Ham: Hambleton through Hammond

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


HAMBLETON, James, Columbiana County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-39.


HAMILTON, Alexander, 1757-1804, founding father, statesman, first Secretary of the Treasury, anti-slavery activist, second President of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded in 1785.

(Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, p. 166; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 56-60; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 171-179; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 905; Encyclopaedia Americana, 1830, Volume VI, pp. 152-153)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 171-179:

HAMILTON, ALEXANDER (January 11, 1757- July 12, 1804), statesman, was born in the British colony of Nevis, one of the Leeward Islands. His family was good, his father being a Scottish merchant of St. Christopher, the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton of Grange in Ayrshire, and his mother Rachel Fawcett (Faucette), the daughter of a French Huguenot physician and planter of Nevis. She had been carefully educated, had made an unhappy marriage with a Danish landholder of St. Croix named John Michael Levine, had separated from him, and after meeting James Hamilton had made unavailing efforts to obtain complete freedom from her husband. Her union with Hamilton, though legally irregular, was on an irreproachable moral foundation, and she was socially recognized as his wife. But the home was not prosperous. James Hamilton's affairs, as his son later wrote, soon "went to wreck," and Rachel was living apart from him and dependent upon relatives in St. Croix when she died in 1768. Alexander Hamilton was thus practically an orphan at eleven, though his father survived until 1799. After receiving some desultory education from his mother and a Presbyterian clergyman at St. Croix, and learning to speak French fluently, at twelve he had to go to work in the general store of Nicholas Cruger in Christianstadt. From this position he was rescued by his intense ambition for a college education, his brilliancy (particularly demonstrated by a newspaper letter descriptive of a hurricane which swept St. Croix in 1772), and the generosity of his aunts. They sent him to New York in the fall of 1772. After some preliminary training at Francis Barber's grammar school at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, he entered King's College (now Columbia University) in the autumn of 1773. Already he had formed habits of persistent study which he retained throughout life, while his letters of the time display astonishing maturity.

The preliminaries of the Revolution interrupted Hamilton's college work and gave him opportunities for distinction which he seized with characteristic dash and address. Little weight need be attached to his statement that he temporarily inclined toward the royal side; from the time that he was a guest of William Livingston's at Elizabethtown he accepted the patriot views, and Robert Troup's story that it required a trip to Boston in 1774 to confirm his Whig opinions appears improbable. At a mass-meeting in "the Fields" (now City Hall Park) on July 6, 1774, he spoke against British measures, and at once.. began writing for Holt's New York Journal, or General Advertiser with a vigor which attracted attention. In December 1774, he contributed to the pamphlet war of the day A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress from the Calumnies of Their Enemies, in some 14,000 words, and when the Reverend Dr. Samuel Seabury replied, he continued the debate in The Farmer Refuted; or, a More Comprehensive and Impartial View of the Disputes Between Great Britain and the Colonies, this reaching 35,000 words. These anonymous pamphlets showed such grasp of the issues, so much knowledge of British and American government, and such argumentative power, that they were attributed to John Jay, and Dr. Myles Cooper of King's College was incredulous that a lad of seventeen could have written them. Hamilton's position was that of a moderate who loyally defended the King's sovereignty and the British connection but rejected the pretensions of Parliament. His conduct was as restrained as his pen, and there is evidence that he several times acted to allay mob excitement, once (November 26, 1775) protesting to John Jay when a party under Isaac Sears destroyed Rivington's press. But as the Revolutionary movement gained headway he was gladly borne into its full current. Robert Troup's statement that in 1775 Hamilton and he formed a volunteer company called "Hearts of Oak" is probably true; while early in 1776 he applied for the command of an artillery company authorized by the provincial Convention, was examined, and on March 14 received his commission. His skill in drilling his company attracted attention, and General Nathanael Greene is said to have been so impressed that he introduced Hamilton to Washington (G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 1859); it is certain that Lord Stirling made a fruitless effort to obtain him for his staff. During the summer and fall campaign he fought with Washington on Long Island, helped fortify Harlem Heights, commanded two guns at White Plains, and was in the New Jersey retreat, while that winter he shared in the descents upon Trenton and Princeton. Though he thirsted for military glory, promotion would have been slow. It was fortunate for him that Washington, doubtless impressed by the reputation of his pamphlets, made him a secretary, and (March 1, 1777) aide-de-camp, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. His true weapon was the pen.

As secretary and aide, Hamilton held a position of great responsibility, and his duties were by no means confined to giving literary assistance to Washington. He became a trusted adviser. Since Washington was not only commanding general but virtually secretary of war, an enormous amount of business passed through his headquarters, which Hamilton did much to organize and systematize; while he inevitably came to take minor decisions into his own hands. He complained of the labor, writing that it was hard "to have the mind always upon the stretch, scarce ever unbent, and no hours for recreation." But though he was allowed to take part in a few skirmishing expeditions, and on one of these was the officer who warned Congress to remove from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Washington wisely kept him at his desk. Intercourse with the General, correspondence with Congress and the states, and occasional military missions, gave him an unrivaled opportunity for learning the situation of the army and nation. It was a characteristic of Hamilton's genius that he should not only grasp a state of affairs with lightning speed, but be seized with a passionate desire to offer constructive remedies. Before he had been at headquarters a year he had drafted the first of a series of important reports on the defects of the military system and the best mode of improving it. Among these papers are the report of January 28, 1778, on the reorganization of the army; the report of May 5, 1778, on the work of the inspector- general's office; and the plan for this office as adopted by Congress on February 18, 1779. Hamilton also prepared a comprehensive set of military regulations which he laid before Washington. Meanwhile, he was giving attention not only to the management of the army but to the problem of invigorating the whole government, and in facing this his flair for bold political theorizing again awakened.

The growth of Hamilton's political ideas, and the extraordinary ripeness and incisiveness of his thought, are exhibited in his correspondence with a committee of the New York state convention (Gouverneur Morris, Robert Livingston, William Allison), and also with Robert Morris, James Sullivan, James Duane, and other leaders, the whole covering the years 1777-81. He was a stanch believer in representative government, then widely distrusted. In a letter of May 19, 1777, to Gouverneur Morris, he ascribed the supposed instability of democracies to the fact that most of them had really been "compound governments," with a partitioned authority, and declared that "a representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated, and the exercise of the legislative, executive, and judiciary authorities is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will, in my opinion, be most likely to be happy, regular, and durable" (W arks, 1904, IX, 72). But he insisted from the first that his democracy should have a highly centralized authority, armed with powers for every exigency. He sent Robert Morris a 14,000-word letter (April 30, 1781) embodying a systematic treatise on finance as part of this strongly centralized system, and containing a proposal for a national bank; its financial ideas were defective, but as William Graham Sumner said, its statesmanship was superb. Writing to Duane (September 3, 1780), he vigorously exposed the defects of government under the Confederation, condemned the timidity, indecision, and dependence of Congress, and set forth a detailed plan for a revised form of government- a plan, it has been observed, almost  exactly paralleled in the very successful Swiss government of later days (H. J. Ford, Alexander Hamilton, 1920, p. 92). In this letter he made the first proposal for a constitutional convention, suggesting that Congress should call a representation of all the states, and that this body should grant to Congress "complete sovereignty in all that relates to war, peace, trade, finance"-much more power than it enjoys today, though Hamilton would have reserved all internal taxation to the states. This willingness to entrust to Congress vastly increased authority at a time of general disgust with its inefficiency, vacillation, and corruption, is another proof of Hamilton's political discernment. One secret of his success was his belief in the possibility of a rapid renovation of political instruments.

Meanwhile, Hamilton had allied himself with one of the richest and most influential families of New York by his marriage late in 1780 to Elizabeth, second daughter of General Philip Schuyler. "It is impossible to be happier than I am in a wife," he wrote in 1797, and he was always tenderly devoted to her (Works, 1904, X, 260; A. M. Hamilton, post, pp. 95 ff.). They had eight children, one of whom was James Alexander Hamilton [q.v.]; the first child, Philip, was born January 22, 1782. Hamilton had also detached himself from Washington's staff in a last attempt to gain military distinction. The excuse for this he found in a quarrel in February 1781, when Washington administered a reprimand to his aide because the latter kept him waiting for a few minutes. The manner in which Hamilton resented this entirely proper rebuke, his rejection of Washington's subsequent advances, and his private slurs upon Washington's abilities, do him grave discredit. Unfortunately it was far from the last example of his hastiness and irascibility. Through Washington's magnanimity he was appointed to head an infantry regiment in Lafayette's corps, and at the siege of Yorktown commanded a brilliant attack upon one of the two principal British redoubts. Returning to Albany as hostilities ended, he rented a house, took Robert Troup to live with him, and after less than five months' study was admitted to the bar. His intention, he wrote Lafayette, was "to throw away a few months more in public life, and then retire a simple citizen and good paterfamilias." The public service of which he spoke was a term in the Continental Congress, which he entered in November 1782, finding it the weak flywheel of a deplorably ramshackle government. Chafing at the feebleness he saw all about him, he did what little he could to arouse a greater vigor. His efforts included the composition of the spirited but impotent reply of Congress to the refusal of Rhode Island to consent to the five per cent. impost plan (December 16, 1782; Works, 1904, II, 179-223); the introduction that same winter of a resolution asserting the absolute necessity of "the establishment of permanent and adequate funds to operate generally throughout the United States, to be collected by Congress"; and letters to Washington somewhat officiously but shrewdly urging •him to preserve the confidence of the army for use in a possible crisis. He would have introduced resolutions calling for a constitutional convention if he had not foreseen their total failure.

Though Hamilton retired from Congress in 1783 to devote himself to the law, opening an office in New York at 58 Wall St., he continued to throw his energies into the movement for a stronger federal government. Part of his legal work involved a defense of federal authority against the excesses of state law. In the noted case of Rutgers vs. Waddington he maintained that the peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain overrode the laws of New York, and particularly the Trespass Act, under which the widow Rutgers had claimed arrears of rent from a Loyalist who had occupied her property during the Revolution; his masterly argument, of which only the long brief remains, carried the case in the mayor's court, though the legislature formally reaffirmed its authority. He was an alert spectator of the growing confusion of 1784-86, and eager for an opportunity to act. The commercial negotiations of Virginia and Maryland, and the call for a general commercial convention to meet at Annapolis in September 1786, furnished the opening he desired. He secured appointment as one of the two New York delegates to the Annapolis meeting; when it failed to reach an agreement, he saw the possibility of driving home the lesson that commercial harmony was impossible without political unity; and he secured the unanimous adoption of an address recommending that the states appoint commissioners to meet in Philadelphia the following May " to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall seem to them necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and to report an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled." It was one of the most adroit and timely of all his strokes. The timidity of the other delegates made the terms of the call vague, but Hamilton unquestionably looked forward to the adoption of an entirely new Constitution.

In the legislature of 1787, in which the support of the New York business community gave him a seat, he led a spirited but mainly unsuccessful fight against the state laws which contravened the treaty with Great Britain. Late in the session, the bill for New York's complete adherence to the impost measure asked by Congress was brought up, and in its behalf Hamilton made one of his greatest speeches. "I well remember," Chancellor Kent later wrote oi the address, "how much it was admired, for the comprehensive views which it took of the state of the nation, the warm appeals which it made to the public patriotism, the imminent perils which it pointed out, and the absolute necessity which it showed of some such financial measure" (William Kent, Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, 1898, p. 297). He met defeat in the Assembly, 36 to 21, but he had aroused public sentiment. Seizing the day after the impost vote, he introduced a motion instructing the New York delegates in the Continental Congress to support a constitutional convention, and despite the efforts of Governor George Clinton's followers to weaken it, carried it in both houses. When the legislature named three delegates to the proposed convention, Hamilton as a federalist was offset by two anti-federalists, Robert Yates and John Lansing. Clinton and his powerful state-rights group took the most hostile attitude toward his labors, declaring that the Articles of Confederation required only slight amendment. But, as Hamilton gained the support of a solid body of merchants and other capitalists, he was able in increasing degree to place the anti-federalists upon the defensive.

