Alexander Hamilton: An American Tragedy

my name is John Foster I'm adult information services librarian at Manor public library from menara Avenue otherwise known as a reference librarian those of you who are frequent the library will know that I give history talks over there I have a PhD in history from the University of Washington and a few other degrees but I basically you know spent a lot of time hiding out from real gainful employment to get Alexander Hamilton is I was kind of saying a little bit earlier is really a fascinating figure and one that has sort of come back into vogue because of the lin-manuel Miranda musical which sort of took the country by storm I think this is a great thing a lot of people in this country before that only really knew Hamilton is the guy on the $10 bill and you don't really see that many $10 bills frankly so but it's it's kind of nice that he's he's kind of had a renaissance if you will for the reason that he's really I think when you when you dig down a little into him in a lot of respects the most interesting of founding fathers the United States I mean he really he doesn't get quite of the the play that that Washington or Jefferson or Adams or Franklin get but in a way he was the most influential of them all okay so you could look at and say well Washington was the general who who led the Revolutionary Army the kind of alarm me to victory in the in the Revolutionary War and that was no mean feat I mean really okay so Britain was not the greatest land power Britain was really it was and continued to be mostly a sea power but still if you'd looked at how the revolutionary forces matched up against the British at the beginning of it the idea that they were actually going to win I mean really it's impressive that anybody wanted to join up because the British were pretty severe about people who deviated from the program I mean it tended to result in a lot of hangings or deportations to less pleasant places so to you know one of the things that I learned as I was kind of doing this is how much and how little people in my generation learned about the Revolutionary War and that period from when we were in school so most of us sort of remember that kind of the schoolhouse rock things that were on about you know the no taxation without representation and and which is you know which was not not an unimportant thing although you know when you look at that at what kind of representation we were likely to get in a British Parliament that had between five and six hundred members like even if they had represent you know even if we gotten representatives in that Parliament it wasn't like really what they wanted was autonomy from Great Britain and in a lot of respects no taxation without representation was a kind of useful way of expressing it although not exactly what they wanted Alexander Hamilton had a kind of unprepossessing start in life he was born in Charlestown and nevus and what was at that time the British West Indies his mother Rachel Fassett was married to a man named Peter Olivia a Dutch Danish merchant who had been very unpleasant to her and whom she left and took up with James a Hamilton Jr James a Hamilton jr. was a sort of lesser son of a Scottish noble house that's their crest right there and this is back in the sort of days of primogeniture when you know if you were the first son of a noble house you were going to inherit and if you know if you were a younger son chances are you would be sort of sent off in the world to you know make your fortune and hopefully not to create too many children and and this becomes an important sort of issue because that how you're going to support children I mean we worry about it now back then when people were sort of a little closer to the edge of utter ruin back then meant something kind of different than it did now so if you had it you know if you were gonna bring children in the world especially you know and this is not you know connected to this directly but girl children even at this time we're sort of viewed as somewhat less fortunate because they were expensive and didn't produce in the way that male children were likely to no offense to the woman here but that's that's the way it was his mother Rachel Fassett ended up raising him Hamilton was born in 1557 or 15 I did I write 1557 oh my gosh in 1757 or 1755 boy I must have been typing quickly yes imagine that said 17 we don't exactly know which this is one of the funny things you don't really know when you were born people just told you later and so the there's sort of arguments for both the 1555 one we think he may have gone turns up on a registrar's document in the West Indies so it's it could be right the 1557 one was what he tended to tell people in 1557 17 757 it was the one that he tended to tell people and it has to do with when he got up to North America and was enrolling in King's College later Columbia University he didn't want to seem like he was old too old and he was a little older than students were who tend to start there so the birth date is you know Ron chernow this is by the way for those of you don't know the state-of-the-art biography on Alexander Hamilton it's the book from which Miranda did his interpretation it's really good it's really well-written it's 700 plus pages long so it's a little bit of a commitment but the thing you've really got to like about chernow cheering I was written a number of Boggs he recently wrote one about ulysses s grant which is absolutely fabulous I mean I learn things that I just I had a completely different picture of grant after I read that book but the great thing about chair now is he's a very responsible scholar and he'll say and this the birthday thing is a perfect example it might be this or it might be that this is the evidence for this this is the evidence for that this is why I think it's probably one or the other and that's really you know too often sort of historians will will act as if they know things that they don't know so I really like turnout because he'll he'll deal sort of tell you this is the thing these are the things we know in these were what we don't know James Hamilton left his family when Hamilton was very young Hamilton had her older brother who's also named James and it was probably because Rachel for us that was involved in a she was being sort of taken to court by Peter Le'Veon who wanted her back although more out of a sense of pride Peter Le'Veon was really a piece of work now I understand if your wife runs off and takes off with some buddies takes up with somebody else that's that's upsetting but later on when Peter Le'Veon died he had subsequently had a child with another with another woman and he left all his possessions to that child and nothing to - Alexander Hamilton his brother which was pretty severe because at that time they were both indigent so James Hamilton left Rachel Fassett sort of kept kept sort of the wolf from the door by doing sewing and other other work like that eventually when Hamilton was 13 there was a yellow fever outbreak yellow fever was was very lethal back in those days Alexander got it - he and his mother were in bed together and in those days and this is a really horrible detail to relate but I will just say it's a sort of whatever like in those days likely what your treatment was going to be was an emetic which would make you vomit and some sort of concoction that would cause your caused you to be very gassy and so he spent the last few days of his mother's life in bed with her both sick and to the end like throwing up and and it must have been very horrible until she finally expired and then he was really alone in the world except for his brother and that must have been a devastating thing for a 13 year old he was taken in by an uncle Thomas Stevens things sort of when Rachel Fassett died Peter Le'Veon and her her creditors basically seized all of her possessions and a friend of the family went and bought the family library taw Alexander Hamilton was from a very young age of very avid reader and and this comes through and a lot of what would happen to him in later life he and his brother went to live with an uncle Peter Litton not Tom Stevens Peter witner things sort of started to look up but then within a year within about six months peter Litton committed suicide suddenly and then once again alexander and his brother were on their own he made no provision for them in his will Alexander Hamilton's brother was apprenticed to a carpenter and he Alexander Hamilton was taken in by the Stevens family and put to work at a merchants firm Beekman and Kruger there's a persistent rumor in chernow discusses this that Stevens was actually Hamilton's