His eldest surviving son James, 2nd marquess of Hamilton (c. 1589-1625), was created baron of Innerdale and earl of Cambridge in the peerage of England in 1619, and these honours descended to his son James, who in 1643 was created duke of Hamilton (q.v.). William, 2nd duke of Hamilton (1616-1651), succeeded to the dukedom on his brother’s execution in 1649. He was created earl of Lanark in 1639, and in the next year became secretary of state in Scotland. Arrested at Oxford by the king’s orders in 1643 for “concurrence” with Hamilton, he effected his escape and was temporarily reconciled with the Presbyterian party. He was sent by the Scottish committee of estates to treat with Charles I. at Newcastle in 1646, when he sought in vain to persuade the king to consent to the establishment of Presbyterianism in England. On the 26th of September 1647 he signed on behalf of the Scots the treaty with Charles known as the “Engagement” at Carisbrooke Castle, and helped to organize the second Civil War. In 1648 he fled to Holland, his succession in the next year to his brother’s dukedom making him an important personage among the Royalist exiles. He returned to Scotland with Prince Charles in 1650, but, finding a reconciliation with Argyll impossible, he refused to prejudice Charles’s cause by pushing his claims, and lived in retirement chiefly until the Scottish invasion of England, when he acted as colonel of a body of his dependants. He died on the 12th of September 1651 from the effects of wounds received at Worcester. He left no male heirs, and the title devolved on the 1st duke’s eldest surviving daughter Anne, duchess of Hamilton in her own right.
Anne married in 1656 William Douglas, earl of Selkirk (1635-1694), who was created duke of Hamilton in 1660 on his wife’s petition, receiving also several of the other Hamilton peerages, but for his life only. The Hamilton estates had been declared forfeit by Cromwell, and he himself had been fined £1000. He supported Lauderdale in the early stages of his Scottish policy, in which he adopted a moderate attitude towards the Presbyterians, but the two were soon alienated, through the influence of the countess of Dysart, according to Gilbert Burnet, who spent much time at Hamilton Palace in arranging the Hamilton papers. With other Scottish noblemen who resisted Lauderdale’s measures Hamilton was twice summoned to London to present his case at court, but without obtaining any result. He was dismissed from the privy council in 1676, and on a subsequent visit to London Charles refused to receive him. On the accession of James II. he received numerous honours, but he was one of the first to enter into communication with the prince of Orange. He presided over the convention of Edinburgh, summoned at his request, which offered the Scottish crown to William and Mary in March 1689. His death took place at Holyrood on the 18th of April 1694. His wife survived until 1716.
James Douglas, 4th duke of Hamilton (1658-1712), eldest son of the preceding and of Duchess Anne, succeeded his mother, who resigned the dukedom to him in 1698, and at the accession of Queen Anne he was regarded as leader of the Scottish national party. He was an opponent of the union with England, but his lack of decision rendered his political conduct ineffective. He was created duke of Brandon in the peerage of Great Britain in 1711; and on the 15th of November in the following year he fought the celebrated duel with Charles Lord Mohun, narrated in Thackeray’s Esmond, in which both the principals were killed. His son, James (1703-1743), became 5th duke, and his grandson James, 6th duke of Hamilton and Brandon (1724-1758), married the famous beauty, Elizabeth Gunning, afterwards duchess of Argyll. James George, 7th duke (1755-1769), became head of the house of Douglas on the death in 1761 of Archibald, duke of Douglas, whose titles but not his estates then devolved on the duke of Hamilton as heir-male. Archibald’s brother Douglas (1756-1799) was the 8th duke, and when he died childless the titles passed to his uncle Archibald (1740-1819). His son Alexander, 10th duke (1767-1852), who as marquess of Douglas was a great collector and connoisseur of books and pictures (his collections realized £397,562 in 1882), was ambassador at St Petersburg