After reading biographies of Washington and Jefferson, I was quite excited to read more about Hamilton. I thought he would be a shoo-in for my favorite Founding Father, but the reality of his character proved more complex.
Some of my favorite things about Hamilton:
He was the first Secretary of the Treasury and the genius behind the creation of American banking and foreign credit.
He was a prolific writer, producing the rough equivalent of 70 novels by the time he was 49.
His general political views balanced aristocratic and democratic tendencies almost flawlessly.
That being said, Hamilton could be exasperating. He died in a duel shortly after mourning his own son’s death in an equally senseless duel. The reasons for the duel strike the modern reader as absurd. I expected to be crestfallen by the fact that he died young and that America was therefore deprived of his influence, but the older he grew, the worse his views seemed to become. In an oversimplified sense, it was almost as if Washington was necessary to check Hamilton’s impulses, and after Washington’s death, Hamilton lost not only political influence but also a much-needed anchor for his thinking.