Founding Fathers: Complete Biographies, Their Articles, Historical & Political Documents. Emory Speer
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Alexander Hamilton was born. Many great men have been precocious children. The astonishing precocity of Hamilton rivaled the growth of those tropical flowers perfuming the zephyrs that caressed the soft tresses of the little child. We find him when twelve years old a clerk in a counting-room, and in the familiar letter to his friend Edward Stephens, at that tender age it is discovered that he is already the possessor of a vocabulary well nigh Johnsonian. "I contemn," he writes, "the 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." So marked was his capacity at this time, that by friends or relatives he was entrusted with the sole management of a mercantile business of importance, and it cannot be doubted that the familiarity he thus acquired with business methods, and accounting, had the most important influence, when it devolved upon him to organize the Treasury, and to utilize the untouched resources of our country for the establishment of national credit. Indeed, I have long been convinced that no single accomplishment is of more practical value to the lawyer or statesman, than a precise knowledge of accounting and the methods of successful business men.
The genius of this remarkable youth was soon appreciated by those who were concerned in his welfare. By a judicious liberality, for which they will deserve the gratitude of generations yet unborn, they made provision for his education. In his fifteenth year he left St. Nevis and arrived in Boston in October, 1772. He was advised to enter the grammar school at Elizabethtown, and at the end of the year he entered King's, now Columbia College. There he had the assistance of a private tutor. He labored incessantly. In addition to his regular studies he indulged his natural inclination and made continual excursions into the domains of finance, government, and politics.
Hamilton was born twelve years after Jefferson. Wellington and Napoleon were born in the same month. Of the latter conjunction "Providence," said Louis XVIII, "owed us that counterpoise."
While Hamilton was thus in the words of his boyish letter striving "to prepare for futurity," there came in his affairs that tide which leads on to fortune. It was the rising tide of the American Revolution. The lad had been born in an English dependency. While it is probable that he had listened to the declamations of the Boston patriots, he was now in New York Where the Tories were in control. It is characteristic of the man, as he declares himself, that he had formed strong prejudices on the Ministerial side, until he became convinced by the superior force of the arguments in favor of the Colonial cause. On the 6th of July, 1774, a great open air meeting was held under the auspices of the patriot leaders. Hamilton was in attendance listening to the speakers.
In the summer of the same year, perhaps in the same month, on the other side of the Atlantic, another youngster of Scottish antecedents, clothed in the regimentals of the Scots Royals, strolled into an English court at the assizes of a country town Where Lord Mansfield was sitting. The Chief Justice, noticing the uniform, invited the young officer to a seat on the bench, briefly stated the principal points of the case, and offered other gratifying civilities. The subaltern listened with the liveliest interest. The counsel were among the leaders of the circuit, but it occurred to the military visitor in the course of the argument how much more clearly and forcibly he could have presented certain points and urged them on the minds of the jury. This incident became the inception of the surpassing career in advocacy of Lord Thomas Erskine, who after the lapse of four generations, comprising the Augustan age of our profession, is still facile princeps among the advocates of the English speaking bar.
Like Erskine, Hamilton was not satisfied with the patriotic orators in the "Fields" Conscious of his own powers, the student pressed through the crowd to the platform and in a moment stood before the people. An accomplished biographer states that the populace stared at the audacious boy, and then nature asserted itself and his words flowed unchecked. Thrilled with the cogency and power of the young patriot's appeal, his vast audience whispered one to the other the significant words, "It is a collegian, it is a collegian."
He took no step backward. But two years previously George the Third had exclaimed, "Junius is known and will write no more." This proved to be true. But the compositions of that master of style had been indelibly impressed upon those who spoke and wrote the English tongue. The written disputations of the day were expressed in pamphlets, or after the fashion of Junius, by essays addressed to the printer. Hamilton soon became a vigorous tractarian for the patriots. Two pamphlets he wrote; both were ascribed to men of distinguished ability, and when their authorship was disclosed the young writer was at once famous. But Hamilton had no purpose "to prepare for futurity" by the pen alone. He soon joined a volunteer corps. In addition to this, he almost immediately evinced a characteristic, essential then, and more essential now, to every leader of thought or action in our country — the detestation and abhorrence of the mob. With the rule of the mob, the reign of the law and the lawyer is gone. A British line-of-battle ship, the Asia, in the harbor, had opened fire on the town. The Liberty Boys could not get at the ship, and rushed en masse to King's College to wreak their vengeance on a more convenient and perhaps less formidable object, Dr. Cooper, the Tory president of that seat of letters. But they found their leader Hamilton, and Troup, his lifelong friend, on the steps of the building ready to protect their preceptor. Hamilton proceeded to address the crowd and to denounce their lawless conduct. Dr. Cooper, who it seems did not hear or comprehend the nature of Hamilton's harangue, or who perhaps recalled the classic aphorism, "Timeo Danaos et dana ferentes," from an upper story warned the mob not to be guided by such a madman as his pupil, and then prudently betook himself to flight.
When the New York convention ordered the organization of a battery of artillery, Hamilton sought the command. He was now but nineteen years of age, but a rigid technical examination disclosed his familiarity with that difficult arm, and he received the appointment. By the excellence of his drill he won the admiration of General Greene. This distinguished officer introduced the young artillerist to Washington, to whom subsequently he was to render services inestimable. At the disastrous battle of Long Island with great courage he aided to cover the retreat, and to save the patriot army. At White Plains he won further renown by the admirable manner in which he handled his guns. He volunteered to recover Fort Washington by storm. In the painful marching and countermarching of the patriots through New Jersey he was ever present. He shared in the victory over the Hessians at Trenton, and at Princeton With his veteran command, now reduced to twenty-five gunners, he upheld his reputation as a brilliant and gallant artillerist.
His literary reputation had now become widely known. He now seemed to be far more valuable on the staff than in the line. This with his proven excellence in the profession of arms led, on March 1, 1777, to his promotion to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, When he was barely twenty years old. He was now appointed as one of Washington's aides. Henceforward and almost to the end of the Revolutionary struggle, in the Words of his friend the gallant Laurens of South Carolina, he "held the pen of Junius for Washington's army."
I must not omit to mention that We find in Hamilton's life confirmation strong of that popular conviction, especially among the better half of humanity, that the greatest men are ever the most susceptible to the influence of feminine charms. When in 1779, Washington after Saratoga had sent his young officer to request reinforcements from General Horatio Gates, Hamilton had met at Albany an apparition altogether more agreeable than that doughty and self-satisfied Warrior. This was Miss Elizabeth Schuyler. This charming Woman was the daughter of the friend of Washington, the distinguished general of that name. The acquaintance Was renewed in the spring of 1780 and ripened into an engagement. The marriage was not unreasonably delayed. Hamilton was now connected with one of those famous Dutch families, of a race Whose indomitable courage reclaimed their beloved Fatherland from the waves of the North Sea, whose irresistible passion for civil and religious liberty had also expelled from its borders the merciless and intolerant bigots of a cruel and alien race. Our country owes much to the fighting strain of those brave Hollanders, and will doubtless continue, for some time to come, to profit from their passion for practical and effective statecraft, and their native instinct for the construction of works of irrigation, and the excavation of canals.
Time forbids that I should give further narrative of the military record of the young officer who became America's greatest constructive statesman.