Existing comment:
Immigrant
Unlike most of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant. As a boy in the West Indies, he was introduced to shame (his parents were unmarried) and to the world of commerce (he went to work as a merchant's clerk when he was nine). Sent to New York to be educated, Hamilton was soon caught up in the American Revolution. He made the new nation his own, espousing its ideals and marrying a patriotic young woman. While his talents and ambition were perfectly suited to the burgeoning energy of New York, he envisioned a unified nation in a way that most of his contemporaries, rooted in home-state loyalties, could not. |