Orphan Bastard

Young Hamilton endures loss and pursues advancement.

By the age of 13, Alexander Hamilton was an orphan. He had lost everyone within a matter of two years. His father had abandoned his family a few years prior, leaving his mother, Rachel, to raise him and his brother James alone. Rachel was a hard-working single mom who ran a shop in the downstairs room of their house.Then in 1768, Alexander's childhood took a turn for the worse. Rachel fell sick with a fever, and within days Alexander was also sick. Ron Chernow paints the scene of young Hamilton and his mom lying side by side, deathly ill in a single upstairs bed.

Ron Chernow

Dr. Heering subjected mother and child to the medieval purgatives so popular in eighteenth-century medicine. Rachel had to endure an emetic and a medicinal herb called valerian, which expelled gas from the alimentary canal; Alexander submitted to bloodletting and an enema. Mother and son must have been joined in a horrid scene of vomiting, flatulence, and defecation as they lay side by side in a feverish state in the single upstairs bed.

The delirious Alexander was probably writhing inches from his mother when she expired at nine o'clock on the night of February 19. Notwithstanding the late hour, five agents from the probate court hastened to the scene and sequestered the property.

The disease Rachel and Alexander contracted was likely yellow fever. Alexander survived; Rachel did not. As soon as she died, the probate court immediately seized her assets including nine slaves, household furnishings, shop inventory, and a library of books.Years earlier, Rachel had been married to a man named Johann Michael Lavien, with whom she had a son, Peter Lavien. Although Rachel had not seen Peter for years, the estate belonged to him. Peter's claim was that Alexander and James had been born outside of wedlock, into "whoredom," and therefore had no legal rights. The Danish Probate Court agreed with this claim, which left Alexander and James with no mother, no father, and no property. They were now penniless and entirely reliant on extended family for support.

Ron Chernow

Heaps of bills poured in, including for the batch of medicine that had failed to save their mother. Less than a week after Rachel died, the probate officers again trooped to the house to appraise the estate.The court decided that it had to consider three possible heirs: [Rachel's first child] Peter Lavien, whose father had divorced Rachel "for valid reasons by the highest authority," and the illegitimate James and Alexander, the "obscene children born after the deceased person's divorce." The whole marital scandal was dredged up again, only now at an age when Alexander and his brother could fully fathom its meaning.

In November 1769, no less implacably vengeful than his father, Peter Lavien returned to St. Croix and took possession of his small inheritance—an injustice that rankled Alexander for many years. Peter had fared sufficiently well in Beaufort, South Carolina, to be named a church warden—the chief financial and administrative officer—in St. Helena's Parish the previous year, yet he couldn’t spare a penny for the two destitute half brothers orphaned by his mother's death.

At this point, there was still a strand of hope for Rachel's boys. Rachel's older sister Ann and her husband James had a 32-year-old son named Peter Lytton. After Rachel died, the boys went to live with Peter, but within months Peter was found in his bed, soaked in blood. Apparently he had killed himself, either by stabbing or shooting. Peter's will provided for his mistress and their child, but once again Alexander and James were left with nothing. Peter's father, also named James, tried to make arrangements for the boys, but he too died within a month of his own son's death, perhaps from grief, and his will also left nothing to his nephews. At this point, it became obvious that Alexander and James had to be split apart so that they could go make a livelihood on their own.

James was sent to apprentice with an old carpenter, and Alexander had already begun work at a Caribbean import-export firm named Beekman and Cruger.

Dear Ned

Young Hamilton endures loss and pursues advancement.

David Beekman and Nicolas Cruger were New York merchants who ran an import‑export firm on St. Croix. They hired the young Alexander to manage their accounts, write letters, translate French correspondence, track cargo, deal with ships and captains, and run the business while they were away. Hamilton would later say that this clerkship was "the most useful part of his education.”

Ron Chernow

Beekman and Cruger engaged in an export-import business that provided an excellent training ground for Hamilton, who had to monitor a bewildering inventory of goods. The firm dealt in every conceivable commodity required by planters: timber, bread, flour, rice, lard, pork, beef, fish, black-eyed peas, corn, porter, cider, pine, oak, hops, shingles, iron, lime, rope, lampblack, bricks, mules, and cattle...

Young Hamilton acted like the owner of the firm. He was making decisions and then sending those frequent updates to Nicholas Cruger. And because of this, Cruger became very comfortable leaving Hamilton in charge while he made trips to New York.I'm gonna read you a letter that Alexander wrote to Cruger's brother demonstrating his precociousness in managing the firm. He explains that he processed a merchant shipment as quickly as possible, but the mahogany he received was second rate, so he had to sell it at a lower price. Now, keep in mind, this letter was written while he was a teenager.

Young Hamilton

Your mahogany is of the very worst kind or I could readily have obtained 6 shillings per foot for it, but at present tis blown upon, tis fit only for end work. … Believe me Sir Nothing was neglected on my part to give him the utmost Dispatch, & considering that his Cargo was stowed very Hicheldy-picheldy - the proceeding part of it rather uppermost. I think he was dispatched as soon as could be expected.

Ron Chernow

He learned to write in a beautiful, clear, flowing hand. He had to mind money, chart courses for ships, keep track of freight, and compute prices in an exotic blend of currencies, including Portuguese coins, Spanish pieces of eight, British pounds, Danish ducats, and Dutch stivers.

