CHAPTER XI.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

THE MASTER OF POLITICAL SAGACITY.

PATRIOTS of exalted worth appeared in the Colonial period of our history, and signalized their respective merits in achieving enterprises of comprehensive and enduring utility. Their successors of Revolutionary renown were no less dignified in talent and untarnished in worth. Looking at the era of the formation and adoption of the Constitution of these United States, and the civil administration of Washington, next to the great President himself no name shines fairer than that of Alexander Hamilton. He was born January 11th, 1757, in the island of Nevis the most beautiful of the British West Indies. His father was a Scotchman, his mother a French lady, descended from that noble race, the Huguenots. This happy blending of contrasted elements in the original source of his blood and character, solidity and enthusiasm, sagacity to project theories and facility in their execution, will be exemplified in all his subsequent career. The father was a merchant, but his business was disastrous, and he died in penury at St. Vincents. The mother possessed

elegant manners and a strong intellect, which made a vivid impression on her son, though she, too, died when he was but a child.

Like most men who are destined to become truly great, young Hamilton was early left to buffet adverse storms and in the midst of difficulties to be the architect of his own fortunes. By the favor of some persons related to his mother, the otherwise unprotected child was taken to Santa Cruz, where he received the rudiments of early education. He soon learned to speak and write the French language fluently, and was taught to repeat the Decalogue in Hebrew, at the school of a Jewess, when so small that he was placed standing by her side on a table. But his education at this period was conducted chiefly under the supervision of the Rev. Dr. Knox, a distinguished Presbyterian clergyman, who gave to the mind of his aspiring pupil a religious bias as lasting as his life. In 1769, he was placed as a clerk in the counting-house of Mr. Nicholas Cruger, a wealthy and highly respectable merchant of Santa Cruz. By his skill and assiduity as a clerk, young Hamilton soon won the attention and confidence of his patron, and at the same time betrayed in his favorite studies and private correspondence an ambition that soared far above his mercantile pursuits. Before he was thirteen years old, he wrote as follows to a young friend at school:

"I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station: I mean, to prepare the wav for futurity."

Herein gleams the true fire of a noble youth, love of fame and the strongest attachment to untarnished integrity, guarantees of splendid succcess, which in this instance were never disproved by facts.

While in Mr. Cruger's office, the predestined statesman appropriated every hour he could command from recreation and repose, to mathematics, ethics, chemistry, biography, history, and knowledge of every kind. Some of his youthful compositions were published, and their promise was so extraordinary that his relatives and friends resolved to send him to New York for the purpose of maturing his education. He arrived in this country in October, 1772, and was placed at a grammar school in New Jersey, under the instruction of Francis Barber, of Elizabethtown, who afterward became a distinguished officer in the American service. At the close of 1773, Hamilton entered King's (now Columbia) College, where he soon "gave extraordinary displays of genius and energy of mind."

In college Hamilton never relaxed the severe application to study which his natural tastes and glowing ambition required; nor was he unmindful of the storm gathering beyond the quiet cloisters wherein he prosecuted scientific research and classic lore with hallowed delight. His penetrating mind, versatile pen, and powerful living tones were from the first employed in defending colonial opposition to the acts of the British Parliament. In December, 1774, and February, 1775, he wrote anonymously several elaborate pamphlets in favor of the pacific measures of defence recommended by Congress.