Alexander Hamilton

Family
Alexander Hamilton was born in 1757 in the Nevis, British West Indies illegitimately. In 1780, he married Elizabeth Schuyler, daughter of Revolutionary War general, Philip Schuyler. Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton had eight children.

Military
Hamilton served as an aide to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Having achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he led an infantry regiment, which helped secure the victory at the battle of Yorktown.

Constitution
He serve in Congress from 1782-1783. In September 1786, he served as a delegate at the Annapolis Convention, where he and James Madison proposed the Constitutional Convention. Hamilton served as a delegate at the Constitutional Convention and served on the Committee on Style which created the final version of the U.S. Contitution. He devoted much of his time advocating for the passage of the new federal constitution. He authored more than half of the Federalist Papers. Once the Constitution was ratified, Hamilton among other influencial gentlemen insisted on George Washington as the first President.

Career
Hamilton attended King's College. He became an attorney, who practiced law in New York. From 1789-1795, Hamilton served as the first Secretary of Treasury in George Washington's Cabinet. In 1789, Congress gave him the task of developing a fiscal plan to pay off the extensive war debt. The following year, he proposed a national bank with private interest and direction, which was strongly opposed by other members of the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. The on-going feud between Hamilton and Jefferson led to the introduction of the first political parties in the U.S. -- Federalists, the followers of Hamiltonian thinking, and Democrats, the followers of Jeffersonian thinking. After resigning from the Secretary of Treasury position, he remained a personal advisor to President Washington, who asked Hamilton to review and refine his farewell address.

Death
Hamilton had an on-going feud with Republican Vice President, Aaron Burr. Hamilton spoke out strongly against Burr, when Burr was running for Governor of New York in 1804. Burr ultimately lost that election. On July 11, 1804, he met Burr in Weehawken, NJ for a duel. The following day, Hamilton died from the resulting wound.

Quotes

"A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people." - Federalist Papers No. 31

"Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities." - Federalist Papers No. 34