Quote of awesomeness: “A promise must never be broken.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
One of the greatest man in history who has helped in shaping our bank system today, establishing the system of Federalism and is also known as one of the founding fathers of the nation, Alexander Hamilton. There is still so much more that he has done, so much more. It has been such an honor getting able to read about him because without him, and his awesome mind the world would be different today. Yes, he also has a play, called Hamilton, about his life.
Our First National bank was because of…
FUUUN FACT!: Did you know that Hamilton founded the first National Bank in the US which both Thomas Jefferson (as a Republican) and James Madison (who became the 4th president of the United States) was going against him and trying to prevent him from making it happen (but it did happen, Hamilton succeeded and with a good purpose)
Alexander Hamilton was well aware of the system that the British were using for their banks and he wanted the US to have it’s own like them. His reason to have a bank which he had the plan of spreading all throughout the other states were:
- The US would have its own uniform currency
- The bank could lend to people and governments (especially to start for business purposes)
- The US basically needed one
- The US was using Spanish dollars and they should have their own currency because it’s better
- It could hold deposits
Childhood of Alexander Hamilton
Alexander may have been living in a house in NYC and became famous and met so many important people before but it wasn’t always like this. He wasn’t born into this kind of life. He brought himself up without any of his family members to help but just himself to depend on. His father left them (him, his brother, and his mother) at a very young age, and, unfortunately, his mother died from a sickness which left Alexander and his brother, James, with nothing. You may be wondering why would they not inherit anything from their mother. The reason is that their mother, Rachel Faucette Buck, was forbidden to marry anyone else as she was still married. Rachel had a son, Peter, who was legally left with him all of his mother’s things.
This still didn’t bring down and he strived harder to succeed in his life goals. He started out small and worked his way up. His talents didn’t go unnoticed and this brought him to greater things.
One of his special moments was when he gave a speech once when he was just in college which inspired so many people and which also left a lot of them astonished (in a good way) as they realized he was just a “Collegian!”
Did you know that there were plenty of times when which Alexander would fight in the war against the British? He was one of the men who greatly helped in winning the war against the British. And, Alexander wrote and thought of important choices for George Washington.
The Affair
Although he has done many great things, Alexander did have flaws like everyone else. Unfortunately, with his past of his father leaving and abandoning his mother (his reason being: not wanting hamilton’s mother to be charged with bigamy) he had a “soft spot” for women and went into this affair while married to Elizabeth Schuyler-Hamilton with Maria Reynolds after she begged him for him one night and told him her story about how her husband was abusing her. Hamilton couldn’t say no or bring down a woman in need. He would visit Maria and have stached up money in his pocket. He tried to stop this (his affair) but then Maria sent a letter to him explaining how she doesn’t find a reason to live unless he would be with her. This again affected him and he continued seeing her. Soon enough, they got caught by Maria’s husband, James Reynolds.
Hamilton was being blackmailed by James into paying large sums as he threatened to tell the media about his affair. He needed to protect his honor, it was very important to him. But there was a cost, one day, his firstborn son, Philip fought at a duel against George I. Eacker with the intent of protecting his father’s honor. Philip didn’t win but something worse happened, his wound was too bad to heal that no doctor was able to do anything and he died on November 23, 1801. This hurt Alexander and his wife greatly and this is when Alexander made the decision to quit his job.
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Alexander Hamilton was George Washington’s right hand or aide-de-camp. And, they worked very closely. Hamilton also looked up at Washington as a fatherly figure as his own father he never met. He became the first treasurer secretary which Washington gave to him. He had eight children. He died at the age of 49 a few days after a duel against Aaron Burr in the same place where his son, Philip, got a mortal wound.
According to toptenz, it was in August 1772, when Hamilton was 17 (but telling people he was 15 (yes he lied about his age – L.O.A.S.H)) the West Indies was hit by a horrible hurricane. Hamilton, who was working as a clerk, wrote about the hurricane in a letter that he planned on sending to his father. However, first he showed it to a Presbyterian minister named Hugh Knox, who was also mentoring him. In an interesting side note, Knox was ordained as a minister by Aaron Burr Sr., the father of Vice President Aaron Burr. As you probably know if you ever studied American history, Aaron Burr is going to be a big part of this list.
But, back to the letter – Knox read it and was impressed with Hamilton’s writing. He encouraged Hamilton to publish it in the newspaper where Knox filled in as an editor. It was printed in October along with a foreword by Knox. After the letter was published, several businessmen in St. Croix wanted to know the identity of the writer and when Hamilton came forward, they took up a collection to send him to America to be educated. Several months later, Hamilton was sent to New York where he enrolled in King’s College (which is now Columbia).
This is Alexander’s Letter which brought him to America:
It began about dusk, at North, and raged very violently till ten o’clock. Then ensued a sudden and unexpected interval, which lasted about an hour. Meanwhile the wind was shifting round to the South West point, from whence it returned with redoubled fury and continued so ’till near three o’clock in the morning. Good God! what horror and destruction. Its impossible for me to describe or you to form any idea of it. It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into Angels. A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground, almost all the rest very much shattered; several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined; whole families running about the streets, unknowing where to find a place of shelter; the sick exposed to the keeness of water and air without a bed to lie upon, or a dry covering to their bodies; and our harbours entirely bare. In a word, misery, in all its most hideous shapes, spread over the whole face of the country. A strong smell of gunpowder added somewhat to the terrors of the night; and it was observed that the rain was surprizingly salt. Indeed the water is so brackish and full of sulphur that there is hardly any drinking it.