father and the reason because this was that Stevens son was Hamilton's best friend and every lots of people who saw them said that they looked suspiciously alike and sure now basically says and this is true we don't really have any way of knowing no way I mean exist we could like dig up their remains and DNA test them but short of that we have no way of knowing Hamilton in later life was in contact with his father and his father always entered his letters as your affectionate father so there's reason to believe that James Hamilton senior James Hamilton jr. was Alexander Hamilton's father but Thomas Stevens really went out of his way to make a life for Alexander Hamilton in a way which is also suggestive of some sort of paternal concern so Hamilton went to work for this merchants firm and he was really quite precocious so that when one of the directors left for five months he was essentially left running the running the show and there is a his sort of demeanor about this has shown me see if I've marked this correctly he wrote this is a an excerpt that he from a letter that he wrote to a captain who had was transporting a man of mules and had done so in a particularly unfortunate way sailing through a storm so that many of the Mules were ill or had died and he and this is you know Hamilton at the age of about 15 writing to the sea captain reflect continually on the unfortunate voyage you have just made and endeavoured to make up for the considerable loss there from accruing to your owners and I think that that's so he's here he is dressing down a professional sea captain but but this is the kind of guy that he was you know that he once he sort of had mastered a topic he really felt like validated in telling people telling people off when that was what it took this is a letter that he wrote to Edward Stevens his is the son of Thomas Stevens and a friend of his and it tells you a lot about Hamilton's this is the earliest letter that we had that he wrote it tells you a lot about his character I think to confess my weakness that my ambition is so prevalent that I contend the groveling and conditions clerk or the like to which my fortune etc condemns me and would willingly risk my life there not my character to exalt my station I'm confident Ned that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate performant nor do I desire it but I mean to prepare the way for Futurity I am no philosopher you see and may be justly said to build castles in the air' my folly makes me ashamed and I beg you to conceal it yet Neddy we have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant I shall conclude by saying I wish there were I wish there was a war so this in a way tells you a lot about about his character he really he was somebody who was very committed to his own success and and this is a guy who had come through some extreme tragedies and some extremely bad circumstances and his idea was I'm gonna make myself this clip which is the only reason why you say I wish there was a war why because this is a way that people of ability can get together in the world and also and and mark this well I'm willing to risk my risk my life though not my character that is a portentous line to be written by somebody 14 years old given what happened to him later on he was seen as so precocious that the reverend hugh knox who was a local prelate who also was sort of involved in the sort of literary life of saint croix which is where he was living men got together a sort of subscription fund to send him to university in north america and he they got some sort of subscriptions from local merchants who you know wanted to promote the the situation of a promising young man I mean it's a kind of a remarkable story and it really is the thing that absolutely fundamentally changes his life because he could have just wild away he could have just you know wallowed in st. Croix in the Indies plenty of people he grew up with stayed there and never left but here he's presented this opportunity to go to North America to go to college to make something better of himself in a way that a person from his station in life was unlikely to be able to do and he really sees the opportunity with both hands so in October 1772 he arrives in Boston goes to New York has a kind of he tries to get into Princeton and he's a little so 1772 if he's born in 1755 that makes him 17 yes and he goes to the President of Princeton University and says well I'd like to I'd like to enroll at your University but I want to do an accelerated course I mean he was the sort of quintessential young man in a hurry and that he had done some sort of remedial work before he left the Indies to try and sort of get himself up to speed and he was he continued to do when he got to North America and the President of Princeton said well no I don't think that you know so Hamilton kind of took that in stride and then went to went to what was then called Kings College which was on the in a sort of isolated part of the upper part of Manhattan you have to remember back then that Manhattan was really only settled kind of at the bottom there was the kind of formerly Dutch settlement at the bottom end but up sort of further north by where Columbia University is now there was really nothing or very little I mean his very rural environment and we'll see later later in life he built a mansion up on what is essentially a hundred and forty second and Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem now but back then it was the why mean he had like 34 acres and there was nothing else there this is a statue of Hamilton that currently stands at Columbia in front of Hamilton Hall appropriately enough once again he was a very precocious student he was one of those people who really seem to feel like if I could just make it a matter of who's willing to work harder then I'm gonna be the one who comes out ahead you know you've all known these people who who approach things to sort of say well I'm just gonna you know there's a famous I'm trying to remember whether it was whether it was Andrew Carnegie said when I worked 12 hours a day seven days a week I get a lot luckier and that's kind of the way Hamilton was he he worked himself incredibly hard because he felt like he started from a deficit and because he was you know he knew that he was being given an opportunity that was very singular but he also quickly became enmeshed in the politics the country this was a time at which there had been an intense debate going on in North America about the validity of the connection to Great Britain about the Justice of Great Britain of British taxation in North America now from the British perspective let's recall that the British had fought the French and Indian War as sort of larger part of the Seven Years War to keep the North American colonies from falling under French domination and they had spent a faint fantastic amount of money to do this so when the British said you know what we're gonna have these taxes and duties and we're gonna restrict your trade so that you can only have sort of bilateral trade with us they felt pretty justified in doing so because they had spent a lot of blood and treasure to maintain the North American colonies but from the cull of the collars perspective I mean most of them you know think about these people who had gone from from from metropolitan England to the colonies well why do you go there and it's because you wanna you want to find a better life a lot of people are doing it they're putting themselves in indentured servitude so for five or seven or ten years they're agreeing to be about one notch up from a chattel flav with with the sort of hope that once they're done they're gonna be in an area where they can advance in life as opposed to in England which is a very class bound society where your chances of social mobility are very low what they want to do is with what people come into the colonies want to do is come to a place where all bets are off right I mean not all bets but where the society is a little more open and so there's this intense ferment going on of debates this is a very literate society you know if you think about it one of the main sort of most important developments in modern history was the was the creation of the printing press because then I mean it's like the sort of creation of the internet for us now like you could sort of say what you wanted to say back in the 1980s but now you can put it on Twitter or Facebook or whatever and you know lots and lots and lots of people can read it so you can sort of expand your influence well that's what the printing press was in the in the 17th and 18th century like once you have the printing