Alexander Hamilton
born in the West Indies in 1757.
During his early years, he lived on this small island with his mother and brother. Hamilton’s mother died when he was thirteen. He continued living in the West Indies and worked as a clerk for a company that traded with the New England states. He also continued reading because there was no money for a formal education. He tried his hand at writing. He wrote an article about a hurricane and the people of the island thought that he needed more education so they sent him to the colonies.
When he was about fifteen or sixteen, he arrived in Boston. He then moved to New Jersey, where he prepared to enter college in what is today Prinston University. He made a request of this college to allow him to exelerate his studies to get out of college early but his request was denied. He then went to Columbia College in New York where his request was accepted.
At first Hamilton was for the revolutionin the colonies, however, he did not agree with the loyalist receiving inappropriate treatment from the colonist.
He did fight in the Revolutionary War. In 1777 he became an aide to George Washington and was known to have done much of his correspondence for about four years.
At the end of the war and after the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton became very frustrated with the lack of importance of the federal government. The federal government had no right to collect taxes from the state or a centralized currency. Also the current army was not receiving adequate funds to support their needs.
In 1782 he was elected to the Congress of the Confederation by the state of New York.
During the next several years, different regiments of soldiers conveyed their sentiments of unhappiness due to the lack of back pay for those who had served in the War. They were often called mobs.
During the Confederation Congress, Hamilton drafted a resolution to change the Articles of the Confederation because he was dissatisfied with the decentralized government and the inability to get funds for the new nation.
In 1783 he resigned from Congress and returned to New York. Here he studied and soon became a lawyer. In 1784 he founded the Bank of New York, which still exists today.
He returned to the Constitutional Congress where many of his ideas became a final part to the Constitution that governs our country today.
Hamilton’s famous writings were known as the Federalist Papers. These papers were a collection of essays to help the Constitution become ratified by the states.
George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as his first Secretary of the Treasury in 1789. He worked for the first five years of Washington’s presidency to establish the Treasury Department to have a government that was backed by a significant financial basis. During this time the two party system began to form with Hamilton leading the Federalist and Thomas Jefferson leading the Democrat/Republican Party.
In 1801 Hamilton established the New York Evening Post which today is the New York Post. Hamilton was known to have been very verbal in Congress when he felt that there was a problem that needed to be solved which was in the best interest of the country’s finances.
In 1804 Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr had a duel over a major argument both had been having for a time. It is thought that Hamilton fired first but did not hit his opponent. Burr fired and hit Hamilton. Hamilton died from his wounds the next day.
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