50 Fun Facts About Alexander Hamilton

Which political rival fatally shot Hamilton in a pistol duel at dawn on July 11, 1804?

Aaron Burr was charged with murder in two states, but neither case ever reached trial. Their feud dated to 1791, when he took a Senate seat from Hamilton's father-in-law.

Which US banknote has carried Hamilton's portrait on its front since a redesign in the late 1920s?

The $10 Federal Reserve Note showed Andrew Jackson until the Series of 1928 put Hamilton on every $10 bill. His is the only portrait on a circulating US note that faces left.

Which cabinet post did Hamilton become the first person to hold, serving under George Washington from 1789?

Treasury Secretary is the post that made Hamilton's name: despite his portrait on the currency, he was never president. He served from 1789 to 1795.

Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Charlestown, the capital of which small Caribbean island?

Nevis was then part of the British Leeward Islands. Hamilton's mother later moved her two sons to St. Croix, where she kept a small store in Christiansted.

Which natural disaster did the teenage Hamilton describe so vividly in 1772 that local leaders paid for his schooling?

A hurricane devastated Christiansted on August 30, 1772. Hamilton's account of it so impressed community leaders that they raised a fund to send him to North America to study.

What term of office did Hamilton propose for the president in his own plan at the 1787 Constitutional Convention?

For life, so long as he showed good behavior, was Hamilton's formula, and he wanted senators to serve on the same terms. Opponents called him a monarchist for years afterwards.

Which writer and performer created the Broadway musical Hamilton after reading a biography of him on vacation in Mexico?

Lin-Manuel Miranda also played the title role when the show opened on Broadway in 2015. It went on to set a record with 16 Tony Award nominations, winning 11.

Hamilton's 1791 excise tax on which product set off an armed uprising among farmers in western Pennsylvania?

Whiskey was the basic export of the frontier economy, so the tax hit small farmers hard. Washington himself rode out with about 13,000 militiamen to end the revolt in 1794.

Which longtime enemy did Hamilton urge Federalists to back when the House had to settle the tied election of 1800?

Thomas Jefferson won on the 36th ballot, when several Federalists stopped voting for his rival. Hamilton disliked his politics but judged the other contender unprincipled.

Which state did Hamilton represent at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where he was its only delegate to sign?

New York sent three delegates, but the other two withdrew early, leaving Hamilton to sign alone. He settled there as a teenager and later founded a daily newspaper, the New York Evening Post.

King's College, where Hamilton enrolled as a teenager in the 1770s, later became which Ivy League university?

Columbia dropped its royal name in 1784, right after the Revolution. Hamilton, a former student, later served on its board of trustees.

Which general's daughter did Hamilton marry in December 1780, months after meeting her at the army's winter quarters?

Elizabeth Schuyler outlived Hamilton by half a century, dying in 1854 at age 97. The couple had eight children.

Under which shared Roman pen name did Hamilton and two co-authors publish The Federalist Papers in 1787 and 1788?

Publius honored Publius Valerius, who helped found the Roman Republic and whose byname meant friend of the people. Hamilton chose the name and wrote 51 of the 85 essays.

At which 1781 siege did Hamilton lead a night bayonet charge that captured a key British redoubt?

Yorktown's fall effectively ended the war. Hamilton's men took Redoubt No. 10 with bayonets alone, so that no accidental gunshot would give the night attack away.

In which New Jersey town, on a ledge above the Hudson River, was Hamilton fatally shot in 1804?

Weehawken's heights, below the cliffs of the Palisades, were a popular dueling ground. The two men crossed the Hudson in separate boats early that morning.

What position did Hamilton hold on George Washington's wartime staff for four years, ranked as a lieutenant colonel?

Aide-de-camp work made Hamilton Washington's emissary in intelligence, diplomacy and talks with senior officers. He quit in 1781 after a reprimand, still asking for a field command.

Which institution did Hamilton persuade Congress to charter in 1791, despite claims that it was unconstitutional?