press and once you have a society that that's generally literate the possibility for individuals to spread around political views becomes dramatically expanded Hamilton himself takes part in this he gets in a debate with a with the clergyman named C Barry who was a loyalist now let's remember too we kind of don't like to remember but there were a lot of loyalists in North America at this time it wasn't like all of a sudden people just like ads get rid of the British there were lots of people who were felt themselves to be loyal subjects of the king and even the revolutionaries I mean among them there was a very sort of strong tendency to believe well if we can just get this thing on a right basis we're all British right but sort of as things went on it became clear that that that the chain had to be broken so on on the 6th of July 1774 Hamilton is part of the raising of what's called a Liberty Pole on the campus of Columbia University he had been part of groups that had been discussing political matters and and the relationship to Great Britain Hamilton gives us sort of little talk there we're not exactly sure what he said but that's the first time that we know of Hamilton kind of speaking in public he gets in in this sort of debate with a with a fellow named C berry a local clergyman who's a boy Alice who writes a full vindication of the measures of Congress and the farmer refuted which was his sort of like repose to see burrs reposed and it's a sort of argument about the the way the Continental Congress is starting to conduct itself to try and bring a kind of self-government to the North American colonies and and what we find here is Hamilton is a very voluble writer will see as sort of we go further on in life that Hamilton whenever he got whenever he got engaged with things he could just pour out tacks that are really remarkable rate when the Revolutionary War breaks out which actually happens in 1775 is the first sort of skirmishes he and his classmate form a military unit and start drilling called the hearts of oak he becomes an artillery commander and eventually comes to the attention of General Washington so that in 1777 he's asked to join what's called Washington's family which is Washington's close staff he could becomes friends with the Marquis de Lafayette so at this time too you know a number of this is back in the day when wars were really fought by relatively small professional armies and and military officer ship was a kind of was a real profession you notice if you if you study the history of Prussian the Prussian armies the Prussians were the sort of poster child for professionalization of the army that it started out as a kind of if you looked at the sort of period before this in that in the in the 17th 16th and 17th century there tended to be people became officers because they were oftentimes because they were aristocrats but as things went on people became too sort of began to realize that there were things that you need to know to do effective professional military service especially now in the cavalry that's one thing if you're a if you're an aristocrat you've grown up riding horses so the cavalry was the sort of last bastion of aristocrats as officers but if you're going to be an artillerist right you have to know how to do the math you cannot fake your way through being able to calculate arcs and this was the sort of front edge of of professionalization and also if you're going to be sort of commanding men in in battle in tight formations this is the kind of stand up and shoot I mean it's weird to think now like the Civil War is this American civil wars that kind of last arrived this like we're just gonna stand you know sometimes like this far apart from the flight here to the window and shooting each other until like all of one side or data runs away and that takes a certain you know amount of expertise to get people to do that to get people to stand in to get people to move in the right sort of way that's why that's that's that's what sort of parade drill is all about is getting people to move in the right way at the right time [Music] Hamilton very much gets Washington's confidence Washington really liked him and Hamilton wrote later that Washington had tried to sort of like befriend him and that he had sort of tried to kind of put the brakes on it and the reason being I mean what Washington is from a sort of vaguely aristocratic you know he said he's of Virginia he's a Virginian from the kind of Virginia Squire Archy and you would think that ham would want to be friends with him if Washington won a bleep corner to defense and they did become very close later on but Hamilton also wanted to keep him a little bit at arm's length and part of the reason was that he Hamilton what he really wanted was a serious field command but Washington loved him and knew that he was a guy that got things done so that Hamilton was would write Washington's letters and Washington would sign them a lot of times or Hamilton if there was a problem Hamilton would be sent to deal with it with full authority to just do as he saw fit Washington had such faith in Hamilton that he would just sort of say to him okay there's problem you know there's this supply problem I need you to go deal with the people there and make them act right you know make them do what they're supposed to do but this turned into a sort of a double-edged sword for Hamilton right because he that's the danger of being a really good staff officer because if you're the if you're the commander you need to be able to delegate you need to be able to have guys around you who you can just say go do X and not have to sort of instruct them on every step that they have to take and Hamilton was so good at it that he kept saying to Washington you know I'd really like to get out of it and Washington said no I'm sorry I just can't I can't do without you you know let Lafayette or let whoever whoever else do it like I need you here and it was very frustrating to Hamilton he was also Hamilton spoke fluent French and that made him very useful when the French started coming into the war in the in the later 1770s this is a peculiar thing to why the like you have to sort of look at it kind of geopolitically the French like this this is years the French Revolution doesn't break out until 1789 it's funny like if you think about it like in there's a certain sense in which the French Revolution the American Revolution are kind of connected because they have a lot of similar ideals but you know French liberty equality fraternity liberty equality Brotherhood but this is the French monarchy this is louis xvi saying you know oh great this is a chance to really cause the british some problems we'll just send a fleet and some soldiers and some generals the French tended to be tended to need a bit of sort of liaison to get them on board and Hamilton was the perfect guy to do this because once again growing up in the islands where there was a fairly significant French presence he had learned to speak fluent French and could sort of cope with the French officers and get them to interface with the American officers very well so finally he sort of Hamilton created this this sort of conflict with with Washington where they were in headquarters in and he he sort of he made Washington wait Washington went upstairs to do some work and and Hamilton later told Philip Schuyler who was his father-in-law instead of finding the general in his usual room I met him at the head of the stairs where costing me in a very angry tone Colonel Hamilton he said you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs there's ten minutes I must tell you sir you treat me with disrespect I replied without petulance ii but with decision i am not conscious of it sir but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so we part very well sir he said if it be your choice or something to the effect and we separated sincerely I believe my absence which gave so much umbrage didn't last two minutes but Hamilton at that point tells Washington well I'm gonna leave I'm gonna leave your staff and they have a kind of a break and Washington finally gives him the field command that he that he wants in seventeen 2017 eighty-one by this time it's become clear that the British are are on the run and they ended up getting bottled up in Yorktown on the James Peninsula and Hamilton seeing his kind of last chance for because what he wants is military glory and he writes often as a sort of younger man of his willingness who was expectation that he'll like have a kind of glorious death but you know he has this feeling if I'm gonna be in a in a sort of military conflict I want to be out there