Alexander Hamilton

Front matter

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Preface

Little material is available for a biography of Alexander Hamilton beyond that collected by his son, John Church Hamilton, and his grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton. Much that once existed was lost. Tuckerman^s "Life of General Philip Schuyler'' relates that many letters from Hamilton and other political papers were burned by a son of one of Schuyler's executors, because he regarded them as containing expressions too personal to be exposed to any risk of publicity. The loss to American history is as great as that inflicted by Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, when he destroyed his memoirs for a like reason. A bowdlerized style of writing history and biography was once in vogue that made such suppression of truth seem actually meritorious, and damage was done that can never be repaired. Hamilton's reputation has suffered greatly by it. His career was too vivid and salient, his statesmanship too incisive, his self-revelation too candid to admit of the bowdlerizing process, and he cannot be judged fairly unless all is brought out and put in the scales. Such has been my aim in the present work. My vi PREFACE

special acknowledgments are due to my friend, Mr. Charles R. Williams, of Princeton, for his care in verifying references, in correcting the proofs, and for helpful criticism.

Princeton, March 23, 1920.

Contents

CHAPTER PA.QE

I. Birth and Family Connections .... 1

II. A Picked-Up Education 13

Chapter I Birth And Family Connections

At present the term West Indies suggests something foreign and remote. Such was not the ease when Alexander Hamilton was born in Nevis, one of the chain of islands known as the Lesser Antilles. The British possessions in this quarter were considered to be an integral part of the newer England that had been planted in the western world. A compilation of laws published in 1704, for the use of ^'gentlemen trading to or concerned in her Majesty ^s plantations," mentions them in the order, Virginia, Jamaica, Barbados, Maryland, New England, New York, Carolina. In our own time the Lesser Antilles seem rather farther away than Europe, since a quick and regular ferry has been estabUshed across the Atlantic. But in the colonial period intercourse between the Antilles and the mainland was easier than between the different colonies on the mainland. The brigantines, which were the usual means of conveyance, made the voyage with speed and comfort, as compared with the conditions of land travel at that time. People looking about for places in which to settle would naturally include the West Indies in their survey of American opportunities. Thus it was that the Reverend Hugh Knox, who did so much for Hamilton's early education, found his way there. He arrived in America from Ireland in 1753, studied for the ministry under the Reverend Aaron Burr, at Newark, New Jersey, and after ordination went to St. Croix as pastor to the settlers there. To view Hamilton's birthplace as it was then regarded, Nevis should be thought of simply as an outlying American colony.

Nevis is one of the group known as the Leeward Islands, the northernmost of the Lesser Antilles. It has an area of only fifty square miles, almost round in form, the centre, a peak of 3,200 feet, rising so gradually that, viewed from the sea, the island looks like a perfect cone. Settled originally from St. Kitts, Nevis has been a British colony since 1628. Here Alexander Hamilton was born, January 11, 1757.

At that time the West Indies figured grandly in the world's affairs. With slave labor and with the demand then existing for their products, the islands were reservoirs of wealth for whose possession all the powers of western Europe had contended, producing the diversity of national ownership that has come down to our own times. The great planters lived in magnificent style. Nowhere probably in the western world was there such a display of luxurious dress, fine equipage, and profuse hospitality as in the West Indian capitals. The fame of this grandeur was world-wide. It was a theme that inspired poetic fancy, and the great West Indian staple was the subject of an epic that ranked as a notable poem in its day, but is now preserved from oblivion only by references to it in Boswell's Life of Johnson, The author. Doctor James Grainger, while on a visit to the West Indies, married the widow of a Nevis planter. He wrote a poem in foiu* books on the cultivation of the sugar-cane, which was published in England in 1764. His account of the w^ay in which the cane suffered from attacks of vermin began with a line over which Doctor Johnson made merry :