Around this time, Alexander was taken into the home of Thomas Stevens. Stevens was a successful merchant, and there's speculation that he was perhaps Alexander Hamilton's biological father. The Stevens family was very protective of Alexander, but they made no effort to take his brother James into their home. Alexander also looked a lot like Thomas's son Ned, to the point where people on St. Croix thought they were brothers.Ned became a close friend of Alexander before leaving for New York to attend King's College, which is now Columbia University. In this famous letter from November 11, 1769, Alexander writes to Ned about his own ambition to leave the island and pursue a "higher station."

Young Hamilton

This just serves to acknowledge receipt of your [letter] per Captain Lowndes, which was delivered me yesterday. [I pray that your family's visit] may convey that satisfaction to your soul that must naturally flow from the sight of absent friends in health; and shall, for news this way, refer you to them.

As to what you say respecting your having soon the happiness of seeing us all... I doubt whether I shall be present or not, for, to confess my weakness, Ned, my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune, etc., condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.

I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment; nor do I desire it; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may justly be said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and I beg you'll conceal it; yet, Neddy, we have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant. I shall conclude saying, I wish there was a war.

The Hurricane

Hamilton turns the hurricane into a sermon on pride, faith, and death.

On August 31, 1772, a hurricane ripped through St. Croix from dusk until three in the morning. Seventeen‑year‑old Hamilton had just heard a sermon by his mentor, the Presbyterian minister Hugh Knox. After returning home, he wrote a letter describing the storm, addressed to his estranged father, James. Hamilton did not realize it then, but the letter would change his life. Influenced by Knox, his writing reads like a fire‑and‑brimstone sermon; he calls himself an arrogant, “vile worm” and scolds himself for trembling helplessly in the hurricane.

Young Hamilton

A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground, almost all the rest very much shattered; several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined; whole families running about the streets, unknowing where to find a place of shelter... In a word, misery, in all its most hideous shapes.

Where now, oh! vile worm, is all your boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of your arrogance and self sufficiency? Why do you tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible you now appear. And for why?

The jarring of elements - the discord of clouds? Oh! impotent presumptuous fool! how dare you offend that Omnipotence, whose nod alone were sufficient to quell the destruction that hovers over you, or crush you into atoms? See your wretched helpless state, and learn to know yourself. Learn to know your best support. Despise yourself, and adore your God.

A pleasing calm suspense! A short repose from calamity to end in eternal bliss? Let the Earth rend. Let the planets forsake their course. Let the Sun be extinguished and the Heavens burst asunder. Yet what have I to dread? My staff can never be broken - in Omnipotence I trusted.

He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage - even him have I always loved and served. His precepts have I observed. His commandments have I obeyed - and his perfections have I adored. He will snatch me from ruin. He will exalt me to the fellowship of Angels and Seraphs, and to the fullness of never ending joys.

But alas! how different, how deplorable, how gloomy the prospect! Death comes rushing on in triumph veiled in a mantle of tenfold darkness. His unrelenting scythe, pointed, and ready for the stroke. On his right hand sits destruction, hurling the winds and belching forth flames: Calamity on his left threatening famine disease and distress of all kinds.

As an obedient Christian, Hamilton knows that death will deliver him into “the fellowship of Angels.” Yet he admits that death is also terrifying. Death seems to rush toward him “in triumph, veiled in a mantle of ten‑fold darkness.”Hamilton survived to tell the tale, but the island was devastated, and it would take months before it began to recover. Many families were completely ruined. Alexander will now call on the island's wealthy to give to the poor. His letter will also become his own ticket off the island of St. Croix.

Ticket Out

Hamilton turns disaster writing into a public appeal and a passage off St. Croix.

Hamilton's hurricane letter, ostensibly written to his estranged dad, ends with an appeal to the rich inhabitants of St Croix to help the island's poor. Halfway through his account, Hamilton realizes he survived and feels relieved. This relief is brief, as he then calls himself selfish for exulting in "a season of universal woe."

Young Hamilton

Yet hold, Oh vain mortal! Check your ill timed joy. Are you so selfish to exult because your lot is happy in a season of universal woe? Have you no feelings for the miseries of your fellow-creatures? And are you incapable of the soft pangs of sympathetic sorrow? Look around you and shudder at the view.

See desolation and ruin where'er you turn your eye! See your fellow-creatures pale and lifeless; their bodies mangled, their souls snatched into eternity, unexpecting. Alas! perhaps unprepared! Hark the bitter groans of distress. See sickness and infirmities exposed to the inclemencies of wind and water! See tender infancy pinched with hunger and hanging on the mothers knee for food!

See the unhappy mothers anxiety. Her poverty denies relief, her breast heaves with pangs of maternal pity, her heart is bursting, the tears gush down her cheeks. Oh sights of woe! Oh distress unspeakable! My heart bleeds, but I have no power to solace! O you, who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them.

Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withold your compassion. What are your sufferings compared to those? You have still more than enough left. Act wisely. Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven.

Hugh Knox, the Presbyterian minister we mentioned earlier, thought Hamilton’s letter was brilliant and urged its publication in the Royal Danish American Gazette. As Knox expected, the letter became a local sensation. When residents found out the author was seventeen, they were even more astonished. Despite the fact that their homes, refineries, and fields were devastated by a hurricane, and despite the fact that they had no money to spare, the residents of St. Croix began raising a scholarship fund so Alexander pursue an education in America.

