Alexander Hamilton was born in the British West Indies, came to New York as a teenager, served as Washington's aide-de-camp during the Revolution, helped ratify the Constitution by writing 51 essays under a false name, built the American financial system in four reports to Congress, and died in a duel at 49. The archive holds all of it.
On October 27, 1787, six weeks after the Constitutional Convention ended, Alexander Hamilton published the first of what would become 85 essays arguing for ratification of the Constitution. He wrote under the pseudonym "Publius" — a name shared with James Madison and John Jay, though Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 essays. The first essay appeared in The Independent Journal in New York. The first paragraph laid out the stakes Hamilton believed were at issue.
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
Hamilton wrote Federalist No. 70 on March 15, 1788. It is his argument for the single executive — the presidency as a single person rather than a committee or council. James Wilson had made the same argument at the Convention. Hamilton made the case to the public ratifying the document.
Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.
Washington nominated Hamilton as the first Secretary of the Treasury on September 11, 1789. Ten days later, the House of Representatives directed Hamilton to prepare a plan for the support of public credit. He delivered the First Report on Public Credit to Congress on January 9, 1790 — 40,000 words written in three months, the length of a short novel, every word in Hamilton's hand or dictated to clerks.
The report proposed that the United States assume all Revolutionary War debts — both federal and state — at full face value. It recommended funding mechanisms, interest payments, and the creation of public credit as an instrument of national power. It was the founding document of American financial policy. The full text is at the Online Library of Liberty.
That debt, at the same time, is the price of liberty. The faith of America has been repeatedly pledged for it, and with solemnities that give peculiar force to the obligation. There is indeed reason to regret that it has not hitherto been kept; the prospect of a continuance of this neglect, is perhaps the greatest cause of alarm to the friends of republican government.
Three more reports followed: the Report on a National Bank (December 1790), the Report on the Establishment of a Mint (January 1791), and the Report on Manufactures (December 1791). The Library of Congress holds digitized versions of all four. The national bank proposal passed Congress but was opposed by Jefferson and Madison on constitutional grounds — the first major constitutional dispute of the new republic. Jefferson argued the Constitution did not authorize a bank. Hamilton argued it did, under the necessary and proper clause. Washington sided with Hamilton. The bank was established.
Hamilton's Federalist No. 78, published May 28, 1788, established the argument for judicial review — the power of courts to strike down legislation that violates the Constitution. The argument was not in the Constitution itself. Hamilton made it in a newspaper essay. Chief Justice John Marshall drew on the argument when he established judicial review formally in Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute.
Aaron Burr had been Vice President of the United States since 1801. Hamilton had opposed his presidential bid in 1800 and his gubernatorial bid in 1804. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel after a newspaper report of Hamilton's remarks at a dinner. Hamilton accepted.
On the morning of July 11, 1804, Burr and Hamilton crossed the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton fired first — his shot went wide or was deliberate miss, accounts differ. Burr's shot struck Hamilton in the right side. Hamilton was carried back to New York. He died the following afternoon, July 12, 1804. He was 49 years old.
Hamilton left a statement the night before the duel at Founders Online. He wrote that he had decided to withhold his fire — to give Burr "the opportunity to pause and reflect." The statement is at Founders Online. Burr's letter challenging Hamilton to the duel, and Hamilton's reply, are at the Library of Congress.
I have resolved, if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire — and thus give a double opportunity to Col. Burr to pause and reflect.