But this appeared only in the first edition, and the poem was received with so much favor that piratical editions of it were printed. Grainger eventually settled in St. Kitts, where he died in 1766. Hamilton, who was then nine years old, must have known the poet, as St. Kitts and Nevis are so close together that they form one community. With the decay of the sugar interest the social grandeur of Hamilton's age passed away. The great stone mansions of the wealthy planters were built with a solidity that might have insured their perpetuity in any other climate, but with the decline of prosperity many became untenanted, windows would be broken, there would be no one to close the storm-shutters, and, when the tremendous blasts of a West Indian hurricane gained admittance to the interior, away would go the roof, and only the walls would be left standing, soon to be buried in tropical thickets. Now lizards frisk and land-crabs scuttle in the ruins of houses that were brilliant social centres in Hamilton's day.

A circumstance that was brought up against Hamilton in his political career — ^particularly by John Adams — was the illegitimacy of his birth. The bare legal fact is indisputable, but it is far from meaning what that fact would ordinarily imply. It was a result of the lax conditions of the times, which produced irregular social consequences in all the American colonies, and it was the habit to make allowances for them. One may be sure that the great patroon. General Schuyler, would never have given his daughter to Hamilton if a social stigma had actually rested upon him. Scottish and Huguenot famines were prominent in the British occupation of the Lesser Antilles, and Alexander Hamilton came of both these stocks. Among the Huguenot families was one originally named Faucette, which became Englished as Fawcett. John Fawcett, who settled in Nevis, was a medical practitioner until his gains were large enough to enable him to retire from professional work and live as a wealthy planter. His wife Mary, of whose family there is apparently no record, was twenty years younger and had means of her own. They built a great house on their countiy estate and had also a town house for occupancy when the Captain-General was holding his ofiBcial court in Nevis and the fashionable season was at its height. After twenty years of married life, when Doctor Fawcett had become gouty and irritable, his wife demanded and obtained a separate maintenance. The only child left at home at the time of the separation was Rachel, born after her sisters had grown up. The mother moved to an estate she owned on St. Kitts, taking with her Rachel, then four years old. Great care was taken with Rachel's education, and she was proficient in languages and in the young-lady accomplishments of the day — ^painting, singing, and ability to play the harp and the guitar. She is described as having fair hair with a reddish tinge, sparkling gray eyes, a complexion of the marked whiteness which seems almost peculiar to the sheltered gentlewomen of the tropics, with featiu-es finely modelled and full of vivacity and charm. She became the mother of Alexander Hamilton, but that was after an unhappy experience producing conditions from which she escaped by an irregular union.

When she was sixteen her mother arranged for her a marriage with John Michael Levine, a Dane of wealth and social position, who had come to St. Croix with the idea of bu3dng an estate there and settling down to the life of a planter. The wedding was a fashionable event, followed by a trip to Europe, Mrs. Fawcett accompanying the bridal couple. After remaining long enough to see her daughter presented at court and splendidly received in Copenhagen society, Mrs. Fawcett returned to the West Indies, the Levines following some months after. Meanwhile the yoimg bride had had some revulsion of feeling which turned her against her husband. Watching her chance, she ran away to her mother, boarding a ship just as it was leaving St. Croix for St. Kitts, while her husband was attending some state function. The differences between them — ^whatever they were — were never settled, and she never returned to her husband, but a boy born after the separation was turned over to the father^s care while still a small infant.