and doing it I want I don't want to be sort of someone who's behind the lines so he ends up leading his troops there's a painting of Hamilton in dragoons uniform this is the headquarters at Valley Forge Washington and his staff did rather better than the average soldiers at Valley Forge Valley Forge was a terribly nasty winter although the winter after that was apparently even worse and once again the problem with the with the Revolutionary Army with the kind of alarm II was as Washington's so succinctly put it no money the the Continental Army was constantly having to fight with the Continental Congress to give up money and it was partly because the sort of the way the Continental Congress was run and the way the sort of subsequently the Articles of Confederation would make the country run the states were basically made contributions to the running of the government that were in a certain sense where were not obligatory and that's just no way to run a no way to run a country sadly I mean nobody likes paying taxes but the fact the matter is if you make taxes optional no one will pay them I know I wouldn't and I'm okay mostly with taxation but I mean if you give me the choice I'm gonna say no because I can think of better things I would do with the money and that's and the states always could - right so this is a this is a sort of later kind of representation but this is Hamilton and his troops charging the British readouts at redoubt number nine and number 10 at Yorktown it was apparently a very well fought engagement Hamilton and his men managed to push their way in Hamilton then prevailed upon his men not to execute all the British prisoners which they were inclined to do there was a very there's a great deal of bad feeling between the two groups and the British were very unhappy about this rebellion which they viewed as treasonous as a matter of fact they tended to take prisoners and put them on a series of ships out in the New York Harbor where thousands died in truly horrific conditions so there was a great deal of bad feeling between the soldiers of the two armies as there often is in rebellions I mean rebellions tend to breed atrocities but Hamilton you know once they had gotten in and the British soldiers had surrendered Hamilton said okay we're not you know we're gonna obey the laws of war we're taking these men prisoner and very shortly after that the you know the the war comes to an end this is a detail from a painting of the Cornwallis signing the surrender that's Hamilton there that's his good friend John war John Lauren's Hamilton Laurens were an interesting pair they wrote letters to each other that were of such feeling that some historians have seen them a kind of homoerotic connection chair now mentions this and he points out and I think this is correct there were kind of literary conventions or like letter writing conventions back in those days especially between men where they would express kind of feelings toward each other which we now might read differently but at the time was just the way guys wrote to each other it's very it's very I should I meant to bring an example of it but it's but to sort of take as take as as read that he wrote these letters to each other about their feelings and which you know is not something that that sort of jives necessarily very well with our kind of modern notions of masculinity interestingly to Lauren's and and Hamilton were united by the fact that they were very ardent critics of slavery and Hamilton and Lauren's and a lot of their friends we're not just anti-slavery in the way that slavery is terrible let's free all the slaves and send them back to Africa because they're I mean there's a sort of view abroad that was kind of a broad in the land that that but people of Africans blacks are like deficient or was sort of less than fully human so you know slavery is bad for us slavery damages our souls so we should you know not have slavery we just send the blacks back to Africa Hamilton was of the opinion and he said on a number of occasions that he was pretty sure that the blacks were the same as we were in terms of their intellectual abilities so he was really for just abolishing slavery and then moving on and having just people live around and this makes him a kind of remarkable remarkable figure especially sort of by comparison to Jefferson with whom he later had very many quarrels Jefferson who was all about liberty but but not so much for people who weren't white Hamilton returns to New York becomes an attorney he marries Elizabeth Schuyler who was the daughter of one of the sort of more wealthy New York family as the Skyler's her older sister Angelica Church was a notorious beauty who married a guy who made of gigantic pot of money in the Revolutionary War and then moved back to England and became a member of parliament there are sort of rumors that there was an affair that happened between Hamilton and Angelica Church there's there's no evidence no sort of conclusive evidence Hamilton had a kind of reputation as a ladies man and we'll get into how that costume problems later on some of you may already know a little bit of this story but it's it's difficult to know exactly how much of that is is fact and how much of it it has to do with the bad press that he got back in those days if you really wanted to kind of besmirched your enemies you started a newspaper and had someone write nasty things about them which is what Jefferson did I mean Jefferson basically funded a whole newspaper dedicated to writing bad things about Alexander Hamilton at 1782 past the New York Bar he argued a lot of cases and a lot of cases he defended loyalists and the the famous one is Rutgers v Waddington and it was there was a woman who had owned a brewery she had fled New York New York was a very heavily loyalist town during the during the revolution she had fled it had been taken over the new owner had renovated the place spent a lot of money and was running it she came back and said well he owes me what it's worth and Hamilton came in and defended him and the decision eventually was well he has the new owner has to pay her rent for the time during the war but but other than that so the the point here being that Hamilton developed a kind of reputation as somebody who was relatively Pro British and he was he was also someone who was very interested in the promotion of trade and he knew York was one of the big merchant towns I mean there was you know New York Philadelphia Boston the great merchant towns living north east of the Atlantic seaboard he and a number of his associates founded the Bank of New York and the reason was that they wanted to make capital available for for merchant ventures so this was a time when trade is really expanding now that the connection with Great Britain has been broken that's great because it means that you can look for new options but it's also a problem because so much of us of the trade from the North American colonies had been bilateral trade with the British and the British were now very much looking askance of that and also seizing American vessels periodically and impressing their crews at this point the United States as being or the colony is being run the former colonies are being run under the Articles of Confederation the Articles of Confederation the number one problem of the Articles of Confederation was that the government had no taxation power and once again like okay taxes are horrible but in order to have a central government you have to be half there's there's things that have to pay for and there has to be taxation so in 1786 there's a convention in Annapolis basically it was a sort of informal thing but it was sort of representations from most of the states the discussion of which was an attempt to sort of sort out the problems of the Articles of Confederation and what comes out of this is the idea that there needs to be a constitutional convention that the country needs to be put on a new legal basis this by the way is so this is Elizabeth Schuyler saludable Schuyler Hamilton that's Hamilton's wife that's her sister Angelica that's Philip Schuyler his father-in-law one of the real Grande's of of New York politics this is Hamilton as a sort of younger man he was a kind of slight guy he's about five five had sort of ginger hair a very sort of quick demeanor this is Aaron Burr Bora and Hamilton knew each other from the New York legal set and they had worked on cases together actually but there were two very different characters Hamilton was habitually giving very long speeches and very impatient principled speeches where he wanted to talk about you know the underlying issues burr was a great and eloquent