RON. CHERNOW

Alexander Hamilton was an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean who overcame all the odds to become George Washington's aide-de-camp and the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Few figures in American history are more controversial than Alexander Hamilton. In this masterful work, Chernow shows how the political and economic power of America today is the result of Hamilton's willingness to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. He charts his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe and Burr; his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds; his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza; and the notorious duel with Aaron Burr that led to his death in July 1804. The book was adapted into a hugely successful Broadway musical - winner of 11 Tony awards - which opens at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London in November 2017.

Alexander Hamilton

On Hamilton's 'abiding fascination with a beautiful, noble death.'

Dan Magee

I am aware that a man of real merit is never seen in so favourable a light as seen through the medium of adversity...the clouds that surround him are shades that set off his good qualities.

Hamilton's mind was so swift and decisive that it could lead him into rash decisions. Washington's resolved slowly, resolved surely," Hamilton later said of the President. Washington management style was the antithesis of this. "He consulted much, pondered much, could weigh all sides of an issue and coolly appraise the political repercussions.

What mattered was that people trusted the government to make good on repayment: "In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit. Opinion is the soul of it and this is affected by appearances as well as realities."

Hamilton's interest was not in enriching creditors or cultivating the privileged class so much as in insuring the government's stability and survival. Walter Lippmann later said of Hamilton, "He used the rich for a purpose that was greater than their riches." On the other hand, he was naïve in thinking that the rich would always have a broader sense of public duty and would somehow be devoid of self-interest, instead of being captives to an even larger set of interests.

His opponents, he claimed, neglected a critical passage of his report in which he wrote that he "ardently wishes to see it in-corporated as a fundamental maxim in the system of public credit of the United States that the creation of debt should always be accompanied with the means of extinguishment."

He had learned a lesson about propaganda in pol-itics and mused wearily that "no character, however upright, is a match for con-stantly reiterated attacks, however false." If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end "that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent."

Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this in-strument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual hap-piness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind us no longer.

Alexander Hamilton quotes

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