Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

This was the first time that Hamilton’s opponents tried to denigrate him with charges of mixed racial ancestry.

Thus began the baseless mythology, which persists to this day, that Hamilton was Washington’s “natural” child.

Since critics found it hard to defeat him on intellectual grounds, they stooped to personal attacks.

The most plausible shape of such a business would be the establishment of a son of the present [British] monarchy in the supreme government of this country with a family compact.”

Hamilton supervised the entire Federalist project. He dreamed up the idea, enlisted the participants, wrote the overwhelming bulk of the essays, and oversaw the publication.

Along with Franklin and Adams, he had negotiated the treaty that ended the Revolution

out because of a severe bout of rheumatism. In the final tally, The Federalist Papers ran to eighty-five essays, with fifty-one attributed to Hamilton, twenty-nine to Madison, and only five to Jay. Since Hamilton had not reckoned on Jay’s

For Archibald McLean, The Federalist Papers were a dreadful flop, an unfortunate publishing venture best forgotten.

He never wrote as a solitary philosopher for the ages.

The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation.

They both wanted to erect barriers against irrational popular impulses and tyrannical minorities and majorities.

the starting point of Madison’s most famous essay, Federalist number 10, is that people possess different natural endowments, leading to an unequal distribution of property and conflicts of classes and interests.

Hamilton questioned the motives of the Constitution’s opponents and censured the two types who had populated his political nightmares: state politicians (read: George Clinton) who feared an erosion of their power, and demagogues who fed off popular confusion while proclaiming popular rights (Jefferson later took this starring role).

number. In the next four essays, John Jay showed how weak and vulnerable the confederation had been in foreign affairs.

four essays to the pernicious domestic consequences that would ensue if the Articles of Confederation endured and states continued to bicker with one another.

The United States had become a pariah country, sneered at by foreign states: “We have neither troops nor treasury nor government.”

Only if the federal government could deal directly with its citizens and not fear obstruction from the states could it be a true government.

“Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.”

federal monopoly of customs duties,

by landholders but also marked by diversity. Hamilton was careful to stress that, for the foreseeable future, manufacturing would play an auxiliary role in a predominantly agricultural society.

Deviating from his convention speech, Hamilton now touted the merits of a four-year term for the president, who could run for additional terms.

bill of rights, one of his real failures of vision. We should note that in Federalist number 84, he supported with enthusiasm the Constitution’s ban on titles of nobility:

Ann Venton Mitchell.

led by Mayor James Duane embarked on a Hudson River sloop for the seventy-five-mile journey upriver. This illustrious group included Hamilton, Jay, and Robert R. Livingston, and it made up in intelligence what it lacked in numbers.

prisoners. Governor Clinton was elected as the chairman. If dignified in mien, he was scarcely a neutral arbiter.

He spoke twenty-six times, far more than any other federalist, and soldiered on for six exhausting weeks.

“Many other observations might be made on this subject,” he apologized, “but I cannot now pursue them, for I feel myself not a little exhausted.

their “vices are probably more favorable to the prosperity of the state than those of the indigent and partake less of moral depravity.”

Hamilton believed that revolutions ended in tyranny because they glorified revolution as a permanent state of mind. A spirit of compromise and a concern with order were needed to balance the quest for liberty.

Lansing and Hamilton had shaded over from spirited repartee to such personal insults that a duel might follow:

The final vote of thirty to twenty-seven was the smallest victory margin at any state convention and portended future political troubles for Hamilton.

So exuberant was the lionization of Alexander Hamilton that admirers wanted to rechristen the city “Hamiltoniana.”

Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics.

the improbable presidential candidacy of George Clinton.

ten candidates.)

That Hamilton could be so sensitive to criticisms of himself and so insensitive to the effect his words had on others was a central mystery of his psyche.

will not be bound by the most solemn of all obligations!*******”25 The seven asterisks must have signified the word wedlock,

charged, for the first time in print, with adultery.

There was the Olympian sphere of constitutional debate and dignified discourse—the way many prefer to remember these stately figures—and the gutter world of personal sniping, furtive machinations, and tabloid-style press attacks.

divided state, ripe for political manipulation. The wily Clinton knew that he had to shore up his base, so in September he offered the state attorney-general job to Aaron Burr, whom he neither liked nor trusted.

The political genius of Aaron Burr was to lie in figuring out endless ways to profit from the partisan wrangling in his home state.

Washington had fallen into debt and had to borrow heavily at exorbitant interest rates to make the trip.

The Common Council hired Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French architect and engineer who was to later design Washington, D.C., to renovate City Hall at the corner of Broad and Wall.

Washington hoped it would soon “be unfashionable for a gentleman to appear” in any dress that was not of American origin.27

Both Alexander and Eliza attended the first inaugural ball on May 7.

Washington had seven slaves shipped up from Mount Vernon to assist his white household servants.

Angelica Church sailed from England and arrived in time to witness Washington’s inauguration.

Church became an M.P. from Wendover Borough in 1790.

It may be more than coincidental that the first scandalous reference to Hamilton’s marital infidelity occurred in late March 1789 just as Angelica Church returned to New York.

Alexander and Eliza seemed united, not divided, by their shared adoration of Angelica.