was born in the British West Indies on this date in 1757 (or possibly 1755).
Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution, a work prepared by the U.S. Army Center of Military History in 1987, has a fine chapter on Hamilton from which the following is extracted.
Alexander Hamilton, who represented New York at the Constitutional Convention, was a brilliant political theorist and a leading advocate of centralized government. As an immigrant, Hamilton was able to transcend loyalty to any single state or region and think in terms of nationhood. He combined a natural affinity for aristocratic values with a generally pessimistic view of human nature and concluded that successful government must be strong and must win the support of men of property and social standing. Hamilton was among the most intellectually gifted of the Founding Fathers, rivaling in ability his arch foe, Thomas Jefferson, but he lacked practical political experience and failed to win support for many of his most cherished ideas. A blunt, practical man, he never understood the role that idealists like Jefferson played in shaping society. Ironically, his major contributions to the political life of the nation occurred only when his specific policies were adopted and carried forward by others with broader vision….
Although Hamilton was a great innovator and statesman, his lack of legislative experience and of faith in the common man made him a poor politician. His tactical failures as a leader of the Federalists on both the state and national level fractured the party into competing groups and contributed directly to the election of Jefferson as President in 1800. Both Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes. To Hamilton’s credit, he refused to back a plan by some members of the party to cast votes for Burr to deny Jefferson a victory. Burr’s bitterness over that decision, coupled with his long-standing rivalry with Hamilton in local politics, led inexorably to tragedy. On 11 July 1804 the two men met at dawn at Weehawken Heights, New Jersey. Hamilton, who detested dueling, participated because he felt that his honor had been impugned. Mortally wounded, he was carried back to New York City where he died the next day.