PAGE XI. "Nevis" is pronounced Neevis.
PAGE 3. Of the Gingerland estate nothing remains to-day but a negro hamlet named Fawcett. Its inhabitants are, beyond a doubt, the descendants of slaves belonging to Hamilton's grandparents, for there is no trace of any other family named Fawcett in the Common Records of Nevis.
PAGE 6. This deed of separation is entered in the Common Records of Nevis, 1725-1746, page 429, and is dated the fifth day of February, 1740.
PAGE 11. I have hesitated over the spelling of the name Levine. John Church Hamilton, in his life of Hamilton, spells it Lavine, and in one of Hamilton's letters, page 7, Vol. 11, of this same Life, it is spelt in the same manner. But four times in the Records of St. Croix it is spelt Levine. The half-brother to whom Hamilton refers in his letter had himself baptized in Christianstadt in the year 1769, and the entry reads: Peter, son of John Michael and Rachael Levine. In the interment entry of Rachael Levine it is spelt in this fashion, and in the government records of Levine's business transactions. It seems to me probable that in copying Hamilton's letter the name was misspelled, and although he no doubt mentioned the name freely to his family, it is possible that he did not write it upon any other occasion. I have, therefore, used the method for which there is a considerable authority.
PAGE 29. James Hamilton was the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, Laird of Grange, and his wife, Elizabeth (eldest daughter of Sir Robert Pollock), who were married about 1730. The Hamiltons of Grange belonged to the Cambuskeith branch of the great house of Hamilton, and the founder of this branch, in the fourteenth century, was Walter de Hamilton, a son of Sir Gilbert de Hamilton, who was the common ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton, the Dukes of Abercorn, Earls of Haddington, Viscounts Boyne, Barons Belhaven, several extinct peerages, and of all the Scotch and Irish Hamilton families. He was fifth in descent from Robert, Earl of Mellent, created by Henry I, Earl of Leicester, who married a granddaughter of King Henry I of France and his Queen, who was a daughter of Jeroslaus, Czar of Russia. See "The Lineage of Alexander Hamilton," in theNew York Genealogical and Biographical Review, for April, 1889, or "The Historical and Genealogical Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, with Genealogical Memoirs of Several Branches of the Family," by John Anderson, Edinburgh, 1825, a copy of which is to be found in the British Museum. In the latter work, against the name of James Hamilton, is the following statement: A proprietor in the West Indies, and father of Alexander Hamilton, the celebrated statesman and patriot in the United States of America, who fell, greatly regretted, in a duel with a Mr. Burr.
PAGE 35. There is still so widespread misconception of the term "creole," that it is necessary, even at this late date, to reiterate that it was not invented as a euphemism for coloured blood. In the United States creoles are Southerners of French or Spanish extraction; in the West Indies any person born on one of the islands is a creole, even if he be an undiluted Dane.
PAGE 49. This deed of trust was entered in Vol. X, No. 1, page 180, of the Common Records of St. Christopher, on the fifth day of May, 1756, eight months before the birth of Alexander Hamilton.
PAGE 60. This dialect, or rather this curious mispronunciation of words, and inability to make use of certain letters and more than one or two personal pronouns, is gathered from old books on the islands, for the coloured people of the present generation in the Caribbees, even those of the lower class, now speak, save for their singsong inflection, much like any one else. But in those days there was no education for the blacks, and they spoke the barbarous lingo I have transcribed without embellishment.
PAGE 65. Dr. Hamilton died in June, 1764.
PAGE 68. A piece of eight, then the principal coin in the Danish WestIndies, was worth sixty-four cents.
PAGE 69. Hugh Knox married and left two children, Ann Knox, who marriedJames Towers, and John Knox, who, I think, became a clergyman on St.Thomas.
PAGE 79. The lower story of this fine building, built by Mr. Mitchell, is in a state of entire preservation, and is now one of the largest stores in Christiansted.
PAGE 87. The private burying-ground of the Lyttons was on the Grange estate, owned, at the time of Rachael's death, by Chamberlain Robert Tuite.
PAGE 88. Two candlesticks of this fashion have been preserved inFrederiksted, and are said to have been used by Hamilton while there.
