia in 1787 and that it focus on broad constitutional changes. In 1787 the New York legislature appointed Hamilton to be one of three delegates to the Philadelphia Convention. His two fellow delegates, Robert Yates and Robert Lansing Jr., opposed creating a strong central government. Since the convention decided that each state would have one vote, Hamilton could not get his state to vote for proposals he favored. Although he delivered several speeches before the convention, including his infamous June 18 speech in which he praised the British government and proposed a government modeled after it, he left Philadelphia in late June and only occasionally attended sessions during the rest of the summer. He returned to the convention in early September and signed the final document later that month, even though he had deep reservations about its final form. Notwithstanding those reservations, he returned to New York and within a month had published his first Federalist essay.⁸

Hamilton conceived the Federalist essays as a tactical measure to sway New York opinion in favor of ratifying the new Constitution. He recruited fellow New Yorker John Jay and James Madison to the cause. Between October 1787 and March 1788, 77 essays, all published under the pseudonym “Publius,” appeared in New York newspapers. The essays also appeared in bound form in two volumes. Volume 1 included the first 36 essays and appeared in March of 1788. The second volume, published in May 1788, included the remaining 31 articles and 8 essays that had not yet appeared in the newspapers. Hamilton probably wrote 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers, Madison 29, and Jay 5.⁹ In the spring of 1788, soon after the first volume of Federalist Papers appeared, Hamilton gained election to the New York ratifying convention, which met in Poughkeepsie in June. Hamilton and his fellow Federalist supporters of the Constitution found themselves outnumbered by its Antifederalist opponents, but once word arrived at the convention that Virginia had become the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, the tide turned in the Federalists’ favor and the convention approved unconditional ratification. Although the Federalist Papers had not accomplished Hamilton’s immediate goal of changing New York’s position on the Constitution, the collection quickly became the authoritative text on America’s federal government.¹⁰

Only fourteen months after New York’s ratification of the Constitution, President George Washington nominated and the Senate confirmed Hamilton to be the first secretary of the newly created department of the Treasury. He faced an imposing task. National finances were in disarray, America’s credit among lender nations was weak, the country lacked a stable currency, states quarreled over trade relations, and debt plagued both the state and central governments. Within three months of assuming his new position, Hamilton produced his “Report on Public Credit.” His ambitious plan called for both the funding of the $54 million national debt and the assumption of $25 million of state debts by the federal government. Both aspects of the plan aroused controversy. Hamilton sought to have the holders of old Continental securities exchange the now-depreciated notes for new bonds at face value; critics, led by former ally James Madison, favored discriminating between the original holders of the securities, many of whom were Revolutionary War veterans, and those who later purchased them at a fraction of their face value. Madison’s discrimination proposal failed in the House of Representatives, and Hamilton’s funding plan went forward. His plan to have the federal government assume the debts of the states, however, failed in its initial vote in the House. Some states, including Madison’s Virginia, argued that the assumption plan punished those states that had paid off much of their war debt by forcing them to pay for the debts of less responsible states. In the famous dinner compromise of 1790, Hamilton, Madison, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson hammered out a solution wherein Virginia and other Southern states accepted assumption in return for the establishment of the permanent national capital at a location on the Potomac River.¹¹

At the end of 1790 Hamilton submitted another report to the House that called for the chartering of a national bank. Once again, Madison and others opposed the proposal, arguing that the Constitution did not authorize such a measure. Although both the House and Senate approved a bill establishing the Bank of the United States in early 1791, President George Washington solicited written opinions from several cabinet members, including Jefferson, who agreed with Madison, before deciding whether or not to sign the bill. Hamilton responded to these objections with a passionate defense of a broad interpretation of the Constitution and especially of the “necessary and proper” clause (Article One, Section VIII, Clause 18). Washington signed the Bank bill. Late in 1791 Hamilton submitted his third famous report to the House. The “Report on Manufactures,” which detailed an ambitious plan to establish a strong manufacturing sector of the economy through government subsidies and protective tariffs, proved unsuccessful. Critics objected to Hamilton’s proposals on both constitutional and pragmatic grounds, and Congress never acted on the report’s recommendations. Hamilton himself, however, remained committed to industrial development. In 1791 he helped form the Society for the Encouragement of Useful Manufactures, which established a site in Paterson, New Jersey. Hamilton hoped that similar private ventures would stimulate the growth of domestic industry.¹²

Hamilton’s bold vision and proposals during his first 18 months as Treasury Secretary helped stimulate the development of America’s first political parties. By 1792, Jefferson and Madison mobilized those opposed to Hamilton’s policies in Congress and launched a vigorous newspaper campaign that criticized Hamilton and his program. Hamilton and his supporters responded with articles in sympathetic newspapers. Soon, Jefferson, Madison, and their allies became known as Republicans, Hamilton and his supporters continued to label themselves Federalists, and the first American party system emerged.¹³ The divisions within Washington’s cabinet, and the country, grew deeper after revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain in 1793. Washington declared U.S. neutrality and determined that the 1778 alliance with France did not require the United States to support France. Republicans objected and argued that only Congress had the constitutional authority to interpret treaties and declare neutrality. Hamilton published several essays defending Washington’s actions, and Madison responded with essays supporting the Republican position. Hamilton continued to attack the French Revolution and its American supporters in 1793 and 1794.

One of Hamilton’s last major public acts before he resigned as Treasury Secretary in January 1795 concerned the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion. Prompted by a Hamilton-sponsored excise tax on whiskey, farmers in western Pennsylvania took up arms in protest. Hamilton urged, both in newspa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Otherfront Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction The Life and Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton
• Part I The Contest with Jefferson
• Part II Hamilton’s Republicanism
• Part III Hamilton’s Legacies
• Contributors
• Index