Without the money from the scholarship fund, Alexander would have been stuck on the island. The clerk's wages would have taken years to amount to a substantial sum. But now, thanks to a single letter, Hamilton was bound for the mainland. He arrived in Boston in October of 1772 and then made his way to New York to collect his allowance. He was still a teenager and knew almost no one on the continent. This would be the first time he had worn an overcoat or seen the seasons change.

The Patriots Rise

The Tea Party turns organized resistance into an imperial showdown.

Hamilton started at King’s College in New York in 1773, where he formed a literary club. These clubs were common at the time. Members would write essays, read them aloud, and debate one another's arguments. Hamilton quickly became known as a formidable speaker. At first, his political arguments expressed admiration for England and its constitution, but his views soon aligned with the Patriot cause.Britain had spent the previous decade trying to increase its control and taxation over the colonies. In 1765, it began taxing all printed materials, like newspapers and legal documents. This tax encouraged colonists to organize into a group called the Sons of Liberty. Years later, the Tea Act was passed, which would grant the East India Company a monopoly on selling tea. The Sons of Liberty pledged to resist this de facto tax. The crisis came to a head in Boston in December 1773. Three East India Company ships were docked at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, encircled by British warships. The British military had given the Bostonians a deadline of December 17 to allow the tea to be unloaded.The night before, a group of Bostonians met at a church to discuss how they would resist and prevent the unloading of the tea. This would become one of the most famous nights in American history, known as the Boston Tea Party. Here is a first-hand account from one of the participants, a Boston shoemaker named George R. T. Hewes.

George Hewes

When the committee returned and informed the meeting of the absence of the governor, there was a confused murmur among the members, and the meeting was immediately dissolved, many of them crying out, Let every man do his duty, and be true to his country; and there was a general huzza for Griffins wharf.It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet...after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffins wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea.I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was... and marched in order to the place of our destination. When we arrived at the wharf, there were three of our number who assumed an authority to direct our operations, to which we readily submitted.

The commanders broke Hughes and his fellow men into three distinct parties, one for each ship

George Hewes

The commander of the division to which I belonged, as soon as we were on board the ship, appointed me boatswain, and ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys... I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging.We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches, and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders; first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship; while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.

We then quietly retired to our several places of residence, without having any conversation with each other, or taking any measures to discover who were our associates; nor do I recollect of our having had the knowledge of the name of a single individual concerned in that affair, except that of Leonard Pitt, the commander of my division.There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequences for himself. No disorder [or theft] took place during that transaction, and it was observed at that time, that the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.

After the Boston Tea Party, other colonies staged their own revolts, notably New York. The British were furious. One parliamentarian called the colonies a "nest of locusts" and said they should be "obliterated like Carthage." In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which the colonists called the Intolerable Acts. Most of the British crackdown was directed at Boston: they closed Boston's port, restricted town meetings, and even curtailed the right to trial by jury. To enforce the acts, Britain sent four regiments under the leadership of General Thomas Gage, flooding Boston's streets with soldiers.Even though most of these measures were directed at Boston and Massachusetts, they had the effect of uniting the colonies. The other colonies saw this as a warning that Britain would come for them next, and the shared threat prompted them to organize the First Continental Congress.On July 6, 1774, the Sons of Liberty held an assembly on the Common near King's College. One of the students in the crowd was 19-year-old Alexander Hamilton. Called on by his peers, he worked his way to the platform and gave an impromptu speech so stirring that the crowd went into an uproar. From that moment on, he became a leading spokesman for the Patriot cause.

The Farmer Refuted

Hamilton answers Loyalism in print, then carries his Patriot argument into the militia.

After the British crackdown on Boston and the passing of the Coercive Acts, colonies began to organize. Each colony held its own meeting deciding whether to send delegates to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress.Public debate around the topic of colonial rights was exploding. Those who supported British rule were called Loyalists or Tories. One of these Loyalists was the clergyman Samuel Seabury, who had published a series of pamphlets under the pseudonym "A Westchester Farmer," arguing that it was in the best interest of farmers to remain under British rule. Hamilton, still a student at King’s College, answered him with two essays refuting Seabury's arguments: "A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress" and "The Farmer Refuted." This back-and-forth between Seabury and Hamilton gives us some texture about the public fight in the days before the Revolution.

Samuel Seabury

If I must be enslaved, let it be by a KING at least, and not by a parcel of upstart lawless Committee-men. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin.

Legislation is not an inherent right in the colonies; many colonies have been established and subsisted long without it. The Roman colonies had no legislative authority... All the laws of the empire were enacted at Rome. Neither their colonies nor conquered countries had any thing to do with legislation.

Seabury makes the claim that it's better to be ruled by lions than by rats and vermin. This distrust of committee rule is ironically shared with Hamilton himself, as we'll see when we get to the Federalist Papers.Their disagreement centers on whether the colonies have a right to self-government. Seabury argues that Rome never granted its colonies any rights. Hamilton responds that rights aren't to be found in historical examples, but rather that they are God-given, "written in the sunbeam."

Young Hamilton

The right of colonists... to exercise a legislative power, is an inherent right. It is founded upon the rights of all men to freedom and happiness. For civil liberty cannot possibly have any existence where the society for whom laws are made have no share in making them, and where the interest of their legislators is not inseparably interwoven with theirs.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records... they are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

Hamilton's second essay was published in February 1775, and at this point even Hamilton supported allegiance to the king. The mainstream debate was still centered on colonial rights, not independence. As an example of how quickly things can unwind, it was only two months later that the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place.