Hamilton's role in the Constitutional Convention was not of the first importance; his role at home in New York was. Because of legal work his attendance in Philadelphia was irregular, his longest stay being from May 27 to June 29; his influence was lessened by the fact that Yates and Lansing could carry the state's vote against him; and his theories of centralization made him an object of distrust to many delegates. On June 18 he introduced his " propositions" for a Constitution, proposing that the senators and the chief executive serve during good behavior, that the governors of each state be appointed by the federal government, and that all state laws be strictly subordinate to national laws (Works, 1904, I, 347-69). Naturally they had little influence. During the debates he argued strongly in favor of the popular election of members of the House of Representatives, and in the contest between the small and large states supported the latter, though ready to compromise. At the close of the sessions he made a moving plea for unanimity in signing the Constitution, declaring that no true patriot could hesitate between it and the grave probability of anarchy and convulsion. Since Lansing and Yates had quit the convention, he signed alone for New York. Already (July 24) he had fired the first shot in a fierce war of newspaper essays over the Constitution, attacking Clinton for his hostility. The rejoinders were instant, and he exposed himself to misunderstanding when he signed several of his early articles "Caesar." But rising with characteristic ardor to the occasion, he carried the war into the enemy's camp by planning the "Federalist" series, the memorable first number of which he wrote in the cabin of a sloop while returning from legal work in Albany. Of this truly magnificent sequence of eighty-five expository and argumentative articles, publication of which began October 27, 1787, in the Independent Journal and continued for seven months, he wrote at lea st fifty-one alone, and three more in conjunction with Madison (E. G. Bourne and P. L. Ford, in American Historical Review, April, July 1897). By the printing of these papers he accomplished his first preeminent service in the adoption of the Constitution; the second lay in securing the adherence of New York. The state convention which met at Poughkeepsie in June 1788 was found to contain at first forty-six antifederalists or doubtful men to only nineteen assured federalists. "Two thirds of the convention and four sevenths of the people are against us," wrote Hamilton. But with Jay and Robert Livingston as lieutenants, he led a spectacularly effective fight on the floor of the convention. His opponents argued first for postponement, then for rejection, and then for conditional ratification, but Hamilton overthrew every one of their contentions. Fortunately for history, his irresistible speeches were reported with considerable fulness (Works, 1904, II, 3-99). The turning point came with his conversion of Melancthon Smith, and on July 26 the final vote showed a majority of three for the Constitution. This convention offers one of the few outstanding instances in American history of the decision of a deliberate body being changed by sheer power of sustained argument. In political management and general political contests Hamilton was one among several able leaders of his day, and was likely to err through passion or prejudice; but in parliamentary battle he was to have no real equal until the senatorial giants of the generation of Webster and Clay appeared.

The next task was to secure able and loyal officers for the new government, and Hamilton doubtless realized from the outset that he would be one of these. He sat again in the Continental Congress in February 1788, and introduced the ordinance fixing the dates and place for giving effect to the new government. By hard work in the state elections he also carried both branches of the legislature, and thus made it possible to send two federalists, Philip Schuyler and Rufus King, to the United States Senate. Nervous lest Washington refuse to become the first president, he wrote him an insistent letter. He was thus much in the foreground till the new government was organized in April 1789, and when Robert Morris proved unavailable for the Treasury Department, his selection for that post was universally expected. Commissioned on September 11, 1789, he spent the following year at work in New York, removing to Philadelphia in the fall of 1790.

Though he had no practical experience with the management of finances, his labors were marked by his usual rapidity. The organization of a collecting and disbursing force throughout the country had to be carried on simultaneously with the preparation of a plan for placing the public credit upon an adequate basis. No interest had been paid for years on the foreign loans, the domestic debt was heavily and generally regarded as of dubious validity, and paper emissions and partial repudiation had demoralized public opinion. Hamilton's report was ready when Congress met on January 4, 1790, but its delivery was delayed. He had hoped that he would be permitted to present his comprehensive and energetic scheme on the floor of the House, and labor there for its enactment, and he was deeply disappointed when, at the instance of Madison and others who feared his forensic talents, the representatives insisted that he report only in writing. He had to convert his brief for the speech into a written argument which he laid before the House on January 14 (W arks, 1904, II, 227- 89). Unquestionably this famous document is one of the greatest of his state papers, but its originality has often been exaggerated; he drew heavily upon features of the British financial system as it had been developed up to the time of Pitt (C. F. Dunbar, "Some Precedents Followed by Alexander Hamilton," Quarterly Journal of Economics, October 1888). Yet in its boldness, grasp, and courage the plan was admirable. Hamilton based his proposals upon the assumption that the government would completely and punctually meet its engagements. It is the opinion of an expert student that nine congressmen in ten had come to the capital with the expectation of scaling down the debt (Edward Channing, A History of the United States, IV, 1917, p. 69). But Hamilton argued at length against the general view that a discrimination should be made between the original holders of public securities and actual holders by purchase, many of the latter being speculators who had paid a small fraction of the face value; and he proved the impolicy as well as impracticability of such action. He also argued that the federal government should assume the debts contracted by the states during the war, these having been shouldered for the common cause of independence. His tabulation placed the foreign debt at slightly over $11,700,000, the domestic debt at slightly more than $42,000,000, and the state debts at approximately $25,000,000. Since the interest on these sums would be excessive, he propose d several alternative schemes for funding the debt on a basis that would postpone full interest charges, offering the creditors various options, including part payment in lands and in annuities. To provide the annual revenue of $2,240,000 that he estimated was required by the government, he proposed to levy both import duties and an excise.

Hamilton's plans met fierce opposition, Maclay of Pennsylvania characterizing them as "a monument of political absurdity"; it was argued that they played into the hands of a "corrupt squadron" of "gladiators" and "speculators." Madison argued stubbornly in favor of discrimination between the fir st holders and the later purchasers of public securities, but was defeated by a vote of 36 to 13. After a sharp debate the bill for the assumption of the state debts was temporarily beaten, but Hamilton finally carried it to success through his famous bargain with Jefferson and Madison for the location of the national capital. The funding and assumption measures, combined in one bill of a more rigid type than Hamilton's original proposals, became law on August 4, 1791. He immediately made use of these achievements to undertake further steps. On December 13, 1790, he presented to the House his plan for an excise on spirits; the next day he offered his elaborate plan for a national bank; and on January 28, 1791, he reported on the establishment of a mint (Works, 1904, II, 337-51; III, 388-443; IV, 3-58). All three proposals were accepted. The palpable ne ed for revenue carried the excise bill past bitter opposition; and the bank was established by a law of 1792, though not until Hamilton had clashed with Madison, Edmund Randolph, and Jefferson on the constitutionality of the measure, and had given the first exposition of the doctrine of implied powers to justify his position. As a cap stone for his financial and economic structure, he presented to Congress at the winter session of 1791-92 his report on manufactures, a cardinal feature of which was the proposal that protection be given to infant industries by either import duties or bounties. As the successive reports of the Secretary were studied, the scale of his ideas gradually became evident. He was not merely planning a fiscal system, but doing it in such a way as to strengthen the central government and develop the resources of the country, to stimulate trade and capitalistic enterprises, and to bring about a more symmetrical balance between agriculture and industry.

Unquestionably the secretaryship of the treasury represented the climax of Hamilton's career. Dealing with a field so complex and novel, he could not hope to avoid errors and his opponents have since made the most of some of them. Speculation in federal and state certificates of debt became a veritable mania, with general over-expansion, and ended in a panic and business depression. Hamilton miscalculated future interest rates, expecting them to fall though national growth caused them to rise. Not seeing how rapidly wealth would accumulate, he gave the debt too long a tenure. He has also been criticized for instituting a financial system that was too drastic and firm for the day and that placed an unwise strain upon the new government; even though disaster was avoided, he dangerously stimulated political pass ions, aroused an armed rebellion against the excise, and founded a protective system that has grown to exaggerated proportions. But the best vindication of his measures lies in their results, He created as from a void a firm public credit; he strengthened the government by not merely placing it on a sure financial foundation, but al so uniting great propertied interests behind it; and he gave the country a stable circulating medium, more adequate banking facilities, and important new industries. He saw the importance of what he called " energy in the administration" (Works, 1904, II, 57), and if only because he went further than any other member of the government in exercising the powers of the Constitution, he must rank as one of the boldest and most farsighted of the founders of the nation.

Hamilton's natural aggressiveness, his belief that he was the virtual premier of Washington's administration, which led to improper interferences with other departments, and his unnecessary offenses to the susceptibilities of Jefferson, Madison, and others, accentuated the party divisions which sprang naturally from differences in principles. Both he and Jefferson honestly believed that the policy of the other would tend to the destruction of the government and Constitution. They formed also a personal dislike; Hamilton wrote of Jefferson in 1792 that he was a man of "profound ambition and violent passions" (Ibid., IX, 535), while Jefferson assailed Hamilton in private and protested to Washington against the " corrupt squadron" of the Treasury Department (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VI, 1895, pp. 101-09). The struggle between the federalists and anti-federalists, between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, was carried on by letters circulated among public men, by efforts on both sides to influence Washington, greatly distressing the latter, by congressional oratory, and by newspaper broadsides. It shortly reached a point of great bitterness, and perhaps proved the unwisdom of Washington's attempt to set up an amalgamation cabinet, representing opposite points of view. The President wrote both secretaries in an effort to moderate their feelings, but without success. Hamilton had encouraged John Fenno [q.v.] to establish the Gazette of the United States in New York in 1789, and to transfer it a year later to Philadelphia, while in October 1791 the National Gazette of Philip Freneau [q.v.] appeared under the patronage of Jefferson. Both were soon full of severe articles, with not a few personalities. The assaults on Hamilton culminated in a demand, planned by Jefferson and Madison but presented in the House by William Branch Giles, that he furnish full information concerning the loans which had been effected, their terms, and the application of the proceeds. The scarcely veiled charge of the Republicans was that Hamilton had taken funds raised in Europe, which should have been u:sed to pay debts there, and deposited them in the Bank of the United States in order to extend its "special items" and increase its profits. Giles was indiscreet enough to make still more serious charges. In a series of replies early in 1793, Hamilton completely vindicated himself and routed his accusers, and Giles's nine resolutions of censure were overwhelmingly defeated.

When the French revolutionary wars and the arrival of Genet (April 8, 1793) added fuel to the party flames, Hamilton succeeded in winning Washington to his stand that the administration should show a stricter neutrality between France and Great Britain than most of his party opponents desired. Genet, as Jefferson wished, was received without reservations, and Jefferson's view that the treaty of alliance with France was merely suspended instead of dead was also adopted; but Washington issued what amounted to a proclamation of neutrality and Hamilton followed it with strict instructions to the collectors of customs for enforcement. When the British minister demanded restitution of the British vessels captured by privateers which Genet had illegally fitted out in America, Hamilton's opinion that restitution should be made was adopted by Washington over Jefferson's protests. In this troubled period Hamilton maintained close relations with the British envoy. He succeeded also in having John J ay sent to London to negotiate a treaty covering the commercial and other disputes between Great Britain and the United States, and he carefully controlled Jay's work in the interests of his financial policy at home (S. F. Bemis, Jay's Treaty, 1923; for Hamilton's instructions to Jay, see Works, 1904, V, 121- 31). The breach between Jefferson and Hamilton grew steadily more open and embarrassing until Jefferson's resignation as secretary of state in December 1793, and Jefferson continued to try to discredit the Hamiltonian party by connecting it with speculation at home and British interests abroad. While it is commonly said that Hamilton enjoyed the decisive favor of Washington, there were points in foreign affairs upon which Washington rightly preferred Jefferson's counsel, and some upon which the three men had no real disagreement. Neutrality was a clearly defined American policy before Hamilton ever asserted it, and Jefferson had been fully committed to it. But in home affairs Hamilton's place was secure, and when the Whiskey Rebellion occurred in 1794 he played the chief role in its suppression, attending General Henry Lee's punitive force as a superintending official. He regarded the insurrection as an opportunity for the federal government to vindicate its strength. Soon afterward financial pressure, for his office paid only $3,500 a year, caused him to resign (January 31, 1795). Even after he left the cabinet, however, he did much to advise Washington, as in the recall of Monroe from France and the sending of C. C. Pinckney in his stead; and he assisted Washington to give final form to his Farewell Address (Horace Binney, An Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address, 1859).

