EVEN IF YOU’VE HAD THE good luck to hold a crisp $10 bill, you’ve probably never studied the portrait on it or thought much about the man it depicts.
HAMILTON, the bill says.
He’s famous now, thanks to a Broadway musical. Before that unlikely thing happened, Alexander Hamilton had become a historical footnote. He even nearly lost his place on the $10 bill. This isn’t all that surprising. During his life and afterward, people misrepresented much of what he did and believed. But his work—often criticized and misunderstood—was genius. The United States simply would not be what it is without his visionary thinking and writing. Indeed, without his courage and wits, the Revolutionary War might not have been won.
Alexander was a warrior: fierce, brave, and more than willing to die for the cause. He was a strategist who, despite his youth, became George Washington’s right-hand man. He was a philosopher who helped the rest of the Founding Fathers figure out what they’d meant with their declaration, and how the Articles of Confederation could be turned into a constitution that would endure. He laid the groundwork for the nation’s economy—which was more controversial and complex than you could imagine. He founded the Coast Guard. The Customs Department. The Bank of the United States.
From the start, his life was complicated—a study in contrasts.
He was born in a place both beautiful and terrible.
He was an orphan and, worse at the time, a bastard, which meant he could not go to school with the rest of the boys.
But he was brilliant. Studious, hardworking, and brave, and people rallied to his side again and again.
He was a loyal friend. He was a forgiving enemy.
He was a fearless soldier. He was an indispensable military bureaucrat.
He doted on his wife and children. He cheated on them.
He wrote sensitive love poetry. He wrote blistering political pamphlets.
He saved a man accused of murder. The man who helped him do it shot him to death.
He was a scapegoat. A scholar.
Respected. Reviled.
A genius. A fool.
A penniless nobody who became one of the world’s most powerful men.
He believed in the rule of law. He lost his life in totally illegal fashion.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
HE WAS COMPLICATED.
THIS IS HIS STORY.