in 1806-1807. His sister, Lady Anne Hamilton, was lady-in-waiting and a faithful friend to Queen Caroline, wife of George IV.; she did not write the Secret History of the Court of England ... (1832) to which her name was attached. William Alexander, 11th duke of Hamilton (1811-1863), married Princess Marie Amélie, daughter of Charles, grand-duke of Baden, and, on her mother’s side, a cousin of Napoleon III. The title of duke of Châtellerault, granted to his remote ancestor in 1548, and claimed at different times by various branches of the Hamilton family, was conferred on the 11th duke’s son, William Alexander, 12th duke of Hamilton (1845-1895), by the emperor of the French in 1864. His sister, Lady Mary Douglas-Hamilton, married in 1869 Albert, prince of Monaco, but their marriage was declared invalid in 1880. She subsequently married Count Tassilo Festetics, a Hungarian noble. The 12th duke left no male issue and was succeeded in 1895 by his kinsman, Alfred Douglas, a descendant of the 4th duke. Claud Hamilton, 1st Baron Paisley, brother of the 1st marquess of Hamilton, was, as mentioned above, ancestor of the Abercorn branch of the Hamiltons. His son, who became earl of Abercorn in 1606, received among a number of other titles that of Lord Hamilton. This title, and also that of Viscount Hamilton, in the peerage of Great Britain, conferred on the 8th earl of Abercorn in 1786, are borne by the dukes of Abercorn, whose eldest son is usually styled by courtesy marquess of Hamilton, a title which was added to the other family honours when the 2nd marquess of Abercorn was raised to the dukedom in 1868.
See John Anderson, The House of Hamilton (1825); Hamilton Papers, ed. J. Bain (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1890-1892); Gilbert Burnet, Lives of James and William, dukes of Hamilton (1677); The Hamilton Papers relative to 1638-1650, ed. S. R. Gardiner for the Camden Society (1880); G. E. C[okayne], Complete Peerage (1887-1898); an article by the Rev. J. Anderson in Sir J. B. Paul’s edition of the Scots Peerage, vol. iv. (1907).
HAMILTON, ALEXANDER (1757-1804), American statesman and economist, was born, as a British subject, on the island of Nevis in the West Indies on the 11th of January 1757. He came of good family on both sides. His father, James Hamilton, a Scottish merchant of St Christopher, was a younger son of Alexander Hamilton of Grange, Lanarkshire, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir R. Pollock. His mother, Rachael Fawcett (Faucette), of French Huguenot descent, married when very young a Danish proprietor of St Croix, John Michael Levine, with whom she lived unhappily and whom she soon left, subsequently living with James Hamilton; her husband procured a divorce in 1759, but the court forbade her remarriage.[1] Such unions as hers with James Hamilton were long not uncommon in the West Indies. By her James Hamilton had two sons, Alexander and James. Business misfortunes having caused his father’s bankruptcy, and his mother dying in 1768, young Hamilton was thrown upon the care of maternal relatives at St Croix, where, in his twelfth year, he entered the counting-house of Nicholas Cruger. Shortly afterward Mr Cruger, going abroad, left the boy in charge of the business. The extraordinary specimens we possess of his mercantile correspondence and friendly letters, written at this time, attest an astonishing poise and maturity of mind, and self-conscious ambition. His opportunities for regular schooling must have been very scant; but he had cultivated friends who discerned his talents and encouraged their development, and he early formed the habits of wide reading and industrious study that were to persist through his life. An accomplishment later of great service to Hamilton, common enough in the Antilles, but very rare in the English continental colonies, was a familiar command of French. In 1772 some friends, impressed by a description by him of the terrible West Indian hurricane in that year, made it possible for him to go to New York to complete his education. Arriving in the autumn of 1772, he prepared for college at Elizabethtown, N.J., and in 1774 entered King’s College (now Columbia University) in New York City. His studies, however, were interrupted by the War of American Independence.
