Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

Seven years before the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton became the first person to propose such a plenary gathering.

underneath his high spirits still lurked the pessimism from his West Indian boyhood, and he sometimes viewed the world with a jaundiced, even misanthropic, eye.

I hate congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself.

However loaded with superabundant talent, Hamilton was a mass of insecurities that he usually kept well hidden.

why am I not handsome?

Hamilton’s wedding in December 1780,

Referring to the subscription fund set up by his St. Croix sponsors, he lamented the “knavery” of those managing his money. “They have already filed down what was in their hands more than one half, and I am told they go on diminishing it.”

Hamilton was too proud to sponge off the Schuylers—who would turn out, in any event, to be less affluent than legend held.

Albany retained its early Dutch character, reflected in the gabled houses.

She was visibly pregnant at the time of her daughter’s wedding.

Whether from shame, illness, or poverty, James Hamilton never met Eliza, the Schuylers, or his grandchildren, despite Alexander’s sincere entreaties that he come to America.

lonely groom, who didn’t have a single family member in attendance.

Washington had wanted to be closer all along. It was Hamilton who had rebuffed him:

From the same situation, they had drawn the same conclusions: the need for a national army, for centralized power over the states, for a strong executive, and for national unity. Their political views, forged in the crucible of war, were to survive many subsequent attempts to drive them apart.

America could defeat the British in the bond market more readily than on the battlefield.

Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified belatedly by the last state on February 27, 1781.

That the thirteen states would someday coalesce into a single country was far from a foregone conclusion.

By dint of his youth, foreign birth, and cosmopolitan outlook, he was spared prewar entanglements in provincial state politics, making him a natural spokesman for a new American nationalism.

His views did not change greatly over time so much as expand in richness, depth, and scope.

Finally, on July 31, Hamilton succeeded in his long-standing quest when he received command of a New York light-infantry battalion

In a poetic conceit that he often played with but never acted upon, he toyed with abandoning worldly pursuits to luxuriate in her company: “Every day confirms me in the intention of

For Hamilton, who had envisioned this moment since his clerkship on St. Croix, Lafayette’s choice of Gimat threatened to rob him of his last great chance to fight.

Hamilton was to command three battalions led by Gimat, Fish, and Laurens.

“You shall engage shortly to present me with a boy.

Hamilton in his leniency toward his prisoners expressed his belief that wars, like duels, were honorable rituals, conducted by gentlemen according to sacred and immutable rules.

he infected blacks with smallpox and forced them to wander toward enemy lines in an attempt to sicken the opposing forces.

On the warm morning of October 17, a red-coated drummer boy appeared on the parapet, followed by an officer flapping a white handkerchief.

Tens of thousands of onlookers gaped in amazement as the shattered British troops marched out of Yorktown and, to the tune of an old English ballad, “The World Turned Upside Down,”

On January 22, 1782, Eliza rewarded him with a son, christened Philip in tribute to her father.

Among other things, Hamilton renounced a pension that ultimately was to equal five years of full pay. His motives were certainly laudable—he wanted to remove the slightest conflict of interest as the army was demobilized and its members’ future compensation debated—but his widow and offspring were to one day rue his decision and work hard to reverse it.

With the British still clinging to New York City after Yorktown, Hamilton adopted the Schuyler mansion in Albany as his temporary home for the next two years.

he resumed the legal studies suspended at King’s he wanted to adhere to a speeded-up timetable.

Unlike other aspiring lawyers of the time, Hamilton declined to clerk under a practicing attorney and planned to instruct himself.

By July, just six months after starting his self-education, he passed the bar exam and was licensed as an attorney who could prepare cases before the New York State Supreme Court.

In acquiring these credentials, Hamilton lagged six months behind Aaron Burr, who had opened an Albany law office in July 1782.

There is little doubt that Hamilton and Burr socialized a good deal in Albany.

tenure, he advocated duties on imported goods as America’s best form of revenue.

he was chosen as one of five members of New York’s delegation

to the Continental (or Confederation) Congress that was to convene in November.

John Laurens was one of the last casualties of the American Revolution.

“You know how truly I loved him and will judge how much I regret him.”

Hamilton did not form deep friendships easily and never again revealed his interior life to another man as he had to Laurens.

The city of forty thousand people that he encountered was larger and more affluent than New York or Boston.

Madison was a pivotal figure in Hamilton’s career, their early collaboration and later falling-out demarcating distinct stages in Hamilton’s life. People tended either to embrace Hamilton or to abhor him; Madison stands out for having alternated between the usual extremes.

he was prone to hypochondria

plantation. At Princeton, he absorbed prodigious heaps of books and slept only four or five hours per night.

President Witherspoon, who had rejected Hamilton, remarked of Madison that “during the whole time he was under [my] tuition [I] never knew him to do, or to say, an improper thing.”

the central government had to have the right to enact laws that superseded those of the states and to deal directly with their citizens.

Some soldiers had been left so indebted by the fighting and the devalued currency that they feared they would be jailed upon their discharge from the army.

a committee chaired by Hamilton granted the officers a pension payment equivalent to five years’ full pay. Whether Congress could really make good on such payments without its own taxing power was another question.