SOURCE: "Professional Life—Duel and Death," in Alexander Hamilton, 1882. Reprint by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883, pp. 237-84.

Lodge was an American politician, historian, and author, who coedited the North American Review with Henry Adams from 1873 to 1876, and who later served as associate editor of the International Review. His works of American history and biography include A Short History of the English Colonies in America (1881), Alexander Hamilton (1882), and Daniel Webster (1883). In the excerpt below, from his biography of Hamilton, Lodge summarizes his subject's accomplishments in glowing terms.

Hamilton is one of the statesmen of creative minds who represent great ideas. It is for this reason that he left the deep mark of his personal influence upon our history. His principles of finance, of foreign affairs, of political economy, and of the powers and duties of government under the constitution may be found on every page of our history, and...