PREFACE LITTLE material is available for a biography of Alexander Hamilton beyond that collected by his son, John Church Hamilton, and his grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton. Much that once existed was lost. Tuckerman's "Life of General Philip Schuyler" relates that many letters from Hamilton and other political papers were burned by a son of one of Schuyler's executors, because he regarded them as containing expressions too personal to be exposed to any risk of publicity. The loss to American history is as great as that inflicted by Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, when he destroyed his memoirs for a like reason. A bowdlerized style of writing history and biography was once in vogue that made such suppression of truth seem actually meritorious, and damage was done that can never be repaired. Hamilton's reputation has suffered greatly by it. His career was too vivid and salient, his statesmanship too incisive, his self-revelation too candid to admit of the bowdlerizing process, and he cannot be judged fairly unless all is brought out and put in the scales. Such has been my aim in the present work. My |