Hamilton, Alexander (1755-1804)

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Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804)

Member of congress, delegate to the constitutional convention, secretary of the treasury

American Nationalism. As the first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton formulated fiscal policies and a philosophy of American nationalism that placed him at the center of decision making in the Washington administration. Hamilton improved the financial stability of the United States, but his belief that American nationalism should be based on a union of interests between the U.S. government and wealthy merchants, manufacturers, and speculators divided the country politically.

Early Years. Alexander Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies on 11 January 1755 and grew up on the neighboring Danish island of Saint Croix. He was the younger of two illegitimate sons of James Hamilton, the fourth son of an aristocratic Scottish family, and Rachel Fawcett Lavien. After James Hamilton abandoned the family in 1765, Rachel opened a small store to support her sons, but she died in 1768. For the next four years the orphaned Hamilton worked for the mercantile firm of Beekman and Cruger. His intelligence, ambition, remarkably mature business judgment, and dramatic newspaper description of a hurricane that hit Saint Croix in 1772 persuaded several prominent citizens of the island to pay for Hamilton’s college education at King’s College (now Columbia University) in New York. While a student, Hamilton’s extensive reading and his friendship with William Livingston and other New York patriots introduced him to the ideas of the American Revolution. In 1774 and 1775, after the Reverend Samuel Seabury condemned the First Continental Congress for supporting nonimportation of British goods until Parliament repealed the Intolerable Acts, the nineteen-year-old Hamilton forcefully refuted Sea-bury in two pamphlets supporting colonial union as the only way to defend liberty. As a Continental Army officer Hamilton demonstrated military leadership and courage during the New Jersey campaign in 1776 and 1777 and at Yorktown in 1781. As aide-de-camp to Gen. George Washington, Hamilton impressed his superior and other important men with his intellect, organizational skills, and executive ability. He also improved his social position in 1780 by marrying Elizabeth Schuyler, daughter of Gen. Philip Schuyler, a wealthy and influential New Yorker. Hamilton was admitted to the New York bar in July 1782 after only a few months’ study, but his real interest was politics and the creation of a strong national government.

Political Outlook. As a native of the West Indies, Hamilton had no attachment to any American state. His first loyalty was to the idea of national union, and his wartime experiences deepened that commitment. The states’ refusal to give Congress any taxation power forced Congress and the states to finance the war with paper currency. Farmers and merchants profited from wartime inflation by raising the prices they charged to supply the American army while the army went without pay and supplies. Hamilton, influenced by Scottish philosopher David Hume’s Political Discourses (1752), concluded that Americans could not win the war or protect their independence unless they established a national government with complete control over the economy and the states. Hamilton also accepted Hume’s conclusion that men are motivated by their passions, and the strongest passion is greed. A government that could use men’s greed to motivate them to support the government would become rich and powerful. Hamilton’s eight months as a member of Congress in 1782 and 1783 intensified his conviction that the Confederation lacked the political and financial power to maintain national union. Shays’s Rebellion in 1786 and 1787 strengthened his fear of democracy and his belief in the necessity of an effective national government to protect the property of wealthy men who would, in turn, support that government. As one of New York’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Hamilton proposed an extraordinarily powerful national government that would have essentially abolished the states. In order to create a national government capable of providing social stability and protecting private property Hamilton recommended a senate and president elected for life and a lower house of representatives to control democracy. The final version of the Constitution provided for a weaker national government than the one Hamilton wanted, but he enthusiastically supported it as one of the authors of The Federalist (1788) and as a delegate to New York’s Constitutional Convention.

American Prime Minister. Congress granted the secretary of the Treasury power to “digest and prepare plans for the improvement and management of the revenue, and the support of the public credit.” As the first secretary of the Treasury in 1789, Alexander Hamilton took full advantage of his policy-making role in financial affairs. Hamilton’s belief in the connection between national power and commerce meant that he did not limit himself to suggesting policies to stabilize the nation’s credit. Instead, he injected himself into every major decision on financial, domestic, and foreign policy connected to his plan to make the United States a commercial empire. President George Washington’s conception of the presidency, emphasizing independence from party politics and the legislative process, encouraged Hamilton’s view of himself as an American prime minister. Hamilton acted as the chief executive of Washington’s cabinet and the head of the Federalist Party, formulating policies and supervising the passage of legislation in Congress. His meetings with British diplomats to advance his agenda for America’s commercial future compromised Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson’s control of foreign policy and created serious divisions within the administration. By the time Hamilton retired from office in January 1795 the United States had the highest credit rating in Europe, the value of American exports had doubled, and his policies on the national debt and banking had vastly expanded American capitalistic enterprises. His policies also created vocal political opposition. Republicans attacked Federalists as pro-British monarchists and aristocrats who cared only about the rich and offered themselves as the party that would protect the interests of the common people.

Political Influence. Hamilton retired from political office in 1795, but he did not retire from politics. He remained an important party leader who advised President Washington, President John Adams’s cabinet, and Federalist members of Congress on policies and presidential candidates. His influence undermined President Adams’s authority and created a serious split in the Federalist Party. As the nation prepared for the possibility of war with France in 1798 Hamilton, appointed second in command of the enlarged army under George Washington, saw the conflict as an opportunity to gain military glory for himself and to expand the American “empire” by annexing Louisiana, Florida, and perhaps all of Spanish America, possibly through an alliance with Britain. Hamilton also contemplated the possibility of using the army to put down political opposition to Federalist policies such as the Alien and Sedition Acts. President Adams would not tolerate Hamilton’s grandiose visions of military glory, a subservient alliance with Britain, the high taxes necessary to maintain the army, or the danger of using the army to suppress political dissent. His peace mission to France in 1799 destroyed Hamilton’s plans. Hamilton had the satisfaction of seeing Adams defeated in 1800 only to have the election come down to a choice between two men he despised: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. As much as he disagreed with Jefferson’s principles, Hamilton felt that the country was safer under him than under Burr, whom he denounced to his fellow Federalists as a thoroughly unprincipled man motivated only by personal and political ambition.

The Duel. Hamilton advised Federalists to respond to Jeffersonian democracy by spreading their principles to the common people he had long ignored through political organization and newspapers such as the New-York Evening Post, which he helped found in 1801. He was appalled when the Federalists contemplated an alliance with Aaron Burr, a long-standing political and personal rival and a man he condemned as “the most unfit and dangerous man in the community.” In 1791 Burr, who had abandoned the Federalists to run as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in New York, defeated Hamilton’s father-in-law. In 1792 Burr offered to rejoin the Federalists and run against Gov. George Clinton, but Hamilton’s opposition ended his candidacy. Hamilton also opposed Burr’s attempt to be the Federalist vice-presidential candidate in 1792. In 1804 he denounced a Federalist plan to support Burr for governor of New York in exchange for New York’s support for a northern confederacy. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel after Hamilton refused to deny or retract derogatory statements about Burr that appeared in a New York newspaper. The death of his oldest son in a duel in 1801 had intensified Hamilton’s hatred of dueling, but his honor and his principles would not allow him to step aside and allow a man like Burr to gain public office. On 11 July 1804 Hamilton and Burr met at Weehawken, New Jersey. Like his son, Hamilton had decided not to fire at his adversary, with equally fatal results. Burr shot Hamilton, and he died the next day. Hamilton’s scorn for democracy made him unpopular in his day, but his support for an energetic national government that encouraged economic growth influenced later generations.