Ron Chernow

On the night of April 18, 1775, eight hundred British troops marched out of Boston to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seize a stockpile of patriot munitions in Concord. As they passed Lexington, they encountered a motley battalion of armed farmers known as Minutemen, and in the ensuing exchange of gunfire the British killed eight colonists and then two more in Concord. As the redcoats retreated helter-skelter to Boston, they were riddled by sniper fire that erupted from behind hedges, stone walls, and fences, leaving a bloody trail of 273 British casualties versus ninety-five dead or wounded for the patriots.

After news spread of what happened in Lexington and Concord, young men quickly formed groups of voluntary companies or militias, typically led by retired military officers who had served alongside the British. Young Hamilton joined his local militia called the "Hearts of Oak" (or Corsicans), where he drilled each morning before class. Recruits wore short green jackets and leather caps that read "Liberty or Death." Public opinion turned abruptly against the Loyalists, many of whom fled to England as tensions grew.

Hamilton Under Fire

Hamilton proves his Patriotism through restraint, courage, command, and endurance.

One of the Loyalists who remained in Boston was Dr. Myles Cooper, the president of King's College, where Hamilton was in attendance. Cooper was a known Loyalist who had called the Bostonians “a crooked and perverse generation.” On the night of May 10, 1775, an enraged mob descended on the campus to confront Cooper.Hamilton received word and reached the college ahead of the mob. He took the front stoop and delayed them with a speech. He warned that they would "disgrace and injure the glorious cause of liberty" if they continued. Hamilton bought Cooper enough time to escape out the back. Cooper wandered along the Hudson all night, boarding a ship to England the following morning.

Henry Cabot Lodge

There is, indeed, something rather surprising as well as quite fine in the spectacle thus presented of a boy, whose blood was hot with the new strong wine of revolution, risking his life and, what he loved probably much more, his influence and his popularity, in behalf of law, order, and mercy.

The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, the same day that Hamilton helped Miles Cooper escape. Unlike the First Continental Congress, which was organized to demand rights within the British Empire, the Second Congress was tasked with manage the war. This body functioned more like a national government and gradually evolved into the first government of the United States.On June 14, 1775, it created the Continental Army; the following day, it unanimously chose George Washington of Virginia as commander in chief. Washington was an obvious choice for two reasons: (1) he had earned a reputation as a strong military leader during the French and Indian War and (2) selecting a Virginian signaled that the cause was continental, not merely a regional dispute between Boston and Britain.

On June 17, the New England militia fortified a position near Bunker Hill in Boston. Their goal was to surround the British army and prevent them from taking control of the heights around the city. The next morning, the British notice the fortification and attacked. By the end of the day, the British had lost a thousand men, about twice as many as the Patriots. A couple weeks later, Washington arrived in Cambridge to take command of the New England Militia and turn it into the Continental Army. Other companies from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia soon arrived to join the fight.That August, Hamilton saw his first bit of action. The British warship Asia sat in New York Harbor, and the Continental Army feared that the cannons near the battery at King’s College would be seized. Hamilton, his friend Hercules Mulligan, and about fourteen other volunteers signed up for a mission to haul the guns out of the battery and into safety.When they began moving the guns, the Asia opened fire. The Patriots shot back, and soon the warship was unloading grapeshot into Boston, tearing apart houses and taverns and sending residents screaming into the streets. Here we get our first glimpse of Hamilton under fire. Mulligan later recounted how Hamilton had to go back to the battery to fetch his musket and was completely unfazed by the shelling around him.

Hercules Mulligan

I was engaged in hauling off one of the Cannons, when Mr. Hamilton came up and gave me his musket to hold, & he took hold of the rope. The punt of the Asia had before approached the Battery and was fired upon and a man was killed, she returned to the ship and the fire was then opened upon us.

I left [Hamilton's] musket in the Battery & retreated, as he was returning I met him and he asked for his piece. I told him where I had left it, and he went for it, notwithstanding the firing continued, with as much unconcern as if the vessel had not been there.

Seven months later, Alexander Hamilton would have his own formal command. New York was raising an artillery company, and a man named Alexander McDougall, a leader in the Sons of Liberty, recommended Hamilton to the post. Artillery suited Hamilton well since it was a mathematical and technical position and made use of his extensive knowledge of military history. Hamilton recruited and trained 68 men, and their unit became known as one of the most disciplined in all the army.On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence. The signers of the Declaration knew that treason would be punished by death and that the odds of winning a war against Britain were low.Around this time, the British sent two warships named the Phoenix and the Rose, firing into New York City as they moved up the Hudson. Hamilton’s men were among the companies that returned fire. One of Hamilton’s cannons burst, killing some of his men. This was one of his first setbacks and a harsh encounter with the reality of war.

Henry Cabot Lodge

From New York, Hamilton went with the army in their terrible march through New Jersey, and shared in the brilliant campaign of Trenton and Princeton. By this time, after six months of hard fighting, his company was reduced to twenty-five men, who retained their old discipline, but little else.

Their commander had, however, made a name as a dashing and gallant officer, and this, added to his literary reputation, led to his appointment as one of Washington's aides with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, on March 1, 1777, when he was barely twenty years old.

New Family

Hamilton finds belonging on Washington’s staff, then falls for Eliza Schuyler.