speaker but not one of these people who was moved by great moral passions let's just say as a matter of fact later on when Burr and and Jefferson were were vying for the presidency Hamilton said well I'd really rather have Jefferson because I'd rather have someone whose principles I disagree with than somebody who has no principles at all and then that was kind of what he thought of her but they got along pretty well there wasn't really intrinsic conflict between them so from 14 May to 17 September 1787 the state sent representatives to a constitutional convention in Philadelphia Hamilton was elected as one of the three or was appointed as one of the three delegates from New York the governor of New York George Clinton was not really thrilled about the idea of a more of a firmer or more extensive union among the colonies and so he appointed two other delegates who were opposed to Hamilton so that if they voted as a delegation Hamilton would always be out voted by these two other guys and in fact relatively shortly into the whole thing once it became sort of clear what was being discussed the other two guys just left and so Hamilton was a kind of lame-duck the New York like the New York delegation couldn't vote in the convention because only one of the three members was in a tent is in attendance for the vast majority of the vast majority of the of the meeting Hamilton at this point is arguing for he argues at one point for an executive that it's a life tenure and he thinks that that people should serve in the in the legislative houses for six years at a time and he gets a sort of reputation as a kind of crypto monarchist there are a lot of people in the country who think that he is actually a monarchist that what he wants to do is either restore some sort of connection to Great Britain actually or to create a kind of like monarchist form of government in North America and a lot of people it's very it's very sort of regional so what you get is a sort of debate between more populous states that want their population to tell and less populous states that are worried about getting out forward which is why you get that that the African the slaves are three-fifths of a man thing that's written into the into the Constitution because the slaveholding states were relatively less populous than the northern states the they had slaves in all the states but in in South Carolina there more than half the population and Virginia they're also a very considerable part of the population so the southern states want to say well let's have you have to insert of like calculating our population for purposes of voting allow us to count the slaves but since they're not really quite human they only count as three-fifths of a person so you get this very peculiar and what you get to is the sort of debate going on between what comes to be called federalism and anti federalism federalism Hamilton's the the political tenancy with which he becomes associated which stands for us very strong central authority as opposed to anti federalism what later becomes republicanism represented by especially Virginian aristocrats I say aristocrats are not really aristocrats but you know what I'm saying like Jefferson who want as little government as possible and just want to be sort of left to their own affairs and it basically a lot of it is the kind of world versus urban split that we have in the country today so that in the Northeast which was relatively urban although still quite rural you have relatively large cities lots of that are dependent on international trade what do you need if you're in that position well you need roads and you need someone to you need a structure of customs houses so that when stuff comes into the country the the duties can be paid you need a structure that's national so that the taxes on trade from South Carolina get paid to the central government so you have to have a central authority rather than just sort of saying to the the people in Charleston well we'd like it if you said her portion of the the receipts from trade up this way Hamilton then John J and James Monroe writes the Federalist Papers is a kind of fence of the draft of the Constitution there was very there was a lot of debate about the Constitution and they write this series of a veces in an incredibly short period of time sometimes Hamilton's writing two and three of these essays and the Federalist Papers is really one of those things that it's absolutely worth your time to read if you have not read because it's the sort of ironically he's working on with Monroe's from Virginia who later comes to hate him did I send Monroe what I meant was Madison but anyway Monroe's issue comes a little later but basically the lot of what what Madison writes is the sort of history of Republic's or whatever this is a new thing that's being tried right there's no government like this on earth at this time the last time they tried it was Athens in the 5th century BC and it came to really spectacular grief I mean those of you who've read the history of the Peloponnesian War like things go poorly so there's really no no blueprint for how you're going to organize a republic like this in fact the model they all look to is not so much Athens but Republic in Rome which also comes to grief in a kind of a different way but Hamilton wants to say and he says if you read the Federalist Papers what we need is a central authority with the power to keep society running he really thinks that the anti-federalists or the Republican view is a recipe for anarchy and this comes up a little later on after ratification here's the deciding ceremony by the way of the Constitution you can see Hamilton here in Benjamin Franklin's ear about something Hamilton was not a huge fan of I think he thought that that Franklin was a kind of a dilettante but the funny things that you learned when you read the history of having fathers is how little they liked each other there was the sort of Virginia set then there was the kind of Boston people then there was the New York people the New York people mostly didn't like each other either so there was the faction that the sort of Skyler's and Van Rensselaer's on one side and the clintonites on the other and they really they really really disliked each other Hamilton Hamilton and and Jefferson's intense dislike for each other really got going when they both served in Washington's administration subsequently than the first presidential administration Hamilton served as Secretary of the Treasury Jefferson served as Secretary of State first of all the Treasury Department was bigger than all the other departments put together Hamilton went to work one of the big things that went on one of the sort of negotiations how the country was going to be set up was centered around two issues that were called removal and assumption removal was where are we gonna put the the capital and there was a very strong faction that wanted it I mean it was sort of pro-tem in in Philadelphia but there was a kind of faction that wanted it at Trenton and then there but the southerners like well we don't want it up north because then like so much of the influence goes to the north at the same time the u.s. the unites the burgeoning United States had large debts run up from fighting the revolution and what Hamilton wanted was for the federal government to assume those debts assumption but some of the states didn't want this especially the southern states because they said well we've already paid some of the southern states had already paid their debts off so there's their thing well why should we why should we finance the prophesy of states who heaven whatever so there was a kind of a horse trade that got done where the capital is moved to the sort of Maryland Virginia border after while they got rid of the Virginia part and the the payoff was that the southern states would accept assumption so the the capital was sort of left in Philadelphia for ten years and then it was moved once that there was nothing in Washington DC at this point it was basically a fever swamp but they kind of like built the town you can tell if any of you've ever been to Washington DC you like it's one of the few places you ever go where all the streets are you know mean in the central part all the streets are like straight and a vehicle equal length very different no if any of you've ever been to Boston Boston is impossible place to drive around because there are no straight streets in Boston and everything is one-way like the number one thing that you fear when you're driving around Boston is getting behind somebody with out of state plates you know that they have no idea where they're going