A national bank drew fire from Madison and from fellow cabinet members, who said the Constitution gave Congress no such power. Hamilton answered that its powers were implied, and Washington signed the bill.

Which US armed service traces its birth to the fleet of revenue cutters that Hamilton proposed in 1790?

The Coast Guard counts August 4, 1790, when Congress approved his armed cutters, as its birthday. The ships were meant to patrol the coast and help customs collectors seize contraband.

Which married woman's affair with Hamilton became public in 1797, years after her husband extorted money from him?

Maria Reynolds was 23 when the affair began in 1791. To prove he had misused no public money, Hamilton published a pamphlet admitting the affair in detail.

Hamilton helped George Washington draft which 1796 message warning against party strife and permanent foreign alliances?

The Farewell Address was a public letter, first printed in a newspaper on September 19, 1796. The ideas were Washington's, but Hamilton wrote most of the text.

Hamilton's 1790 dinner-table bargain with James Madison put the permanent national capital on the banks of which river?

The Potomac site was one half of a trade: four congressmen from districts along the river switched their votes to pass Hamilton's financial plan. The Susquehanna had been the rival site.

Which fellow Federalist did Hamilton attack in a long pamphlet during the 1800 campaign, splitting his own party?

John Adams was the sitting president and the Federalists' own candidate that year. Hamilton's pamphlet was highly critical of his conduct and character, then closed with a tepid endorsement.

Under Hamilton's 1790 funding plan, what did the federal government take over from the thirteen states?

Their war debts from the Revolution were exchanged for new federal securities at full face value. About $18 million in state obligations ended up on the national books.

What was the first name of Hamilton's eldest son, who died at 19 after a duel in 1801?

Philip had confronted a lawyer over a speech attacking his father, and the quarrel ended on the dueling ground. He was named for his mother's father, a Continental Army general.

What is the name of the only home Hamilton ever owned, a country house his family moved into in 1802?

The Grange is now a national memorial, and the whole house has been moved twice, in 1889 and again in 2008. Hamilton lived in it for only two years.

What kind of institution did Hamilton's widow help to found in 1806, later serving as its head for 27 years?

An orphanage was a fitting cause for the widow of a man orphaned as a boy. Hers was the first private one in its city, and she led it from 1821 to 1848.

After the Revolution, Hamilton built a law practice in the 1780s by defending which unpopular group in court?

Loyalists and British subjects faced lawsuits over property they had held during the wartime occupation. In Rutgers v. Waddington, Hamilton argued that a state law broke the peace treaty.

Which author's 2004 biography of Hamilton became the basis for the hit Broadway musical about him?

Ron Chernow went on to serve as the show's historical consultant. His book returned to the bestseller list in 2015, eleven years after it first appeared.

Hamilton's father James, the fourth son of a landed gentleman, sailed to the Caribbean from which country?

Scotland was home to the family's estate in Ayrshire. James Hamilton later abandoned Alexander's mother and their two sons.

What job did the young Hamilton hold on St. Croix, where he once ran the business for five months?

Merchant's clerk was his post at Beekman and Cruger, a firm that traded with the mainland colonies. While still a teenager he was left in charge for five months in 1771 while the owner was at sea.

Which tailor, later a spy on British officers, took in the teenage Hamilton as a lodger soon after he arrived in 1772?

Hercules Mulligan's tailoring shop catered to wealthy British officers, which later made him a useful spy. He also helped Hamilton sell the cargo meant to pay for his schooling.

Hamilton entered the Revolutionary War in 1776 as the captain of a 60-man company from which branch of the army?

Artillery suited a man who had already helped seize British cannons under fire from a warship in 1775. The next year he was commissioned to raise the company himself and made its captain.

Hamilton's cannons helped pin down Hessian troops in which surprise attack on the morning after Christmas 1776?

Trenton found his company posted at the high point of town, keeping the Hessians pinned in their barracks. Eight days later he fought at Princeton too.