Weeks after his victory in Princeton, Washington set up headquarters in Morristown, halfway between New York and Philadelphia. He invited Hamilton to join him at headquarters as one of his chief aides. Hamilton was always reluctant to take a desk job, but it seems this was the exception. Hamilton accepted the post and was thereby promoted to lieutenant colonel.There's speculation that Washington was infertile. Having no biological children of his own, he treated younger officers like Lafayette and Hamilton as surrogate sons. Hamilton became so familiar with Washington's way of thinking that he began writing a bulk of Washington's letters and speeches.

Ron Chernow

Quartered at Jacob Arnold's tavern, Hamilton lived in cheek-by-jowl intimacy with his new military family. So that he could summon his aides at any hour, Washington preferred to have them shelter under one roof. Sometimes, on frosty nights, the general would wrap himself in a blanket and lie thinking on a couch until interrupted by a sudden messenger on horseback.The four to six young aides usually slept in one room, often two to a bed, then worked long days in a single room with chairs crowded around small wooden tables. During busy periods, the aides sometimes wrote and copied one hundred letters per day, an exhausting grind relieved by occasional dances, parades, and reviews.Hamilton, though the youngest family member, was nevertheless Washington's "principal and most confidential aide," as the general phrased it. Instead of resenting him, the other aides treated Hamilton affectionately and nicknamed him "Ham" or "Hammie." For an orphaned boy from the Caribbean, what better fate than to become part of this elite family?

By the spring of 1779, the United States had developed an open alliance with France, which made the prospect of an American victory seem not so far-fetched. The alliance also came on the heels of a military victory at Saratoga and the British evacuation of Philadelphia.Hamilton, who had once said that a soldier should have "no wife but the army", was now worried that after the war, he'd be without a family. He wrote a playful letter to his close friend John Laurens, another of Washington's aides, describing his ideal wife: someone well‑bred yet averse to the word "ton" (fashionable society), neither a "bossy" termagant nor a penny-pinching "economist."

Young Hamilton

Take her description—she must be young, handsome (I lay most stress upon a good shape), sensible (a little learning will do), well bred (but she must have an aversion to the word ton), chaste, and tender (I am an enthusiast in my notions of fidelity and fondness), of some good nature, a great deal of generosity (she must neither love money nor scolding, for I dislike equally a termagant and an economist).

In politics I am indifferent what side she may be of. I think I have arguments that will easily convert her to mine. As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in God and hate a saint.

But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better. … Though I run no risk of going to Purgatory for my avarice, yet as money is an essential ingredient to happiness in this world, as I have not much of my own, and as I am very little calculated to get more either by my address or industry, it must needs be that my wife, if I get one, bring at least a sufficiency to administer to her own extravagancies.

The letter was a joke, but the reality of this impossibly wonderful woman arrived the next winter.

The wealthy and powerful Schuyler family from Albany had three boys and five girls. Four of the five Schuyler sisters eloped. Eliza would be the exception.When Eliza arrived in Morristown, she had a letter of introduction from her father to General Washington. Hamilton had already met Eliza and her older sister Angelica on a trip to Albany, and was smitten with both sisters. It's possible that Hamilton even had an affair with Angelica, or at least many people presumed they did based on their ongoing flirtation throughout his life.But he was also head over heels for Eliza. After they met at Morristown, a fellow aide described Hamilton as a "gone man." Within a month, the two had agreed to marry. Their courtship continued through correspondence, and during the engagement Hamilton challenged whether she would be ready to be a poor man's wife sacrificing her coach for a "jolting wagon" and fine brocade for "homespun cloth."

Young Hamilton

I love you more and more every hour. The sweet softness and delicacy of your mind and manners, the elevation of your sentiments, the real goodness of your heart - its tenderness to me - the beauties of your face and person - your unpretending good sense and that innocent simplicity and frankness which pervade your actions, all these appear to me with increasing amiableness, and place you in my estimation above all the rest of your sex.

The Poor Man's Wife

Hamilton tests Eliza’s appetite for poverty, marries her, and collides with Washington.

Young Hamilton

Tell me, my pretty damsel, have you made up your mind upon the subject of housekeeping? Do you soberly relish the pleasure of being a poor man's wife? Have you learned to think a homespun preferable to a brocade and the rumbling of a wagon wheel to the musical rattling of a coach and six? Will you be able to see with perfect composure your old acquaintances, flaunting it in gay life, tripping it along in elegance and splendor, while you hold a humble station and have no other enjoyments than the sober comforts of a good wife?...If you cannot, my dear, we are playing a comedy of all in the wrong and you should correct the mistake before we begin to act the tragedy of the unhappy couple.

Here is Lin-Manuel Miranda's version of the same letter Hamilton wrote to Eliza, adapted for his Broadway musical.

Lin Manuel Miranda

Eliza, I don't have a dollar to my name, an acre of land, a troop to command, a dollop of fame. All I have's my honor, a tolerance for pain, a couple of college credits and my top-notch brain. … We'll get a little place in Harlem and we'll figure it out.

Hamilton did not presume he was marrying into the Schuyler fortune. As an orphan and bastard, he didn't even know if her father, Philip Schuyler, would accept him. But Philip Schuyler embraced the illegitimate aide without hesitation and called him the ornament of his country.

Philip Schuyler

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.

On December 14, 1780, Hamilton and Eliza married in Albany, in the Dutch custom — a small ceremony in the bride's home, the church clerk recording only "Colonel Hamilton & Elisabeth Schuyler." Almost no one from Hamilton's side was there.

