The LuLac Edition #5, 751, August 29th, 2026

 

  

 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

PATRIOT, FINANCIAL GENIUS

GONE TOO SOON

 

 

 

Alexander Hamilton was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 under the presidency of George Washington. He also founded America's first political party, the Federalist Party, in 1791.

Born out of wedlock in Charlestown on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Hamilton was orphaned as a child and taken in by a prosperous merchant. He was given a scholarship and pursued his education at King's College (now Columbia University) in New York City where, despite his young age, he was an anonymous but prolific and widely read pamphleteer and advocate for the American Revolution. He then served as an artillery officer in the American Revolutionary War, where he saw military action against the British Army in the New York and New Jersey campaign, served for four years as aide-de-camp to Continental Army commander-in-chief George Washington, and fought under Washington's command in the war's climactic battle, the Siege of Yorktown, which secured American victory in the war and with it the independence of the United States.

After the Revolutionary War, Hamilton served as a delegate from New York to the Congress of the Confederation in Philadelphia. He resigned to practice law and founded the Bank of New York. In 1786, Hamilton led the Annapolis Convention, which sought to strengthen the power of the loose confederation of independent states under the limited authorities granted the Congress by the Articles of Confederation. The following year he was a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention, which drafted the U.S. Constitution creating a more centralized federal national government. He then authored 51 of the 85 installments of The Federalist Papers, which proved persuasive in securing its ratification by the states and remains the preeminent interpretation of Constitutional intent.

 

 

As a trusted member of President Washington's first cabinet, Hamilton served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury. He envisioned a central government led by an energetic executive, a strong national defense, and a more diversified economy with significantly expanded industry. He successfully argued that the implied powers of the U.S. Constitution provided the federal government the legal basis to create the First Bank of the United States as a fiscal agent to assume the states' war debts, a bank that was funded by a tariff on imports and a whiskey tax. Hamilton opposed American entanglement with the succession of unstable French revolutionary governments. In 1790, he persuaded the U.S. Congress to establish the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service to protect American shipping. In 1793, he advocated in support of the Jay Treaty under which the U.S. resumed friendly trade relations with the British Empire. Hamilton's views became the basis for the Federalist Party, which was opposed by the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton and other Federalists supported the Haitian Revolution, and Hamilton helped draft Haiti's constitution in 1801.

After resigning as the nation's secretary of the treasury in 1795, Hamilton resumed his legal and business activities and helped lead the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. In the Quasi-War, fought at sea between 1798 and 1800, Hamilton called for mobilization against France, and President John Adams appointed him major general. The U.S. Army, however, did not see combat in the conflict. Outraged by Adams' response to the crisis, Hamilton opposed his 1800 presidential re-election. Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied for the presidency in the electoral college and, despite philosophical differences, Hamilton endorsed Jefferson over Burr, whom he found unprincipled. When Burr ran for Governor of New York in 1804, Hamilton again opposed his candidacy, arguing that he was unfit for the office. Taking offense, Burr challenged Hamilton to a pistol duel, which took place in Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 11, 1804. Hamilton was mortally wounded and immediately transported back across the Hudson River in a delirious state to the home of William Bayard Jr. in Greenwich Village, New York, for medical attention. The following day, on July 12, 1804, Hamilton succumbed to his wounds.

Scholars generally regard Hamilton as an astute and intellectually brilliant administrator, politician, and financier who was sometimes impetuous. His ideas are credited with influencing the founding principles of American finance and government. In 1997, the historian Paul Johnson wrote that Hamilton was a "genius—the only one of the Founding Fathers fully entitled to that accolade—and he had the elusive, indefinable characteristics of genius.

THE DUEL

Why would anyone of his stature participate in a duel that was sure to be met with violence.

The concept of honor was fundamental to Hamilton's vision of himself and of the nation. As evidence of the importance that honor held in Hamilton's value system, historians observe that Hamilton previously was a party to seven "affairs of honor" as a principal, and to three as an advisor or second. Such affairs of honor were often concluded prior to reaching the final stage of a duel.

Before the duel, Hamilton wrote an explanation of his decision to participate while at the same time intending to "throw away" his shot. His desire to be available for future political matters also played a factor. A week before the duel, Hamilton and Burr both attended an annual Independence Day dinner held by the Society of the Cincinnati. Separate accounts confirm that Hamilton was uncharacteristically effusive while Burr was, by contrast, uncharacteristically withdrawn. Accounts also agree that Burr became roused when Hamilton, again uncharacteristically, sang a favorite song, which recent scholarship indicates was "How Stands the Glass Around", an anthem sung by military troops about fighting and dying in war.

The duel began at dawn on July 11, 1804, along the west bank of the Hudson River on a rocky ledge in Weehawken, New Jersey. Both opponents were rowed over from Manhattan separately from different locations, since the location of the duel was not accessible from the west due to the steepness of the adjoining cliffs. Coincidentally, the duel took place relatively close to the location of the duel that had ended the life of Hamilton's eldest son, Philip Hamilton, three years earlier. Lots were cast for the choice of position and which second should start the duel. Both were won by Hamilton's second, who chose the upper edge of the ledge for Hamilton facing the city and the rising sun to the east.  After the seconds measured the paces, Hamilton, according to both William P. Van Ness and Burr, raised his pistol "as if to try the light" and had to wear his glasses to prevent his vision from being obscured. Hamilton also refused the more sensitive hairspring setting for the dueling pistols offered by Nathaniel Pendleton, and Burr was unaware of the option.

Burr shot Hamilton, delivering what proved to be a fatal wound, while Hamilton apparently "deloped", as he had indicated was his intention in his letter beforehand; and his shot went well above Burr's head, breaking a tree branch. The seconds, Pendleton and Van Ness, disagreed on which man fired first in the duel. Soon after, they measured and triangulated the shooting, but could not determine from which angle Hamilton had fired. Biographer Ron Chernow contends that, after taking deliberate aim, Burr fired second. Biographer James Earnest Cooke, however, believes that Burr took careful aim and shot first, and Hamilton fired while falling after being struck by Burr's bullet.

The shot hit Hamilton in the lower abdomen above his right hip. The ball ricocheted off Hamilton's second or third false rib, fracturing it and causing considerable damage to his internal organs, particularly his liver and diaphragm, before becoming lodged in his first or second lumbar vertebra.

The paralyzed Hamilton was immediately attended by the same surgeon who tended to Hamilton's son Philip. Hamilton was ferried to Greenwich Village and the boarding house of his friend William Bayard Jr., who was waiting on the dock. On his deathbed, Hamilton asked the Episcopal Bishop of New York, Benjamin Moore, to give him holy communion. Moore initially declined to do so on the grounds that participating in a duel was a mortal sin and that Hamilton, although undoubtedly sincere in his faith, was not a member of the Episcopalian denomination. After leaving, Moore was persuaded to return that afternoon by the urgent pleas of Hamilton's friends. After hearing Hamilton's solemn assurance that he repented his role in the duel, Moore gave him communion.

After final visits from his family, friends, and considerable suffering for at least 31 hours, Hamilton died at two o'clock the following afternoon, July 12, 1804, at Bayard's home just below present-day Gansevoort Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. The city fathers halted all business at noon two days later for Hamilton's funeral. The procession route of about two miles organized by the Society of the Cincinnati had so many participants of every class of citizen that it took hours to complete and was widely reported nationwide by newspapers. Moore conducted Hamilton's funeral service at Trinity Church at present-day 89 Broadway in Manhattan. Gouverneur Morris gave the eulogy and secretly established a fund to support his widow and children. Hamilton was buried in the church's cemetery.