Until his death, Hamilton remained out of civil office. His best work had all been done; his cruelest errors remained to be committed. When Jay returned home with his treaty to meet a storm of criticism, Hamilton brought his p en into play in its behalf, writing two powerful series of newspaper articles signed "Camillus" and "Philo-Camillus." Their ability extorted from Jefferson a remarkable tribute. "Hamilton," he wrote to Madison, on September 21, 1795, "is really a colossus to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is an host within himself" (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VII, 1896, p. 32). Though he was the leader of his party in 1796, he showed no aspiration for the presidency, to which because of the hostility of the South his election would have been impossible. He returned with zest to his work at the New York bar of which he was regarded as the foremost member, and where his earnings shortly reached $12,000 a year. A great favorite with the merchants of the city, he was "employed in every important and especially in every commercial case" (Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, 1898, p. 317); of insurance business he had "an overwhelming share." He took delight in his leisure for domestic life, building for his large family in 1802-03 a new home, "The Grange," at what is now Amsterdam A venue and r41st-145th streets. Had he been discreet his pathway might have been fairly smooth, but discretion repeatedly failed him. In 1797 a baseless accusation against his honesty as secretary of the treasury, brought by Monroe and others, forced him to make public confession of his intrigue some years previous with a Mrs. Reynolds; an avowal which had the merit of a proud bravery, for it showed him willing to endure any personal humiliation rather than a slur on his public integrity. From the beginning of John Adams's administration he was on ill terms with the President, partly because of an old mutual dislike, and partly because in 1796 Hamilton had encouraged the Federalist electors to cast a unanimous vote for Adams's running-mate Thomas Pinckney, frankly declaring that he would rejoice if this gave Pinckney the presidency in place of Adams. Hamilton also attempted to maintain a steady influence over the acts of Timothy Pickering and Oliver Wolcott as secretaries of state and the treasury, and succeeded until the President discovered the connection and angrily reorganized his cabinet. To the end of his life Adams cherished resentment over this "intrigue," condemning Hamilton and Pickering (though not Wolcott) in the strongest terms. The natural ill-feeling between two men so unlike in temperament and principles resulted in a series of clashes. Hamilton and Adams disagreed upon the personnel of the diplomatic commission to be sent to France, the former resenting the appointment of Elbridge Gerry; they disagreed upon the Alien and Sedition Acts, which Hamilton with his usual shrewdness condemned as "violence without energy"; and upon the course which was to be pursued when the French Directory, in the X.Y.Z. Affair, outraged American feeling.

When war threatened with France in 1798, Hamilton again entertained dreams of military achievement. Following the passage of a law for raising a provisional army, Washington, who was to command it, suggested Hamilton's appointment as inspector-general with the rank of major-general, his plan being to make his old aide second in command. General Henry Knox forthwith raised the question of precedence, refusing to serve if the generals were ranked according to the order of Washington's published list. Adams acceded to this view, ordering the commissions to be dated to give Knox the first rank. Washington thereupon threatened to resign, and Adams reluctantly yielded. Commissioned as inspector-general on July 25, l798, Hamilton was busy for several months with plans for organizing a force of 50,000 and for offensive operations against Louisiana and the Floridas. He hoped to effect conquests upon an impressive scale. When suddenly Adams dissipated both the war cloud and these dreams of glory by his wise stroke in dispatching a new minister to France, Hamilton and his supporters were filled with angry consternation. With outward good grace, Hamilton advised his friends in the Senate that "the measure must go into effect with the additional idea of a commission of three," but his inward resentment was extreme. He realized that the French mission, rending the Federalist party in two, had struck it what would probably be its death-blow. A short time later he heard that Adams had accused him of being under British influence. After writing twice to the President and receiving no answer, he rashly gave way to his feelings. In what he called "a very belligerent humor," he wrote a letter harshly arraigning Adams as unfit for the presidency and letting out much confidential cabinet information. Against his friends' protests he circulated it widely, a copy was obtained by Aaron Burr, and the Republicans saw that it went through at least five printings during the year 1800 (Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John, Adams, Esq., President of the United States, 1800). It was a blunder of the first magnitude, and represented so palpable a surrender to personal irritation that it was without excuse.

Yet, after this surrender to petty motives, Hamilton magnificently rose above them during the Jefferson-Burr contest for the presidency in the election of 1800-01, while three years later he was to perform a still more signal service for the Republic. When the Jefferson-Burr tie went to the House, he might have joined other Federalists in attempting to revenge themselves upon Jefferson by throwing the election to his rival, but believing that Burr was an ill-equipped and dangerous man, Hamilton cast his influence into the opposite scale. After Jefferson's election he necessarily played a minor part in national politics, though he watched public affairs alertly and in 1801 joined with some friends in founding the New York Evening Post to increase his influence. He trenchantly criticized Jefferson's first message, he supported the acquisition of Louisiana, and he occasionally wrote on other questions. The rising tide of disaffection with the Republican administration in certain New England circles, and the half-covert talk of secession there and in New York, found in him an immovable opponent. When in 1804 Burr again sought the governorship of New York, and it was suspected that if victorious he meant to join the New England malcontents in the formation of a Northern confederacy, Hamilton immediately took the offensive with his old dash. He succeeded in stemming the tide which had set in behind Burr's Independent and Federalist ticket, and the Republican candidate, Morgan Lewis, was easily elected. It was a brilliant achievement, scotching the best hopes of the secessionists. Burr's defeat left him thirsting for revenge, and he found his opportunity in a statement published by Dr. Charles D. Cooper, declaring that Hamilton had called Burr "dangerous" and had expressed privately "a still more despicable opinion of him." A challenge for a duel passed, and Hamilton lacked courage to defy public opinion by rejecting it, though he accepted with the utmost reluctance. The encounter took place on the early morning of July 11, 1804, under the Weehawken heights on the banks of the Hudson, and Hamilton fell mortally wounded at the fir st shot. He was carried back to the home of William Bayard at 80 Jane St., and after excruciating suffering died the next afternoon. It was the end of both a brilliant career and a dastardly plot against the Union. "The death of Hamilton and the Vice President's flight, with their accessories of summer-morning sunlight on rocky and wooded heights, tranquil river, and distant city, and behind all, their dark background of moral gloom, double treason, and political despair, still stand as the most dramatic moment in the early politics of the Union" (Henry Adams, History of the United States of America, 1890, II, p. 191).

Hamilton was below the middle height, being five feet seven inches tall, slender, remarkably erect, and quick and energetic in his movements. His complexion was clear and ruddy, his hair reddish brown, his eyes deep blue, and his whole countenance recognizably Scottish. It was often observed that his face had a double aspect, the eyes being intent and severe, the mouth kindly and winning. Few could resist his captivating traits, and even his enemies acknowledged the charm of his graceful person, frank manners, and lively conversation. He possessed a quick and powerful pride, which Gouverneur Morris somewhat unfairly called vanity. When at work, and he worked almost incessantly, he had a marvelous faculty of concentration; many observers spoke of his ability to reach conclusions as by a lightning flash-to divine them. "Hamilton avait divine l' Europe," said Talleyrand (Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, 1876, I, 261). In his political activities he displayed a taste for intrigue, which he sometimes carried too far. His machinations against Adams in 1796, his confidential correspondence with the British minister while he sat in Washington's cabinet, his proposal to trick the Republicans in 1800 out of New York's presidential electors-a proposal which Governor Jay quietly set aside as one "which it would not become me to adopt"-can all be counted heavily against him. Apart from this, his character was of the highest stamp, while his patriotism was unquestioned. His power as an orator was the greatest of his time, but it was characteristic of him that he chose to exert it upon select bodies of influential men, not upon the multitude. His abilities as a political leader were surpassed by few, but again he chose to work upon and through small groups rather than upon the masses. His intellect was hard, incisive, and logical, but wanting in imagination and in subtlety.

Hamilton's political principles were clearly formed by the time he was twenty-five, were pursued unremittingly throughout his life, and have probably laid a clearer impress upon the Republic than those of any other single man. He did not believe in the people, but instead profoundly distrusted the political capacity of the common man, believing him too ignorant, selfish, and ill-controlled to be capable of wise self-government. "Take mankind in general, they are vicious, their passions may be operated upon," he said in the Federal Convention (Works, 1904, I, 408); and again he referred to the people as a "great beast." He recognized that the ideas and enthusiasms of the time made large concessions to popular and republican government necessary, but he strove to hold them within close bounds. The main instruments of power, he believed, should be kept in the hands of selected groups, comprising those with intelligence and education enough to govern, and those with property interests for government to protect. This implied a concentration of strength in the central government. His belief in a powerful federal authority, springing thus from his political philosophy, was confirmed and made aggressive by his observations of the evils of the Confederation, with its feebleness and its disintegrating emphasis on state rights. At the time of the Federal Convention he believed the complete extinction of all the states desirable but impossible (W or/ls, 1904, I, 397 ff.), and the plan which he actually brought forward would have reduced the states to shadows and have placed a tremendous authority in the hands of the federal executive. As a member of the cabinet, he wished to go beyond the words of the Constitution in invigorating the government, and hence proclaimed his doctrine of implied powers; a doctrine which, as developed under Marshall and since, has tremendously strengthened the national as compared with the state sovereignties. Accepting representative institutions, he perceived the necessity of creating an economic element devoted to a strong government and eager to uphold it for selfish as well as patriotic reasons, hence his funding measures and his views in the reports on the national credit and on manufactures. In the Federalist, which is a keen study in the economic interpretation of politics. he had remarked: "Every institution will grow and flourish in proportion to the quantity and extent of the means concentrated towards its formation and support"; as administrator he simply gave this principle application. He thought much of governmental strength, but little of liberty. He emphasized national wealth, power, and order, ang neglected local attachments and autonomy. He believed in governmental measures for helping whole classes to grow prosperous, but he paid no attention to the aspirations of the individual for greater happiness, opportunity, and wisdom. He was a hard, efficient realist, whose work was invaluable to the nation at the time it was done, but whose narrow aristocratic political ideas needed correction from the doctrines of Jefferson and Lincoln.

[There is still room for a biography of Hamilton making full use of his papers, which were purchased by the government in 1849 and are now in the Library of Congress History of the Republic of the U. S. of America, as Traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton (6 volumes, 1857-60), by his son, John Church Hamilton, is a documentary life on an excessively grand scale. J. C. Hamilton also published a seven-volume edition of the Works (1850-51), which is supplemented rather than supplanted by the editions of Henry Cabot Lodge (9 volumes, 1885-88; 12 volumes, 1904). Two lives strongly biased in Hamilton's favor are Lodge, Alexander Hamilton (1882), and J. T. Morse, Life of Alexander Hamilton (1876). Still more partisan, and full of dubious if interesting theorizing, is F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union (1906). More impartiality is shown in W. G. Sumner, Alexander Hamilton (1890); James Schouler, Alexander Hamilton (1901); and H. J. Ford's thoughtful but often inaccurate Alexander Hamilton (1920). In Claude G. Bowers, Jefferson and Hamilton (1925), and Francis W. Hirst, Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson (1926), the point of view is frankly hostile to Hamilton. There is material of value in The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton (1910), by his grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton [q.v.], and there are interesting sidelights in E. S. Maclay, Journal of Wm. Maclay (1890). Hamilton's connections with journalism are treated in Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism (1922). For a study of the background, two books by Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) and Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915), are invaluable. Gertrude Atherton, who published A Few of Hamilton's Letters (1903), put much original research into her historical novel upon him, The Conqueror (1902). Paul Leicester Ford compiled a Bibliotheca Hamiltoniana (1886) which should be brought down to date. Among articles on special phases of his work in technical journals may be cited the following: A. D. Morse, "Alexander Hamilton," Pol. Sci. Quarterly, March 1890; E. G. Bourne, "Alexander Hamilton and Adam Smith," Quarterly Journal of Economics, April 1894; E. C. Lunt, "Hamilton as a Pol. Economist," Journal of Pol. Economy, June 1895; W. C. Ford, "Alexander Hamilton's Notes on the Federal Convention of 1787," American History Review, October 1904. See also the published writings of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.]

