Reflections on history while writing my book, American Hero.
Guns, Girls, Whiskey,
and Alexander Hamilton
Besides Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton may be one of the most
misunderstood men in American History. We all think we know him well. We keep
him in our pockets in the form of a ten-dollar bill (if we’re lucky) and
everyone knows he was one of the Big Six Founding Fathers. Hopefully, if
cornered by Jay Leno we’ll know he was never a president. If we really paid
attention, we may know he had something to do with setting up the Treasury and
getting the United States out of debt from the Revolutionary War. We might have
heard rumors about his personal life; born in the West Indies, a black woman in
the woodshed of his ancestry, the many affairs (Bill Clinton didn’t invent
political sex), and then there’s the Duel, when he was murdered by the Vice
President of the United States, Aaron Burr.
There’s a lot more
to all these stories, but let’s start when young Alex Hamilton, barely into his
20s, led a band of insurgents out of King’s College Law School (soon to be
renamed Columbia) on an attack against the British Navy as the
Revolutionary War had barely begun.
As always, there’s a
woman involved. In this case, several women. Hamilton had become a much-admired
patron among the “nuns” of Black Sam’s Tavern. In those days one would have to
make a fine distinction between a saloon and a bordello. Later, it became known
as Fraunces Tavern, the temporary capital of the newly minted United States and
the place where George Washington gave his Farewell Address. Yes, the first
seat of government in the United States was a House if Ill-Repute, which makes
perfect sense once you study up on these things.
When rumor spread in
the summer of 1775 that the HMS Asia
had moored in New York Harbor with the intent of forcing the rebellious
colonists to conform to new tax laws, Hamilton leapt to the top of a wooden
table, beer stein flinging foam in the air, and declared to a room full of
drunken college students and prostitutes, “What separates the damned British
from us is not the power of weapons but will power. What say ye men, do ye have
the will?”
He led a rowdy crowd
into the streets of lower Manhattan and overwhelmed a small British force at
the Battery. They stole ten cannons that had been positioned there to protect
the flotilla assembling in the harbor. Under return musket fire from the
Redcoats, the students dragged the heavy iron cannons to a Liberty Tree, set up
on the Broad Way as a symbol of solidarity with the Sons of Liberty up in
Boston. Several were wounded, including a grazing ball to Hamilton’s shoulder,
but no one died.
The British, not as
incompetent as they would soon prove to be, however, knew how to strike back at
the culprits where it would hurt the most. They launched their ship’s cannon
dead on to Black Sam’s Tavern, bashing in its roof and causing a raging fire in
the wooden building.
Priorities in place,
the students quickly abandoned their stolen artillery and picked up buckets of river
water to put out the fire and save their “Holy Ground.”
The British retook
their cannons and sent Hamilton’s Rangers scurrying for their lives. The next
day the Redcoats occupied Manhattan.
Hamilton’s efforts
did not go to waste, however. He saved the beloved tavern from destruction
(Black Sam was a major job creator for the city’s working girls) and caught the
attention of the newly appointed Commander of the Colonial Forces, George
Washington, who would soon hire Hamilton as his aide and launch his brilliant
career.
Another time we’ll
take a closer look at the famous Duel. There’s a lot more to that story, too.
Sometimes I think of the Founding Fathers as six
parts of a single entity. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson is the brain. John Adams
is the spleen. James Madison is the liver. George Washington is the lungs.
Benjamin Franklin is the, well, let’s call it the gonads. And, despite his
facility with accountancy, Hamilton is the heart. More later.
