Was Alexander Hamilton a Federalist

On this day in 1755 or 1757, Alexander Hamilton was born in the Caribbean. If you need a quick primer on Hamilton, here are the essential facts about him.

1. Where is Nevis and why do we care?

Hamilton was born on January 11, in either 1755 or 1757, on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies. (There is a dispute among historians about his actual birth year.) Today, Nevis and St. Kitts are one country, known as the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. His father was from Scotland; his mother from Nevis. Hamilton left the region as a teenager to live in North America.

2. Hamilton’s skills as a writer let him leave the Caribbean

In August 1772, Hamilton’s letter to his father about a hurricane that struck Saint Croix was reprinted in a newspaper, the Royal Danish American Gazette. The locals were so impressed that they took up a collection to send Hamilton to a college in the British North American colonies. Princeton rejected Hamilton, but King’s College (later known as Columbia) accepted him.

3. Hamilton fought with honor in the Revolutionary War

Through his efforts as a volunteer, young Hamilton became General George Washington’s aide de camp, or his right-hand man. Hamilton also personally led an attack and charge at the Battle of Yorktown on a British redoubt.

4. Hamilton was a mostly self-taught lawyer

After resigning his military commission, Hamilton was able to study the law and pass a legal examination within six months in 1782. He had been reading the law on his own in Nevis and at King’s College, and had studied with John Jay and William Paterson, two future Supreme Court Justices.

5. He helped promote the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Hamilton was agitated with the weak Confederation Congress and the Articles of Confederation, so he worked with James Madison and other Founders to hold the Annapolis Convention in September 1786. There, Hamilton introduced a resolution for more delegates “to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, to take into consideration the situation of the United States.”

6. Hamilton’s constitutional legacy was the Federalist Papers

Hamilton wasn’t a big presence at the 1787 Convention in Philadelphia because he was the minority voice in the New York delegation. But he played a big role in helping secure the Constitution’s ratification as one of the three authors of The Federalist Papers, along with Madison and Jay. Hamilton wrote roughly 51 of the 85 essays, which are still consulted today by scholars and the Supreme Court. Hamilton’s authorship wasn’t made public until after his death in 1804.

7. Hamilton founded the Treasury Department and strengthened the banking system

If that wasn’t enough, President Washington appointed Hamilton as the first Secretary of the Treasury, when the new nation was facing a steep financial crisis. Hamilton brokered a solution to paying off the former colonies’ war debt, and then organized the Treasury Department as a powerful unit. Hamilton also formed the First Bank of the United States and convinced other nations that the United States was financially sound.

8. Hamilton inspired the first American political party

Hamilton’s moves as Treasury Secretary and as a proponent of a strong central government led to the unofficial formation of the Federalist Party by 1791. In response, leaders like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson formed a political faction known as the Democratic Republicans that directly objected to Hamilton and his ideas. (Washington approved of many Federalist principles but wasn’t a party member.) The partisan clashes between the two groups would persist until Hamilton’s death.

9. Hamilton helped his own political enemy become President

In the deadlocked 1800 presidential election, a House of Representatives controlled by the Federalists had two Republican candidates to choose from: Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Hamilton wrote a private letter to a House member urging that Jefferson, Hamilton’s political enemy, become the next President. “Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself—Thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement—and will be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands,” Hamilton wrote. “In a choice of Evils, let them take the least—Jefferson is in my view less dangerous than Burr.”

10. The never-ending duel controversy

The deadly duel between Hamilton and Burr in July 1804 was years in the making; the two men had been rivals in New York before the 1800 election, and Hamilton worked to deny Burr’s election to the New York governorship. After Hamilton wouldn’t retract an insult, the two men and their seconds met in Weehawken, New Jersey, with Burr shooting Hamilton, and Hamilton dying the next day.

But what happened during the duel? Did Hamilton deliberately misfire? Or did someone introduce a hair-triggered pistol into the mix? Was Burr obligated under the dueling code to not shoot Hamilton? The only witnesses were the men’s seconds, who wrote a joint account of the incident. “Both parties presented and fired in succession. The intervening time is not expressed, as the seconds do not precisely agree on that point. The fire of Colonel Burr took effect, and General Hamilton almost instantly fell,” goes the account, with the witnesses disagreeing on who shot when.

Hamilton was born on January 11, in 1755 or 1757 at Charlestown, on the British island of Nevis. His parents, Rachel Faucette and James Hamilton, were not married when he was born. James abandoned the family in 1766 and Rachel died in 1768. Hamilton spent his adolescence on the Danish possession of St. Croix. Locals recognized Hamilton’s remarkable intelligence after he published an eloquent letter describing a hurricane that hit the island, and raised money to send him to school in Britain’s North American colonies.

Hamilton arrived in the colonies in late 1772 and initially applied to the College of New Jersey, but instead attended King’s College in New York City. While in New York, Hamilton became a supporter of colonial protests against British imperial policy. He wrote several pamphlets in 1774 and 1775 attacking the views of outspoken loyalist Samuel Seabury. In 1775, Hamilton drilled with a volunteer company of militia, and was made captain of an artillery company in March 1776. In the American Revolutionary War, he fought at the battles of Kip’s Bay, White Plains, Trenton, and Princeton.