A. N.
Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 56-60;

HAMILTON, Alexander, statesman, born in the island of Nevis, West Indies, 11 January, 1757; died in New York city, 12 July, 1804. A curious mystery and uncertainty overhang his birth and parentage, and even the accounts of his son and biographer vary with and contradict each other. The accepted version is, that he was the son of James Hamilton, a Scottish merchant, and his wife, a French lady named Faucette, the divorced wife of a Dane named Lavine. According to another story, his mother was a Miss Lytton, and her sister came subsequently to this country, where she was watched over and supported by Hamilton and his wife. A similar doubt is also connected with his paternity, which now cannot be solved, even were it desirable. His father became bankrupt “at an early day,” to use Hamilton's own words, and the child was thus thrown upon the care of his mother's relatives. His education seems to have been brief and desultory, and chiefly due to the Reverend Hugh Knox, a Presbyterian clergyman of Nevis, who took a great interest in the boy and kept up an affectionate correspondence with him in after-days when his former pupil was on the way to greatness. In 1777 his old tutor wrote to Hamilton that he must be the annalist and biographer, as well as the aide-de-camp, of General Washington, and the historiographer of the American war of independence. Before Hamilton was thirteen years of age it was apparently necessary that he should earn his living, and he was therefore placed in the office of Nicholas Cruger, a West Indian merchant. His precocity was extraordinary, owing, perhaps in some measure, to his early isolation and self-dependence, and at an age when most boys are thinking of marbles and hockey he was writing to a friend and playmate of his ambition and his plans for the future. Most boys have day-dreams; but there is a definiteness and precision about Hamilton's that make them seem more like the reveries of twenty than of thirteen. Even more remarkable was the business capacity that he displayed at this time. His business letters, many of which have been preserved, would have done credit to a trained clerk of any age, and his employer was apparently in the habit of going away and leaving this mere child in charge of all the affairs of his counting-house. The boy also wrote for the local press, contributing at one time an account of a severe hurricane that had devastated the islands, which was so vivid and strong a bit of writing that it attracted general attention. This literary success, joined probably to the friendly advocacy of Dr. Knox, led to the conviction that something ought to be done for a boy who was clearly fitted for a higher position than a West Indian counting-house. Funds were accordingly provided by undefined relatives and more distinct friends, and thus equipped, Hamilton sailed for Boston, Massachusetts, where he arrived in October, 1772, and whence he proceeded to New York. Furnished by Dr. Knox with good letters, he speedily found friends and counsellors, and by their advice went to a school in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where he studied with energy to prepare for college, and employed his pen in much writing, of both prose and poetry. He entered King's college, New York, now Columbia, and there with the aid of a tutor made remarkable progress. While he was thus engaged, our difficulties with England were rapidly ripening. Hamilton's natural inclinations were then, as always, toward the side of order and established government, but a visit to Boston in the spring of 1774, and a close examination of the questions in dispute, convinced him of the justice of the cause of the colonies. His opportunity soon came. A great meeting was held in the fields, 6 July, 1774, to force the lagging Tory assembly of New York into line. Hamilton was among the crowd, and as he listened he became more and more impressed, not by what was said, but by what the speakers omitted to say. Pushing his way to the front, he mounted the platform, and while the crowd cried “A collegian! A collegian!” this stripling of seventeen began to pour out an eloquent and fervid speech in behalf of colonial rights.

Once engaged, Hamilton threw himself into the struggle with all the intense energy of his nature. He left the platform to take up the pen, and his two pamphlets—“A Full Vindication” and “The Farmer Refuted”—attracted immediate and general attention. Indeed, these productions were so remarkable, at a time when controversial writings of great ability abounded, that they were generally attributed to Jay and other well-known patriots. The discovery of their authorship raised Hamilton to the position of a leader in New York. Events now moved rapidly, the war for which he had sighed in his first boyish letter came, and he of course was quick to take part in it. Early in 1776 he was given the command of a company of artillery by the New York convention, and by his skill in organization, and his talent for command, he soon had a body of men that furnished a model of appearance and discipline at a time when those qualities were as uncommon as they were needful. At Long Island and at White Plains the company distinguished itself, and the gallantry of the commander, as well as the appearance of the men, which had already attracted the notice of General Greene, led to an offer from Washington of a place on his staff. This offer Hamilton accepted, and thus began the long and intimate connection with Washington which suffered but one momentary interruption. Hamilton filled an important place on Washington's staff, and his ready pen made him almost indispensable to the commander-in-chief. Beside his immediate duties, the most important task that fell to him was when he was sent to obtain troops from General Gates, after the Burgoyne campaign. This was a difficult and delicate business; but Hamilton conducted it with success, and, by a wise admixture of firmness and tact, carried his point. He also took such part as was possible for a staff officer in all the battles fought by Washington, and in the André affair he was brought into close contact both with André and Mrs. Arnold, of whom he has left a most pathetic and picturesque description. On 16 February, 1781, Hamilton took hasty offence at a reproof given him by Washington, and resigned from the staff, but he remained in the army, and at Yorktown commanded a storming party, which took one of the British redoubts. This dashing exploit practically closed Hamilton's military service in the Revolution, which had been highly creditable to him both as a staff and field officer.

In the midst of his duties as a soldier, however, Hamilton had found time for much else. On his mission to Gates he met at Albany Miss Elizabeth Schuyler, whom he married on 14 December, 1780, and so became connected with a rich and powerful New York family, which was of marked advantage to him in many ways. During the Revolution, too, he had found leisure to study finance and government, and his letters on these topics to Robert Morris and James Duane display a remarkable grasp of both subjects. He showed in these letters how to amend the confederation and how to establish a national bank, and his plans thus set forth were not only practicable, but evince his peculiar fitness for the great work before him. His letters on the bank, indeed, so impressed Morris that when Hamilton left the army and was studying law, Morris offered him the place of continental receiver of taxes for New York, which he at once accepted. At the same time he was admitted to the bar, and he threw himself into the work of his profession and of his office with his wonted zeal. The exclusion of the Tories from the practice of the law gave a fine opening to their young rivals on the patriot side; but the business of collecting taxes was a thankless task, which only served to bring home to Hamilton more than ever the fatal defects of the confederation. From these uncongenial labors he was relieved by an election to congress, where he took his seat in November, 1782. The most important business then before congress was the ratification of peace; but the radical difficulties of the situation arose from the shattered finances and from the helplessness and imbecility of the confederation. Hamilton flung himself into these troubles with the enthusiasm of youth and genius, but all in vain. The case was hopeless. He extended his reputation for statesmanlike ability and brilliant eloquence, but effected nothing, and withdrew to the practice of his profession in 1783, more than ever convinced that the worthless fabric of the confederation must be swept away, and something better and stronger put in its place. This great object was never absent from his mind, and as he rapidly rose at the bar he watched with a keen eye the course of public affairs, and awaited an opening. Matters went rapidly from bad to worse. The states were bankrupt, and disintegration threatened them. Internecine commercial regulations destroyed prosperity, and riot and insurrection menaced society. At last Virginia, in January, 1786, proposed a convention at Annapolis, Maryland, to endeavor to make some common commercial regulations. Hamilton's opportunity had come, and, slender as it was, he seized it with a firm grasp. He secured the election of delegates from New York, and in company with Egbert Benson betook himself to Annapolis in September, 1786. After the fashion of the time, only five states responded to the call; but the meagre gathering at least furnished a stepping-stone to better things. The convention agreed upon an address, which was drawn by Hamilton, and toned down to suit the susceptibilities of Edmund Randolph. This address set forth the evil condition of public affairs, and called a new convention, with enlarged powers, to meet in Philadelphia, 2 May, 1787. This done, the next business was to make the coming convention a success, and Hamilton returned to New York to devote himself to that object. He obtained an election to the legislature, and there fought the hopeless battles of the general government against the Clintonian forces, and made himself felt in all the legislation of the year; but he never lost sight of his main purpose, the appointment of delegates to Philadelphia. This he finally accomplished, and was chosen with two leaders of the opposition, Yates and Lansing, to represent New York in the coming convention. Hamilton's own position despite his victory in obtaining delegates was trying; for in the convention the vote of the state, on every question, was cast against him by his colleagues. He, however, did the best that was possible. At an early day, when a relaxing and feeble tendency appeared in the convention, he introduced his own scheme of government, and supported it in a speech of five hours. His plan was much higher in tone, and much stronger, than any other, since it called for a president and senators for life, and for the appointment of the governors of states by the national executive. It aimed, in fact, at the formation of an aristocratic instead of a Democratic republic. Such a scheme had no chance of adoption, and of course Hamilton was well aware of this, but it served its purpose by clearing the atmosphere and giving the convention a more vigorous tone. After delivering his speech, Hamilton withdrew from the convention, where his colleagues rendered him hopelessly inactive, and only returned toward the end to take part in the closing debates, and to affix his name to the constitution. It was when the labors of the convention were completed and laid before the people that Hamilton's great work for the constitution really began. He conceived and started “The Federalist,” and wrote most of those famous essays which rivetted the attention of the country, furnished the weapons of argument and exposition to those who “thought continentally” in all the states, and did more than any thing else toward the adoption of the constitution. In almost all the states the popular majority was adverse to the constitution, and in the New York ratifying convention the vote stood at the outset two to one against adoption. In a brilliant contest, Hamilton, by arguments rarely equalled in the history of debate, either in form or eloquence, by skilful management, and by wise delay, finally succeeded in converting enough votes, and carried ratification triumphantly. It was a great victory, and in the Federal procession in New York the Federal ship bore the name of “Hamilton.” From the convention the struggle was transferred to the polls. George Clinton was strong enough to prevent the choice of senators, but at the election he only retained his own office by a narrow majority; his power was broken, and the Federalists elected four of the six representatives in congress. In this fight Hamilton led, and when the choice of senators was finally made he insisted, in his imperious fashion, on the choice of Rufus King and General Schuyler, thus ignoring the Livingstons, a political blunder that soon cost the Federalists control of the state of New York.

In April, 1789, Washington was inaugurated, and when the treasury department was at last organized, in September, he at once placed Hamilton at the head of it. In the five years that ensued Hamilton did the work that lies at the foundation of our system of administration, gave life and meaning to the constitution, and by his policy developed two great political parties. To give in any detail an account of what he did would be little less than to write the history of the republic during those eventful years. On 14 January, 1790, he sent to congress the first “Report on the Public Credit,” which is one of the great state papers of our history, and which marks the beginning and foundation of our government. In that wonderful document, and with a master's hand, he reduced our confused finances to order, provided for a funding system and for taxes to meet it, and displayed a plan for the assumption of the state debts. The financial policy thus set forth was put into execution, and by it our credit was redeemed, our union cemented, and our business and commercial prosperity restored. Yet outside of this great work and within one year Hamilton was asked to report, and did report fully, on the raising and collection of the revenue, and on a scheme for revenue cutters; as to estimates of income and expenditure; as to the temporary regulation of the currency; as to navigation-laws and the coasting-trade; as to the post-office; as to the purchase of West Point; as to the management of the public lands, and upon a great mass of claims, public and private. Rapidly, effectively, and successfully were all these varied matters dealt with and settled, and then in the succeeding years came from the treasury a report on the establishment of a mint, with an able discussion of coins and coinage; a report on a national bank, followed by a great legal argument in the cabinet, which evoked the implied powers of the constitution; a report on manufactures, which discussed with profound ability the problems of political economy and formed the basis of the protective policy of the United States; a plan for an excise; numerous schemes for improved taxation; and finally a last great report on the public credit, setting forth the best methods for managing the revenue and for the speedy extinction of the debt. In the midst of these labors Hamilton was assailed in congress by his enemies, who were stimulated by Jefferson, led by James Madison and William B. Giles, and in an incredibly short time, in a series of reports on loans, he laid bare every operation of the treasury for three years, and thereafter could not get his foes, even by renewed invitations, to investigate him further.

