Hamilton and the Gossip Mill

Any account of Hamilton, taking into account the biographical approaches, must reflect on the importance of gossip in his biography. Gossip as a marker of sexual behavior, also as a marker of military loyalty and professional maneuvering in the army.

Narratives of Robert Troup and Hercules Mulligan

Two sources for the young Hamilton are collected in "Alexander Hamilton Viewed by His Friends: The Narratives of Robert Troup and Hercules Mulligan," Nathan Schachner, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 4.2 (April 1947), 203-25.

According to Schachner, most of these narratives (one by Mulligan, two by Troup) were prepared for John C. Hamilton, A's son, for his father-worshipping biography. Mulligan was an Irish immigrant who worked as a spy for Washington during the British occupation of NY; his notes were written between 1810 and 1815. Troup was a life-long friend of AH, and wrote one narrative for a failed biographer (Rev. Dr. John Mason) and two more for John C. Hamilton. Schachner notes some errors in dating and detail, and writes that Troup was "an arrant gossip."

Mulligan narrative, highlights:
Hamilton boarded with HM's family. It was AH who anonymously suggested a plan to GW about "the best means to draw off the [Continental] army" from Long Island. AH's famous initial political essay, the refutation of the Westchester Farmer, was widely attributed to Governor Livingstone. AH was indignant about whig attacks on tory presses, on the grounds that "our neighbours should [presume to] intrude upon our rights" (211). He recounts the story of saving King's College President Cooper.

Troup narrative, I, highlights:
AH was part of a college club devoted to debate, speaking, writing. AH, as a young man, was extremely religious, well "versed in the history of England," and antagonistic toward a number of "ministerial Champions of the day," all of whom were clergymen (see list 213). The response to the Westchester Farmer was attributed to John Jay. Much of AH's publications were presented by John Holt, whig printer. AH dabbled in poetry, but ms. was lost during the war.

AH writes a treatise on the study of law. AH was a great lawyer, but "not a learned Case Lawyer"--that is, good on the big issues, bad on the details. Writes pamphlets to defend post-war Tories, signed under the name Phocion.

AH's hatred of Burr came from a conversation in which Burr told AH to use the army to overthrow the pathetic Constitutional government. AH takes offence (216-17).

Recounts conspiracy to frame AH in May 1803, in relation to dealings with the French in Louisiana (217-18)

Troup's narrative, II:
Samuel Loudon as another of AH's printers. AH's personal poverty; Troup lends him money frequently. AH had drafted an early version of Washington's Farewell address near the end of his first term. As a lawyer, AH works to discourage suits, seeks compromises; in court, "apt to be prolix" (221).

Was AH a monarchist? No! But get the reason: "He never had the least idea that we had materials, in the country, at all suitable for the construction of a monarchy; and consequently he never harboured any intention whatever of attempting that form of government" (221).

Troup's narrative, III:
Detailed account of the so-called Conway Cabal, in which General Conway and General Gates try to oust Washington early in the War; Troup and Hamilton were accused of exposing Conway/Gates to Washington, but it was actually General Wilkinson.

Basic Outline of Youth, per McDonald

Birth: January 11, 1757.

Parents: Rachel Faucett Lavien, daughter of a planter and physician in Nevis, wife of planter and merchant John Michael Lavien, with whom she has a son, Peter. Lavien has his wife imprisoned, and upon her release she makes it back to Nevis where she meets James Hamilton, of noble background (fourth son of a Scottish petty noble), a failed merchant. Rachel and James cohabit close to 15 years, having two sons, A and James (older, born 1753). Lavien divorces Rachel in 1759, but Rachel later learns, when she attempts to marry James, that the divorce terms preclude her remarriage. James leaves the family c. 1765, when AH is eight; he doesn't return.

Education: first, working as clerk and manager for Beckman & Cruger, a wholesale import-export firm in Christiansted (B and C are New Yorkers). He gains an education informally, from a Jewish tutor, from Rachel's books (we know she owned at least 34); he's an admirer of Pope and Plutarch.

Adolescent crisis: A is orphaned when his mother dies in 1768; his half-brother Peter Lavien claims the estate. The Hamilton boys live with Peter Lytton, Rachel's nephew, but he commits suicide; A is taken in by Thomas Stevens, father of a friend. He writes his friend Edward Stevens in 1769 (he is 12 years old) a famous letter in which he "contemn[s] the grov'ling and condition of a Clerk or the like," insists he's "no Philosopher," and "wish[es] there was a War." McDonald nicely analyzes this letter: (1) AH doesn't want to accept his lot in life (being a Philosopher), (2) doesn't want "Preferment" (unearned favors), (3) despises subordination (grov'ling), and (4) views War as the sphere in which social movement is possible (see page 9). In McDonald's view, AH becomes an island-hater, despising all that the Caribbean stands for: "He despised laziness, disorderliness, unpredictability, impropriety, procrastination, drunkenness, sloth--the ways of the islands..." (10).

