Alexander Hamilton: Rise to Greatness

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One of the best books that I've read during my research for my own book on George Washington is Ron Chernow's masterpiece, Alexander Hamilton. From their struggles together in war and in peace, the partnership between Washington and Hamilton was indispensable to the founding of the United States of America. As the great Hamilton scholar Stephen Knott has said, "Next to George Washington, Alexander Hamilton is most responsible for the country that you and I have the privilege of living in." How did Hamilton make such an enduring impact on American history? In the essay that follows, I offer some reflections on what made Hamilton such a powerhouse among the mighty pantheon of America's Founding Fathers.

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“It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into Angels.”

That astonishingly well-written description of a ferocious hurricane that struck the island of Nevis and its Caribbean neighbors during the summer of 1772 came from a letter penned by seventeen-year-old Alexander Hamilton. The power of those words were a testament to the incredible intellect and promise of the young man. This clear showing of Hamilton’s writing ability is even more impressive when one considers that he was largely self-taught. While Hamilton was clearly blessed with enormous brainpower, life had not handed him many other advantages. In fact, as Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow details the “grim catalog of disasters” that befell young Alexander and his older brother James between 1765 and 1769, “their father had [deserted their family], their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died.” Those unbelievable series of losses left Hamilton and his brother “alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step in their rootless, topsy-turvy existence, they had been surrounded by failed, broken, embittered people. Their short lives had been shadowed by a stupefying sequence of bankruptcies, marital separations, deaths, scandals, and disinheritance.”

When one considers all of the traumatic experiences he had endured, it is easy to understand why a seventeen-year-old Alexander Hamilton, languishing as an impoverished accounting clerk, dreamed so intensely of escaping from this existence in the West Indies and rising above his station, using his great intellectual gifts and his willingness to work hard in order to make his mark in the world and live a life that meant something. As it turned out, Hamilton’s talents would help make that dream come true.

Upon the urging of a Presbyterian minister and part-time journalist named Hugh Knox, Hamilton went on to publish his hurricane letter in the Royal Danish American Gazette. That moment changed Hamilton’s life forever. As Chernow adds, “His hurricane letter generated such a sensation - even the island’s governor inquired after the young author’s identity - that a subscription fund was taken up by local businessmen to send this promising youth to North America to be educated.” And so, through the power of his pen, Hamilton had punched his ticket to a new land brimming with opportunity for a determined, wise young man like himself.

Reaching American shores in 1773, Alexander Hamilton arrived in Great Britain’s North American colonies at a pivotal moment. Tensions between the British and her American colonists had been building for nearly a decade and soon coalesced into a full-scale, world-changing revolution. Hamilton was at the forefront of that revolution and went on to become an indispensable figure in America’s fight for independence, the formation and ratification of the American Constitution, and the successful start of America’s republican model of government. He was a genuine war hero, winning glory in battle, and also serving a critical role as an aide on General George Washington’s personal staff during the Revolutionary War. In spearheading the Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays written in support of America’s new Constitution after it was sent to the states for ratification, Hamilton single-handedly wrote 51 of those essays, ultimately producing what his chief political nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, conceded was the “best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.” In his greatest act of duty to his adopted country, Hamilton served as the first secretary of the treasury in President George Washington’s administration. The significance of what Hamilton achieved in that position was monumental and far-reaching. We are all beneficiaries of the American world that Hamilton created. As Chernow summarizes the impact of Hamilton’s time as treasury secretary, “Bankrupt when Hamilton took office, the United States now enjoyed a credit rating equal to that of any European nation. He had laid the groundwork for both liberal democracy and capitalism and helped transform the role of the president from passive administrator to active policy maker, creating the institutional scaffolding for America’s future emergence as a great power. He had demonstrated the creative uses of government and helped to weld the states irreversibly into one nation.” As Chernow concludes, “If Washington was the father of the country and Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surly the father of the American government.”

Alexander Hamilton’s immense wisdom and vision were huge factors behind his success, but the driving force behind his achievements was what Chernow calls his “inexhaustible capacity for work." Hamilton truly lived to work hard and one cannot help but marvel at his amazing output and commitment. For example, across the Continental Army’s harsh winter encampments during the Revolutionary War, times of intense privation and suffering, Hamilton constantly read weighty books on everything from economics to philosophy and history, “constantly educat[ing] himself,” writes Chernow, “as if equipping his mind for the larger tasks ahead.” To take another example, around the time he was writing 51 of the 85 essays that made up the Federalist Papers between October 1787 and August 1788, Hamilton was also juggling the intense responsibilities of his law practice. As Chernow adds, Hamilton had to “squeeze the essays into breaks in his schedule, as if they were a minor sideline.” Hamilton’s friend Robert Troup also explained that those essays “were composed under the greatest possible pressure of business, for [he] always had a vast deal of law business to engage his attention." In our final example of his sterling work ethic, when Hamilton was serving as treasury secretary and composing his report on the public credit for Congress under a tight deadline, Chernow writes that he was “Closeted in his study day after day, he scratched out a forty-thousand-word-treatise - a short book - in slightly more than three months, performing all the complex mathematical calculations himself.”

Another moment from Hamilton’s life underscores not only his dedication to hard work, but also shines a light on his character. In 1795, Hamilton, facing intense financial pressure after his years of public service, resigned his post as treasury secretary and returned to practicing law in order to better support his wife and eight children. Such a move was stunning to French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, a man who heavily exploited his own public office to obtain money. One night in New York, Talleyrand was walking to a dinner party when he stumbled by Hamilton’s law office and saw the famous American toiling at his work by candlelight. “I have seen a man who made the fortune of a nation laboring all night to support his family,” said a shocked Talleyrand. If Hamilton had not been so upright of a person, he could have been like Talleyrand and used his high position to enrich himself and his family. Hamilton, however, was not that type of man. He had the highest regard for the public trust that had been placed in him as a civil servant and he never wanted to betray that trust. In fact, Hamilton considered the work he had done as treasury secretary so important that he later publicly admitted to engaging in an extramarital affair in order to refute charges of corruption leveled against him from his time in office. It speaks volumes that Hamilton was willing to put himself and his family through so much humiliation, sacrificing his private reputation in order to protect his public record and all the work he had done to better the country.

Hamilton’s amazing journey from the depths of poverty in the West Indies to the heights of power and influence in America ended in tragedy on July 11, 1804. In what was his eleventh, and ultimately final, affair of honor, better known as a duel, Hamilton was mortally wounded by a longtime political and personal rival, the sitting U.S. Vice President, Aaron Burr. This and the other affairs of honor that Hamilton was involved in are a reminder that despite all his brilliance, he could also be headstrong and made some egregious errors in judgment. With that said, though, Hamilton’s life is not defined by those shortcomings. What defined Hamilton was his improbable rise to greatness, his genius, his rare vision and outstanding work ethic, and his many years of transformative public service. As Hamilton biographer Henry Cabot Lodge said of this great founding father, “We look in vain for a man who, in an equal space of time, has produced such direct and lasting effects upon our institutions and history.” For his inspiring example and all he did to build a better world, Hamilton’s story deserved a far better ending. His legacy, however, still very much lives on. Because of the foundations and precedents he set, the modern America we inhabit is very much the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton.