When speaking about America’s Founding Fathers, many will go for the obvious names: George Washington, our first President, Thomas Jefferson, the writer of our Constitution, and Benjamin Franklin, who is regarded as the first American innovator. However, there is a man that will often go unnamed and unnoticed by the general populace who did just as much, if not more, than these men in the time he spent serving our nation. Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury and one of the biggest champions for the Constitution and Patriot cause during the American Revolution, was vital in establishing some of the most integral parts of our financial and economic systems and helped shape the nation from its birth.
Hamilton’s story began like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. He was born in Nevis, an island in the British West Indies, on January 11th of 1755 to Rachel Fawcett Lavie and James Hamilton. Lavie was married to another man at the time she was pregnant with Alexander, and was put out on the streets when her husband discovered the affair. She went to live with James for some time, but he disappeared when Alexander was ten, leaving Lavie and Alexander to live in squalor. His mother died of a fever when he was thirteen, making Alexander an orphan. Hamilton then went to live with his cousin, Peter Lytton, who committed …show more content…
During his career, he helped establish the system of judicial review in the case Rutgers v. Waddington. He also became devoted to the cause of establishing a new set of federal laws, as he felt that the Articles of Confederations, which were acting as the nation’s federal laws at the time, were separating the states rather than uniting them as a nation. He served as a delegate for New York in the Continental Congress, and heavily supported the new bill that Thomas Jefferson and others had proposed (“Delegates of the Constitutional Convention”
Hamilton’s story began like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. He was born in Nevis, an island in the British West Indies, on January 11th of 1755 to Rachel Fawcett Lavie and James Hamilton. Lavie was married to another man at the time she was pregnant with Alexander, and was put out on the streets when her husband discovered the affair. She went to live with James for some time, but he disappeared when Alexander was ten, leaving Lavie and Alexander to live in squalor. His mother died of a fever when he was thirteen, making Alexander an orphan. Hamilton then went to live with his cousin, Peter Lytton, who committed …show more content…
During his career, he helped establish the system of judicial review in the case Rutgers v. Waddington. He also became devoted to the cause of establishing a new set of federal laws, as he felt that the Articles of Confederations, which were acting as the nation’s federal laws at the time, were separating the states rather than uniting them as a nation. He served as a delegate for New York in the Continental Congress, and heavily supported the new bill that Thomas Jefferson and others had proposed (“Delegates of the Constitutional Convention”