My reflections and feelings on this frightful and melancholy occasion, are set forth in the following self-discourse.
Where now, oh! vile worm, is all thy boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of thine arrogance and self sufficiency? Why dost thou tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible you now appear. And for why? The jarring of elements—the discord of clouds? Oh! impotent presumptuous fool! how durst thou offend that Omnipotence, whose nod alone were sufficient to quell the destruction that hovers over thee, or crush thee into atoms? See thy wretched helpless state, and learn to know thyself. Learn to know thy best support. Despise thyself, and adore thy God. How sweet, how unutterably sweet were now, the voice of an approving conscience; Then couldst thou say, hence ye idle alarms, why do I shrink? What have I to fear? A pleasing calm suspense! A short repose from calamity to end in eternal bliss? Let the Earth rend. Let the planets forsake their course. Let the Sun be extinguished and the Heavens burst asunder. Yet what have I to dread? My staff can never be broken—in Omnip[o]tence I trusted.
He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage—even him have I always loved and served. His precepts have I observed. His commandments have I obeyed—and his perfections have I adored. He will snatch me from ruin. He will exalt me to the fellowship of Angels and Seraphs, and to the fullness of never ending joys.
But alas! how different, how deplorable, how gloomy the prospect! Death comes rushing on in triumph veiled in a mantle of tenfold darkness. His unrelenting scythe, pointed, and ready for the stroke. On his right hand sits destruction, hurling the winds and belching forth flames: Calamity on his left threatening famine disease and distress of all kinds. And Oh! thou wretch, look still a little further; see the gulph of eternal misery open. There mayest thou shortly plunge—the just reward of thy vileness. Alas! whither canst thou fly? Where hide thyself? Thou canst not call upon thy God; thy life has been a continual warfare with him.
Hark—ruin and confusion on every side. ’Tis thy turn next; but one short moment, even now, Oh Lord help. Jesus be merciful!
Thus did I reflect, and thus at every gust of the wind, did I conclude, ’till it pleased the Almighty to allay it. Nor did my emotions proceed either from the suggestions of too much natural fear, or a conscience over-burthened with crimes of an uncommon cast. I thank God, this was not the case. The scenes of horror exhibited around us, naturally awakened such ideas in every thinking breast, and aggravated the deformity of every failing of our lives. It were a lamentable insensibility indeed, not to have had such feelings, and I think inconsistent with human nature.
Our distressed, helpless condition taught us humility and contempt of ourselves. The horrors of the night, the prospect of an immediate, cruel death—or, as one may say, of being crushed by the Almighty in his anger—filled us with terror. And every thing that had tended to weaken our interest with him, upbraided us in the strongest colours, with our baseness and folly. That which, in a calm unruffled temper, we call a natural cause, seemed then like the correction of the Deity. Our imagination represented him as an incensed master, executing vengeance on the crimes of his servants. The father and benefactor were forgot, and in that view, a consciousness of our guilt filled us with despair.
But see, the Lord relents. He hears our prayer. The Lightning ceases. The winds are appeased. The warring elements are reconciled and all things promise peace. The darkness is dispell’d and drooping nature revives at the approaching dawn. Look back Oh! my soul, look back and tremble. Rejoice at thy deliverance, and humble thyself in the presence of thy deliverer.
Yet hold, Oh vain mortal! Check thy ill timed joy. Art thou so selfish to exult because thy lot is happy in a season of universal woe? Hast thou no feelings for the miseries of thy fellow-creatures? And art thou incapable of the soft pangs of sympathetic sorrow? Look around thee and shudder at the view. See desolation and ruin where’er thou turnest thine eye! See thy fellow-creatures pale and lifeless; their bodies mangled, their souls snatched into eternity, unexpecting. Alas! perhaps unprepared! Hark the bitter groans of distress. See sickness and infirmities exposed to the inclemencies of wind and water! See tender infancy pinched with hunger and hanging on the mothers knee for food! See the unhappy mothers anxiety. Her poverty denies relief, her breast heaves with pangs of maternal pity, her heart is bursting, the tears gush down her cheeks. Oh sights of woe! Oh distress unspeakable! My heart bleeds, but I have no power to solace! O ye, who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them. Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withold your compassion. What are you[r] sufferings compared to those? Ye have still more than enough left. Act wisely. Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven.
I am afraid, Sir, you will think this description more the effort of imagination than a true picture of realities. But I can affirm with the greatest truth, that there is not a single circumstance touched upon, which I have not absolutely been an eye witness to.
Our General [Ulrich Wilhelm Roepstorff, Governor General of St. Croix] has issued several very salutary and humane regulations, and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man.
AMAZING, RIGHT??!
If you are going to read about Alexander Hamilton, I highly recommend the book Alexander Hamilton Revolutionary written by Martha Brockenbrough. It was copywritten on 2017 and its pages will leave you excited to know about Hamilton
Yours Truly,
L.O.A.S.H
In Crash Course, there are plenty of videos on World History, Biology, Ecology, Literature, Philosophy, Mythology, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science and way more! It’s an awesome channel to learn about so many different subjects in such a fun and entertaining way. Check it out!
Life of a Secret Homeschooler | A.K.A | L.O.A.S.H 
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