ALEXANDER HAMILTON. — American statesman, born on the island of Nevis (Antilles) on 11 January 1757, died 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 found him. Decisively committed, first as a publicist and then as a soldier, to the cause of the colonies against England, in 1777 he became aide-de-camp to Washington, a position he held for four years. After the victorious conclusion of the war, he was a delegate from the State of New York to the Continental Congress and later to the Philadelphia Assembly (of which he was one of the promoters), which drafted the new federal Constitution.
To secure its ratification by his State, he published, in collaboration with Madison and Jay, a series of articles that appeared in a newspaper and were later collected under the title The Federalist, becoming a classic exegesis of the American Constitution. A champion of a strong, unitary State, Hamilton fought the revolutionary and democratic currents that sought to grant maximum autonomy to the individual States at the expense of the central government. Appointed Secretary of the Treasury, he pursued a vigorous policy of economic recovery aimed at consolidating federal authority. In contrast to the Enlightenment, inspired by vigorous realism and a politics of power, he clashed with Jefferson, Secretary of State and leader of the democratic faction. After a long struggle, he resigned in 1795. Killed in a duel by a political opponent, he left an indelible mark on the political and economic history of the United States, and his teachings are still invoked by the conservative currents of the country.