Not Your Father's Founders (10 page)

Caribbean Island of Nevis
January 11, 1755 or 1757−July 12, 1804
Duel Personalities

Of all the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton had the largest hill to climb to reach success. Most of them were born into aristocratic families. Hamilton was a poor, illegitimate child whose father lived thousands of miles away.

Alexander Hamilton's mother, Rachel Faucett Lavien, was married to John Lavien. They lived on the Danish island of St. Croix. Rachel and John divorced in 1759. According to Danish law, she could not remarry. Rachel moved to Nevis, where she met James Hamilton. They produced Alexander and moved to St. Croix in 1765. So, by a quirk of law, Alexander was an illegitimate child. Shortly thereafter, James abandoned his family, leaving Rachel to rely on friends and family members for financial support.

After she died in 1768, islanders saw to it that Hamilton learned to read, write, and learn the mercantile business. Once they determined that he was exceptionally bright, they sent him to New York for a proper education at King's College (now Columbia University). He was fifteen at the time.

Hamilton arrived in New York when debates over independence versus loyalty to Britain were reaching a fever pitch. He got into the spirit of the debates in a pamphlet battle with a loyalist who was writing under the pseudonym “The Farmer.” Hamilton rebutted “The Farmer's” arguments, using the name “Friend to America.” The die was cast: Hamilton was firmly in the patriots' corner, and he did not hesitate to blast Parliament.

While engaging in debate, Hamilton was also preparing for war. He immersed himself in a study of artillery warfare. His self-training paid off quickly: Hamilton joined an artillery regiment in March 1776, and received an officer's commission as captain of the Provincial Company of Artillery. The title sounded more impressive than the job actually was. Before he could resolve all his logistics challenges, such as outfitting, arming, and training his troops, Hamilton was embroiled in the war.

General Washington moved his troops from Boston to New York and the battles around the city involved Hamilton's New York Artillery Regiment. He turned out to be a fine artillery officer.

For the next few years, Hamilton fought in battle after battle. He took a position as an aide to General Washington, but they had a falling out because Washington would not give Hamilton his own command.

Washington relented eventually. Hamilton had his own command during the siege of Yorktown in 1781, where he led the Americans in the final attack on the British position. After the campaign ended, the fighting subsided and the need for an active army diminished. Hamilton ended his active military career as a result, and returned to New York to study law. He was appointed to Congress and saw another side of the military: the lack of financial support for the army. Hamilton served one year in the Continental Congress, then concentrated on his law practice. In his “spare” time he established the Bank of New York.

Hamilton did not stay on the political sidelines for long. He saw a need for centralization and checks and balances in government. Consequently, he was named a delegate from New York to the 1786 Annapolis Convention, which required a good chunk of his time. The Annapolis Convention was convened to discuss the Articles of Confederation, the United States' first attempt at governing itself. The result of the gathering was a recommendation to forget the articles and write a new Constitution.

After the convention failed to accomplish its goal, a call went out for delegates to a Constitutional Convention. Hamilton served as a delegate. He helped draft the Constitution and wrote many of the “Federalist Papers,” eighty-five essays written under pseudonyms between October 1787 and August 1788 by Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison in support of ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

After the Constitution was ratified, Hamilton served in the Congress of the Confederation in 1788−89. But Washington called on him once again, naming him the nation's first secretary of the treasury.

Hamilton believed in a strong federal government. He maintained that the U.S. Constitution—which he had helped write—allowed the federal government to fund the national debt, assume state debts, and create its own bank. He proposed that these programs would be funded by a tariff on imports and an excise tax on whiskey.

It wasn't Hamilton's controversial views about the role of the federal government that did him in. It was a foolish moral lapse that led to his resignation from his position and ended his public service career.

Hamilton was the male star of the nation's first major political sex scandal. He had a two-year affair with Maria Lewis Reynolds, the wife of one of his acquaintances, James Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds knew about the affair; he used it to blackmail Hamilton, with Maria's complicity. Hamilton made at least two payments to satisfy Reynolds's demands. Eventually, Hamilton admitted his role in the affair to two congressional investigators, James Monroe and Frederick Muhlenberg. They handled the matter discreetly, and it was relegated to old news. The federal government had weathered its first real political scandal.

After the investigation ended, Hamilton went back to his law practice and never held national office again. But he kept interfering in national political affairs. He helped engineer Thomas Jefferson's election as president in 1800 in order to spite his old nemesis, John Adams, who had no love for Hamilton.

Adams and Hamilton engaged in a constant struggle for the leadership of the Federalist Party. During Adams's presidency, Hamilton sought constantly to advise his cabinet members, which aggravated the president. Hamilton exacerbated the rift between them close to the election of 1800 when he attacked Adams's policies in a document intended for private circulation, titled
The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States
.

In the document, Hamilton included confidential information about Adams's cabinet activities. Aaron Burr, Hamilton's legal and political adversary and Jefferson's vice-presidential running mate, published a copy of the treatise without Hamilton's knowledge. Burr's duplicity heightened the animosity between him and Hamilton.

In the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson and Aaron Burr were tied in the number of electoral votes. In the House of Representatives, which would cast the deciding vote, Hamilton campaigned against Burr to help get Jefferson elected. Four years later, he again worked to keep Burr out of the White House.

Burr took exception to Hamilton's meddling in the presidential elections. He challenged Hamilton to a duel on the pretext of some alleged insults Hamilton had hurled at Burr. They met on the Weehawken, New Jersey, dueling diamond on July 11, 1804.

Burr shot Hamilton, who died the next day. Burr killed more than a man; he killed a national treasure. Hamilton's service to the United States had been extraordinary. Sadly, the man who had done so much to build his adopted country was done in by an affair and a duel.

Braintree, Massachusetts
January 12, 1737−October 8, 1793
Did He Really Say That?

As a young man, John Hancock was not interested in politics. Running a business was his primary interest. After graduating from Harvard in 1754, Hancock began an apprenticeship at his uncle's retail and shipping business, which he inherited in 1764. By then he was increasingly opposed to the growing number of British acts aimed at raising tax revenues from the colonists.

In 1764, Hancock cofounded the local Society to Encourage Trade. Subsequently, he was elected to one of Boston's seven selectmen seats in 1765. When news of the impending Stamp Act reached the colonies, Hancock seemed uninterested. He had other problems to deal with: His balance sheet was a mess, he had very little cash, and his suppliers refused to let him operate on credit.

By the time the Stamp Act became effective, Hancock owed one supplier alone £19,000. American trade was stagnant, and merchants vigorously protested the Stamp Act. At this point, his financial distress was great enough that Hancock joined the growing number of protesters. Samuel Adams befriended Hancock, supported his bid for selectman, introduced him to members of the patriot clubs, and invited him to a few secret meetings. Suddenly, John found himself in a position to exert influence. Other merchants looked to him for guidance.

Hancock informed his agents in London that he would no longer import British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed, which it was, on March 18, 1766.

Hancock became an active leader in the fight against British taxation policies. Tensions came to a head on June 10, 1768, when British commissioners seized his sloop
Liberty
, alleging that he had not paid taxes on his entire cargo of wine.

A mob assembled on the wharf to support Hancock. As the drama played out, the mob became more agitated and rowdy. Patriots seized a boat owned by one of the commissioners and burned it near Hancock's mansion as their leaders urged the crowd to “take up arms and be free.” Hancock helped disperse the crowd before it became more riled. The
Liberty
affair bolstered his growing popularity.

The war between Hancock and the customs commissioners was not over. On November 3, 1768, he was arrested for smuggling. John Adams defended Hancock in court. Despite irregular proceedings by the prosecution, Hancock was acquitted and became more of a public hero than ever.

The stress of the court proceedings over his arrest for smuggling and the public horror over the Boston Massacre convinced him that inflammatory politics were not the best way to fight British taxation policies—until Britain passed the Tea Act of 1773.

The tea tax was Parliament's effort to save the faltering East India Company, an English joint stock firm, by selling its tea in Boston at a bargain price. Bostonians protested the act by dressing up as Indians and dumping the tea into the harbor on the night of December 16, 1773. Hancock did not play a direct role in the protest. He did attend a meeting earlier that night at which he spoke and told everyone there to do what they thought was right.

Tensions in Boston ran high. In 1775, General Thomas Gage, the new military royal governor of Massachusetts, ordered his soldiers to fortify the town's defenses and canceled a General Assembly meeting of the Provincial Congress slated to convene in nearby Salem.

Defiant congressional delegates met anyway. They established the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, charged with forming a 15,000-man army and securing supplies, arms, and artillery. Hancock, convinced war was imminent, settled his debts with his London agent, and went into the revolution still cash poor, but ready for action.

Hancock was reelected to the Provincial Congress and selected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. His activities set him even more firmly in the sights of the occupying British forces. General Thomas Gage ordered the seizure of the Boston Safety Committee's munitions. The stage for war was set.

Hancock was elected president of the Second Continental Congress. He successfully walked the fine line between the radicals who desired independence and moderates who favored reconciliation. In the process, he incurred the enmity of John Adams and Samuel Adams, who tried to curtail his growing power and influence. They believed that Hancock's vanity and lavish lifestyle did not set a good example for people who were struggling to establish a new country and sacrificing material goods and personal wealth in the process.

Hancock learned by May 1776 that he had been deliberately excluded from the Massachusetts lower house and the Governor's Council. Seeing the mood of the times and the radicals moving into popular sentiment, he became an ardent convert to the cause of independence.

Hancock's father-in-law, Edmund Quincy, advised him after the British left Boston that “Nothing will answer the end so well as a Declaration to all the world for absolute Independency.” Hancock took that advice, as his large signature on the Declaration demonstrates. While he is purported to have said, “There, I guess King George will be able to read that” about his signature, there is no definitive proof that he actually uttered those words or anything like them.

After Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, Hancock returned to Boston to renew his political aspirations and earn some money. He feared that he might be attacked en route from Philadelphia to Boston. So, in a typical example of the Hancock extravagances that riled John and Samuel Adams, he requested an armed escort from George Washington, who provided him with fifteen horsemen.

Shortly after his return, Hancock was elected as governor of Massachusetts by a landslide. Hancock spent his gubernatorial career largely as a figurehead, with enough sense to let the powers of the legislature have their way.

Hancock served additional terms as governor of Massachusetts and was elected to the Massachusetts convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution. He had hopes of serving as the first president of the United States, but realized the national political current would not support him.

His career ended prematurely. Hancock was fifty-six years old when he died, ending his career as a master politician. His place in history will always rest on his large signature on the Declaration of Independence.