Which national office did Hamilton's killer hold on the day of their duel in July 1804?

Vice President he remained: though charged with murder, he went back to the capital, presided over a Senate impeachment trial and completed his term.

What did Hamilton's own shot hit in the 1804 duel, instead of the man standing opposite him?

A cedar tree took the ball through a limb about twelve feet up, some four feet wide of the line between the two men. Hamilton had written beforehand that he did not intend to fire at him.

The pistols from Hamilton's fatal duel were sold in 1930 to a predecessor of which financial giant?

JPMorgan Chase descends from the Manhattan Company, founded by the very man who fired the fatal shot. The pistols had belonged to Hamilton's brother-in-law.

Hamilton wrote the report urging all the states to meet in Philadelphia at which 1786 gathering of only five states?

Annapolis Convention delegates numbered just twelve, too few to settle the trade barriers they had come to discuss. The meeting they asked for became the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

In Federalist No. 78, Hamilton called which branch of the new federal government the least dangerous?

The judiciary, he reasoned, has no influence over either the sword or the purse and can only pass judgment. The same essay argues that judges should hold office for as long as they behave well.

Which South Carolina friend of Hamilton on Washington's staff won approval to recruit 3,000 enslaved men as soldiers?

John Laurens promised the recruits freedom in return for fighting. He was shot from his saddle in August 1782, one of the last casualties of the Revolutionary War.

Which musical style, unusual for a history play, drives much of the score of the Broadway show Hamilton?

Hip-hop shares the score with R&B, pop, soul and traditional show tunes. The music was composed over seven years, from 2008 to 2015.

Hamilton joined a society founded in 1785, which soon opened the African Free School, to promote which cause?

Ending slavery through manumission was the society's aim, though many of its founders were slaveholders themselves. Its school, opened in 1787, taught the children of slaves and free people of color.

As a student in 1775, Hamilton held back an angry Patriot mob with a speech so that which man could escape?

His college president, Myles Cooper, was an outspoken supporter of the Crown. Hamilton backed the Revolution but disapproved of mob violence against its opponents.

Hamilton's student militia company of 1775 raided British cannons at the Battery under which adopted name?

Hearts of Oak replaced the company's first name, the Corsicans, a salute to the short-lived Corsican Republic. The raid was carried out under fire from a British warship.

Arguing the Croswell libel case in 1804, Hamilton said which defense should clear a publisher of defamation?

The truth alone was no defense under English precedent, and the judges deadlocked on his plea. The next year the state legislature wrote Hamilton's argument into its libel law.

Hamilton devised the framework for which 1794 agreement with Britain, negotiated in London by the sitting Chief Justice?

The Jay Treaty passed the Senate in 1795 with exactly the two-thirds majority it needed. Its opponents denounced Hamilton, and even Washington, as monarchists.

Whose full-length 1805 portrait of Hamilton is the source of the face engraved on US paper money?

John Trumbull is best known for the Declaration of Independence scene that hangs in the Capitol rotunda. His full-length Hamilton was painted the year after its subject died.

Hamilton's manufacturing society founded which New Jersey city in the 1790s beside the Great Falls of the Passaic River?

Paterson took its name from the governor who signed the society's charter. The site was chosen because the falls could supply water power for a planned national manufacturing center.

Which other man who was never president shares with Hamilton a place on US paper money in everyday circulation?

Benjamin Franklin appears on the $100 bill. Hamilton is also the only person on the notes who was born outside what is now the United States.

Hamilton's first political pamphlets answered which pro-British clergyman who signed himself a farmer?

Samuel Seabury went on to become the first American Episcopal bishop. Hamilton, then a student, answered him anonymously in two pamphlets, the second titled The Farmer Refuted.

Hamilton followed George Washington as head of which hereditary order of Revolutionary War officers?

The Society of the Cincinnati made Hamilton its second President General. Washington's heirs passed him the diamond eagle badge that the first president had worn.