HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. - American statesman, b. on the island of Nevis (Antilles) on 11 Jan. 1757, d. in New York on 12 July 1804. Of precocious intellect, he was sent to study in New York, where the outbreak of the War of Independence caught him. Having decisively taken sides, first as a publicist, then as a soldier, for the colonies and against England, in 1777 he became Washington's aide-de-camp, a post he held for four years. Once the war had ended victoriously, he was a delegate of the State of New York to the Continental Congress and then to the Philadelphia Assembly (of which he was one of the promoters), which drafted the new federal Constitution.
To secure its votes from his State, he published, with the collaboration of Madison and Jay, a series of articles which, having appeared in a newspaper and then been collected under the title The federalist, became a classic exegesis of the American Constitution. An advocate of a strong, unitary State, H. fought the revolutionary and democratic currents, which wanted to leave maximum autonomy to the individual States, at the expense of the central government. Appointed Secretary of the Treasury, he carried out an energetic policy of economic recovery with the aim of consolidating federal authority. Far from the Enlightenment, inspired by a vigorous realism and a policy of power, he clashed with Jefferson, Secretary of State, and leader of the democratic current. After a long struggle, he resigned in 1795. Killed in a duel by a political opponent, he left an irreconcilable mark on the political-economic history of the United States, and the country's conservative currents still appeal to his teaching.
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Gabriele Musatti