Ron Chernow

At noon on December 14, 1780, Alexander Hamilton, twenty-five, wed Elizabeth Schuyler, twenty-three, in the southeast parlor of the Schuyler mansion. The interior of the two-story brick residence was light and airy and had a magnificent curving staircase with beautifully carved balusters.Except for James McHenry, Hamilton's friends on Washington's staff were too busy with wartime duties to attend. For all the merriment and high spirits, few guests could have overlooked the mortifying contrast between the enormous Schuyler clan, with their Van Cortlandt and Van Rensselaer relatives, and the lonely groom, who didn't have a single family member in attendance.Hamilton had few people to invite to the wedding. His brother, James, was still alive, probably on St. Thomas, but he didn't come. Hamilton contacted his father, who was on Bequia in the Grenadines, but he didn't show up either … 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.

After the wedding, the staff job chafed harder than ever. More than once Hamilton had asked Washington for a field command — a battalion under Lafayette, a charge on the British posts in northern Manhattan — and each time Washington refused, unwilling to lose the one aide who could draft his subtlest letters and speak French. He was trapped by his own usefulness.In January 1781, he rejoined Washington at New Windsor, on the Hudson, and Eliza came with him. The winter brought mutinies in the unpaid lines, which Washington put down hard. On February 16, the morning after the two had worked past midnight, Hamilton was coming down the stairs as the general was climbing them, and Washington said curtly that he wanted a word. Hamilton nodded — he would be right back; he only had a letter to hand off. But he stopped to talk with Lafayette on the way, and by the time he climbed back up, Washington was furious.

Yorktown

Hamilton leaves Washington's staff, wins command, and takes Redoubt Ten.

For four years, Hamilton had run Washington's correspondence as his aide-de-camp, quartered at the general's headquarters. In February 1781, at New Windsor, a chance meeting on the staircase ended it. Here Hamilton explains to his father-in-law how he was dismissed from the general's "family".

Young Hamilton

Since I had the pleasure of writing you last, an unexpected change has taken place in my situation. I am no longer a member of the General's family.Two days ago, the General and I passed each other on the stairs. He told me he wanted to speak to me. I answered that I would wait upon him immediately [after delivering a letter]. … Returning to the General, I was stopped on the way by the Marquis de La Fayette, and we conversed together about a minute...I met him at the head of the stairs, where, accosting me in an angry tone, "Colonel Hamilton," said he, "you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect." I replied, without petulancy, but with decision: "I am not conscious of it, sir; but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part."

Washington quickly tried to repair the break, but Hamilton refused. Out of the family but still in the army, Hamilton spent the spring pressing Washington for a field command. He claimed he was incapable of “importunity” — wearing others down with pleas — even as he pursued command with unrelenting persistence.

Ron Chernow

If Washington expected relief from Hamilton badgering him for an appointment, he soon learned otherwise. Hamilton was fully prepared to become a pest. In mid-April, he found quarters for himself and Eliza in a brick-and-stone Dutch dwelling at De Peyster's Point on the east bank of the Hudson, by no coincidence opposite Washington's headquarters at New Windsor.He even ordered "a little boat which two people can manage" so that he could scoot back and forth on short notice. No sooner was Hamilton unpacked than he told General Nathanael Greene that he was scouting for "anything that fortune may cast up. I mean in the military line." ... During the spring and early summer of 1781, Hamilton never slackened in his efforts to wrest a field command from Washington. And yet he refused to admit his bulldog tenacity.

In early July, Hamilton forced the question. He mailed Washington a letter with his commission enclosed — a quiet threat to resign if no command came. On July 31, he finally got what he wanted: a battalion of New York light infantry. With the war nearly over, this was probably his last chance at battlefield glory.By late September, Hamilton’s battalion had reached Yorktown, where Cornwallis was trapped behind a ring of British redoubts. French and American engineers were digging siege trenches closer and closer to the British lines, while allied cannons battered them day and night.

By October 14, only two redoubts still blocked the allies from moving their guns close enough to finish the siege. Washington ordered them taken by bayonet: French troops would attack one, and Lafayette’s American light infantry the other.Lafayette first gave the lead to one of his own aides. Hamilton objected, arguing that the command belonged to him by seniority. Washington agreed. Hamilton won the assault and rushed back to his tent shouting, "We have it! We have it!"

Now came the challenge: take Redoubt No. 10 by surprise. Hamilton’s men had to cross the dark, shell-torn ground and overwhelm the British before they could react.

Ron Chernow

After nightfall on October 14, the allies fired several consecutive shells in the air that brilliantly illuminated the sky. Hamilton and his men then rose from their trenches and raced with fixed bayonets toward redoubt ten, sprinting across a quarter-mile of landscape pocked and rutted from exploding shells. For the sake of silence, surprise, and soldierly pride, they had unloaded their guns to take the position with bayonets alone.Dodging heavy fire, they let out war whoops that startled their enemies. "They made such a terrible yell and loud cheering," said one Hessian soldier, "that one believed the whole wild hunt had broken out." Hamilton, hopping on the shoulder of a kneeling soldier, sprang onto the enemy parapet and summoned his men to follow. Their password was "Rochambeau" [because it sounded like 'Rush-on-boys.'].

Once inside the fallen redoubt, Hamilton assembled his men quickly in formation. The whole operation had consumed fewer than ten minutes. Hamilton had accomplished the capture handily, suffering relatively few casualties; the French brigade met stiffer resistance and suffered heavy losses.Hamilton was exemplary in his treatment of the enemy. Some of his men clamored for revenge against the captives, and one captain was about to run a British officer through the chest with a bayonet when Hamilton interceded to prevent any bloodshed.

