SOURCE: "Alexander Hamilton," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LIX, No. CCCLI, January, 1887, pp. 115-23.

The following is an approbatory overview of Hamilton's character and works.

As one reads the writings of Alexander Hamilton, it is impossible to escape a sense of regret that he was not born within the limits of the thirteen colonies in British America. The most distinguished statesman of the United States should have been a son of their soil, a product of their civilization, a result of their formative influences. It was a strange freak of chance or destiny which placed so magnificent an intellect in the head of a child to be born illegitimately, of obscure parentage, on the insignificant island of St. Kitt's. Many a mother, under the like embarrassing circumstances, would have so managed the infantile career of the unwelcome little waif that the world would have lost, nor have ever...