After some years of the forlorn life of a grasswidow the young woman met James Hamilton and the two fell deeply in love. He was the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, of Grange, in Ayrshire, Scotland, who was the fifteenth in descent from David Hamilton, who had a charter of land from his uncle, Alan Hamilton, of Lethberd, confirmed by the overlord, Archibald, Earl of Douglas, January 29, 1411. Like many another cadet of ancient Scottish lineage, James Hamilton had emigrated in search of better opportunities for advancement than he could find at home. He reached St. Kitts, where he had a kinsman, WiHiam Hamilton, an old friend of the Fawcetts. William was a man of local eminence; a physician, a planter, and a member of the Council. James Hamilton was a well-educated and well-born Scottish gentleman. When the two met he was about twenty-one and Rachel Levine was about twenty. The two met often in society, for Rachel's friends stood by her and she moved in the best circles. Mrs. Fawcett died and a beautiful, attractive, accomplished young woman was left alone. The two wanted to marry and could not. Efforts to free Rachel were imavailing. Finally the two decided to unite outside of the law. The circumstances of the case received much indulgent consideration, but the investigations made by Mrs. Atherton on the spot show that the couple experienced social censure. This explains the inconvenient arrangement made for their married life. Rachel had through inheritance from her father a place in Nevis, to which they moved, although Hamilton's business was in St. Kitts and he had to cross the two-mile strait between the two islands almost daily. But the kinsfolk and old friends of the Fawcetts and Hamiltons stood by the young couple, their home was hospitable and attractive, they drew about them a circle of friends, and obtained a recognized position in Nevis society.

The circumstances should be viewed not only with regard to local conditions but also with regard to the general conditions then existing as to marriage law in the British Empire. The old canon law, which admitted of the annulment of marriage entered into by an inexperienced girl under duress, had been overthrown, and secular jurisprudence had not yet extended its cognizance to such situations. From the traditional information collected by Mrs. Atherton it appears that Rachel had been much averse to the marriage with Levine and gave way only under pressure. The only way in which she could have obtained divorce was by a special act of Parliament, always a matter of great expense and difficulty, and quite imattainable in St. Kitts. It is plain that the behavior of James Hamilton and his consort stood quite apart in moral quality from that which commonly attends an irregular union. Rachel always had the position of an honored wife, and received social recognition as such. In later years the Hamiltons of Scotland were glad to claim relationship, but there is no evidence of their interest until Alexander Hamilton had become famous.

But, while his birth and rearing had none of the disadvantages which the term illegitimate might suggest, he did experience some of the inconveniences of poverty, not, however, to a greater extent than was probably a help in fortifying his character. James Hamilton went into business in St. Kitts, had trouble with his partners, withdrew from the firm, and set up for himself. His wife sold her St. Kitts estate to provide him with capital, which was sunk in unsuccessful enterprises, and the family was impoverished. Peter Lytton, husband of one of RacheFs elder sisters, gave James Hamilton the position of manager of a cattle estate on St. Croix, and he moved there with his family. The Hamiltons were kindly received by the Lyttons and also by the Mitchells, the family into which the other sister had married. But James Hamilton made a failure of his management, fell out with his brother-in-law, and in the third year after the family settlement in St. Croix he went to St. Vincent in search of employment. He kept in correspondence with his wife, but was never able to re-establish his household, and his family became dependent upon his wife^s relatives. The Lyttons took Mrs. Hamilton and her children into their own home, allotting to her use an upstairs wing of their great mansion. Two years passed by, and James Hamilton had not succeeded in doing any better in business than to earn a small salaiy; then came a final severance through the death of Mrs. Hamilton, February 16, 1768. She was then only thirty-two years old. James Hamilton lived for many years after, remaining on St. Vincent, where he died on June 3, 1799. Notwithstanding his separation from his family, his famous son regarded him with affection. A letter has been preserved from Alexander Hamilton to his brother, written from New York, Jime 23, 1785, in which he said:

But what has become of our dear father ? It is an age since I have heard from him or of him, though I have written him several letters. Perhaps, alas, he is no more, and I shall not have the pleasing opportunity of contributing to render the close of his life more happy than the progress of it. My heart bleeds at the recollection of his misfortunes and embarrassments. Sometimes I flatter myself his brothers have extended their support to him; and that he now enjoys tranquillity and ease. At other times I fear he is suffering in indigence. Should he be alive, inform him of my inquiries; beg him to write to me, and tell him how ready I shall be to devote myself and all I have to his accommodation and happiness.

