Summary

Alexander Hamilton's life was a whirlwind of activity, and his story is told with the same frenetic energy and meticulous detail he brought to his work. Born out of wedlock in the British West Indies and orphaned as a boy, Hamilton escaped a dreary clerkship to become one of America's founding fathers. He was a precocious youth, already displaying a genius for politics and finance. As George Washington's wartime aide, he participated in many of the Revolution's pivotal events. After the war, he became one of New York's most successful and controversial lawyers. As the chief architect of the new American government and its first treasury secretary, Hamilton created many of the institutions that would give the nation strength and stability: a national bank, a tax system, a customs service, and the Coast Guard. He was also the driving force behind the Constitution, the principal author of The Federalist Papers, and a foreign-policy theorist of exceptional insight. In a tumultuous public arena dominated by political extremes, Hamilton occupied a mediating position as a committed revolutionary with a dread of anarchy and mob rule. His enemies caricatured him as a cryptomonarchist bent upon enriching the propertied class, even though Hamilton himself came from humble origins and was a staunch foe of both slavery and inherited aristocracy. His sometimes high-handed actions, combined with a nearly obsessive concern for his honor, repeatedly tripped him up, as in the notorious Reynolds affair, and led ultimately to the duel that ended his short, brilliant, and turbulent life.

No other founder had as improbable and dramatic a life or was burdened with a childhood of such wretched sorrow and deprivation. He was the son of a "fallen woman" and deserted by his father, and then orphaned after his mother's death. His sole inheritance was a small collection of books. His youthful genius was spotted by patrons who bankrolled him for his education. At King's College (now Columbia), he blossomed as an orator and pamphleteer. As an artillery captain, Hamilton's bravery in the Revolution made him a trusted aide to George Washington. Hamilton was also instrumental in the downfall of Benedict Arnold and in crafting the victory at Yorktown. After the war, he became one of New York's most distinguished attorneys and was famed for defending Loyalists against persecution. He was a leading advocate of a stronger union among the states and laid the intellectual groundwork for a new Constitution. His marriage to Eliza Schuyler gave him a powerful political base in his adopted state, though his later dalliance with Maria Reynolds was to become the first major sex scandal in American politics. When Washington became president, he made Hamilton his most trusted adviser and chief architect of a federal government. Hamilton was a political and economic theorist of exceptional brilliance.

Hamilton's sometimes overweening self-confidence was offset by Washington's restraint, making the two men an exceptional team. The two men also had similar views on government and finance, especially their belief in a strong federal power to hold the states together. As treasury secretary, Hamilton crafted a financial system that rescued the country from bankruptcy and enabled it to establish public credit, issue bonds, assume state debts, mint coins, and create the Bank of the United States, not to mention a coast guard and a customs service. He was a driving force behind early American industry and manufacturing and laid out Paterson, New Jersey, as one of the country's first planned industrial towns. At every turn, his programs aroused fervent support and opposition, leading to the creation of two parties. Hamilton became the lightning rod for the Federalists. He was a polarizing presence who aroused equally potent reactions of adoration and detestation. His political enemies-Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among them-regarded him as a British agent bent upon creating a monarchy.

Hamilton's life in Philadelphia was a whirl of financial panic, political intrigue, wartime preparations, and personal scandal. As the French Revolution degenerated into violent excesses, Hamilton emerged as America's most outspoken critic of Jacobinism, warning that comparable uprisings could engulf America. When France began attacking American merchant ships, he pushed for military preparations and the creation of an army to repel any French invasion, even though he had earlier preached restraint during a crisis with Great Britain. While serving as treasury secretary, Hamilton engaged in a secret, long-standing adulterous affair with Maria Reynolds that eventually became public knowledge, providing grist for his foes. When Adams became president and an undeclared war with France looked inevitable, Hamilton became inspector general of a new army under Washington's leadership. Adams chafed at Hamilton's continuing political influence and viewed his cabinet members, including treasury secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., and war secretary James McHenry, as Hamilton stooges. As Hamilton's influence over Adams waned, his temper worsened.

Hamilton was increasingly tormented by a sense of his own mortality, which found expression in the Grange, the country house and garden that he erected to the north of Manhattan. As peace with France grew more likely, Hamilton began to fade from the national scene. After Adams was not reelected president, Jefferson became his successor despite a tie with Aaron Burr. It was Hamilton who ensured that Jefferson triumphed over Burr. Adams, still incensed at Hamilton's treachery in trying to swing the election to Pinckney, published a bitter pamphlet about him, ending their relationship. After his cabinet purge and the loss of his army, Hamilton devoted himself to rebuilding his law practice and raising his family, though he still yearned to participate in politics.

As Jefferson became president, Hamilton remained at the pinnacle of the New York bar. He had numerous admirers among the city's commercial elite, but his mood grew darker as his political fortunes waned. He still made time for his family, with whom he built an elegant country house and garden called the Grange. He continued to express sympathy for his Scottish and West Indian relatives and to do favors for them, and he found renewed warmth and affection in his long-standing love for his sister-in-law Angelica. Hamilton was no less preoccupied with Aaron Burr, whose political fortunes also declined under Jefferson. In 1804, as Burr's career neared collapse, he challenged Hamilton to a duel, based on a supposedly derogatory remark that Hamilton had made at a private dinner. After protracted negotiations, Hamilton reluctantly accepted the duel and shot to kill. Burr returned fire and mortally wounded Hamilton, who died the next day. Burr's behavior after the duel did him more harm than Hamilton, for the latter's farewell letters and his seconds' description of his throwing away his shot cast him as a martyr.

The duel's repercussions were momentous for Eliza, who was left to raise seven children while managing her husband's substantial debts. Washington's wine cooler reminded her that her husband had been a devoted patriot and had sacrificed his own honor to preserve his political integrity in the face of malicious slander. She was determined to salvage Hamilton's reputation and for decades oversaw a mammoth project to compile his papers and bring forth an authorized biography that would cement his reputation. She became active in numerous charities, cofounding the New York Orphan Asylum Society and establishing a school for poor children named in honor of her husband. The high-spirited Eliza Hamilton became, in effect, the oldest surviving widow of the American Revolution, living for fifty years after her husband's death. She was still clear-eyed and resolute in her nineties, and she did not die until 1854, just a decade before the Civil War tore asunder the union for which Alexander Hamilton had fought so tirelessly and had done so much to establish.