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biography
| name: |
Hamilton, Alexander
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1757–1804)
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| biography:
| US statesman and political thinker, born in Nevis, British West Indies. The son of a Scottish merchant and a French Huguenot mother who died when he was 11, he went to work in a store that same year because his father's business was failing. He showed an early talent for writing and an ambition to gain an education, so aunts sent him to America (1772), and he entered King's College (now Columbia University) in 1773. Although always a moderate in his political views, he soon aligned himself with the anti-British patriots, writing lengthy pamphlets that left many amazed at the knowledge and writing skills of a 17-year-old. With the outbreak of the American Revolution, he joined the army, and by early 1776 was fighting under George Washington's command. By March 1777 he was Washington's secretary and aide-de-camp, and soon assumed considerable responsibilities that extended well beyond organizing Washington's communications and affairs, setting forth plans to reorganize not only the present army but the government that would follow the fighting. After a minor quarrel with Washington, he got himself reassigned to head an infantry regiment that he led at the siege of Yorktown. After a term in the Continental Congress (1782–3), he went into private law practice in New York City. As one of New York's delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (1787), he did not exercise much influence, as his ideas on the organization of a government were too conservative, but he signed the new constitution, and in October he published the first of the so-called ‘Federalist papers’ endorsing the new government. (Of the 85 ‘papers’–actually open letters, most signed by ‘Publius’–he wrote 51 and collaborated with James Madison on 3 others; Madison and John Jay wrote the remaining 31.) Hamilton also played a most crucial role in applying the power of his oratory and arguments to persuade New York State to adopt the Constitution. Selected by Washington as the first secretary of the treasury (1789–95), he proceeded boldly to structure the new nation's fiscal system, setting up a national bank and national mint and taking on the national debt. But the very aggressiveness that served to strengthen the new government also contributed to the divisiveness, particularly between Thomas Jefferson and himself, that led to the emergence of two opposing political parties, the Federalists led by Hamilton and the Democratic-Republicans led by Jefferson. Hamilton resigned in 1795 and returned to private law practice in New York City, and remained recognized as head of the Federalists, but when Jefferson and Aaron Burr ended up in a tie in the presidential election of 1800, Hamilton used his influence to get the House of Representatives to choose Jefferson because he believed Burr to be a dangerous man. In 1804 Hamilton then used his influence to help defeat Burr's candicacy for the governorship of New York. Burr then challenged Hamilton to a duel, and although he was opposed to duelling, his own son having been killed in one in 1801, he met Burr early in the morning of 11 July at Weehawken, NJ; Hamilton fired into the air but Burr mortally wounded Hamilton, who died the next day. Widely admired for his intellect, Hamilton was less popular for a certain arrogance in pursuit of his own beliefs. And if some of his ideas now seem less than congenial, especially his outspoken distrust of common people, he was probably the right man in the right place at the right time, giving form to many of the elements that allowed for the endurance of the government of the United States of America. |
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