The Price of Victory

Hamilton turns battlefield victory into glory as Yorktown exposes a bankrupt republic.

The next morning Hamilton wrote the official report of his victory and secured his glory.

Young Hamilton

I have the honor to render you an account of the corps under my command in your attack of last night upon the redoubt on the left of the enemy's lines.The rapidity and immediate success of the assault are the best comment on the behavior of the troops. … As it would have been attended with delay and loss to wait for the removal of the abatis and palisades, the ardor of the troops was indulged in passing over them.There was a happy coincidence of movements. The redoubt was in the same moment enveloped and carried in every part. The enemy are entitled to the acknowledgment of an honorable defence. … Incapable of imitating examples of barbarity, and, forgetting recent provocations, the soldiery spared every man who ceased to fight.

Three days after Redoubt No. 10 fell, the British position at Yorktown was finished.

Ron Chernow

On the warm morning of October 17, a red-coated drummer boy appeared on the parapet, followed by an officer flapping a white handkerchief. The guns fell silent. Cornwallis had surrendered. … 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," moved between parallel rows of handsomely outfitted French soldiers and battered, ragged American troops.

But the victory exposed a problem the war had hidden: the country that won could not pay for what it had won. With the army waiting to disband, the Confederation's superintendent of finance, Robert Morris, was running out of ways to keep it afloat.

William Sumner

As the time approached for disbanding the army, their complaints became louder and louder. There was a clear disposition to get rid of them as quickly as possible without paying them. … What was an army one day would have been turned into the same number of tramps the next day, with no means of obtaining a dinner.In January, 1783, Hamilton wrote to Franklin: "Imagine the situation of a man who is to direct the finances of a country almost without revenue … an army ready to disband or mutiny, a government whose sole authority consists in the power of framing recommendations."

The war was over. The "government" was broke, the army was unpaid, and the country was in a state of chaos.

The Federalist Papers

Hamilton champions constitutional power through argument and compromise.

Yorktown marked the end of the war, but it wasn't long before the country was fighting with itself on every political issue. One of the major fights was about how much power the national government should have. In the beginning, the national government seemed to have very little power at all. It couldn't reliably pay soldiers who had fought in the war nor tax states to collect revenue to pay those soldiers—it had very little power to solve its own problems.In 1787, delegates from various states met in Philadelphia to see if they could design a more effective national government. Hamilton was sent from New York, and he gave a six-hour speech in which he proposed that the President and senators of the United States should serve for life.At the time, everyone was on guard. They suspected that this revolution would be short-lived and that the country could easily return to aristocracy and monarchy. Hamilton's proposal of a lifelong president smelled like a monarchist position and it earned him a reputation as a monarchist. Ultimately, the delegates agreed on a plan for a much less powerful government. Hamilton signed and supported this plan, even though it fell short of his vision.

Alexander Hamilton

I am anxious that every member should sign. A few by refusing may do infinite mischief. No man's ideas are more remote from the plan than my own are known to be; but is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on the one side, and the chance of good to be expected from the plan on the other?

Each state had to decide whether to ratify this new Constitution, and opposition in New York was strong.Hamilton recruited James Madison and John Jay to defend the Constitution in a series of newspaper essays. They used the pen name "Publius," after Publius Valerius, one of the founders of the Roman Republic. In seven months they wrote eighty-five essays. Hamilton wrote fifty-one.The first Federalist essay appeared in a New York newspaper on October 27, 1787. Hamilton opened with a basic question. Could people build a government deliberately, through "reflection and choice," or would governments always arise through "accident and force"?Opponents warned that a strong government would threaten liberty. Hamilton argued that liberty also needs a government strong enough to defend it.

Alexander Hamilton

… the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated.

In Federalist No. 70, Hamilton made the case that one strong president was better than a committee. His argument is still relevant today. Should the president be more powerful, or should Congress?According to Hamilton, committees ("pluralities") shift blame. It's easier to blame a single president for a harmful decision ("pernicious measure").

Alexander Hamilton

But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive … is, that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. … It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure … ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author.

Hamilton argued for the Constitution clause by clause. At the start, most of the New York convention was against Hamilton, but by July 26th, they were ready to ratify it, 30 votes to 27.After the Constitution was ratified, the states chose electors. Americans trusted Washington, the Revolutionary War hero who had given up military power voluntarily. The electors chose him unanimously, and Congress began setting up the new government before his ceremonious trip from Mount Vernon to the nation's temporary capital in New York.

Ron Chernow

The new government was launched with all due pageantry and fanfare. On April 16, 1789, George Washington departed from Mount Vernon on an eight-day journey to New York that blossomed into a national celebration. Cannon saluted the presidentelect as he approached each town. He passed under many triumphal arches and crossed a bridge in Trenton covered with flower petals strewn by thirteen young maidens cooing greetings.

When he reached Elizabethtown, New Jersey, he boarded a sumptuous barge that transported him across the Hudson River to New York City. Shaded by a red canopy and tossed by brisk breezes, the barge was towed by thirteen pilots. At the foot of Wall Street, Governor Clinton and Mayor Duane welcomed the president-elect before masses of cheering people. Church bells chimed, ships in the harbor ran up their colors, and cannon fired a thirteen-gun salute before Washington made his way to his new residence, a three-story brick building at 10 Cherry Street.

Money Out of Debt

Hamilton wants to take on debt.

