Alexander Hamilton (1755?/57?-1804) was born on the West Indian island of Nevis and moved to St. Croix with his mother and older brother, James, in 1765. Poverty-stricken and illegitimate, he was sent to North America for an education through charitable contributions from a small group of supporters. After hasty preparatory work at an academy, Hamilton enrolled at King's College (later Columbia University) in New York City and rapidly became involved in America's burgeoning war with Britain, first as a pamphleteer and then as captain of an artillery company.
Leaving college without a degree in 1776, he led his company into action in New York and New Jersey, coming to the attention of General George Washington, who appointed him an aide-de-camp in 1777. Although desperate to earn glory on the battlefield, he served most of the war by Washington's side, drafting letters, assisting in administrative duties, and acting as an emissary; his frustration with the powerlessness and inefficiency of the wartime Continental Congress spurred the centralizing focus of his later policies. Marrying Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of the wealthy New York landowner Philip Schuyler, in December 1780, he left Washington's service a few months later, the result of a spat born of Hamilton's impatience with his desk job and Washington's frayed nerves. Washington finally granted him a field command storming a redoubt at Yorktown in 1781. Retiring from active service after the British surrender, he dedicated himself to developing a law practice in New York City.
Throughout this time, Hamilton gave much thought to the failures and flaws of the Articles of Confederation, devising detailed plans for reforming American government and finance. He was soon at the forefront of efforts to revise the Articles, and his ardent nationalism was a driving force behind the calling of the Federal Convention of 1787. Outvoted by the other two New York delegates to the Convention—both opposed to the emerging Constitution—Hamilton forged ahead afterward, investing his full energies in New York's ratification debates. As part of this effort, he planned a series of newspaper essays in defense of the proposed Constitution, inviting James Madison and John Jay to join him. The resulting Federalist essays appeared in various New York newspapers from October 1787 to August 1788. Hamilton authored approximately fifty-one of the eighty-five essays.
With the launching of the new government in 1789, President Washington invited Hamilton to be the nation's first secretary of the Treasury; he was confirmed in the position on 11 September 1789. Here, Hamilton's dedication to fostering an energetic national government came to fruition. Given the enormous task of bringing order to the nation's disordered finances, he forged a national financial infrastructure through a combination of administrative organization and bold policies. His three-pronged financial program proposed the national assumption of state war debts, the creation of a National Bank, and national support of manufacturing; he also encouraged close economic ties with British manufacturers and trade. Amidst a population fearful of slipping back into despotism, Hamilton's policies provoked enormous controversy, ultimately contributing to the rise of national political factions.
Hamilton resigned as secretary of the Treasury in 1795 and returned to his law practice, but he remained at the center of the Federalist cause for several years, privately advising members of President John Adams's cabinet; during the 1798 Quasi-War with France, he ardently advocated building America's armed forces in preparation for war. Adams's peace efforts with France enraged Hamilton for reasons of both policy and personality, driving him to write an injudicious pamphlet attacking Adams's Federalist candidacy for president in 1800 and promoting Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in his stead. By dividing the Federalists, the pamphlet helped to raise Hamilton's two foremost political enemies—Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr—to executive power and destroyed his political influence.
Hamilton's final years were melancholy. In 1801, shortly before the completion of Hamilton's Upper Manhattan country home, the Grange—the first house that he owned—his family life was ripped apart when the oldest of his eight children, nineteen-year-old Philip, was killed in a duel defending his father's name. Three years later, Hamilton opposed Burr's candidacy for governor of New York; after fifteen years of political opposition, Burr responded by challenging Hamilton to a duel. The two men met on the heights of Weehawken, New Jersey, on the morning of 11 July 1804. Mortally wounded, Hamilton died the next day. The nation mourned the passing of an ever-controversial but essential political leader whose policies and vision shaped the character and future of the American nation.