Sponsor: Rev. Hugh Knox, a Princeton-educated Ulster Presbyterian, minister and doctor, slavery-hater, New Light. He helps AH get to New Jersey, where he hopes to enter Princeton. The NJ circle includes Wm Livingstone (then governor of NJ) and Elias Boudinot (AH lives with them for a time), and perhaps John Jay (Livingstone's son-in-law).

College: A meets entrance requirements to Princeton at the Elizabethtown Academy, but calling upon Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, head of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, he asks for admission with the proviso that he be allowed to move from class to class at his own rate. This request is refused, so AH ends up at Columbia (King's College), where, in FM's words, "he virtually completed the course of instruction in less than two and a half years" (12).

The Revolution: is unfolding around the new immigrant; the Boston Tea Party occurs two months after Hamilton enters Columbia, and the first Continental Congress is meeting before the end of his first year. AH jumps into the political scene, writing two political tracts (published anonymously) in the winter of 1774-75: he is 17-18 years old. (As McDonald notes, Jefferson was 31, Adams 39.) He also organizes a volunteer drill company and in a short time is captain of an artillery company with 68 men under his command.

The Mob: In this context, AH first comes against a mob, out to destroy the home of Myles Cooper, president of King's. AH intercepts the mob, distracts it with "a political harangue," giving Cooper time to escape.

Summarized from McDonald, first chapter.

The Young Revolutionary

Forest McDonald is a true admirer, and presents his overview of AH's life in glowing terms: inspired by fame, he ultimately became a social revolutionary. "His vision was grander [than that of the typical, political revolutionary of America]: he sought to transform the American people into free, opulent, and law-abiding citizens, through the instrumentality of a limited republican government, on the basis of consent, and in the face of powerful vested interests in the status quo. The others were content merely to effect a political revolution. He set out to effect what amounted to a social revolution" (3).

AH was also committed to the markeplace and the money nexus: "What distinguished the industrious minority from other Americans was that they measured worth and achievement in terms of money and worked to obtain money, whereas the others disdained to work for money...and made do with a cumbersom system of personal obligations, barter, and fiat credit" (4). It never occurs to FM that those not embracing the money economy were doing anything other than "making do," and might have a moral argument against a world of commerce. "To transform the estabilshed order," he idealistically ventriloquizes, "all that needed to be done was to monetize the whole--to rig the rules of the game so that money would become the universal measure of the value of things. For money is oblivious to class, status, color, and inherited social position; money is the ultimate, neutral, impersonal arbiter" (4).

At least this view has the virtue of presenting AH as what he was: a capitalist revolutionary.

Hamilton Hagiology

Every biographer of Hamilton approaches the subject matter defensively, knowing that AH has been despised by the right people, admired by the wrong people, for better or for worse.

Chernow is no different, quoting Noah Webster:

Hamilton's "ambition, pride, and overbearing temper" destined him "to be the evil genius of this country" (qtd 3).

or Henry Adams:

"From the first to the last words he wrote, I read always the same Napoleonic kind of adventuredom" (qtd 3).

or Woodrow Wilson:

"a very great man, but not a great American" (qtd 3).

And against them, Teddy Roosevelt,

"the most brilliant American statesman who ever lived, possessing the loftiest and keenest intellect of his time" (qtd 4).

And here is Chernow splitting the difference: "If Jefferson provided the essential poetry of American political discourse, Hamilton established the prose of American statecraf"t. No other founder articulated such a clear and prescient vision of America's future political, military, and economic strength or crafted such ingenious mechanisms to bind the nation together....Except for Washington, nobody stood closer to the center of American politics from 1776 to 1800 or cropped up at more turning points" (4).

And this is all to say that to assess Hamilton is to assess America: "Hamilton argued for a dynamic executive branch and an independent judiciary, along with a professional military, a central bank, and an advanced financial system....to repudiate his legacy is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world" (6).

Insightful comments here, echoing Forest McDonald's more overtly ideological drum-beating: to analyze Hamilton as representative Founding Father is to recast our portrait of early America in terms of economic theory, political institution-building, militarism, and the revision of the court system. And there is also AH's active involvement with publishing and newspaper-building, which makes him something of the true expression of the Franklin myth.

[Note: Chernow claims to have found "nearly fifty previously undiscovered essays written by Hamilton himself" (6).]