so Hamilton serves a secretary of the Treasury in the in for most of both of Washington's administrations he sets up the National mint once again the idea that there should only be sort of one source of of currency in the country was a kind of a novel idea it used to be the case that any bank could just omit currency print currency which is a dangerous thing right because you just you have no way of knowing I mean it's hard enough to know like if the federal government is going to collapse you really don't know if some bank somewhere is gonna collapse so you have to like it's hard to know especially if you're I mean this is before the era of fiat currencies like this is still the sort of gold standard so notes basically have to be mostly based on some sort of metallic currency he Institute's the Revenue Cutter service which is the precursor to the Coast Guard he also Institute's the whiskey tax they're looking for ways to raise money and what better ways to raise money than a sin tax and this causes a lot of excuse me uh upset especially in sort of war front area areas especially western Pennsylvania where people are used to brewing their own hooch and just selling it or just drinking it so that a rebellion gets going between 1791 1794 and Hamilton to a lesser extent Washington have to send troops out there and threaten some hangings before they get people sort of on board with the idea that they just have to they have to submit to the he also creates a sort of Organization for promoting industry they buy some land out in Paterson New Jersey where there's a large waterfall and the idea was that they were going to start he starts this sort of this sort of program of trying to lure so if you were a sort of mill a person who knew how to build mills in Great Britain it was illegal for your leave and it was certainly illegal for you to take the boom you know it was a serious trade secret so Hamilton sort of like started this program of trying to get people from Great Britain to come to the United States people who knew how to build a spinning mill and a lot of the people who knew how to build these mills who had worked for the the sort of great early spinning mills then just came to the United States because if they didn't have to write down how to build it they knew it in their head and so Hamilton starts sort of organizations for promoting industry once again this is a big northeastern thing and the the southerners and and Jefferson in particular really disliked this what they want is an agrarian country of sort of smallholders and and the funny thing is that they come out and like well we're the defenders of the common man like Jefferson who lives at Monticello and he's got slaves he's having children with one of them which lots of people know about as a matter of fact well we get to this a little bit Hamilton knew about it because Jefferson was was also a correspondent of Jefferson took Sally Hemings with him when he went to England and and and and jelica Church saw him there and figured out what have been going on and probably I mean Hamilton knew some way and that's probably the way that he knew was that Angelica church told him Jefferson's sort of forces in Congress the anti-federalists or the Republican forces in Congress are constantly sort of trying to trying to trip Hamilton up and there's a there's a there's a comes from name Giles who Institute's a series of motions that says to Hamilton this is sort of right at the end of his tenure okay within the next month we need a complete report to you on the entire financial position of the United States all of the foreign loans and Hamilton like creates this incredible I mean it's a it's a sort of marvel of his abilities that he creates this enormous report in which he down to the last dollar accounts for all of the money and all of the debts and all of the the transitions that I've been going there was a sort of there was a concept like Jefferson was constantly making his accusation that Hamilton was like a swindler because Hamilton was friends with a lot of people who were finance guys and and one of the sort of pronounced feelings among the anti-federalists Republican crowd was that finance was the kind of tool of the devil right that it was making money out of nothing you know if you wanted to make money plant a field or you know like build a house or you know build furniture or whatever for them like these kind of money guys so Hamilton creates this system of rolling debts but whenever Hamilton created a debt obligation he always created a sort of source of revenue that would fund the debt I mean Hamilton is a very canny person in terms of the way he organized things financially so that Jefferson when he becomes president Jefferson who's the most vitriolic critic of Hamilton system ends up having to keep the system because it's the thing that's allowing the country to operate it's the thing that's allowing the government to have enough revenue to keep itself operating in the course of 1791 instead of 1792 Hamilton meets a young woman named Mariah Reynolds who comes to him at first telling this sort of tale of woe about how she's you know fallen on hard times and her husband has left her and she needs money and and he ends up having an affair with her and then it turns out that her husband I mean so her husband finds out then it turns out that what's really going on is that this is a blackmail plot I mean and this is one of the really peculiar things about Hamilton because he was a very canny man he was not a stupid person but he was basically honey trapped by these people and and so Mariah Reynolds husband comes to Hamilton and says well you know this is horrible you've stolen my wife's affection from me I can now no longer fulfill my roles husband can you give me thousand dollars and he keeps squeezing Hamilton for money in Hamilton you know with the implication that he's gonna let it be known and Hamilton already knows that there's a paper the National Gazette being run by a guy named Freneau that is being funded by Jefferson to write nasty things about things that are already public knowledge what he really doesn't want is for this to get out in the press so it eventually so eventually but the end of sort of in July of 1792 says the calendar look you know you do what you're gonna do I'm not gonna pay this anymore and calendar or Reynolds on another friend of his go up what they want to do is start speculating in let me jump back from it because the government had no money during the Revolutionary War a lot of times the soldiers were paid in bonds or were paid in sort of promissory notes and these became an item of speculation after the war because a lot of the soldiers had just sort of said had kind of sold them for pennies on the dollar because they needed money now and the government didn't have the money to pay them now so what people would go around and do was buy these promissory notes at a discount in the hope that they would then take them to the federal government and get paid at face value and this is what Reynolds and his friend wanted to do they eventually get arrested for for some other sort of shenanigans but the they provide the the means so Hamilton very stupidly has has like written letters to Mariah Reynolds which of course she has kept and they get into the hands of this very unscrupulous Scottish journalist named James Callender who puts out a book called the history of the United States for the Year 1796 very promising title in which he provides a sort of like a summary of the letters but also with the implication that Hamilton has been engaging with Mariah Reynolds husband in financial shenanigans so once again you get this sort of claim that that Hamilton must be engaged in some kind of financial misdeeds that he must be a sort of an embezzler so this is it all comes out in 1796 sort of much later and Hamilton's just really upset about this and he is just one of these people who cannot let it drop all of his friends are just like Hamilton says Rob you know I've got to rebut this Oh Hamilton's friends like no no nobody believes this and nobody cares this is like you know you're not secretary of the Treasury anymore just leave it alone and no no no I've got this so he writes a 96 page defense of himself in which he publishes all the letters I know that the title is so long that I had to sort of it's it's referred to as the Reynolds pamphlet but see if let me see if I can observe a Shinzon certain documents contained in numbers 5 and 6 of the history of the United States for the Year 1796 in which the charge of speculation against Alexander Hamilton late secretary of the Treasury is fully refuted written by