A visit to Boston seems to have thoroughly confirmed the conclusion, to which reason had already led him, that he should cast in his fortunes with the colonists. Into their cause he threw himself with ardour. In 1774-1775 he wrote two influential anonymous pamphlets, which were attributed to John Jay; they show remarkable maturity and controversial ability, and rank high among the political arguments of the time.[2] He organized an artillery company, was awarded its captaincy on examination, won the interest of Nathanael Greene and Washington by the proficiency and bravery he displayed in the campaign of 1776 around New York City, joined Washington’s staff in March 1777 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and during four years served as his private secretary and confidential aide. The important duties with which he was entrusted attest Washington’s entire confidence in his abilities and character; then and afterwards, indeed, reciprocal confidence and respect took the place, in their relations, of personal attachment.[3] But Hamilton was ambitious for military glory—it was an ambition he never lost; he became impatient of detention in what he regarded as a position of unpleasant dependence, and (Feb. 1781) he seized a slight reprimand administered by Washington as an excuse for abandoning his staff position.[4] Later he secured a field command, through Washington, and won laurels at Yorktown, where he led the American column in the final assault on the British works. In 1780 he married Elizabeth, daughter of General Philip Schuyler, and thus became allied with one of the most distinguished families in New York.
Meanwhile, he had begun the political efforts upon which his fame principally rests. In letters of 1779-1780[5] he correctly diagnoses the ills of the Confederation, and suggests with admirable prescience the necessity of centralization in its governmental powers; he was, indeed, one of the first, if not to conceive, at least to suggest adequate checks on the anarchic tendencies of the time. After a year’s service in Congress in 1782-1783, in which he experienced the futility of endeavouring to attain through that decrepit body the ends he sought, he settled down to legal practice in New York.[6] The call for the Annapolis Convention (1786) was Hamilton’s opportunity. A delegate from New York, he supported Madison in inducing the Convention to exceed its delegated powers and summon the Federal Convention of 1787 at Philadelphia (himself drafting the call); he secured a place on the New York delegation; and, when his anti-Federal colleagues withdrew from the Convention, he signed the Constitution for his state. So long as his colleagues were present his own vote was useless, and he absented himself for some time from the debates after making one remarkable speech (June 18th, 1787). In this he held up the British government as the best model in the world.[7] Though fully conscious that monarchy in America was impossible, he wished to obtain the next best solution in an aristocratic, strongly centralized, coercive, but representative union, with devices to give weight to the influence of class and property.[8] His plan had no chance of success; but though unable to obtain what he wished, he used his great talents to secure the adoption of the Constitution.
To this struggle was due the greatest of his writings, and the greatest individual contribution to the adoption of the new government, The Federalist, which remains a classic commentary on American constitutional law and the principles of government, and of which Guizot said that “in the application of elementary principles of government to practical administration” it was the greatest work known to him. Its inception, and much more than half its contents were Hamilton’s (the rest Madison’s and Jay’s).[9] Sheer will and reasoning could hardly be more brilliantly and effectively exhibited than they were by Hamilton in the New York convention of 1788, whose vote he won, against the greatest odds, for the ratification of the Constitution. It was the judgment of Chancellor James Kent, the justice of which can hardly be disputed, that “all the documentary proof and the current observation of the time lead us to the conclusion that he surpassed all his contemporaries in his exertions to create, recommend, adopt and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
When the new government was inaugurated, Hamilton became secretary of the treasury in Washington’s cabinet.[10] Congress immediately referred to him a press of queries and problems, and there came from his pen a succession of papers that have left the strongest imprint on the administrative organization of the national government—two reports on public credit, upholding an ideal of national honour higher than the prevalent popular principles; a report on manufactures, advocating their encouragement (e.g. by bounties paid from surplus revenues amassed by tariff duties)—a famous report that has served ever since as a storehouse of arguments for a national protective policy;[11] a report favouring the establishment of a national bank, the argument being based on the doctrine of “implied powers” in the Constitution, and on the application that Congress may do anything that can be made, through the medium of money, to subserve the “general welfare” of the United States—doctrines that, through judicial interpretation, have revolutionized the Constitution; and, finally, a vast mass of detailed work by which order and efficiency were given to the national finances. In 1793 he put to confusion his opponents who had brought about a congressional investigation of his official accounts. The success of his financial measures was immediate and remarkable. They did not, as is often but loosely said, create economic prosperity; but they did prop it, in an all-important field, with order, hope and confidence. His ultimate purpose was always the strengthening of the union; but before particularizing his political theories, and the political import of his financial measures, the remaining events of his life may be traced.