PAGE 91. I am convinced that Hugh Knox baptized Hamilton, and have had the old records of St. Croix, deposited in the archives of Copenhagen, thoroughly searched. But they are in so dilapidated a condition that one might as profitably appeal to the recording angel. In 1782 the French destroyed the church registers of Nevis, but it is hardly likely that Rachael Levine had Hamilton baptized. The islanders were indifferent to baptism under the most amiable conditions, usually waiting until it was reasonable to suppose that their brood was complete, when they took it to the fonten bloc. But Hugh Knox would have attached great importance to this ceremony.
PAGE 120. There is no doubt in my mind that Hamilton and young Stevens were either first or second cousins, and that the resemblance between them which subsequently, in the United States, gave rise to the gossip that they were brothers, was due to this fact. I was not able to discover that Mrs. Stevens was a daughter of John and Mary Fawcett, but she or her husband might well have been closely related to Hamilton's grandparents, for the few prominent families of Nevis and St. Christopher intermarried again and again. The Fawcetts were married at least twenty-two years before Rachael was born, and doubtless had one of the large families of that time.
PAGE 131. "The Fields" was the old name for the City Hall Park.
PAGE 133. I have inferred that the speech Hamilton made on this occasion was a spontaneous outburst of the same thought which he elaborated a few weeks later in his history-making pamphlets. Wherever it has been possible, I have used his own words, for he must have talked much as he wrote.
PAGE 136. "Indeed he was the first to perceive and develop the idea of a real union of the people of the United States"—"History of the Constitution of the United States" by George Ticknor Curtis, who also comments at length upon his having been the chief force in bringing the discontent of the colonists to a head and precipitating the Revolution.
PAGE 145. There is space only for Hamilton's share in these battles. I am obliged to assume that the reader knows his Revolutionary history.
PAGE 165. Nothing can be told here of Laurens's private history beyond the statements that his too sensitive mind held him responsible for the accidental death of a younger brother, and that he had married a woman in England, whom he had left at the altar, to join, with all possible haste, the fighting forces in America, and whom he never saw again. If this meets the eye of his family and they care to trust me with the necessary papers, I shall be glad to write a life of Laurens.
PAGE 196. This verse was found in a little bag on Mrs. Hamilton's neck when she died at the age of ninety-seven.
PAGE 208. "At the age of three and twenty he had already formed well-defined, profound, and comprehensive views on the situation and wants of these states. He had clearly discerned the practicability of forming a confederated government and adapting it to their peculiar condition, resources, and exigencies. He had wrought out for himself a political system, far in advance of the conceptions of his contemporaries, and one which in the case of those who most opposed him in life, became, when he was laid in a premature grave, the basis on which this government was consolidated; on which to the present day it has been administered; and on which, alone, it can safely rest in that future which seems to stretch out its unending glories before us."—GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.
PAGE 209. This letter from Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler, from which this extract is taken, was first published in Martha Lamb's "History of New York," A.S. Barnes & Co., New York.
PAGE 226. Burr was aide-de-camp to Washington for six weeks, beginning the last week in May, 1776. He hated the work and left abruptly, incurring Washington's contempt and dislike. The charge of his friends that Hamilton poisoned the Chief's mind against him is wholly unfounded. Washington made up his own mind about men, and there is no evidence that the two young men met except in the most casual manner before this spring of 1782. Of course it is possible that a diligent reading of obscure correspondence might bring to light an earlier acquaintance, but the matter is not worth the waste of time. Matthew Davis, the only responsible biographer of Burr, gives two years as the time consumed by Burr for his legal studies. Parton was wholly indifferent to facts and has no serious position as a biographer; but possessing a picturesque and entertaining style, he has been widely read, and his estimate of Burr accepted by the ignorant.
PAGE 233. Madison was born in 1751, Morris in 1752.
PAGE 257. "A long chapter might be written about Hamilton's other labours in the State legislature;… he laboured hard to prevent legislation in contravention of the treaty of peace; he corrected gross theoretical blunders in a proposed system of regulating elections, and strove hard though not altogether successfully to eliminate religious restrictions; he succeeded in preventing the disfranchisement of a great number of persons for having been interested, often unwillingly, in privateering ventures; he stayed some absurd laws proposed concerning the proposed qualifications of candidates for office; in the matter of taxation he substituted for the old method of an arbitrary official assessment, with all its gross risks of error and partiality, the principle of allowing the individual to return under oath his taxable property; he laboured hard to promote public education by statutory regulations; his 'first great object was to place a book in the hand of every American child,' and he evolved a system which served as the model of that promulgated in France by the imperial decree of 1808; he had much to do with the legislation concerning the relations of debtor and creditor, then threatening to dissever the whole frame of society; he was obliged to give no little attention to the department of criminal law; finally he had to play a chief part in settling the long and perilous struggle concerning the 'New Hampshire Grants,' the region now constituting the State of Vermont: his efforts in this matter chiefly averted war and brought the first new state into the Union."—MORSE'S "Life of Hamilton," Vol. I.