One of the first decisions that Washington made as President-elect was to appoint a Secretary of the Treasury. This was a critical decision for Washington. He knew that the early republic was in a precarious state, and he knew that the only way for the nation to survive was to establish a strong financial footing. The natural choice for Secretary was Robert Morris. Morris was a wealthy merchant from Liverpool who had been in charge of finances during the war. In fact, he had even funded soldiers out of his own pocket and was called the "Financier of the Revolution." But he declined the role and recommended another man instead.

Robert Morris

But, my dear general, you will be no loser by my declining the secretaryship of the treasury, for I can recommend to you a far cleverer fellow than I am for your minister of finance in the person of your former aide-de-camp, Colonel Hamilton. He knows everything, sir, to a mind like his nothing comes amiss.

On September 11, 1789, Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton, already an expert on finance, immediately shut himself up for months to study the financial systems of European states. He buried himself in books, wrote long treatises, and devised a brilliant set of proposals that would lay the foundation for one of the most prosperous nations the world has ever seen.Later, Daniel Webster would say of Hamilton’s work that "he smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. The fabled birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the United States, as it burst forth from the conception of Alexander Hamilton."

One of the most important and perhaps counterintuitive parts of Hamilton's plan was the federal assumption of state debts. The states owed a lot of debt to soldiers and other bondholders after the Revolutionary War. A lot of those bonds were now held by speculators who had bought them for 15 cents on the dollar. Hamilton wanted to take on all of those obligations and centralize them under the federal government. Not only would this allow the United States to build up credit, but it would remove pressure on states to develop competing sources of taxes and revenue.However, the states that had already paid down most of their debt thought this plan was unfair. One of those states was Virginia. Virginia Congressman James Madison, Hamilton's friend and co-author of the Federalist Papers, led the opposition to Hamilton's plan in the Congress. On April 12, 1790, the House voted against the plan. Two weeks later, they voted yet again to end all debate on the issue. It seemed that one of the most important aspects of Hamilton's economic vision was now dead.

Ron Chernow

According to Jefferson, the northern states were threatening “secession and dissolution” when he ran into a ragged Hamilton outside Washington’s residence. Usually, Hamilton was dapper and polished; now, to Jefferson’s amazement, he was despondent and unkempt.

Thomas Jefferson

His look was somber, haggard, and dejected.... He walked me backwards and forwards before the President’s door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called creditor states; the danger of the secession of their members and the separation of the states.

Jefferson invited Hamilton and Madison to dinner, where they looked for a way to win southern votes for Hamilton's plan.

Thomas Jefferson

It was observed . . . that as the pill would be a bitter one to the southern states, something should be done to soothe them.

At the meeting, Hamilton agreed to support a southern capital. They would move the capital to Philadelphia for ten years and then more permanently to the Potomac. In exchange, Madison would get Hamilton the votes he needed for his assumption plan. Their dinner negotiations worked. On July 26, the House narrowly passed assumption.In the next lesson, we'll see this same debate adapted for Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2015 musical, "Hamilton."

Cabinet Battle #1

Hamilton's debt compromise echoes through modern musical theater.

The topic of the last lesson was fairly technical: the federal assumption of state war debts. This lesson looks at how Lin-Manuel Miranda turned that same debate into popular number in his 2015 broadway hit, "Hamilton."

Lin-Manuel Miranda got the idea for "Hamilton" while reading Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography, the same one we've been reading in this course. Miranda's "Cabinet Battle #1" reimagines the debt fight as a rap battle:

Thomas Jefferson

'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' / We fought for these ideals; we shouldn't settle for less. / These are wise words, enterprising men quote 'em. / Don’t act surprised, you guys, cuz I wrote 'em.

But Hamilton forgets / his plan would have the government assume state's debts. / Now, place your bets as to who that benefits: the very seat of government where Hamilton sits.

Jefferson responds for Virginia, which had already paid most of its war debt and did not want to help pay what other states still owed.

Thomas Jefferson

If New York's in debt—why should Virginia bear it? / Uh! Our debts are paid, I'm afraid. / Don't tax the South cuz we got it made in the shade... In Virginia, we plant seeds in the ground. / We create. You just wanna move our money around.

In the musical, Miranda’s Hamilton character replies with a taunt about Monticello, Jefferson’s Virginia plantation, where he kept slaves. His quip “Doin' whatever the hell it is you do in Monticello” alludes to historical context that modern audiences now have: Jefferson probably had a long-term sexual relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and fathered six of her children.

Alexander Hamilton

Thomas. That was a real nice declaration. / Welcome to the present, we're running a real nation. / Would you like to join us, or stay mellow, / Doin' whatever the hell it is you do in Monticello?

Then Hamilton turns to credit. If the federal government took over the debts, the Union could borrow more easily. "Financial diuretic" is Miranda's joke for getting money moving through the system.

Alexander Hamilton

If we assume the debts, the union gets / A new line of credit, a financial diuretic. / How do you not get it? If we're aggressive and competitive / The union gets a boost. You'd rather give it a sedative?

Hamilton turns Jefferson's defense of Virginia against him by saying enslaved people are doing the work Jefferson claims for Virginia: "we know who's really doing the planting."

Alexander Hamilton

A civics lesson from a slaver. Hey neighbor, / Your debts are paid cuz you don’t pay for labor. / "We plant seeds in the South. We create." / Yeah, keep ranting, / we know who’s really doing the planting.

Miranda compresses months of argument into a few minutes. The conflict remains the same: would assumption burden states that had already paid, or give the country stronger credit?