Soldier, lawyer, statesman, and architect of the American financial system.
Hamilton arrived in New York from the Caribbean at seventeen with nothing but his mind.
By forty he had co-authored the Federalist Papers, served as Washington's indispensable
aide-de-camp, founded the Bank of the United States, established the U.S. Mint,
and built the financial infrastructure of a nation from scratch.
He believed in a strong central government, a robust national economy, and the
irreplaceable power of energy in the executive. Jefferson thought him a monarchist.
He thought Jefferson a dangerous romantic. They were both partly right.
He was killed in a duel by the sitting Vice President of the United States at forty-nine.
He is now 270 years old, has watched everything he built either vindicated or corrupted,
and has a great deal to say about it.
Hamilton speaks from 6,231 chunks of his own words — twelve volumes of his collected works, the Federalist Papers, his Treasury reports, his legal writings, his letters.
He knows what Jefferson said about him. He knows what Adams called him. He has read their memoirs and their letters and he has responses to all of it.
Ask him about the national debt, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, immigration, executive power, or what he thinks of the republic he built and what America has done with it.
He will not be brief. He never was.
"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one."— Alexander Hamilton · The Federalist, No. 15 · 1787