Eventually Alexander Hamilton invited his father to make his home with him. In a letter of Jime 12, 1793, the father wrote: "My bad state of health has prevented my going to sea at this time." Moreover, the war between England and France made travel dangerous. But he added: "We daily expect news of a peace, and when that takes place, provided it is not too late in the season, I will embark in the first vessel that sails for Philadelphia.'' The letter sent "respectful compliments'' to Mrs. Hamilton and the children, and closed with wishes of health and happiness to his "dear Alexander," subscribed by "your very affectionate father, James Hamilton.'^ Although the elder Hamilton lived for six years after the date of that letter, he was never well enough to attempt the voyage, and the two never met after the son left the West Indies. That they corresponded regularly is attested by Hamilton's letter of 1797 to a Scotch kinsman, in which he said:

It is now several months since I have heard from my father, who continued at the island of St. Vincent's. My anxiety at this silence would be greater than it is were it not for the probable interruption and precariousness of intercourse which is produced by the war. I have strongly pressed the old gentleman to come and reside with me, which would afford him every enjoyment of which his advanced age is capable; but he has declined it on the ground that the advice of his physicians leads him to fear that the change of climate would be fatal to him. The next best thing for me is, in proportion to my means, to endeavor to increase his comforts where he is.

From the same letter it appears that the Lyttons and the Mitchells, who lived in affluence durmg Hamilton's boyhood, were then in straitened circumstances. Hamilton's expense-book, July 1, 1796, records a donation of one hundred dollars to Mrs. Mitchell. This book also records money sent to Hamilton's father and younger brother, to the amount of several thousand dollars, during the years 1796 to 1799, when Hamilton was himself in difficulties over the insufficiency of his income to sustain expenditure required by his position. Little is known about the career of Hamilton's younger brother, except that he remained in the West Indies and was obscure in character and fortune.

Chapter II A Picked-up Education

Alexander Hamilton was eleven years old when his mother died; his brother James was five years yomiger. Alexander's education seems to have been desultory, but he learned to speak French fluently. That language has always had a commercial value in the Lesser Antilles that brings it into extensive use, and a clever child is apt to pick up some knowledge of it. Hamilton acquired fluency by continual practice with his mother. In other studies he was helped by the Reverend Hugh Knox, who was a frequent visitor at the Lytton mansion, and who lent the boy books and took an active interest in his progress. After his mother's death Alexander went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Mitchell. Her husband had made a fortune in the slave trade; he owned a large general store and also plantations yielding sugar, molasses, and rum. He had a town house in Christianstadt, and, living there, Hamilton was now able to go regularly to school with Knox, who lived in the same town. He was one of a small class of students to whom the Presbyterian pastor gave lessons in Latin and mathematics, but Hamilton could not have gone far in his studies, as he was only twelve years old when he went to work for Nicholas Cruger, proprietor of a large general store. Such rudiments of learning as he had received were steadily improved by assiduous reading. Evidence of his youthful ambition is given by a letter from Hamilton to his chum, Edward Stevens, sajdng:

... for to confess my weakness, Ned, my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn tne grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may be justly said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and beg you'll conceal it; yet Neddy, we have seen such schemes successful, when the projector is constant.

This letter, which is a stock quotation in Hamilton biographies, is usually presented as evidence of precocious ambition, but this is not really a remarkable circumstance. Nothing is more common than for youth to have such dreams. Alexander Hamilton hit the mark, but myriads have had like auns who missed the mark and settled down to obscure fortunes. The letter is a remarkable one to have been written by a boy not yet thirteen, but it is remarkable not so much for its declaration of purpose as for its revelation of the writer's character. Its youthful pomposity attests his famiHarity with the hterary models of the age. The style is a clever boy^s imitation of the rolling periods of the eighteenth-century historians and essayists. Hamilton turned out to be one of the small class of men of whom it has been justly said that they appear as levers to uplift the earth and roll it into another course, but they do not attain to such rare functions by the high range of their ambition but by the large development of their powers. "The grovelling condition of a clerk '^ which he contemned was probably of great value as a discipline; for nothing braces the mind so much as training in ability to apply its powers to disagreeable tasks. Certain it is that Hamilton put his mind to his work as a clerk with energy and success, and it was by doing well what was then in his sphere of opportunity that larger prospects were opened. His abihty was such that his employer trusted him with important affairs, and in 1770 he was left in charge of the business while Mr. Cruger was on a trip to America. The diversified experience which Hamilton obtained in business management, and the habits of accuracy and circumspection which trading pursuits tend to develop, were good training for the career which made him famous.