PAGE 265. The classic narrative of the Constitutional Convention is by George Ticknor Curtis, and there have been few more fascinating chronicles of any subject. Of the condensed narratives the most coherent and vivid is in Roosevelt's "Life of Gouverneur Morris."
PAGE 268. Hamilton also invited Gouverneur Morris to collaborate, but that erratic gentleman was otherwise engaged.
PAGE 269. I take this apportionment from a copy of "The Federalist" presented by Hamilton to his nephew Philip Church, and kindly lent to me by Mr. Richard Church. In this copy one of Hamilton's sons, at his father's dictation, wrote the initial of the writer or writers after each essay. To Jay are allotted Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 54. To Madison, 10, 14, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. To Hamilton and Madison jointly: 13, 19, 20. The rest to Hamilton.
PAGE 271. "'The Federalist,' written principally by Hamilton, exhibits an extent and precision of information, a profundity of research, and an accurateness of understanding, which would have done honour to the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or modern times."—Edinburgh Review, No. 24.
"It is a work altogether, which, for comprehensiveness of design, strength, clearness, and simplicity, has no parallel. We do not even except or overlook Montesquieu and Aristotle among the writings of men."—Blackwood's Magazine, January, 1825.
"In the application of elementary principles of government to practical administration 'The Federalist' is the greatest work known to me."—Guizot.
PAGE 300. This coup of Hamilton's was evidently not placed onrecord,—for manifest reasons,—for it is not to be found in Elliot's"Debates," and we should have lost it but for a letter from Clinton toJohn Lamb. See Foster, "On the Constitution," page 4, Vol. I.
PAGE 304. On page 842, "History of the Republic," by J.C. Hamilton, is the only letter from Hamilton to his brother James which has been preserved. It is well known in the family, however, that he corresponded with both his father and brother after his arrival in America. A letter from his father promising to come to the United States as soon as practicable will be found on page 567, Vol. V, Hamilton's Works (J.C. Hamilton edition).
PAGE 304. I am at a loss to understand upon what authority certain of Hamilton's biographers base their assertion that, shortly after his arrival in this country, he cut his West Indian relatives, ignored their many claims upon his affection and gratitude, and deliberately excluded them from his memory. There is no such assertion in his son's biography, and the lives of Hamilton that have followed have been little more than a condensation of that voluminous work. This uncharitable assumption—which must precede such a statement—cannot be the result of an exhaustive reading of his correspondence, for there they would find letters from Hugh Knox and Governor Walsterstorff and Edward Stevens, extending over a period of many years; and reproaches in none of them. Nor can it be the result of investigation among his descendants, for it is well known in the Hamilton family, that he not only corresponded regularly with his relatives, including his father, for a long while, but that he supported Mrs. Mitchell after her husband's failure and death. And even if this indisputable information were not accessible, it is incredible to me that any one capable of understanding Hamilton even a little should believe that so contemptible a quality as ingratitude had any place in his nature. The most impetuous, generous, honest, and tender of men, he was the last person to turn his back upon those who had befriended and supported him in his precarious youth. Had he been capable of such meanness, he would not have died lamented by the best men in the country, many of whom had loved him devotedly for a quarter of a century. Nor was there any motive for such a performance. One is not at all surprised to find that Mrs. Mitchell was among the last of his earthly thoughts; but were there not ample proof of the falsity of these careless assertions, then indeed would Hamilton be an enigma.
