Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton bore neither loyalty nor affection for Nevis, the British island on which he was born, or for St. Croix, the Danish island on which he passed his early youth. An American who spent a few years on St. Croix during the eighteenth century remarked that he felt "much the same anxiety at a distance from it as Adam did after he was banished from the bowers of Eden." For Hamilton, however, the island was a prison from which he could not wait to escape: probably the happiest moment he knew in the West Indies was when, from the deck of a ship, he watched St. Croix drop below the horizon.

No doubt, much of the aversion Hamilton felt for St. Croix was owing to the unhappiness he experienced there. His father, James Hamilton, the fourth son of the Laird of Cambuskeith, "The Grange," Ayrshire, Scotland, lived in open adultery with Alexander's mother, Rachel Fawcett Lavien, the daughter of a French Huguenot physician and wife of John Lavien, a German businessman who had settled at St. Croix. Although Alexander was born in 1755 (his brother James had preceded him by two years), John Lavien did not get round to divorcing Rachel until 1758. In his bill of divorce, he declared her to be no better than a prostitute. In actuality, she seems to have been an impetuous, ardent and high-spirited young woman, too strong-willed to endure a loveless marriage. But since Rachel was forbidden by Danish law to remarry (she being the offending party), the bar sinister was indelibly fixed upon her two sons.

To make matters worse, James Hamilton was a ne'er-do-well. His business ventures almost invariably turned out badly; the year Alexander was born, his father went bankrupt. Moreover, most of Alexander's relatives on his mother's side, the most important of whom were the Lyttons, were in financial difficulties. Thus, from his earliest years, it was impressed upon Alexander that while he came of good family-"My blood," he once said, "is as good as that of those who plume themselves upon their ancestry"-and many of his near relatives had been wealthy and respected, times had changed for the worse, the money was gone and they were all on the downgrade.

As for the family name, it was becoming increasingly apparent that James Hamilton would add no embellishment to it, not even to the extent of handing it down legally to his descendants.

In 1765, shortly after James Hamilton had brought his family to St. Croix, he abandoned Rachel and his sons. He left them almost wholly destitute. Since none of Rachel's relatives were able to help out financially, she was obliged to open a small store while her son James was apprenticed to a carpenter, and Alexander, at the age of eleven, became a clerk in the counting house of Cruger and Beekman. In 1769, Rachel died; she had ceased to call herself "Madame Hamilton" and she was buried as Rachel Lavien. As for James Hamilton, he was last heard of on the island of St. Vincent, where he lived to a ripe and impenitent old age. While thus cutting himself off from his family, he did not make the breach so complete as to exclude charity. Over the course of years he received a considerable sum of money from Alexander, but James Hamilton never indicated any strong desire to see the son whose generosity he had done so little to merit.

Singularly enough, Alexander never blamed his troubles upon his father. He always addressed James Hamilton with filial respect and affection; at no time did he reproach him for his conduct toward his wife and children. Indeed, had James Hamilton been a model of conjugal and parental behavior, he could hardly have evoked a greater semblance of regard from his youngest son. In later life, when Alexander referred to his family-which, understandably, was not often-it was of his father rather than of his mother that he usually spoke. Hamilton forgave his father this unpaternal neglect because James Hamilton, with all his faults, represented a link with the aristocratic world. Much could be forgiven a lord, or the younger son of a lord.