Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, studied at King's College in New York and served as an aide to George Washington during the Revolutionary War. A New York delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, he co-wrote The Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay to support ratification. As the first Secretary of the Treasury from 1789 to 1795 he designed the federal financial system, and he became the leading figure of the Federalist Party. Sources give his birth year as either 1755 or 1757. He died in 1804 after a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.

Admirers credit Hamilton with building the financial foundations of the United States, including public credit, a national bank and a customs service, and with an early vision of an industrial, commercial economy. Many economists and historians see his reports as a template for later American developmental policy, and his story gained new popular attention through the 2015 musical Hamilton. Critics in his own time, led by Jefferson and Madison, argued that his program favored speculators, creditors and northern merchants over farmers and concentrated too much power in the federal government. His proposal for a life-term executive led opponents to accuse him of monarchist leanings. On slavery, he was a member of the New York Manumission Society, while recent research has also documented his involvement in transactions involving enslaved people for his family, a point historians continue to debate.