PAGE 339. Burr was married to Madame Jumel for a short time when they were both old enough to know better. She very quickly sent him about his business and resumed the name of her second husband. Burr had appropriated sixteen thousand dollars with which she had entrusted him, and, as she told people still living, his charming manners were entirely superficial, he was cross and exacting at home. Nevertheless she did not hesitate to make use of him upon occasion. During the bread riots in Italy her carriage was hemmed in one day and her richly attired self threatened by the furious populace. When it became evident that her terrified coachman could make no headway she arose to her majestic height, and, sweeping out one hand with her haughtiest gesture, said in a loud and commanding tone, "Make way! make way! for the widow of the Vice-President of the United States." The crowd fell back properly awed. Madame Jumel claimed to have the famous diamond necklace, but for the truth of this claim I cannot vouch. She certainly had many personal relics of Napoleon, confided to the care of Jumel, when the fallen Emperor meditated flight on his faithful banker's frigate.
PAGE 387. It is impossible that Hamilton could have sat for all the alleged portraits of himself, scattered over the United States, or he would have had no time to do any work. Moreover, few realize his personality or the contemporaneous description of him. That in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is the best. That in the City Hall, New York, is one of the best, and the copy of it in the Treasury Department, Washington, is better. Several others are charming, notably, the one at Morristown Headquarters, New Jersey, and the one painted for his army friends, now in the possession of Mr. Philip Schuyler. The one in the Chamber of Commerce is a Trumbull, but looks like a fat boy with thin legs. It is to be hoped there will be no further photographing of that libel. Had Hamilton looked like it he would have accomplished nothing.
PAGE 413. As the visit of little Lafayette to the United States was of no historical moment I have taken the liberty of bringing him over at my own pleasure. Otherwise I should have been obliged merely to mention his advent in the course of the rapid seven years' summary which comes later.
PAGE 430. That Hamilton conceived the ice-water cure for yellow fever is well known to doctors.
PAGE 435. Mr. Richard Church kindly brought me an old bundle of letters from Mrs. Church to Mrs. Hamilton. Except for the faded ink they might been written yesterday, so lively, natural, andmodernwere they. It was impossible to realize that the writer was dust long since. Indeed, in all the matter, published and unpublished, that I have read for this book, I find no excuse for the inverted absurdities and stilted forms with which it is thought necessary to create a hundred-year-old atmosphere.
PAGE 441. This letter of Thomas Corbin disposes of the asseverations of Jefferson's biographers that the leader of the Democrats dressed himself like a gentleman until he became President. His untidiness was probably congenital to begin with, and in any case would have been a policy from the first, of that deep and subtle mind.
PAGE 448. A clause had been inserted in Article II of the Constitution which would permit Hamilton, although an alien born, to be a President of the United States.
PAGE 451. It was Mr. James Q. Howard in a letter to the New YorkSun, May, 1901, who called attention to the fact that Hamilton was the first of the "Imperialists," or "Expansionists."
PAGE 458. I wrote to Colonel Mills, Commander of West Point, to ask him if any of Hamilton's codes were still in use. The librarian of the post, Dr. Edward S. Holden, replied, among other things, as follows: "… As circumstances have changed, the details of his codes have changed, and the principles which guided him have been readapted to new conditions as they have arisen. The best praise that can be given him is, then, that he thoroughly understood the basic principles underlying military affairs, and that with superb genius he applied them to the exigencies of his time with that philosophical and at the same time practical talent which was his special endowment."
PAGE 469. I made a copy from the original of a letter from Alexander Baring (afterward Lord Ashburton) to his counsel, D.J. Rinnan, containing full details of this transaction. One of the significant points about the contemptuous opinions of Burr's dishonesty which one comes upon constantly in the correspondence of this period, is that no one claims to have made its discovery, or to think comment worth while. It evidently became established at an early date. But brilliancy and dexterity saved him at the bar, and he won many a case for those who despised him most.
PAGE 471. Tammany Hall was highly respectable in the beginning of its career. I have here used the term in the figurative sense; it is in truth an epigram into which all political abomination is concentrated.
PAGE 474. For correspondence of Hamilton with his Scotch relatives, and with Secretary of the Navy regarding Robert Hamilton, see Vol. VI, Hamilton's Works.
Burials in 1799, Con. June 3d. James Hamilton—Father of GeneralHamilton in America killed by Col. Baird.
NOTE: The Rev. I. Guilding was the Rector of the Parish at this time, and the entry was made by him in the above form.
I certify that the above entry is a true and correct copy from the Register of Burials in the Cathedral Church of St. George, in the town of Kingston, in the island of St. Vincent, West Indies, by me,
E.A. TURPIN, Rector of St. George and St. Andrew, and Archdeacon of St.Vincent, this 13th day of May, 1901.