Outside of his own department, Hamilton was hardly less active, and in the difficult and troubled times brought on by the French revolution he took a leading part in the determination of our foreign policy. He believed in a strict neutrality, and had no leaning to France. He sustained the neutrality proclamation in the cabinet, and defended it in the press under the signature of “Pacificus.” He strenuously supported Washington in his course toward France, and constantly urged more vigorous measures toward Edmond Charles Genet (q. v.) than the cabinet as a whole would adopt. During this period, too, his quarrel with Jefferson, which really typified the growth of two great political parties, came to a head. Jefferson sustained and abetted Freneau in his attacks upon the administration and the financial policy, and upon the secretary of the treasury most especially. Hamilton, too, forgetful of the dignity of his office, took up his pen and in a series of letters to the newspapers lashed Jefferson until he writhed beneath the blows. At last Washington interfered, and a peace was patched up between the warring secretaries; but the relation was too strained to endure, and Jefferson soon resigned and retired to Virginia. Hamilton was contemplating a similar step, but postponed taking it because he wished to complete certain financial arrangements, and he also felt unwilling to leave his office until the troubles arising in Pennsylvania from the excise were settled. These disturbances culminated in open riot and insurrection; but Washington and Hamilton were fully prepared to deal with the emergency. A vigorous proclamation was issued, an overwhelming force, which Hamilton accompanied, was marched into the insurgent counties, and the so-called rebellion faded away.

Hamilton now felt free to withdraw from the cabinet, a step that he was compelled to take from a lack of resources sufficient to support a growing family, and he accordingly resigned on 31 January, 1795. His neglected practice at once revived, and he soon stood at the head of the New York bar. But even his incessant professional duties could not keep him from public affairs. The Jay negotiation, which he had done much to set on foot, came to an end, and the treaty that resulted from it produced a fierce outburst of popular rage, which threatened to overwhelm Washington himself. Hamilton defended the treaty with voice and pen, writing a famous series of essays signed “Camillus,” which had a powerful influence in changing public opinion. He was also consulted constantly by Washington, almost as much as if he had continued in the cabinet, and he furnished drafts and suggestions for messages and speeches, besides taking a large share in the preparation of the “Farewell Address.”

Hamilton not only corresponded with and advised the president, but maintained the same relation with the members of the cabinet, and this fact was one fruitful source of the dissensions that arose in the Federalist party after the retirement of Washington. Hamilton supported John Adams loyally, if not very cordially, at the election of 1796, and intended to give him an equally loyal support when he assumed office, but the situation was an impossible one. Adams was the leader of the party de jure, Hamilton de facto, and at least three members of the cabinet looked from the first beyond their nominal and official chief to their real chief in New York. If Adams had possessed political tact, he might have managed Hamilton; but he neither could nor would attempt it, and Hamilton, on his side, was equally imperious and equally determined to have his own way. The two leaders agreed as to the special commission to France, and the commission went. They agreed as to the attitude to be assumed after the exposure of the “X. Y. Z.” correspondence, and all went well. But, when it came to the provisional army, Adams's jealousy led him to resist Hamilton's appointment to the command, and a serious breach ensued. The influence of Washington prevailed, however, and Hamilton was given the post of inspector-general. For two years he was absorbed in the military duties thus imposed upon him, and his genius for organization comes out strongly in his correspondence relating to the formation, distribution, and discipline of the army. In the mean time the affairs of the party went from bad to worse. Mr. Adams reopened negotiations with France, which disgusted the war-Federalists, and then expelled Timothy Pickering and James McHenry from the cabinet, 12 May, 1800. He also gave loud utterance to his hatred of Hamilton, which speedily reached the latter's ears, and the Federalist party found themselves face to face with an election and torn by bitter quarrels. The Federalists were beaten by their opponents under the leadership of Burr in the New York elections, and Hamilton, smarting from defeat, proposed to Jay to call together the old legislature and refer the choice of electors to the people in districts. The proposition was wrong and desperate, and wholly unworthy of Hamilton, who seems to have been beside himself at the prospect of his party's impending ruin and the consequent triumph of Jefferson. He also made the fatal mistake of openly attacking Adams, and the famous pamphlet that he wrote against the president, after depicting Adams as wholly unfit for his high trust, lamely concluded by advising all the Federalists to vote for him. Such proceedings could have but one result, and the Federalists were beaten. The victors, however, were left in serious difficulties, for Burr and Jefferson received an equal number of votes, and the election was thrown into the house of representatives. The Federalists, eager for revenge on Jefferson, began to turn to Burr, and now Hamilton, recovered from his fit of anger, threw himself into the breach, and, using all his great influence, was chiefly instrumental in securing the election of Jefferson, thereby fulfilling the popular will and excluding Burr, a great and high-minded service, which was a fit close to his public life.

After the election of Jefferson, Hamilton resumed the practice of his profession, and withdrew more and more into private life. But he could not separate himself entirely from politics, and continued to write upon them, and strove to influence and strengthen his party. As time wore on, and the breach widened between Jefferson and Burr, the latter renewed his intrigues with the Federalists, but through Hamilton's influence was constantly thwarted, and was finally beaten for the governorship of New York. Burr then apparently determined to fix a quarrel upon his life-long enemy, which was no difficult matter, for Hamilton had used the severest language about Burr—not once, but a hundred times—and it was easy enough to bring it home to him. Hamilton had no wish to go out with Burr, but he was a fighting man, and, moreover, he was haunted by the belief that democracy was going to culminate in the horrors of the French revolution, that a strong man would be needed, and that society would turn to him for salvation—a work for which he would be disqualified by the popular prejudice if he declined to fight a duel. He therefore accepted the challenge, met Burr on 11 July, 1804, on the bank of the Hudson at Weehawken, and fell mortally wounded at the first fire. His tragic fate called forth a universal burst of grief, and drove Burr into exile, an outcast and a conspirator. The accompanying illustration represents the tomb that marks his grave in Trinity churchyard, New York. The preceding one, on page 57, is a picture of “The Grange,” Hamilton's country residence on the upper part of Manhattan island. The thirteen trees that he planted to symbolize the original states of the Union survive in majestic proportions, and the mansion is still standing on the bluff overlooking the Hudson on one side and Long Island sound on the other, not far from 145th Street.

As time has gone on Hamilton's fame has grown, and he stands to-day as the most brilliant statesman we have produced. His constructive mind and far-reaching intellect are visible in every part of our system of government, which is the best and noblest monument of his genius. His writings abound in ideas which there and then found their first expression, and which he impressed upon our institutions until they have become so universally accepted and so very commonplace that their origin is forgotten. He was a brave and good soldier, and might well have been a great one had the opportunity ever come. He was the first political writer of his time, with an unrivalled power of statement and a clear, forcible style, which carried conviction in every line. At the time of his death he was second to no man at the American bar, and was a master in debate and in oratory. In his family and among his friends he was deeply beloved and almost blindly followed. His errors and faults came from his strong, passionate nature, and his masterful will impatient of resistance or control. Yet these were the very qualities that carried him forward to his triumphs, and enabled him to perform services to the American people which can never be forgotten.

There are several portraits of the statesman by John Trumbull, and one by Wiemar; also a marble bust, modelled from life, by Ceracchi in 1794, of which the accompanying illustration, on page 56, is a copy. A full-length statue of Hamilton stands in the Central Park of New York.

Hamilton was the principal author of the series of essays called the “Federalist,” written in advocacy of a powerful and influential national government, which were published in a New York journal under the signature of “Publius” in 1787-'8, before the adoption of the Federal constitution. There were eighty-five papers in all, of which Hamilton wrote fifty-one, James Madison fourteen, John Jay five, and Madison and Hamilton jointly three, while the authorship of the remaining twelve have been claimed by both Hamilton and Madison. As secretary of the treasury, he presented to congress an elaborate report on the public debt in 1789, and one on protective duties on imports in 1791. In the “Gazette of the United States,” under the signature “An American,” he assailed Jefferson's financial views, while both were members of Washington's cabinet (1792); under that of “Pacificus,” defended in print the policy of neutrality between France and England (1793); and in a series of essays, signed “Camillus,” sustained the policy of ratifying Jay's treaty (1795). Other signatures used by him in his newspaper controversies were “Ciito,” “Lucius Crassus,” “Phocion,” and “Scipio.” In answer to the charges of corruption made by Monroe, he published a pamphlet, containing his correspondence with Monroe on the subject and the supposed incriminating letters on which the charges were based (1797). His “Observations on Certain Documents” (Philadelphia, 1797) was republished in New York in 1865. In 1798 he defended in the newspapers the policy of increasing the army. His “Works,” comprising the “Federalist,” his most important official reports, and other writings, were published in three volumes (New York, 1810). “His Official and other Papers,” edited by Francis L. Hawks, appeared in 1842. In 1851 his son, John C., issued a carefully prepared edition of his “Works,” comprising his correspondence and his political and official writings, civil and military, in seven volumes. A still larger collection of his “Complete Works,” including the “Federalist,” his private correspondence, and many hitherto unpublished documents, was edited, with an introduction and notes, by Henry Cabot Lodge (9 vols., 1885). In 1804 appeared a “Collection of Facts and Documents relative to the Death of Major-General Alexander Hamilton,” by William Coleman. The same year his “Life” was published in Boston by John Williams, under the pen-name “Anthony Pasquin,” a reprint of which has been issued by the Hamilton club (New York, 1865). A “Life of Alexander Hamilton” (2 vols., 1834-'40) was published by his son, John Church, who also compiled an elaborate work entitled “History of the Republic of the United States, as traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and his Contemporaries,” the first volume of which contains a sketch of his father's career (1850-'8). See also his “Life” by Henry B. Renwick (1841); “Life and Times of Alexander Hamilton,” by Samuel M. Smucker (Boston, 1856); “Hamilton and his Contemporaries,” by Christopher J. Riethmueller (1864); “Life of Hamilton,” by John T. Morse, Jr. (1876); “Hamilton, a Historical Study,” by George Shea (New York, 1877); “Life and Epoch of Alexander Hamilton,” by the same author (Boston, 1879); and “Life of Hamilton,” by Henry Cabot Lodge (American statesmen series, 1882). A list of the books written by or relating to Hamilton has been published under the title of “Bibliotheca Hamiltonia” by Paul L. Ford (New York, 1886).  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, whose life is deeply interwoven with the history of the American revolution, with the formation and adoption of the constitution of the United States, and with the civil administration of Washington, was born in the island of Nevis, in the British West Indies, January 11th, 1757. He was of Scottish descent. His paternal grandfather resided at the family seat of Grange in Ayrshire, in Scotland. His father was bred a merchant, and went to the West Indies in that character, where he became unsuccessful in business, and subsequently lived in a state of pecuniary dependence. His mother was of a French family, and possessed superior accomplishments of mind and person. She died when he was a child, and he received the rudiments of his early education in the island of St. Croix.

He was taught when young to speak and write the French language fluently, and he displayed an early and devoted attachment to literary pursuits. His studies were under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Knox, a respectable Presbyterian clergyman, who gave to his mind a strong religious bias, which was never eradicated, and which displayed itself strongly and with consoling influence on his death-bed, though it may have been checked and diverted during the ardor and engrossing scenes of his military and political life. In 1769, he was placed as a clerk in the counting-house of Mr. Nicholas Cruger, an opulent and highly respectable merchant of St. Croix. Young HAMILTON went through the details of his clerical duty with great assiduity and fidelity, and he manifested a capacity for business, which attracted the attention and confidence of his patron. He displayed, at that early age, the most aspiring ambition, and showed infallible symptoms of superior genius. '”I contemn,” said he in a letter to a confidential schoolfellow, “the grovelling condition of a clerk, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station; I mean to prepare the way for futurity.” This extraordinary feeling and determined purpose in a youth of twelve years; this ardent love for fame, and the still stronger attachment to character, were felt and exhibited in every period of his after life.

While he was in Mr. Cruger’s office, HAMILTON devoted all his leisure moments to study. Mathematics, chemistry, ethics, biography, knowledge of every kind, occupied his anxious researches. In 1772, he gave a precise and elegant description of the hurricane which had recently swept over some of the islands, and which was anonymously published in the island of St. Christopher, where it excited general attention, and contributed to give a happy direction to his future fortunes. When the author became known, his relations and patrons resolved to send him to the city of New York, for the purpose of a better education.

He arrived in New York in October, 1772, and was immediately placed at a grammar school, at Elizabethtown, in New Jersey, under the tuition of Mr. Francis Barber, who afterwards was distinguished as an accomplished officer in the American service. HAMILTON entered King’s (now Columbia) College at the close of 1773, where he soon “gave extraordinary displays of richness of genius and energy of mind.”

His active and penetrating mind was employed, even at college, in sustaining and defending the colonial opposition to the acts of the British parliament. In July 1774, while a youth of seventeen, he appeared as a speaker at a great public meeting of citizens in the fields, (now the park in front of the city hall,) and enforced the duty of resistance by an eloquent appeal to the good sense and patriotism of his auditors. He also vindicated the cause of the colonies with his pen in several anonymous publications. In December 1774, and February 1775, he was the author of some elaborate pamphlets in favor of the pacific measures of defence, recommended by congress. He suggested at that early day the policy of giving encouragement to domestic manufactures, as a sure means of lessening the need of external commerce. He anticipated ample resources at home, and, among other things, observed that several of the southern colonies were so favorable in their soil and climate to the growth of cotton, that such a staple alone, with due cultivation, in a year or two would afford products sufficient to clothe the whole continent. He insisted upon our unalienable right to the steady, uniform, unshaken security of constitutional freedom; to the enjoyment of trial by jury; and to the right of freedom from taxation, except by our own immediate representatives; and that colonial legislation was an inherent right never to be abandoned or impaired.

In the course of this pamphlet controversy, HAMILTON became engaged, though unsuspected by his opponents, in an animated discussion with Dr. Cooper, principal of the college, and with wits and politicians of established character on the ministerial side of the question. The profound principles, able reasoning, and sound policy contained in the pamphlets, astonished his adversaries; and the principal of them held it to be absurd to suppose that so young a man as HAMILTON could be the author. He was thenceforward cherished and revered by the whigs of New York as an oracle.

The war had now commenced in Massachusetts bay, and HAMILTON, young, ardent, and intrepid, was among the earliest of his fellow-citizens to turn his mind to the military service. In 1775, and while at college, he joined a volunteer corps of militia in the city of New York, studied the details of military tactics, and endeavored to reduce them to practice. And while he was most active in promoting measures of resistance, lie was busy also in studying the science of political economy, relative to commerce, the balance of trade, and the circulating medium; and which were soon to become prominent topics of speculation under the new aspects of social and political organization, of which the elements were then forming. In checking the wild spirit of mobs, he showed himself equally the intrepid advocate of freedom, and the enemy of all popular misrule and licentiousness.

On the 14th March, 1776, HAMILTON was appointed captain of a provincial company of artillery, in the city of New York, and in that rank he was soon in active service, and brought up the rear of the army in the retreat from Long Island. He was in the action at White Plains, on the 28th of October, 1776, and by that time his character and conduct had attracted the observing eye of Washington. He was with his artillery company, firm and active, in the retreat through New Jersey, and resisted the progress of the British troops on the banks of the Raritan. He was with his command at Trenton and Princeton, and he continued in the army until the 1st of March, 1777, when he was appointed aid-de-camp to General Washington, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Colonel HAMILTON remained in the family of the commander-in-chief until February, 1781, and during that long and eventful period of the war, he was, in the language of Washington himself, “his principal and most confidential aid.” In that auspicious station, and in the very general intercourse with the officers of the army and the principal men of the country which it created, he had ample opportunities to diffuse the knowledge of his talents and the influence of his accomplishments. As he spoke the French language with facility, he became familiar with the officers of the French army in America, and with the distinguished foreign officers in the American service. He recommended himself to their confidence by his kindness and his solicitude to serve them in the best manner. Their attachment and admiration were won by his genius and the goodness and frankness of his heart. This was particularly the case in respect to the Marquis Lafayette, and the Baron Steuben.

The principal labor of the correspondence of the commander-in-chief fell upon HAMILTON; and the most elaborate communications of that kind are understood to have been made essentially with his assistance. In November 1777, he was deputed by Washington to procure from General Gates at Albany reinforcements of troops, which were exceedingly wanted for the army before Howe in Philadelphia. His object was to obtain the three continental brigades, then under Gates, and without any northern enemy to employ them. But General Gates insisted on retaining at least two of the brigades, and would only consent to part with the weakest of the three. The negotiation was conducted by Colonel HAMILTON with consummate discretion; and without having recourse to the absolute authority of the commander-in-chief, he overcame, by dint of argument, the unreasonable reluctance and dangerous temper of insubordination in Gates, and procured the march to head quarters of two of the brigades. In 1778, the accuracy of HAMILTON’S judgment was tested on the subject of the inspector-general of the army, and in the appointment of Baron Steuben, and the designation of his powers and duties. He was in the same year intrusted by General Washington with much discretion respecting a general exchange of prisoners with the enemy; and he was very efficient and most happy in his advice in favor of the attack of the enemy upon their retreat through New Jersey, in June 1778, in opposition to the opinion of a majority of a council of war consulted on that occasion. The determination to attack led on to the action of Monmouth, in which fresh honor was added to the American arms. Colonel HAMILTON was that day in the field under the Marquis Lafayette, and his merit was very conspicuous in the activity, skill, and courage which he displayed.

The finances of the United States had become involved in great disorder, and the enormous issues of paper currency to the amount of two hundred millions of dollars, and its consequent depreciation almost to worthlessness, had prostrated public credit. The government and the army were reduced to the greatest difficulties and distress, from the want of means to sustain themselves, and support the war. In this extremity, the mind of Colonel HAMILTON was turned to the contemplation of the subject, and the means of relief. He was led on to those profound investigations in reference to the complicated subjects of finance, currency, taxation, and the fittest means to restore confidence, by the mastery of which he was afterwards destined to be “the founder of the public credit of the United States.” In. 1779, he addressed a letter to Robert Morris, one of the first commercial characters of the country, giving in detail his plan of finance. The restoration of the depreciated currency, and of credit and confidence, was not to be effected by expedients within our own resources. The only relief, as he declared, was to be sought in a foreign loan to the extent of two millions sterling, assisted by a vigorous taxation, and a bank of the United States to be instituted by congress for ten years, and to be supported by the foreign as well as by domestic loans in the depreciated currency at a very depreciated ratio. This institution was to rest on the firm footing of public and private faith, and was to supply the want of a circulating medium, and absorb the depreciated paper, and furnish government with the requisite loans. The scheme was in part adopted in June 1780, by the voluntary institution, through the agency of a number of patriotic individuals, of the bank of Pennsylvania, and which received the patronage of congress. Colonel HAMILTON looked with intense anxiety on the distresses of the country, and he perceived and avowed the necessity of a better system of government, and one not merely advisory, but reorganized on foundations of greater responsibility, and more efficiency. He addressed a very interesting letter to Mr. Duane, a member of congress from New York, on the state of the nation. This letter appears at this day, with all the lights and fruits of our experience, as masterly in a preeminent degree. He went on to show the defects and total inefficiency of the articles of confederation, and to prove that we stood in need of a national government, with the requisite sovereign powers, such, indeed, as the confederation theoretically contained, but without any fit organs to receive them. He suggested the idea of a national convention to amend and reorganize the government. This was undoubtedly the ablest and truest production on the state of the union, its finances, its army, its miseries, its resources, its remedies, that appeared during the revolution. It contained in embryo the existing federal constitution, and it was the production of a young man of the age of twenty-three.

In October 1780, HAMILTON earnestly recommended to General Washington the selection of General Greene, for the command of the southern army, which Gates had just left in disorganization and scattered fragments. He had early formed an exalted opinion of the merits of Greene, and entertained unmeasured confidence in his military talents, and “whose genius,” as he said, “carried in it all the resources of war.” In December 1780, he married the second daughter of Major-General Schuyler, and in the February following, he retired from the family of General Washington, but still retained his rank in the army, and was exceedingly solicitous to obtain a separate command in some light corps. Being relieved from the active duties imposed upon him as an aid, his mind became thoroughly engrossed with the situation of the country, which was in every view replete with difficulties, and surrounded with danger. Public credit was hastening to an irretrievable catastrophe. In April 1781, he addressed a letter to Mr. Morris, the superintendant of finance, on the state of the currency and finances, and he transmitted the plan of a national bank, as the only expedient that could give to government an extensive and sound paper credit, and as being essential to our success and safety. He reasoned out the utility and policy of a bank, and met and answered the objections to it with a force, perspicuity, and conclusiveness, that swept away every difficulty, and carried with it almost universal conviction. The plan of a national bank was submitted to congress by Mr. Morris, in May, 1781 and they adopted it with great unanimity, and resolved to incorporate and support it under the name of the Bank of North America. That institution, with the incipient and more feeble aid of the bank of Pennsylvania, then in operation, was of inestimable service in restoring and sustaining the credit of the country; in bringing forward our resources, and carrying on the operations of the army during the concluding scenes of the war.

The last act of Colonel HAMILTON’S military life, was at the siege of Yorktown, in Virginia. After repeated solicitations, he was at last gratified with the command of a corps of light infantry, attached to the division under the command of his friend, the Marquis Lafayette, and he was so fortunate as to be able to lead the night attack by assault of one of the enemy’s redoubts, and which was carried with distinguished rapidity and bravery. This event was the consummation of his wishes. The active service of the army had now ended. He immediately turned his attention to the duties and business of civil life; and having selected the profession of the law, he fitted himself for admission, in 1782, to the bar of the supreme court of New York with surprising facility, and with high credit to his industry and research.

The country being about to settle down in peace, our civil government became the primary object of attention to reflecting statesmen. The defects of the confederation had grown to be prominent and glaring. The machine had become languid and worthless, and especially after the extraordinary energy and enthusiasm of the war-spirit, which had once animated it, had been withdrawn. In the winter of 1781-2, Mr. HAMILTON wrote a number of anonymous essays in the country papers in New York, under the signature of the Continentalist, in which he went largely into an examination of the defects of the confederation, and into an enumeration of the powers with which it ought to be clothed. In the summer of 1782, he was appointed by the legislature of New York, a delegate to congress. The same legislature that appointed him unanimously passed resolutions, introduced into the senate by General Schuyler, declaring that the confederation was defective in not giving to congress power to provide a revenue for itself, or in not investing them with funds from established and productive sources; and that it would be advisable for congress to recommend to the states to call a general convention to revise and amend the confederation.[1]

Colonel HAMILTON took his seat in congress, in November, 1782, and continued there until the autumn of 1783, and the proceedings of congress immediately assumed a new and more vigorous tone and character. He became at once engaged in measures calculated to relieve the embarrassed state of the public finances, and avert the dangers which beset the union of the states. His efforts to reanimate the power of the confederation, and to infuse some portion of life and vigor into the system, so as to render it somewhat adequate to the exigencies of the nation, were incessant. He was sustained in all his views, by that great statesman, the superintendant of finance, and by some superior minds in congress, and especially by Mr. Madison, whose talents, enlightened education, and services, were of distinguished value in that assembly. On the 6th of December, 1782, he moved and carried a resolution that the superintendant of finance represent to the legislatures of the several states, the indispensable necessity of complying with the requisitions of congress, for raising specified sums of money towards sustaining the expenses of government, and paying a year’s interest on the domestic debt. On the 11th of the same month, he was chairman of the committee which reported the form of an application to the governor of Rhode Island, urging in persuasive terms, the necessity and reasonableness of the concurrence on the part of that state, in a grant to congress of a general import duty of five per cent., in order to raise a fund to discharge the national debt. It contained the assurance that the increasing discontents of the army, the loud clamors of the public creditors, and the extreme disproportion between the annual supplies and the demands of the public service, were invincible arguments in favor of that source of relief; and that calamities the most menacing might be anticipated if that expedient should fail. So again on the 16th of December, he was chairman of the committee that made a report of a very superior character in vindication of the same measure. On the 20th of March, 1783, Mr. HAMILTON submitted to congress another plan of a duty of five per cent., ad valorem, on imported goods, for the discharge of the army debt. On the 22d of that month, he again, as chairman, reported in favor of a grant of five years’ full pay to the officers of the army, as a commutation for the half pay for life which had some time before been promised by congress. On the 24th of April following, he, as one of the committee, agreed to the report which Mr. Madison drew and reported as chairman, containing an address to the states in recommendation of the five per cent. duty; a document equally replete with clear and sound reasoning, and manly and elegant exhortation.