himself and the worst part of the whole thing is that he writes 96 pages of closely argued prose to show that he's a philanderer not an embezzler and the Republican press just has a field day with this oh my gosh there's a mother quote so calendar was as with all literary assassins of Hamilton associated with Jefferson and Jefferson when he saw this thing he wrote to Jefferson and says if you have not seen it no anticipation can equal the infamy of this piece it is worth all that 50 of the best pens in America could have said against him drawing on his material calendar wrote mockingly that quote hole proof from his pamphlet rests upon the allusion I am a rake and for that reason I cannot be a swindler oh and this was the way right before he publishes this he has to tell his wife that this is what's about to happen and oh my god how much she had felt like all of a sudden like okay honey I had this affair and by the way which is coming out into public knowledge now but I've written 96 pages to show that you know although I did that I didn't do some other thing which is I'm sure wholly irrelevant to you it's it's a very peculiar thing about Alexander Hamilton I mean he really he was just one of those people who couldn't let it go and this is another thing which does not serve him very well later in life he's sort of in the wilderness for a while after he writes by the way Washington's famous farewell address he's really the author of it Washington decides not to serve a third term although he sort of couldn't and there was no rule against him doing so he's succeeded by John Adams who's choleric and not very nice Adams was wont to hold cabinet meetings in which he would shout at his cabinet minister has become so angry that he would throw his wig on the floor and stomp on it he thought that Hamilton was sort of too smart for his own good but what's happening at this point is sort of brew so the the French and the and the British have gone to war and there's the sort of question about which is going to which side the u.s. is going to be on and Hamilton says well let's be on the British side because what do the French have to offer us nothing like we could there you know we can't really it's hard for us to trade with them and they don't really have much in trade that we want but the British do have things that we want and a big market for our stuff Jefferson and his friends are on the other head the French Revolution is the greatest thing to ever happen to mankind the jakab are like and you know if they chop off a few heads or a few hundred that's that's unfortunate but really they're on the sort of they're doing the same thing we are Liberty you know but it's but it looks very much in 1798 that there's gonna be a war for a war with France so Hamilton gets called back into the government to put together an army Washington is the kind of nominal head but Hamilton is the one really running it Hamilton gets promoted above a number of more senior people including Henry Knox who just refused to serve because of it eventually the war doesn't happen and but the whole thing really leaves a bad taste in Adams mouth because he feels like excuse me once again Hamilton is maneuvered himself into this position of of authority and he thinks that Hamilton is a kind of he fundamentally personally dislikes Hamilton and the feeling is very much mutual the only thing that sort of keeps them you know from being a you know fully arrayed against each other is that they're both in the Federalists orbit but when Hamilton comes up for reelection he's opposed by or when Adams comes up for election he's opposed by Jefferson who at this point sees people kind of sent me the the the Federalists have been running the country ever since independence and people are kind of tired of it so Jefferson runs a very successful campaign in the course of which burr decides that he was called Hamilton burr because for some reason the guy who wrote the Perry now Perry Mason novels called the prosecutor Hamilton burr Aaron Berger gets involved and essentially splits the New York Federalist Party so that he can possibly have a share a shot at winning the presidency which he doesn't win but he could becomes Jefferson's vice president so you get this weird so basically the way they did it was whoever got the most votes was president and whoever got the second-most was vice president where you end so you end up with burr who the Republicans don't like because he's a federalist and who the Federalists don't like because he split the New York Federalist Party and who Jefferson completely freezes out for for the four-year first four years of his administration and then picks somebody else while he was doing this Hamilton was working very engaged Lee against him politically trying to get George pinkey from South Carolina who was a that rarest of things a South Carolina Federalist and when burr comes into New York goes back to New York after losing after being sort of dismissed as vice president were not react he runs for governor of New York and Hamilton really takes up the cudgels to get someone else elected and he says a lot of bad --is-- things about Hamilton but but nothing more than the truth really I mean he dislikes I'm about burb Hamilton dislikes Perot personally but but mostly because he has no principles he thinks burr is an unprincipled person also he builds this estate which I talked about a little bit this is a little hard to see this map now but this is the original site it's 140 third between Amsterdam and convent then it gets moved down to here now it's in a in st. Nicholas Park which is also called Hamilton Park up in Harlem and it's a very nice place I had the that's a picture of it it looks pretty much like that today it's just sitting in the middle of a park in the middle of New York City Hamilton ends up going to a dinner party in the first in the early in the year 1804 in Albany the number of people other Federalists and they're talking about Burr and Hamilton maybe makes a few unguarded comments about it and there's a there's a guy named Richard's there who ends up writing an article about the whole affair and he says you know Hamilton said this and that about burr and also some more despicable things a still more despicable opinion he said Hamilton who had expressed sober who is very prickly writes to Hamilton and said well what is it that you you need to apologize for what for this despicable thing which you said about me and this is several months later now and Hamilton writes him back and Hamilton's like a little annoyed about this and was like well but I'm not gonna apologize because tell me what I said that I should apologize for and what does Despicable mean anyway and so neither one of these guys were strangers to the ideals of the idea of dueling Hamilton's son by the way completers previously Phillip had been killed in a duel in very unfortunate circumstances it made Hamilton's oldest daughter become unbalanced and she was never the same dueling at this point was illegal but it was viewed by people in sort of aristocratic circles or sort of upper circles of society especially people in the military as necessary because if you allowed somebody to challenge your honor it was then going to be very difficult for you to lead troops for the so it was really viewed but a lot of times like a lot more duels were offered than actually happened right so there'd be a sort of like challenge offered and then usually there'd be some sort of negotiation and somebody would find a way to kind of walk back what they'd said but burr at this point was apparently try I mean it's a little hard to understand what Burr was doing here he was apparently he at this point his political career was in a shambles and he was apparently trying to kind of regenerate it by getting over on Hamilton shooting and killing him turned out to be a terrible a terrible move right yeah it really worked out very poorly for him Hamilton was really just one of these people who wouldn't let it go and so because there was no particular you know Burke kept saying well like you know clearly you said some things and you should apologize for them and and Hamilton was like well I can't apologize if you don't if you're not going to tell me what it was that I'm apologizing for I'm not gonna like like blank check apologize for things right and and so finally they get they get it it comes to the point that they that they're going to have this duel so they're not going to do it in New York we're dueling is prosecuted very severely they decided they're gonna do it in New Jersey where it's also illegal but where it's less frequently prosecuted so they go across the