The young captain impressed senior officers in the Continental Army, and William Alexander (Lord Stirling) even asked Hamilton to serve as his military aide. On January 25, 1777, the Pennsylvania Evening Post posted an advertisement: “Captain Alexander Hamilton, of the New-York company of artillery, by applying to the printer of this paper, may hear of something to his advantage.”1 This referenced General George Washington’s decision to invite Hamilton to his military staff, which Hamilton accepted, making him a lieutenant colonel. For the next four years, Hamilton was one of Washington’s most valued staff members, and had a variety of responsibilities, including writing letters to Congress, state politicians, and other Continental Army officers.

Washington and Hamilton from Mount Vernon on Vimeo.

While Washington’s aide, Hamilton wed Elizabeth Schuyler, on December 14, 1780. She was the daughter of Philip Schuyler, who had served as a major general in the Continental Army and was one of the wealthiest men in New York. Hamilton left Washington’s staff in March 1781 after a dispute with the general and out of frustration with his lack of field command. Washington ultimately granted him a field command, and on October 14, 1781, Hamilton led the successful assault of Redoubt 10 during the Siege of Yorktown, which contributed to the surrender of General Lord Charles Cornwallis.

Following Yorktown, Hamilton was selected by New York to be a delegate to the Confederation Congress in 1782. As a member of Congress, he was part of a nationalist faction that attempted to use discontent among officers about pay to frighten Congress and the states into adopting an amendment that allowed Congress to tax imports. Certain officers camped at Newburgh, New York, called for force against Congress, and only a personal plea by Washington quelled the so-called Newburgh Conspiracy. Following this incident, Washington warned Hamilton that “the Army is a dangerous instrument to play with.”2

Hamilton served as one of New York’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, and proposed that senators and the executive serve for life, and that the executive have an absolute veto. Although his proposals were not fully adopted, Hamilton passionately campaigned for the Constitution. He joined James Madison and John Jay in writing the Federalist Papers in support of ratification, penning the majority of the essays. Hamilton was also a delegate to the New York ratifying convention in Poughkeepsie during the summer of 1788, and helped convince largely antifederalist New York to ratify the new Constitution.

After George Washington was elected the nation’s first president in 1789, he appointed Hamilton secretary of the treasury. Hamilton sought to create a stable financial foundation for the nation and increase the power of the central government. He pushed for the national government to assume state debts, which would bind creditors to the federal government. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Representative James Madison opposed this plan, and only assisted its passage through Congress when Hamilton agreed to a permanent location for the nation’s capital along the Potomac River. Hamilton made the First Bank of the United States a centerpiece of his financial plan. Modeled on the Bank of England, the bank held government funds, issued loans to the government, provided currency, and increased liquid capital to facilitate economic growth. Hamilton’s opponents, led by Jefferson and Madison, believed his policies dangerously empowered the central government and favored the rich over yeoman farmers. In time, Hamilton and Jefferson became the leaders of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties respectively. Jefferson and Hamilton also disagreed over foreign policy. After war broke out between Great Britain and France in 1793, Hamilton favored Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality, which Jefferson opposed. Jefferson resigned in December 1793, frustrated that Washington usually sided with Hamilton. In 1794, Hamilton helped quell the Whiskey Rebellion, and resigned from his cabinet post in January 1795.

Hamilton remained active politically after leaving the cabinet, and helped draft Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796. Washington was called out of retirement in 1798 to lead a Provisional Army, when war with France loomed. The aging Washington insisted that Hamilton be his second in command, noting that “I know not where a more competent choice could be made.”3 With Washington’s death in December 1799, Hamilton was briefly the senior-ranking officer of the army, until his departure from the service the following year.  

When Thomas Jefferson finished in an electoral tie with Aaron Burr in the election of 1800, some Federalist Congressmen wanted to give Burr the election. Hamilton believed Jefferson was preferable to Burr, and wrote to Federalists imploring them to support Jefferson. In one letter, he said Burr was “a man of extreme and irregular ambition; that he is selfish to a degree which excludes all social affections” and added “he [Burr] is inferior in real ability to Jefferson.”4 Hamilton helped break the congressional deadlock and Jefferson was elected. During the New York gubernatorial election of 1804, the Albany Register published a letter stating that Hamilton had insulted Aaron Burr, one of the candidates, at a private dinner. Burr lost the election, and after confronting Hamilton about the reported slander, challenged him to a duel. On July 11, 1804, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton in Weehawken, New Jersey, and Hamilton died the following day. Eliza survived her husband by fifty years, passing away in 1854.

Today, Hamilton is recognized for his role in creating America’s financial system, and his portrait is on the ten-dollar bill. He gained new acclaim in 2015 with the Broadway production Hamilton, a Tony Award-winning musical about his inspiring rise to prominence.

Kieran J. O’Keefe
George Washington University

Notes:

1. Pennsylvania Evening Post, January 25, 1777.

2. “To Alexander Hamilton from George Washington, 4 April 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives.

3. “From George Washington to Henry Knox, 16 July 1798,” Founders Online, National Archives.

4. “From Alexander Hamilton to James A. Bayard, 16 January 1801,” Founders Online, National Archives.

Bibliography:

Borden, Morton. Parties and Politics in the Early Republic: 1789-1815. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing, 1967.

Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Harper, John Lamberton. American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

McDonald, Forrrest. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.

Miller, John C. Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox. New York: Harper, 1959.