Hamilton's desire for a college education was well known to friends and relatives. They had the means to gratify that desire^ and withheld it rather from inattention or from inertia than from positive unwillingness. A chance event produced a concentration of influence that was decisive. In August, 1772, a terrible hurricane swept St. Croix, causing great wreckage and ruin. Hamilton wrote an account of it which was published in a St. Kitts newspaper, there being no English newspaper in St. Croix. It attracted much attention and caused a strong sentiment that so clever a youth ought to have the best advantages. Arrangements were then made by his aunts for sending him to America for a college education. There have been many instances of such benefactions to promising youths in West Indian annals, but the case of Alexander Hamilton is the most illustrious. He sailed on a vessel bound to Boston, which was reached in October, 1772, and he at once took passage for New York. He never returned to the West Indies, but spent the rest of his life in the United States.

It has been generally assumed in biographies that Hamilton's interest in the American struggle was excited by the influences of his collegiate career, but it is probable that he brought that interest with him, for the same issues were quite as absorbing to thought in the West Indies as on the American continent. Indeed, the constitutional temper which was manifested in those times has been better preserved in the West Indies than in continental America. As the English in Ireland have preserved the

Shakesperian pronunciation that has been lost in England itself through phonetic change; as Nova Scotia has preserved seventeenth-century customs that have died out in Scotland itself; as one may find in the West Indies features of the seventeenth-century organization of local government that have disappeared in the mother country; so too one may note reHcs of poHtical thought, characteristic of all the American colonies in Hamilton's boyhood, still preserved in the West Indies, although now extinct in the United States through the political transformations it has experienced. St. Kitts and Nevis have lost the representative assemblies they possessed in Hamilton's day, and the local legislature is now nominated by the Crown. But Barbados still manages its own affairs under a charter of the same type as was originally granted to Virginia and Massachusetts, and while these have long since adopted other constitutional arrangements, the Barbados charter is still in operation and the colonial assembly occupies the same position and displays the same constitutional spirit as was evinced by the Virginia House of Burgesses and by the Massachusetts General Court in the colonial period. An instance of this spirit, displayed in 1816, may be exhibited as a specimen of political doctrine which was clamorous throughout the West Indies during Hamilton's boyhood. A bill had been introduced in the British House of Commons providing for a local official, with fees fixed by imperial authority. This proposal was denounced by the Barbados Assembly in terms that exactly reproduce what was common doctrine in all the American colonies when Hamilton was a child. The speaker of the Barbados Assembly declared:

There is a right which every British subject possesses, destroyed by no lapse of time or circumstance, namely, that as the burdens of the people are borne by the great mass of the community, they cannot be imposed without the consent of those who represent the interests and sympathize with the wants of the bulk of the people. It matters not on what soil an Englishman may have fixed his hut, or in what uncongenial climate he may earn a precarious subsistence; the pittance of his industry is safe, except for the aids for the general benefit voted by the power of the representative system.