If such a series of efforts to uphold the authority and good faith of the nation failed at the time, yet HAMILTON and the other members of congress who partook of his fervor and patriotism, had the merit, at least, of preserving the honor of congress, while every other attribute of power was lost. There are other instances on record in the journals of that memorable session, in which Colonel HAMILTON was foremost to testify national gratitude for services in the field, and to show a lively sense of the sanctity of national faith. He was chairman of the committee which reported resolutions honorable to the character and services of Baron Steuben; and he introduced a resolution calling upon the states to remove every legal obstruction under their local jurisdictions in the way of the entire and faithful execution of the treaty of peace. His seat in congress expired at the end of the year 1783; but his zeal for the establishment of a national government, competent to preserve us from insult abroad and degradation and dissension at home, and fitted to restore credit, to protect liberty, and to cherish and display our resources, kept increasing in intensity. His statesman-like views became more and more enlarged and comprehensive, and the action of his mind more rapid, as we approached the crisis of our destiny.

On the recovery of New York in the autumn of 1783, Mr. HAMILTON assumed the practice of the law; but his mind was still deeply occupied with discussions concerning the public welfare. In the winter of 1784, his pamphlet productions under the signature of Phocion, and addressed “to the considerate citizens of New York,” excited very great interest. Their object was to check the intemperate spirit which prevailed on the recovery of the city of New York; to vindicate the constitutional and treaty rights of all classes of persons inhabiting the southern district of New York, then recently recovered from the enemy’s possession; and to put a stop to every kind of proscriptive policy and legislative disabilities, as being incompatible with the treaty of peace, the spirit of whiggism, the dictates of policy, and the voice of law and justice. His appeal to the good sense and patriotism of the public was not made in vain. The force of plain truth carried his doctrines along against the stream of prejudice, and overcame every obstacle.

Colonel HAMILTON had scarcely began to display his great powers as an advocate at the bar, when he was again called into public life. He was elected a member of assembly for the city of New York, in 1786, and in the ensuing session he made several efforts to surmount the difficulties, and avert the evils, which encompassed the country. The state of Vermont was in fact independent, but she was not in the confederacy. His object was to relieve the nation from such a peril, and he introduced a bill into the house of assembly renouncing jurisdiction over that state, and preparing the way for its admission into the union. His proposition was ably resisted by counsel, heard at the bar of the house, and acting on behalf of claimants of lands in Vermont, under grant from New York. Mr. HAMILTON promptly met and answered the objections to the bill with his usual ability and familiar knowledge of the principles of public law. In the same session he made bold but unavailing efforts to prop up and sustain the tottering fabric of the confederation, and the prostrate dignity and powers of congress. His motion and very distinguished speech in favor of the grant to congress of an import duty of five per cent., was voted down in silence without attempting an answer. But a new era was commencing. The clouds began to disperse, and the horizon was soon seen to kindle and glow with the approaches of a brighter day. HAMILTON was destined to display the rich fruits of his reflection and experience, and his entire devotedness to his country’s cause in a more exalted sphere. In the same session he was appointed one of the three New York delegates to the general convention, recommended by congress to be held at Philadelphia, in May, 1787, to revise and amend the articles of confederation.

His services in that convention were immensely valuable. All contemporary information confirms it. His object was to make the experiment of a great federative republic, moving in the largest sphere, and resting entirely on a popular basis, as complete, satisfactory, and decisive as possible, in favor of civil liberty, public security and national greatness. He considered the best interests of mankind, and the character of free and popular institutions, as being deeply, and perhaps finally, involved in the result. Experimental propositions were made in the convention, and received as suggestions for consideration. The highest toned proposition which he ever made, was that the president and senate should be elected by electors chosen by the people, and that they as well as the judges should hold their offices during good behavior, and that the house of representatives should be elected triennially. His opinions essentially changed during the progress of the discussions, and he became satisfied that it would be dangerous to the public tranquillity, to elect by popular election a chief magistrate with so permanent a tenure; and towards the close of the convention, his subsequent plan gave to the office of president a duration of only three years.

When the constitution adopted by the convention was submitted to the consideration of the American people, Mr. HAMILTON, in association with Mr. Jay and Mr. Madison, commenced a series of essays under the signature of Publius, in explanation and vindication of the principles of the government. Those essays compose the two Volumes of that celebrated and immortal work “The Federalist.” Several numbers appeared successively every week in the New York papers, between October, 1787, and the spring of 1788. The whole work consists of eighty-five numbers. Mr. Jay wrote five, Mr. Madison upwards of twenty, and Mr. HAMILTON the residue. The value of the union, the incompetency of the articles of confederation to preserve it, and the necessity of a government organized upon the principles, and clothed with the powers, of the one presented to the public, were topics discussed with a talent, force, information, skill, and eloquence, to which we had not been accustomed. Mr. HAMILTON was also a member of the New York state convention, which met at Poughkeepsie in June, 1788. That convention was composed of many distinguished individuals of great weight of character. Most of them had been disciplined in the varied services of the revolution. But as Mr. HAMILTON had been a leading member of the national convention, and had signed the instrument before them, he felt and nobly sustained the weight of the responsibility attached to his situation and as he had been also a leading writer in the Federalist, his mind was familiar with the principles of the constitution, and with every topic of debate. The wisdom of the commentator was displayed and enforced by the eloquence of the orator. He was prompt, ardent, energetic, and overflowing with an exuberance of argument and illustration.

After the constitution had been adopted by the requisite number of states, it went into operation in the course of the year 1789; and when the treasury-department was established, Colonel HAMILTON was appointed secretary of the treasury. He remained in that office upwards of five years, and resigned it in January, 1795, after having built up and placed on sound foundations the fiscal concerns of the nation confided to his care, so as to leave to his successors little more to do than to follow his precepts, and endeavor to shine by the imitation of his example. His great duty consisted in devising and recommending a suitable provision for the gradual restoration of public credit and the faithful discharge of the national debt. His reports as secretary, made under the direction of the house of representatives, were so many didactic dissertations, laboriously wrought and highly finished, on some of the most difficult and complicated subjects in the science of political economy. Among those reports, the most interesting were, first, his report of January, 1790, on a provision for the support of public credit, in which he showed the necessity of funding the public debt; the inexpedience of discrimination between original and present holders of it; and the expediency of assuming the state debt. Second, his report of December, 1790, on the establishment of a national bank, in which he demonstrated that it was within the reach of the legitimate powers of the government, and essential to the convenient and prosperous administration of the national finances. His reasoning was so clear and cogent, that it carried the measure triumphantly through congress; notwithstanding the objections of Mr. Jefferson in the executive cabinet, he satisfied the cautious and solid judgment of Washington. Third, his report of December, 1791, on the subject of domestic manufactures. This was one of his most elaborate reports, equally distinguished for knowledge and strength; and he seems not to have entertained a doubt, either of the constitutional right of congress to exercise its sound discretion on the subject or of the wisdom of the legislative encouragement of them in particular cases. Fourth, his report of January, 1795, on a plan for the further support of public credit. In his view, the true principle to render public credit immortal, was to accompany the creation of debt with the means of extinguishing it; and he recommended a provision for augmenting the sinking fund, so as to render it commensurate with the entire debt of the United States. By these financial measures which he had the honor to suggest and recommend, he enabled his country to feel and develope its immense resources; and under his administration public credit was awakened from death unto life, and rose with fair proportions and gigantic strength, so as to engage the attention and command the confidence of Europe. In connection with these splendid results, the integrity and simplicity with which he conducted his department, and which the most jealous and penetrating inquisition into all the avenues of his office could never question, forms with posterity one of his fairest titles to fame.

While Colonel HAMILTON presided over the treasury department, the French revolution burst forth with destructive violence, and brought on an embittered war between Great Britain and the French republic. Being a member of President Washington’s cabinet council, Mr. HAMILTON was one of the advisers of the proclamation of neutrality in April, 1793, and he supported it by his vigorous pen. That proclamation was the index to the foreign policy of Washington, and it was temperately but firmly maintained against the intrigue and insolence of the French minister to the United States, and against all the force and fury of the turbulent passions of the times, engendered and inflamed by the French democracy. He aided the American policy of neutrality in some fugitive pieces under the signature No Jacobin, and in the more elaborate essays of Pacificus, and vastly more so by his advice in favor of the timely mission of Chief Justice Jay, as minister extraordinary to Great Britain, in the spring of 1794.

After Colonel HAMILTON’s return to private life and to the practice of his profession in the city of New York, he felt himself called upon by a sense of duty to vindicate the justice and wisdom of Mr. Jay’s treaty, which had adjusted and extinguished the complaints and difficulties existing between the two nations. This he did in a series of essays under the signature of Camillus, in the summer of 1795. They were profound and exhausting commentaries on particular branches of public law, and sustained with great ability and a thorough knowledge of the subject, the grounds on which our treaty and neutral claims and commercial interests had been ascertained and adjusted.

On reassuming his profession, Colonel HAMILTON entered at once into an overwhelming share of professional business. He was a great favorite with the New York merchants; and he justly deserved to be so, for he had uniformly proved himself to be an enlightened, intrepid, and persevering friend to the commercial prosperity of the country. He was a great master of commercial law, as well as of the principles of international jurisprudence. There were no deep recesses of the science which he did not explore. He would occasionally draw from the fountains of the civil law, and illustrate and enforce the enlightened decisions of Mansfield, by the severe judgment of Emerigon, and the lucid commentaries of Valin. In short, he conferred dignity and high reputation on the profession, of which he was indisputably the first of the first rank, by his indefatigable industry, his thorough researches, his logical powers, his solid judgment, his winning candor, and his matchless eloquence.

In the spring of 1798, he was involved once more in political discussion. The depredations of France upon our commerce, and the insults heaped upon our ministers, left to this country no alternative but open and determined resistance. At that crisis Mr. HAMILTON published a number of essays in the New York papers under the signature of Titus Manlius, with a view to rouse the people of this country to a sense of impending danger, and to measures of defence which should be at once vigorous and effectual. No productions of any pen ever portrayed in more just and more glowing colors, the atrocities of revolutionary France towards her own people, and towards other nations, under the impetus of unprincipled ambition and ruthless fanaticism. He suggested that we ought to suspend our treaties with France, fortify our harbors, protect our commerce, attack their predatory cruisers on our coast, create a respectable naval force, and raise, organize, and discipline a respectable body of troops, as an indispensable precaution against attempts at invasion. The facts were so undeniable, and the conclusions so just, that in the summer of 1798, all those precautionary and necessary measures were literally carried into execution by congress, and received the prompt and hearty sanction of the nation. At the earnest recommendation of General Washington, HAMILTON was appointed inspector-general of the small provincial army that was raised in that year.

That public trust did not detach him from his profession, nor long detain him from its duties. He continued his devotedness to the bar during the short residue of his life. In the winter of 1804, Colonel Burr was proposed at Albany as a candidate for governor. General HAMILTON, at a public meeting of persons belonging to the federal party, decidedly objected to the nomination, declaring that he deemed Colonel Burr an unsafe and unfit person to be placed in such a trust, and that he would never unite with his party on such a candidate. Declarations of that kind made on public and patriotic grounds, and when it was his right and his duty to make them if he thought so, (and of which no one doubted,) cost him his life. In the summer following, after Colonel Burr had lost the election, he deemed it expedient to call General HAMILTON personally to account for what he had said. The latter very mistakingly thought it necessary to meet his antagonist in the field. He fell on the 12th July, 1804, and all America mourned over the fate of such an innocent and illustrious victim.

 J. K.

Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 2.