PAGE 501. Hamilton never would own a slave.
PAGE 509. The story of Burr's awakening Hamilton in the early morning to borrow of him, is related in "The History of the Republic." Mrs. Hamilton herself is the authority for the other loan. The story was told her by Washington Morton, her brother-in-law, who arranged it, Burr, for once, being ashamed to go openly to Hamilton. He repaid this sum after Hamilton's death.
PAGE 516. The oft-told tale of Hamilton and Burr meeting at the house of Madame Jumel on the night before the challenge, I have, after careful investigation, utterly repudiated. In the first place, the lady had been married but two months, and to a Frenchman at that. He was a rich man and had undoubtedly married her for love, moreover was devoted to her as long as he lived. It is not at all likely that he was permitting Hamilton to call one night and Burr the next—so the story runs. In the second place, Hamilton, whatever may have been his adventures in the past, was in no condition for gallivanting at this period, as I think I have demonstrated. Dr. Hosack, in the paper he prepared for thePoston the day following Hamilton's death, asserted that owing to the patient's feeble condition he had been unable to give the usual medicines. At the same time Hamilton had been working from fourteen to fifteen hours a day. The conclusions are obvious. Moreover, General Hamilton, now eighty-seven, and in perfect possession of all his faculties, has told me that he frequently accompanied his grandmother, Hamilton's widow, to call on Madame Jumel. In the small town of New York no such sensational meeting could have been kept a secret for long. Madame Jumel lived in the city at the time, by the way, her husband not buying the house on the Heights until 1815.
But that she was at the bottom of the matter I should not have had the slightest doubt, even were it not an accepted fact by both Hamilton's present family and hers, and I arrived at my conclusions, as the story of all concerned, and of the history of the times, developed.
PAGE 522. Burr kept these letters until he died, at the age of 80, and left them to Matthew Davis, who destroyed those whose writers were dead, and returned the others to certain ancient and highly respected dames.
PAGE 527. These pistols are now in the possession of Mr. Richard Church.
PAGE 531. Hamilton's strong likeness to the Caesars is best seen in the marbles of him, notably the one executed by Ceracchi. The painted likenesses of him either do not resemble him at all or are so full of his vivacity, mischievous humour, and indomitable youth that they are wholly himself.
From "Statistical Account of Scotland," Vol. V, page 450, Edinburgh: "The most remarkable person connected with the parish (Stevenston in Ayrshire) was the late General Alexander Hamilton of the family of Grange, though America was the field in which he distinguished himself. He was excelled by none as a general, orator, financier, lawyer. In the words of one who knew him, he was 'the mentor of Washington, the framer of the present constitution of America, a man of strict honour and integrity; equally esteemed in public and in private life.'"
The above came to my hand after the book went to press, and I publish it to emphasize the fact that the Scotch Hamiltons eagerly claimed the kinship of Hamilton, quite indifferent to the irregularity of his birth.
Hamilton's children were born and named as follows: Philip, January 22, 1782; Angelica, September 25, 1784; Alexander, May 16, 1786; James Alexander, April 14, 1788; John Church, August 22, 1792; William Stephen, August 4, 1797; Eliza, November 20, 1799; Philip, June 7, 1802.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to the following people who have helped me with family papers, books and political pamphlets long out of print, their knowledge of the unwritten history of the United States, unpublished anecdotes of Hamilton, and general suggestions: Mr. James Q. Howard of the Library of Congress; Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton; General A. Hamilton; Colonel J.C.L. Hamilton; Mr. Richard Church; Mr. Roger Foster; Mr. H.W. Parker of the Mechanics' Institute Free Library of New York; Dr. Richard B. Coutant, and Mr. Philip Schuyler; and to the following residents of the British and Danish West Indies:
On St. Christopher
Mrs. Spencer WigleyDr. Joseph Haven, U.S. ConsulThe Rev. William EveredThe Rev. George YoeMr. E.P. Latouche, Registrar and Provost Marshal
On Nevis
The Hon. C.C. GreavesThe Rev. W. CowleyThe Rev. Mr. ShephardMr. G.V. Mercier
On St. Croix
The Rev. W.C. Watson
Also—The West Indian works of Dr. Taylor, and Lightbourne's Annuals.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Conqueror, by Gertrude Franklin Atherton