river to Weehawken there's a little shelf of land like if you sometimes you'll see there's a very famous sort of itching that was done later and where they're standing in the woods but in fact it was just a little shelf of land on a sort of piece of land that was owned by a guy who knew that dueling was happened there but every time it happened like he'd hear the pistol shots and by the time get down there he'd be gone they'd be gone these are the pistols that were used Hamilton told people that he was not going to shoot burr so one thing you could do in a duel was waste your shot as a way of saying to the other person okay we've made our point here let's talk it over and it was a very common tactic and Hamilton told lots of people that that was what he was going to do burner on the other hand was a crack shot and so there's a sort of debate about who shot first it's clear that there was one shot a couple of seconds pause and then another one and most people think and I think this is probably true that Hamilton shot first over Birds head and then Matt burr shot him the ball went in above the hip perforated his liver and smashed his spine he went down immediately he brought a doctor with him the doctor waited in a boat down at the bottom of the cliff and was for legal reasons so the doctor could then plausibly claim that he had I was just out boating and all of a sudden here it was I came upon these people with pistols and blood and the whole Megillah it becomes clear that so what Hamilton expected happened was he would shoot Burr would shoot then there's in there seconds would have a kind of discussion about when it would get worked out and at all and he because he was expecting he had made an appointment to do legal business for one of his clients later that day although he acknowledged that that it was possible that he'd be killed that he ended up he wrote this letter to his wife in the event that it might happen this letter my very dear Eliza will not be delivered to you unless I first have terminated my early career to begin as I humbly hope from redeeming Grace and divine mercy a happy immortality if it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview my love for you and my precious children would have been alone than a decisive motive but it was not possible without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem I need not tell you of the pangs I feel from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel nor could I dwell on topic lest it should unmanned me the consolations of religion my beloved can alone support you and these you have the right to enjoy fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted with my last idea I shall cherish sweet hope of our meeting of meeting you in a better world adieu best of wives and best of women embrace all my darling children for me yours ever aah this was only delivered to her somewhat later on he was taken back to New York taken to the house of a surgeon the surgeon pretty quickly recognized that that it was a mortal wound he lingered for about a day he called they called a pastor who he knew the pastor said well I'd like you to give you the last rites but dueling is right out so I can't do it so they called another one and he said well I'd love to but dueling is right out I can't do it so they went back to the first one finally eventually convinced him he sat down with him he said do you you know do you renounce the idea of dueling Hamilton said yes Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton was called she brought their children who stayed with him until he died it was devastating for her although then she lived until about into the 1850s as a person doing she did a lot of social work she did a lot she was very prominent figure she was but always kind of living in the memory of Hamilton but I think that that that note about like the only wood that I could avoid this would be something that would make me less of a man and this less of less worthy to be with you so once again it's part of that kind of contradictory element to Hamilton's character the intense rationalism the intense scholarship but also this commitment to honor this commitment to to the defense of one's reputation the commitment to building one's own reputation that make a little more sense in the context of the 18th century right I mean it's sort of it seemed a little more normal back then like who like I can't imagine fighting a duel and my feeling is if people want to push my reputation well I don't care that much about it but for Hamilton it was I mean you know if people want to go around and say look there's certain kinds of things that I would not let stand but but if people want to say despicable things about me like I'm a jerk and I have no principles like well I can live with that but this is why so if you want to look at that the effects that Hamilton had on the country the formation of a central government with the power to regulate commerce that is that is essential and why is it essential for a lot of reasons think about this the civil rights legislation of the 1960s 1950s in 1979 teen 6 TS predominantly was not based on a reading of the 14th amendment of the Equal Protection Clause the 14 of em we probably should have been but on a very contentious reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause the reason that civil rights legislation happened fundamentally was the argument was if you have black truckers driving down into the South they have to be able to use public facilities they can't be forbidden from having places to stay places to eat places to go to the bathroom and if they are that's a restraint of trade so think about the way that the government with the unitary power to regulate trade think about that effect also McCulloch versus Maryland 1819 this is rather later than Hamilton's life but in that decision the principle was established that the government has implied powers it does it doesn't solely have the powers explicitly enumerated in the Constitution it also has powers implied to make those things happen so if if it has the power to do something it also has the implied powers to have the means to make it happen and this is a kind of centralist federalist idea that's very it's the sort of actual enumeration and law of the Federalist Papers in a lot of respects a system of banking and debt management and the power of the executive that's being discussed a lot these days but we have a system in which the executive has a lot of leeway now there were some people who thought if you look at the French Revolution the French revolutionary said the the legislative branch should have most the power and the other two should be whatever Hamilton's view was the executive branch should have most of the power and the other two there should be checks and balances he was all for checks and balances when it came down to it but the executive needs to be able to get things done in order to make the you know because he was a military man you know you can't if you're running a battalion you know you don't you can't go out there'd be like okay so I think we should go off this way everyone who wants to go that way like raise your hand so he very much was in that sort of model of how a state ought to be run but this is I mean Hamilton I think for these reasons is a really fascinating character and and one who has in a lot of respects a much more profound effect than than a lot of the other founding fathers I mean Jefferson okay the Declaration of Independence and and and all his work as a diplomat the sort of rejigging of the country after the after the era of Washington certainly was was was crucially important Washington himself and his generalship of the Continental Army Hamilton was part of all that stuff but he also created a kind of structure a kind of framework onto which the the nascent American state was built and which allowed it to survive as a new way of organizing as it was a new political entity in the world I mean there's a reason why they don't come around every day and lots more get started than ever succeed so or that ever persist so that Hamilton if you want to look at why the American Republic is what it is today and look at figures and the founding fathers who influenced that I think it's arguable that Hamilton has to be viewed as foremost among the founding fathers in building the state that we have today in this country all right well thank you for coming out [Applause] you

Channel: MentorPublicLib

Views: 53,558

Keywords: Alexander Hamilton, Mentor Public Library, US History, Revolutionary War

Id: U5EtVIhfHN4

Length: 80min 45sec (4845 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018