HAMILTON, Lavinia, African American, abolitionist.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 58n40)


HAMILTON, Morgan Calvin, 1809-1893, Alabama, abolitionist, soldier.  U.S. Senator from Texas, 1870-1877.  Member of the Radical wing of the Republican Party. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III:

HAMILTON, Morgan Calvin, senator, born near Huntsville, Alabama, 25 February, 1809. He received a common-school education, and removed to the republic of Texas in 1837, where he was a clerk in the war department in 1839-'45, and during the greater part of the last three years was acting secretary of war. He was appointed comptroller of the state treasury in September, 1867, was a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1868, and on the reconstruction of the state was elected to the U. S. senate as a Republican, and was re-elected, serving from 1870 till 1877.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.


HAMILTON, Robert, 1819-1870, African American, abolitionist leader, journalist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 5, p. 319, Volume 8, p. 449)


HAMILTON, Thomas, New York, New York, American Abolition Society, Recording Secretary, 1855-59.


HAMLIN, Hannibal, 1809-1891. Vice President of the United States, 1861-1865, under President Abraham Lincoln.  Congressman from Maine, 1843-1847.  U.S. Senator from Maine, 1848-1857, 1857-1861, and 1869-1881.  Governor of Maine, January-February 1857.  In February 1857, he resigned as Governor of Maine to return to the U.S. Senate.  In 1861, he was elected U.S. Vice President.  Was an adamant opponent of the extension of slavery into the new territories.  Supported the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the compromise laws of 1850.  Strongly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Early founding member of the Republican Party.  Supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and creation of Black regiments for the Union Army.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 196-198; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 65-66;  Harry Draper Hunt (1969). Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first Vice-President. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2142-3. Charles Eugene Hamlin (1899). The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin. Syracuse University Press.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 196-198:

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (August 27, 1809-July 4, 1891), vice-president, United States senator, the son of Cyrus and Anna (Livermore) Hamlin, was born at Paris Hill, Maine. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from James Hamlin who settled in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, about 1639. His father, a twin brother of Hannibal Hamlin, the father of Cyrus [q.v.], had studied medicine at Harvard, but after taking up land in Maine, combined farming with the practice of his profession and the holding of sundry local offices. Hannibal grew up in the wholesome environment of a good New England home and attended the village school and Hebron Academy in preparation for college. The latter project had to be abandoned, owing to family misfortunes, and after trying his hand at surveying, printing, and school teaching for a brief period, he decided to study law. He was fortunate in being able to enter the office of Fessenden & Deblois of Portland, the senior partner of which firm, Samuel Fessenden [q.v.], was at once the leading lawyer and the outstanding antislavery advocate of the state. Hamlin was admitted to the bar in 1833 and in the same year settled at Hampden, not far from Bangor. He acquired a considerable practice, but his pronounced talent for party work soon diverted his attention to a political career. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he represented Hampden in the legislature from 1836 to 1841 and again in 1847. He served as speaker for three terms, 1837, 1839- 40. The legislature, during his first five years of service, was an especially valuable training school, containing many members afterwards distinguished in state and national affairs and dealing with such important matters as the financial demoralization of 1837 and succeeding years, the Aroostook boundary embroglio, the abolitionist agitation, and the internal-improvement craze. Hamlin's attitude was usually cautious and conservative.

In 1842 he was elected to Congress and served without special distinction from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1847. He had decided anti-slavery leanings but, like many of his contemporaries, regarded slavery as an institution beyond the legislative authority of the national government. It is to his credit, however, that he opposed the attempts of its supporters to suppress free discussion. The growing importance of this question eventually produced a serious schism in the Maine Democracy, and in 1848 Hamlin was elected to the United States Senate to serve the balance of the term of John Fairfield, deceased, by the anti-slavery wing of the party. He was reelected in 1851 for a full term. Although a popular campaign orator, he preferred, as he afterwards stated, to be "a working rather than a talking member" of the Senate. As chairman of the committee on commerce he was the author of important legislation dealing with steamboat licensing and inspection and ship-owners' liability. Though a supporter of Pierce in 1852, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic policy toward slavery, and in 1856 went over to the Republicans. His speech of June 12, 1856, in which he renounced his Democratic allegiance, was widely quoted for campaign purposes and was one of his most effective utterances (Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 1396-97). In the same year he was elected governor of Maine in an exciting contest which marked the beginning of a long period of Republican predominance. He served only a few weeks as governor, resigning from the Senate January 7, 1857, only to resign the governorship in the following month in order to begin a new term in the Senate. He became increasingly prominent in the anti-slavery contest, and the political needs of 1860 made him a logical running-mate for Lincoln. He again resigned from the Senate on January 17, 1861.

As vice-president during the Civil War, he presided over the Senate with dignity and ability, was on cordial terms with President Lincoln, and performed a great variety of wartime services for his former constituents in Maine. He was a strong advocate of emancipation and became identified with the "Radicals" of Congress . . . his nomination in 1860 had been due largely to party exigencies, his failure to receive a renomination in 1864 may be attributed to the same causes. After retirement from the vice-presidency, he served for about a year as collector of the port of Boston, resigning because of his disapproval of President Johnson's policy. After two years as president of a railroad company constructing a line from Bangor to Dover, he was reelected to the Senate, serving from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1881. He was associated with the Radical group in reconstruction matters, supported Republican principles in economic issues, and steadily maintained his hold on the party organization of his native state. He was an influential opponent of the third-term movement for Grant in the convention of 1880. After retirement from the Senate he served as minister to Spain for a brief period (1881-82), an appointment of obviously complimentary character, without diplomatic significance. He spent his last years in Bangor, enjoying a wide reputation as a political Nestor and one of the last surviving intimates of President Lincoln.

Hamlin is usually grouped with the members of that remarkable dynasty of Maine statesmen beginning with George Evans and ending with Eugene Hale, all of whom he knew and some of whose fortunes he undoubtedly influenced. As a party manager and leader he did not display the unflinching courage and determination of William Pitt Fessenden or Thomas B. Reed, nor that mastery of a wide field of legislation possessed by George Evans or Nelson Dingley. He had, however, a great fund of shrewd common sense and a gift of stating things in clear and understandable phrase. When as chairman of the committee on foreign relations he urged the acceptance of the Halifax fisheries award in the interest of international arbitration and when, on the floor of the Senate, he opposed the Chinese exclusion law as a violation of treaty obligations (Congressional Record, 45 Congress, 3 Session, pp. 1383-87), he displayed genuine statesmanship. It is also worth mention that if he quarreled with President Hayes over patronage and expressed his contempt for civil-service reform, he at least opposed the infamous "salary grab" and refused to take his share of the loot.

Personally Hamlin had many attractive qualities and retained the loyalty and affection of a host of supporters. Senator Henry L. Dawes, who knew him well, described him as "a born democrat," an interesting conversationalist, and an inveterate smoker and card player. He also mentioned as characteristic of the man that he wore "a black swallow-tailed coat, and ... clung to the old fashioned stock long after it had been discarded by the rest of mankind" (Century Magazine, July 1895). Hamlin had a stocky, powerful frame and great muscular strength. His complexion was so swarthy that in 1860 the story was successfully circulated among credulous Southerners that he had negro blood. He was a skillful fly fisherman and an expert rifle shot. He was twice married: on December 10, 1833, to Sarah Jane Emery, daughter of Judge Stephen A. Emery of Paris Hill, who died April 17, 1855, and on September 25, 1856, to Ellen Vesta Emery, a half-sister of his first wife. Charles Hamlin [q.v.] was his son.

[C. E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899), a biography by his grandson, exaggerates Hamlin's importance in national affairs, but is useful in its presentation of Maine party history and occasional documents of personal interest. See also H.F. Andrews, The Hamlin Family (1902), and Howard Carroll, Twelve Americans (1883).

The biographical literature of the period contains many references and the newspapers, probably because of Hamlin's association with Lincoln, published an unusually large amount of obituary material. See especially New York Tribune, July 5, 9, 10, 1891.]

W. A. R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 65-66:

HAMLIN, Hannibal, statesman, born in Paris, Oxford county, Maine, 27 August, 1809; died in Bangor, Maine, 4 July, 1891. He prepared for college, but was compelled by the death of his father to take charge of the farm until he was of age. He learned printing, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and practised in Hampden, Penobscot county, until 1848. He was a member of the legislature from 1836 till 1840, and again in 1847, and was speaker of the lower branch in 1837-'9 and 1840. In 1840 he received the Democratic nomination for member of congress, and, during the exciting Harrison campaign, held joint discussions with his competitor, being the first to introduce that practice into Maine. In 1842 he was elected as a Democrat to congress, and re-elected in 1844. He was chosen to the U. S. senate for four years in 1848, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of John Fairfield, and was re-elected in 1851, but resigned in 1857 to be inaugurated governor, having been elected to that office as a Republican. Less than a month afterward, on 20 February, he resigned the governorship, as he had again been chosen U. S. senator for the full term of six years. He served until January, 1861, when he resigned, having been elected vice-president on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln. He presided over the senate from 4 March, 1861, till 3 March, 1865. In the latter year he was appointed collector of the port of Boston, but resigned in 1866. From 1861 till 1865 he had also acted as regent of the Smithsonian institution, and was reappointed in 1870, continuing to act for the following twelve years, during which time he became dean of the board. He was again elected and re-elected to the U. S. senate, serving from 4 March, 1869, till 3 March, 1881. In June of that year he was named minister to Spain, but gave up the office the year following and returned to this country. He received the degree of LL. D. from Colby university, then Waterville college, of which institution he was trustee for over twenty years. Senator Hamlin, although a Democrat, was an original anti-slavery man, and so strong were his convictions that they finally led to his separation from that party. Among the significant incidents of his long career of nearly fifty years may be mentioned the fact that, in the temporary and involuntary absence of David Wilmot from the house of representatives, during the session of the 29th congress, at the critical moment when the measure, since known as “the Wilmot proviso,” had to be presented or the opportunity irrevocably lost, Mr. Hamlin, while his anti-slavery friends were in the greatest confusion and perplexity, seeing that only a second's delay would be fatal, offered the bill and secured its passage by a vote of 115 to 106. In common, however, with Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Hamlin strove simply to prevent the extension of slavery into new territory, and did not seek to secure its abolition. In a speech in the U. S. senate, 12 June, 1856, in which he gave his reasons for changing his party allegiance, he thus referred to the Democratic convention then recently held at Cincinnati: “The convention has actually incorporated into the platform of the Democratic party that doctrine which, only a few years ago, met with nothing but ridicule and contempt here and elsewhere, namely, that the flag of the Federal Union, under the constitution of the United States, carries slavery wherever it floats. If this baleful principle be true, then that national ode, which inspires us always as on a battle-field, should be re-written by Drake, and should read: 

‘Forever float that standard sheet!  
    Where breathes the foe but falls before us, 
With slavery's soil beneath our feet,   
    And slavery's banner streaming o'er us.’” 

When he had been elected vice-president on the ticket with Mr. Lincoln, he accepted an invitation to meet the latter at Chicago, and, calling on the president-elect, found him in a room alone. Mr. Lincoln arose, and, coming toward his guest, said abruptly: “Have we ever been introduced to each other, Mr. Hamlin?” “No, sir, I think not,” was the reply. “That also is my impression,” continued Mr. Lincoln; "but I remember distinctly while I was in congress to have heard you make a speech in the senate. I was very much struck with that speech, senator— particularly struck with it—and for the reason that it was filled, chock up, with the very best kind of anti-slavery doctrine.” “Well, now,” replied Hamlin, laughing, “that is very singular, for my one and first recollection of yourself is of having heard you make a speech in the house—a speech that was so full of good humor and sharp points that I, together with others of your auditors, was convulsed with laughter.” The acquaintance, thus cordially begun, ripened into a close friendship, and it is affirmed that during all the years of trial, war, and bloodshed that followed, Abraham Lincoln continued to repose the utmost confidence in his friend and official associate. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.


HAMMOND, Thomas H., New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)

[1] This sketch has hitherto been chiefly made from materials contained in the first volume of the “Life of ALEXANDER HAMILTON,” by his son, John C. Hamilton. That volume carries the biography down to this period, and it is a production deeply interesting. The filial reverence of the historian awakens our sensibility, and he commands our confidence by his frankness, his pains-taking research, his documentary accuracy, and sound principles, his just reflections, and perspicuous and elegant narration.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.