Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

It is hard to grasp Hamilton’s later politics without contemplating the raw cruelty that he witnessed as a boy and that later deprived him of the hopefulness so contagious in the American milieu. On the most obvious level, the slave trade of St. Croix generated a permanent detestation of the system and resulted in his later abolitionist efforts. But something deeper may have seeped into his consciousness. In this hierarchical world, skittish planters lived in constant dread

The pause in the fighting that spring gave Hamilton plenty of time to study his new boss. The superficial contrast between the tall forty-five-year-old Virginian and his slight twenty-two-year-old aide was striking.

Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton never saw the creation of America as a magical leap across a chasm to an entirely new landscape, and he always thought the New World had much to learn from the Old.

Great line distinguishing the ideologies of tbese two men

General Charles Lee, an experienced officer who had been captured by the British in a tavern in late 1776 and had only recently been released after a fifteen-month captivity.

Enter Charles Lee

June 28, 1778, was to be an unforgettable day because of, among other things, the stifling heat.

The Battle of Monmouth

“It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—to fight for ourselves for what we are robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”

Martha Washington nickname her large, lascivious tomcat “Hamilton”—

Martha Washington's tomcat, "Hamilton"

Participate afresh in the satisfaction I experience from the connection you have made with my beloved Hamilton. He affords me happiness too exquisite for expression. I daily experience the pleasure of hearing encomiums on his virtue and abilities from those who are capable of distinguishing between real and pretended merit. He is considered, as he certainly is, the ornament of his country.

hate congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves.

“I entreat you, my charmer, not to neglect the charges I gave you, particularly that of taking care of yourself and that of employing all your leisure in reading. Nature has been very kind to you. Do not neglect to cultivate her gifts and to enable yourself to make the distinguished figure in all respects to which you are entitled to aspire.”

“The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people,” he told Morris. “In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.”

That Alexander Hamilton opted to purchase land in the far northern woods and bungled the chance to buy dirt-cheap Manhattan real estate must certainly count as one of his few conspicuous failures of economic judgment.

NYC real estate opportunity blown lol

Many weird coincidences stamped the lives of Hamilton and Burr, yet their origins were quite dissimilar.

Hamilton and Burr backstory

his West Indian childhood left Hamilton with a settled antipathy to slavery. During the war, Hamilton had supported John Laurens’s futile effort to emancipate southern slaves who fought for independence. He had expressed an unwavering belief in the genetic equality of blacks and whites—unlike Jefferson, for instance, who regarded blacks as innately inferior—that was enlightened for his day.

In 1776, John Adams had predicted accurately that “the most intricate, the most important, the most dangerous and delicate business” of the postwar years would be the creation of a central government.

This was the great paradox of his career: his optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His faith in Americans never quite matched his faith in America itself.

Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

“I know that powerful individuals in this and in other states are enemies to a general national government in every possible shape.” 75 Thus ended the most persuasive defense of the Constitution ever written. By the year 2000, it had been quoted no fewer than 291 times in Supreme Court opinions, with the frequency of citations rising with the years.