American legislative bodies have been reformed out of all likeness to their original pattern, and the representative assembly has declined to a singularly humble and subordinate position in the constitutional scheme; so it is now rather in Barbados than anywhere in the United States that such a constitutional atmosphere is preserved as that in which Alexander Hamilton grew up. The Stamp Act, which was the beginning of the series of measures that provoked the American Revolution, was passed in 1765, when Hamilton was eight years old. One may be sure that he often heard it discussed, for resentment was as keen and protests were as emphatic in the West Indies as on the mainland. In St. Kitts the people burned all the stamped papers sent to the island and made the official distributors resign. These measures were carried out in a systematic way, with a show of orderly procedure. Those taking part in them moved over to Nevis in a body to assist the settlers there to do likewise. In both islands the Stamp Act was defeated by solid resistance. The issues that culminated in the American Revolution were thus famiHar knowledge in the islands and gave as strong a tincture to the ideas and prepossessions of the rising generation as on the American continent. When during this troublous period Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York to begin his college education, he was already an ardent American patriot.

He brought with him letters of introduction which obtained for him access to the best society, into which he was received with the easy hospitality of the times. The bright, clever, attractive West Indian lad soon made friends of lifelong value. The support of the Livingston and Schuyler families was the basis of the power which Hamilton acquired in New York politics and acquaintanceship with members of these famihes began while he was attending Francis Barber^s grammar school at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. This school had no provision for lodgers and students boarded around as they themselves arranged. It was a common thing for those well introduced to be invited into the homes of the neighboring gentry. In this way Hamilton lived for some time with the family of EHas Boudinot, already a prominent man in New Jersey politics. Another of the friends made by Hamilton in this period was William Livingston^ at whose house, Liberty Hall, he stayed frequently; meeting there men who became eminent. Among them was John Jay, who married one of Livingston's daughters. Livingston himself became governor of New Jersey during the Revolution.

In biographies of Hamilton written by his own descendants it is asserted that he went to Barber's school to prepare for Princeton, that in little over a year he was ready and would have entered there except for the fact that President Witherspoon refused him permission to go through in shorter time than was allowed by the curriculum. There is no record at Princeton of the appHcation Hamilton is said to have made, but so many circumstances harmonize with the family tradition that it may be regarded as well authenticated. It is quite characteristic of Hamilton's nature and of his circumstances that he should have desired to get his college degree as soon as possible. It cannot be doubted that it was his original intention to go to Princeton. The Reverend Hugh Knox, his first instructor, was a Princeton man; so was Barber, under whose tuition

Hamilton placed himself; so too was Boudinot, with whom he hved. That, after all, he should have turned aside to King's College, New York, was certainly an afterthought, and the only probable explanation of it is that he was refused the privilege he desired of passing from class to class as he was able to qualify.

King's College, the germ of Colimibia University, did not then rank with Princeton in reputation or in equipment. The maintenance of the regular curriculum was the work of only one man, the Reverend Doctor Myles Cooper, who gave the courses in Latin, Greek, EngHsh, mathematics, and philosophy. Hamilton took them all. In company with his friend, Edward Stevens, who was studying medicine, Hamilton also attended the lectures of Doctor Samuel Clossey, who had the chair in anatomy. The only other known member of the faculty was Doctor Peter Middleton, who lectured on chemistry. Hamilton entered as a private student, attached to no particular class but allowed to attend any. He apphed himself to his studies with great diligence, employing a tutor and scheduling his days so that no time should be wasted. But, after all, he never finished his college course and was not graduated, as the outbreak of the Revolutionary War caused the college to be deserted for the camp. Hamilton, like many other young men at that time, was prematurely withdrawn from study and thrown into war and politics by the pressure of events. The prominent dates show how brief were his opportunities for systematic education. He arrived in New York October, 1772; in the autumn of 1773 he entered King's College; in 1774 the Continental Congress held its first session, and in that same year Hamilton began his career as a pubHc speaker and a pamphleteer. But a student animated by definite purpose and pursuing it with steady, concentrated effort can do a great deal in two years, and there is ample evidence that Hamilton acquired sound scholarship, and with it the power of applying his mind with energy and success to any task. He kept on with his studies after he left college to join the army. A pay-book kept by Hamilton in 1776, as commander of a New York company of artillery, is interspersed with notes and reflections upon poHtical philosophy and public finance, and it contains a list of books which is given below just as he wrote it: