.. let me jump right into the question of how i got mixed up with mr. hamilton, because as dick noted, this book is something of a departure for me. when i was on the road publicizing my rockefeller biography "titan" i realized the extent to which i was being typecast as the guilded age mogul guy. when i finished a speech people in the audience would jump up and shout, do carnegie next. do vanlt next. even more, i would give a rip-roaring rendition of rockefeller's life only to have some timid soul raise his hand and ask mr. chernow should i

roll over my t-bill? people only realized how dismal my own investment experience had been. i realized i was trapped in this gilded cage, not a gilded cage, guilded cage, and hamilton arose as the perfect way out of it because on the one hand he would purely transform me back to the origins of the economic and financial system i had already written about and on the other hand he was one of those universal geniuses of the 18th century whose mind seemed to touch on almost every conceivable subject. i think it's fair to say nowadays even well educated americans are ignorant about the first treasury secretary. they know he appears on the $10 bill. though you may notice with something of a hollywood makeover on the new currency. hamilton i think was the best looking of the founders you about treasury department in its wisdom decided he needed plastic surgery. you'll notice they have widened

his face and given him this rugged, square-jawed look as if he were auditioning for a hollywood action movie. there was a marvelous piece in "u.s. news and world report" revealing the air brushed images of the founders on the latest bills and when the magazine came to hamilton it positively gushed and i quote "as for hamilton he now looks like a real hunk." so it took us two centuries to get a hunky found birr we -- founder but we have him. the other thing everybody used to know about hamilton was he was gunned down by vice president aaron burr in a duel in new jersey two centuries before hbo and tony soprano took over the nearby turf. burr was the only vice president in american history ever indicted for murder in two states. yes. and he actually presided over a famous impeachment trial in the

senate of a supreme court justice while he, burr, was simultaneously on the lam from the law in new york and new jersey. never a dull moment in the life of aaron burr. this evening it won't surprise you that i want to make the case that hamilton was the most underrated and misunderstood of the founders and i dare say the most prophetic. he unquestionabley led the most dramatic life of any founder. one packed with so many amazing adventures and accomplishments, so many scandals and tragedies that it was even hard to compress this very brief life into a single, thick volume. let me try to project on your imagination a series of vignettes that will evoke the many facets of this extraordinary life. hamilton had a remarkable personality. he was a charismatic figure, on the one hand very charming, witty, handsome, exceptionally intelligent to be sure, but he

was also brash, headstrong and in the end dangerously sure of himself. first let me summon up a brilliant but very frustrated adolescent toiling away at a trading house on st. croix in the caribbean in the late 1760's. he was an illegitimate boy born on the british island and as dick indicated he had suffered through a series of childhood traumas that would have shattered a lesser figure. his father abandons the family when alexander is 11, mother dies of tropical fever when he is 13. he is farmed out to a first cousin who commits suicide years later. clampedies of biblical proportion -- calamaties of biblical proportion seem to find their way to this young man. in 1772, about a year before the boston tea party, a monster hurricane lashes st. croix and this self-taught prodigy sits down and pens a description of

the hurricane of such precocious elegance that local merchants band together to finance his education in north america. the wonder kid studied at kings college in lower manhattan, later renamed columbia, kings being a slightly awkward and inconvenient name after the revolution. and already as undergraduate extraordinaire, hamilton is publishing stirring pam fleths against the british. he takes up a musket and he drills with his fellow students in nearby st. falls church, today adjacent to ground zero, and he delivers spellbinding speeches to large crowds on what is today new york city park. but this young man is an ambivalent revolutionary. when a rampaging mob of patriots swoops down on the college hoping to tar and feather the tory president miles cooper young hamilton who was only about 5'6" and rather slight of build courageously stands in the doorway and blocks their path.

the young man craves liberty yes but also dreads disorder and this is a fine balancing act of recurring tension that will characterize his entire career. before he has a chance to graduate this slim, blue-eyed young man is appointed an artillery captain for the continental army. he slips across the fog-bound east river during washington's famous nocturnal retreat after the battle of brooklyn. he then rises from his sick bed to cross the icy delaware to surprise the drousing hegs shuns at trenton. then a few months later he is just 22. a guy who had been a penniless orphan five years ago in the trading house on st. croix is miraculously appointed aide-de-camp to george washington. in fact he proved so adept at handling washington's correspondence washington is able to give him the gist of a message and out pops a beautifully worded, delicately nuanced letter from hamilton that almost seems like an

inspired act. you will see in this story that with almost come call consistency hamilton has a knack for being where the action is. he is always there when history is unfolding. he is parachuted into every major event over a 30-year period. for instance hamilton was there at benedict arnold's house the morning that the treason plot was discovered and arnold fled down the hudson river. hamilton found himself con solling the distraught peggy arnold who -- consoling the distraught peggy arnold who was upstairs in her bed weeping in this very provocative lingerie as she faked a mad scene to disguise the fact that she was in cahoots with her husband. hamilton i think was the brainiest of all the founders but i think it's fair to say that around beautiful women he shed approximately 50 points on his i.q. he was suckered in by this masterful performance by peggy arnold.

now, surprisingly enough, you would think that after this gasly childhood that hamilton -- ghastly childhood that hamilton would be thrilled at his sudden station in life. but he was hamilton. no. he was chafing at his desk. he dreamed of battlefield glory. and like so many intellectuals then and now, hamilton was a daredevil who actually enjoyed courting physical danger. at the battle of monmouth he was horrified to find general charles lee in full blown retreat with hispanic stricken men. the young colonel rides up to the general and says i will stay here with you my dear general and die with you. let us all die rather than retreat. hamilton of course has his supreme moment of heroism at yorktown. hamilton after mercilessly badgering washington is given the command of the first infantry battalion. picture the scene. hamilton rises up out of the

trench. he sprints across the rutted wasteland leading his men with frenzied war whoops. one of his subordinates neil hamilton steps on his shoulder and springs up on the parapart and then exhorts his men to follow. you could almost picture tom cruise in the starring scene. now, despite crushing daytime duties for george washington, hamilton against all odds manages to give himself a crash course during the revolution in finance history and politics. from camp to camp this young man is lugging two enormous folio sized volumes called the dictionary of trade and commerce. not exactly light, bedtime fare after a day of heavy-duty correspondence for george washington. hamilton also totes along six volumes of plutarch's lives and takes the empty pages of the military pay book and we see him recording notes on foreign

exchange, population growth, geography, even european rivers that he will never set eyes on. in fact, in his notes, very interesting notes from plutarch we see a young man who seems absolutely bewitched by the bizarre sexual practices of ancient rome. for example hamilton noted in ancient rome young mayor a id women seemed to enjoy being whipped by lusty young noblemen. why? because they thought it aided conception. i can tell you when you study our founding fathers you are led down all sorts of unexpected byways. in fact, hamilton had such a roving eye for the young women that martha washington during the revolution nicknamed her tomcat hamilton. i trust it made for interesting moments with george calling for hamilton and martha calling for hamilton. hamilton was a very proud, ambitious outsider without money. he lacked what the 18th century referred to as birth or breeding. he knew that he needed to marry into a respectable family.

indeed, soon after elizabeth skylar the daughter of a very powerful new york dynasty visits the continental army in 1780 one of hamilton's colleagues reports, quote, hamilton is a gone man. the wedding at the skylinker mansion is a very bitter sweet affair because eliza hamilton has this huge, rich family teaming with all sorts of van courtland and important cousins while hamilton has only a single friend from washington's staff and of course he doesn't have a single family member in attendance. think of the underlying poignancy of that emotional imbalance in that affair. and yet the very, very status conscious skylar family always embraces hamilton as an adored member of the family. amazing. when hamilton then launches his post-war legal career, being hamilton his exploits again seem to verge on the super human. at the time, he usually served in three-year apprentice periods

to qualify for the law but hamilton being hamilton manages to qualify after six months of self-study. in fact, he cobbles together the crib sheet of new york legal procedures and practices and he does it so expertly that it becomes a textbook for a generation of new york lawyers. wonder boy. he then immediately does something quite fearless and controversial. hamilton begins to defend the tory merchants who remained in occupied new york during the british war time occupation and those tory merchants were now being persecuted by returning patrons. they were being persecuted by returning patriots. hamilton wanted to retain the capital and connections and know how of those tory merchants in order to rebuild new york. the city lost somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of all of its buildings during the revolution. you'll hear it said and very often it's taught this way in school that hamilton was a

ferocious snob, that he was the stooge of the plutocrats of his day and a would-be des pot with napoleonic ambitions. thomas jefferson is always represented as a pure and virtuous tribune of the people. in the book i don't entirely stand to stereotype but i try to argue for both hamiltonians and dare i say jeffersonians that the situation was far more complicated than that historical cartoon. case in point, during the revolutionary war it is hamilton of course who champions an audacious plan to emancipate any slave willing to pick up a musket for the continental cause. in the 1780's, it is hamilton who cofound the first abolitionist society in new york . in fact the records, the minutes of those meetings are actually upstairs in this very building where i did an enormous amount

of research for the book. remember that trading firm in st. croix i mentioned that hamilton worked for as a teenager. that firm had imported up to 300 slaves per year from western africa and it's clear from subsequent actions that this first-hand experience of slavery left hamilton with a permanent detestation of the system. in fact, caribbean slavery was the most brutal in the world, even those who managed to survive the middle passage. their life expectancy once they started working in the sugar cane breaks of the west indies was somewhere between three and five years. you constantly have these poor people perishing in the fields and the supply had to be constantly replenished. hamilton, despite the historic stereotype, turns out to have been the most consistent abolitionist among the founders bar none. i repeat, bar none. so when you look at the early history of the republic through the lens of slavery not the only way to look at it but i think a

significant way, hamilton begins to look a little more like the populist and jefferson and madison who owns 200 and 130 human beings respectively begin to look a little more like the privileged aristocrats. hamilton it also turns out had very enlightened views about native americans. many in this audience will know there is a college in upstate new york, both hamilton college -- called hamilton college, and the originies of that school, it started as a secondary school to educate native americans and hamilton lent his name and prestige to that under. he had very benign and enlightened views about jews and said in an unpublished paper that their success could only be explained by special providence. here this is man we're taught to regard as this ferocious stomp who again and again shows himself as not only devoid of prejudice but with a special sympathy for the oppressed. i think with a clear exception of george washington nobody did

more than alexander hamilton to get the 13 squabbling states into the powerful nation we know today. hamilton personally drafts the first appeal to the constitutional convention. he attends as the sole new york delegate to sign it. this hamilton who dreams up and then super vices the most -- supervises the most influential document ever written the federalist papers. of those 85 essays hamilton drafts an astonishing 51. no less astonishing there are periods when he is publishing them at a rate of as many as five or six per week. no less astonishing, he is doing it as a sideline. head a full-time legal practice. he had a full time legal practice. we have anecdotal evidence of the printer in the outer office as hamilton scribbles the final lines of an essay. no single treatise on the u.s. constitution has been cited more frequently by the supreme court than the federalist papers. nearly 300 times over the past two centuries. and if you chart the frequency of citation, the frequency of

citation actually is rising with time, not decreasing. hamilton, boy wonder the new federal government has created hits the ground running. he is only 34 years old when washington appoints him the first treasury secretary. this instantly makes him not only the most powerful person in america, it guarantees he'll be the most controversial. why? remember washington's cabinet and the term was not used. it was originally called the general council, washington's cabinet consist ted of just three people. thomas jefferson secretary of state, henry knox secretary of war and hamilton for treasury. fair to say, pound for pound the best cabinet in american history. even the attorney general is a part time legal adviser to the president, lacking that small thing called the justice department at that point.

in the early days jefferson starts with six employees. henry knox starts with a mere dozen. hamilton starts out with about three dozen and the number quickly balloons to several hundred employees. a frightening bureaucracy by the standards of the day. and also again many times larger than the rest of the government combined. which is why historians tend to liken hamilton's position in washington's administration to that of a prime minister rather than a mere department head but you say to people, alexander hamilton was first treasury secretary, it just does not begin to capture the scope and magnitude of the power that this man wielded. beyond the size of the treasury department, remember hamilton had to invent that department from scratch. at the time there were no income taxes. most revenue came from incoming

duties. smuggling as you know was a favorite revolutionary past and suddenly this activity has to be stopped in the name of patriotism, so hamilton has to construct a fleet of so-called revenue cutters, to start of course the coast guard. again and again we see hamilton forging the basic building blocks of the american government. he takes a country bankrupted by revolutionary war debt. he restores its credit. he devises our first tax system, our first budget system, our first central bank, our first monetary system. he has the federal government adopt all of the state debt. why does he do that? that seems counterintuitive for the federal government to add debt to what it already had. well, hamilton knew that if the federal government adopted the state debt, creditors would transfer their allegiance to the federal government and they would also forever after give the federal government the kind

of moral authority over revenues that the states would never have. very cunning and characteristic of hamilton in terms of embedding a political program. again, no less important than all of these pragmatic achievements as treasury secretary it is hamilton the great constitutional scholar who makes the enduring argument that all of these new activities are in fact permitted under the new national charter. remember, washington's first question, first administration, is this permissible under the constitution? hamilton with a kind of clairvoyance that is hard to explain encourages manufacturing, stock exchanges, banks, corporations at a time when these activities seem like scary futuristic stuff to many people. in the book i dub him the messenger from the future or as the new york historical society would have it the man who made modern america.

why has hamilton been villainized as a dangerous reactionary since he seems to anticipate things that happened a hundred or 200 years later rather than looking backward? i think this goes back to the deadly rivalry between hamilton and jefferson in washington's cabinet. jefferson you know, a man of very decided opinions, was a rather shy, soft spoken man, and jefferson actually shrank from open disagreement. if you happened to find yourself at a dinner party with thomas jefferson and you disagreed with him, jefferson would not openly confront you. hamilton would certainly openly confront you. jefferson would repair to his lodgings for the evening and record the statement that you had made and then he would store it up for later use. boy it he store things up with hamilton. in jefferson's secret diary there are nearly 400 references to hamilton, some of the anecdotes sound accurate, some

of dubious authenticity, not that jefferson is inventing whole thought. but he certainly is giving different comments in situations, his own jeffersonian spin. now, in part, as you well know, we have so many teachers in the room this evening, the epic animosity between these two olympian figures is probably a matter of clashing visions. jefferson wants a rural america with a weak, central government, stresses states rights, strict construction of the constitution, tax cuts, limited government, etcetera. hamilton's vision is of a bustling, diversified america of trade, finance and manufacturing as well as traditional agriculture. hamilton favors an energetic federal government, searnl strong presidency, strong independent judiciary, relatively weak states and a very expansive interpretation of the constitution. you can see where jefferson was understandably terrified of

hamilton's sheer brilliance. hamilton was one of these frightening windbags whom you meet from time to time who can speak in perfectly worded paragraphs for hours on end and hamilton did. he was also one of these intimidating characters who could toss off a 10,000 word opinion overnight for george washington. you can see in jefferson's diary that he is really struggling with hamilton. quote, hamilton made a speech of 3/4 of an hour in the cabinet today as if he had been speaking to a jury. the next day, jefferson, he records, hamilton spoke again for 3/4 of an hour. hamilton was quite frankly, a word machine. he wrote enough in 49 years to fill 22,000 pages in the latest edition of his collected papers and your speaker this evening i confess is masochistic enough to read every one of those pages. it is said that the editor of the papers for the columbia

university press and did an outstanding job, harold use today joke that he intended to dedicate the many volumes to aaron burr, quote, without whose cooperation this project would never have been completed. i thought often of that comment as i was writing the book. even as treasury secretary we find hamilton dabbling in anonymous journalism under a bewildering variety of pseudonyms. he launched one under the guise of camillas and then a simultaneous series that heeps praise on the brilliance of camillas. when hamilton publishes articles supporting washington's neutrality proclamation jefferson contacted james madison and pleaded with him to rebut hamilton in print. quote, for god's sake my dear

sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies and cut hamilton to pieces. there is nobody else who can and will enter the list with him. there was nobody else in america who could enter the list with alexander hamilton and even james madison often shrank from the invitation. the cabinet feud became so vitriolic that poor, long-suffering washington has to finally plead with both of them to desis from their vicious attacks on each other. hamilton's attacks were directly written by hamilton. jefferson would employ different surrogates but the effect was the same. in the end it's jefferson not hamilton who leaves washington's cabinet and hamilton who reigns triumphant but as you know the glittering prize that eludes alexander hamilton is the presidency and of course thomas jefferson goes on to become a two-term president.

now i intimated earlier that hamilton always had a small problem with libido. even during the revolution he boasted to one lady friend that his motto was all for love. and there were moments in his career where he made abundantly good on that. during december of 1791 remarkably enough at at height of his power as treasury secretary a young, 23-year-old woman named mariah reynolds knocks at his door. the government was then in philadelphia. she asked to speak to hamilton privately. and she spills out a woeful tale of how she has been cruelly abandoned by her husband named james reynolds. she appeals to hamilton for financial aid. hamilton several years later narrated what happened next. quote, in the evening i put a bank bill in my pocket and went to her rooming house. i inquired for mrs. reynolds and was shown upstairs at the head of which she met me and conducted me into her bedroom. i took the bill out of my pocket and gave it to her. some conversation then ensued

from which it was quickly apparent that other than pi kuhn o'harey -- other than pe kuhn o'harey -- pecuniary consolation would be acceptable. the 18th century had a way with words. thus, two centuries before bill and monica we have the first sexual scandal in american political history. for a full year despite all of the controversies swirling around his programs when hamilton should have been most vigilant of his reputation the smartest man in american politics does about the most foolish thing imagineable. hamilton to his embarrassment never knew whether mrs. reynolds' attraction for him was real or just a clever con job. he later wrote the variety of shapes which this woman could assume was endless. hamilton keeps furtively slipping off in the night to these assignations with mrs. reynolds even after mr. reynolds, who was this rather coarse character suddenly appears and instead of stopping the adulterous affair between

hamilton and his wife mr. reynolds decides it would be more fun to tax it. hamilton begins to fork over blackmail money to this graffitier james -- grifter james reynolds despite the obvious fatal damage this can do to his career not to mention his devoted, long-suffering wife, eliza. one day mrs. reynolds was entertaining a friend named jacob clingman when hamilton comes unexpectedly to the door. even hamilton took certain precautions like always being alone with mrs. reynolds. hamilton is petrified to discover an eyewitness so what does he do? he pretends essimply dropping off a -- he is simply dropping off a message for the low life james reynolds. pause a moment to picture this. let it sink in. imagine you're home one day. there as knock at the door. you go downstairs and open the door and there is colin powell or donald rumsfeld pretending to be the fedex deliveryman. and imagining that he's going to get away with the disguise.

hamilton ultimately publishes a 95-page pamphlet admitting to the affair because his enemies said that money he was paying to james reynolds was for illicit speculation of treasury securities. hamilton says, no, no. he says it in 95 pages, that was adultery that the money was for. suffice it to say even some of hamilton's closest friends thought a couple nice, discreetly worded paragraphs would have done the trick. i please please know all of this intrigue and back stabbing runs counter to our preferred image of the founders and may remind us more of the state of our fallen tabloid political culture today than of the men ensidelined in our school textbooks. let me stress so there is not any misunderstanding my attempt here tonight and in the book is in no way to deny the greatness of the founders. the very best thing about spending five years on alexander

hamilton, i got on a daily basis just to drink in his glorious words, spend five years not only in his company but that of all of the founders and if anything i came away with a far more exalted sense of their brilliance, depth, integrity, etcetera. at the same time, i wanted to liberate hamilton and the other founders from what i thought was a sometimes steltifying image of gentility of these people with powdered wigs and silver buckle shoes. the founding fathers were not statues chissled in stone but passionate, fascinating figures of tremendous force and intensity. once the revolution was over they exhibited very much the same lust for power, status and influence as other human beings. nor do i think we should fault them for that. in fact, it was their candidly realistic view of the ambition and the afferies -- avarice

rooted in human nachethaur enabled them to construct the most genius constitution that has guarded us against human frailty for more than two centuries. madison wrote famously in federalist 51 if men were angels no government would be necessary. thank god they took that grim, pessimistic view of human nature rather than assuming we would have a secession of saints in the white house. the founders i think wrote these things not just from abstract speculation but from their own personal experiences and observations. let me jump ahead to the duel. there were so many different friendships and feuds and events that i could touch on and maybe we'll get a chance in the q and a to do so. let me jump ahead to the duel. six times earlier in his career alexander hamilton had entered into the highly ritualized quarrels known as affairs of honor. the potential culmination of the affair of honor could always be a duel. on the previous six occasions hamilton had as it were settled out of court.

the quarrels had not ended up in the dueling ground. they could have. he was a very combative man, hypersensitive, i think probably because of his illegitimate boyhood in the caribbean and what was a life-long sense of shame about his illegitimacy so he was always very vigilant with anything concerning his reputation and sense of honor. the novelty of what happens with aaron burr in 1804 was that for the first time hamilton is on the receiving end of the challenge instead of issuing it. this throws him off balance i think psychologically. when hamilton and burr met on the field of honor in new jersey on july 11, 1804, as you can tell we are fast approaching the 200th anniversary as we meet here tonight. hamilton and vice president aaron burr were two politicians with their careers in sharp decline. as shown by the reynolds affair hamilton had perhaps committed political suicide in public once

too often. aaron burr had alienated thomas jefferson. he was of jefferson's party during the famous election of 1800 to try to explain it briefly for those of you unfamiliar with it, there was not a separate vote in the electoral college for president and vice president. jefferson and burr were nominally on the same ticket the understanding being jefferson would be president, aaron burr vice president. when there is a tie between jefferson and burr in the electoral college, aaron burr suddenly decides that it might be rather pleasant to be president of the united states instead of merely vice president. thomas jefferson, who incredibly enough wins that election with an assist from alexander hamilton of all people, burr becomes vice president. thomas jefferson has a very, very long memory and decides to drop burr from the ticket in 1804. burr returns to new york. tries to run for governor. again, hamilton blocks burr's path. burr was never unduly disturbed

by having killed hamilton. he had a rather macabre sense of humor. he liked to refer jokingly, quote, to my friend, hamilton, whom i shot. a few weeks after the duel, burr by this point has fled to safer ground in philadelphia. just two or three weeks after the duel, aaron burr wrote the following letter to his daughter. quote, if any male friend of yours should be dying of -- i recommend he engage in a duel and courtship at the same time. burr had immediately resumed in philadelphia just a week or two after the duel, burr resumed a very lively affair with a mistress named celeste in his letters. only aaron burr. all of this was far less amusing to hamilton's widow eliza who outlived him for 50 years. in fact, she survived almost until the civil war. she died in november, 1854, age

97. this remarkable founding mother if you permit the expression cofounded and ran new york's largest free orphan with nearly 250 children. one of my fondest wishes in the book was to try to rescue eliza hamilton from the obscurity to which she had con signed herself by evidently burning her own letters to alexander hamilton while preserving lovingly every scrap she wrote to him. let me say in closing i knew with hamilton i had been handed a precious gift. i seem to like these large, flawed figures who force me to wrestle with their contradictions. with hamilton, every time i began to lapse into hero worship he would pull me up with some huge, unexpected blunder. every time i started to lose patience with him he would redeem himself again with some beautiful act of statesmanship or friendship or love. i was enthraled by studying hamilton not just for the man

but for the colorful and very turbulent and surely inspirational times in which he lived because if you simply follow in the foot steps of alexander hamilton, the american revolution, the constitutional convention, the formation of the first federal government, all of these formentiff moments in our history -- formtive moments in our history seem to flicker by like some fabulous news reel. the entire his tariff america is wrapped up in this single personal drama. i would maintain from lexington and concord in 1775 to jefferson's first inauguration in 1801 nobody stood more consistently at the center of american political life than alexander hamilton. this is a story, an incredible story of an illegitimate, orphaned young man who comes out of nowhere, sets the world on fire, and grows up quite literally alongside his adopted country. thank you.

>> i've been advised particularly since it's being taped by c-span and we have people upstairs, that this will this will onlyophone in the center aisle. and also that way i won't have to repeat the question. so if you could just make your way to the microphone, in the center and if you are so inclined to line up i'll be happy to try to answer any questions. >> i just gave a course on teddy roosevelt and mckinley. my question has to do with teddy roosevelt's liking of alexander hamilton. can you explain a little bit of how roosevelt would have admired

hamilton, being a progressive president, how would he have admired hamilton and writes about him in a positive way. >> yeah. it's interesting that hamilton's historic reputation has waxed and waned. certainly one period with it waxed was during the progressive era. teddy roosevelt, as well as his successor, william howard taft, thought that alexander hamilton was the greatest of all of the founders. i think that what you found in teddy roosevelt is very much the same combination of views that you find in hamilton on the one hand is a belief in energetic and affirmative central government and kind of robust political leadership. there is, i described hamilton before as an ambivalent revolutionary. i think that you find reflected in teddy roosevelt that same kind of ambivalence let's say about business. he is a great booster of business.

he also wants to regulate business. so that a lot of the contradictions of alexander hamilton's life and ideology are reflected in the career of teddy roosevelt. in fact, when the -- my book was reviewed in the "new york times" by david brooks, he said that rather than hamilton being the ancestor of either the political parties today in a way he represented a third force in american political life that really culminates during the progressive era with the government of teddy roosevelt. >> i wondered if you could comment on a couple of points. since there were about 35 ballots when the voting went between burr and jefferson, and he had 35 ballots to consider who he wanted to choose, can you offer some suggestion as to why he chose to throw his weight

toward jefferson? and the second point, can you offer some suggestion as to why since hamilton had chosen to work arrangements out on the previous duels that he chose to take up with burr with pistols? >> yeah. i'm just going to answer the first question because both are so large and i want to give time for other people. let me answer the first question about the tie election in 1800 or really early 1801. hamilton does something very, very unpredictable. hamilton has spent all of these years against thomas jefferson and as i suggested the warfare between hamilton and jefferson in washington's cabinet is so fierce that the two parties -- the two-party system really springs from that. you have jefferson and the republicans, you have hamilton and the federalists. so, in fact, when there is a tie in the electoral college, in early 1801, hamilton does

something completely unexpected. he throws his weight and his influence to thomas jefferson rather than aaron burr. it's one of the great political reversals in american history. hamilton's explanation was as follows. he said that he supported jefferson rather than burr because he would rather have somebody with the wrong principles rather than no principles. he thought burr was unprincipled and unscrupulous. of course, burr is, during that tie, kind of tacitly flirting with the federalists. a lot of federalists who like hamilton disliked thomas jefferson said burr may be a loose cannon or whatever but we can cut a deal with burr whereas jefferson they realized he had the wrong principles but was a man of very fixed, unalterable

principles. at the time, hamilton, who had engaged in a lot of legitimate criticism but also a lot of hyperbole toward thomas jefferson wrote what i think was the most candid and accurate appraisal of jefferson that he ever did. jefferson you have to remember had been to put it mildly equivocal about the constitution, kind of gradually came to support it but he was very ambivalent about it at the beginning. and hamilton made the fascinating statement in a letter at the time of the tie election. he said i used to watch mr. jefferson when he was secretary of state and i was secretary of treasury and i often thought that he was like a man who knew that he was some day to inherit an estate, being the presidency, and in spite of his rhetoric, did not really want to deplete the estate which he knew he would some day inherit. hamilton predicted jefferson

once in office would in fact enjoy it and would betray a taste for federal power that had not been apparent in his rhetoric certainly when he was in opposition to the policies of washington and hamilton. yes, sir? >> a two-part question. i want to ask you about the duel. two aspects of it. in his wonderful novel a claimed descendant of jonathan edwards burr suggests that the straw that broke the camel's back for burr was hamilton's public suggestion that theodosia burr and her father had an incestuous relationship. secondly, i've heard through the years that the dueling pistols are still in the possession i think of the bank of new york

and that firearms experts who have studied them have found that they were altered to be hair triggers and it had to have been done by hamilton or his seconds because he provided the brace of pistols. >> yes, yes. well let me answer the second question. i assume you could all hear the questions. is that fair? ok. two-part question. the second part was were the dueling pistols altered? during the bicentennial experts who studied the pistols discovered lo and behold there was a hair trigger mechanism. in fact, that was not as big a surprise as it should have been because if you go upstairs into the reading room here and you go through the papers of nathanial pendleton, who was the second to alexander hamilton, at the dueling ground as he handled -- handed hamilton the pistol, he said to hamilton, should i set the hair trigger and hamilton replied not this time. so i don't know why it was so surprising that the pistols contained a hair trigger.

the first question that he asked was some of you have probably read the novel "burr." the duel occurs when aaron burr reads in the newspaper that hamilton has issued a despicable opinion about him at an albany dinner party. i wish i could stand up before you tonight and say that i solved the famous riddle of what the despicable opinion was. i could not. nobody has been able to do it. the author, and i think this is clever from a novelistic standpoint, said hamilton accused burr of an incestuous relationship with his daughter whom he doted on. when i was doing research in the new york public library, i read through all of the different pamphlets that circulated in the spring of 1804 immediately prior to the duel. they circulated at the time aaron burr was running for governor. let me list some of the things, anonymous broadsides circulating

in the spring of 1804. burr was accused of looting the estate of legal claims. he was accused of deflowering certain new york virgins. he was accused of seducing certain married women. burr was accused of pushing various women into prostitution. burr was accused of consorting with 20 different prostitutes who were mentioned by their initials. i have no way of knowing whether any or all of these things were true but what i try to show in the book is they were such a rich field of scurrilous gossip about aaron burr that hamilton had plenty to choose from. i think it also is evident as even burr's close friend charles biddle said that burr was determined to call somebody out at that moment so in a way i wish i could say that i had figured out the great riddle what the despicable opinion was but there's a way in which it doesn't matter. because the situation was ripe,

whatever hamilton had said, burr would have seized on it as a pretext for the duel and the outcome would have been the same. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> yes, can you speculate on kind -- on the kind of career alexander hamilton might have had if he had lived longer? >> one of the tantalizing and also in retrospect frustrating things that hamilton said was that he was projecting toward the end of his life a series of volumes that would examine the influence of governmental institutions on society. he told his friend judge james kent, this series will be to the federalists what wine is to water. that sadens me when i think of it because i take hamilton at his word. he really felt that

intellectually he could reduce something that transcended even the federalists. i think that he had great things to come intellectually and great things to come as the preeminent lawyer of his day. i think politically, his career was at an end. the federalist party was already in what would prove to be a terminal decline. hamilton as you well know had a knack for making enemies equaled only by his knack for making friends. and, in fact, to name alexander hamilton's enemies, john adams, thomas jefferson, james madison, james monroe. i'll throw in john quincy adams and andrew jackson. this is a room full of history teachers. i think the point is evident that hamilton's political enemies had captured control of the country and so i don't think that he could really have recouped his political career but he was still -- there's no sense that by age -- before age

49 hamilton's faculties had dimmed. he certainly seems increasingly somber as the years go on but there is no sense really that his energy is abated either so i have no doubt that there were some brilliant intellectual accomplishments in his future but i don't think that the additional years would have translated into the presidency. >> all right. this is arguably the greatest tribute ever written to hamilton. you obviously have a -- >> can i repeat that? >> yes you can. but actually i'm curious about two very minor points on which you don't defer to hamilton even though you have this great appreciation for him. the first page you say that you are going to cure him i believe of his addiction to capitalization and you remove his use of that way of expressing himself, capitalizing, and the second one, more significant, though somewhat insignificant, he claimed all his life and in fact on his grave his birthday is listed as january 11, 1757,

there is absolutely no conclusive proof either way. why wouldn't you defer to him on his own belief and his own statements that his birth was on january 11, 1757? >> yeah. ok. two-part question. the first is reference -- i have a disclaimer or whatever, an explanation at the beginning of the book. i say that i'm going to cure these 18th century writers of their addiction to capitalization and not just hamilton but i lower case everybody else with a fine impartiality. in the 18th century among other gram attic and quirks of the time they would capitalize nouns. i just felt there is enough distance culturally between us and the 18th century that somehow retaining those spellings and puncuation, i felt needlessly distant -- distances us from the 18th century. so that's why i did it not just to hamilton but to the others. the other is the matter of

hamilton's birth. when you're doing a biography, particularly when you're doing a biography of -- where a loft the fascination of the story is how old is hamilton as he does different things, it produces, you know, for a biography you almost feel like you're on a ship and the deck is heavily rolling because you don't know for certain what his birthday is because you're constantly referring to his age as part of the fascination of the story. there's always been a debate whether he was born in 1755 or 1757. this may sound like small beer to you folks. it tortured me for five years. i came up with a list. i actually came up with a list of 40 or 50 references over the five years to hamilton's age. most of the references after hamilton comes to north america after 1/3 of his life is over, most of the references suggest a

1757 date that is absolutely -- but there is absolutely no consistency. one french journalist comes to america and thinks hamilton is older than madison. in fact i found an interesting document in the reading room upstairs in the papers of hamilton's second at the duel, nathanial pendleton. he actually wrote out the owe bit o'harey -- obituary for the "new york evening post" which hamilton cofounded and starts out by saying alexander hamilton died yesterday at 48. of course the debate is whether he was 47 or 49. then you can see somebody has crossed out 48 and put 49. now, i mean, this is one of his closest friends. this is his second at the duel who is really not sure how old hamilton is. i opted for the earlier date because i gave preference to evidence from the caribbean period where i felt that hamilton did not yet have a vested interest in his age. hamilton was absolutely an honest person. he was honest to a fault. he was candid to a fault.

i think this may have been one of the few things, one of the very rare things, maybe the only thing i could think of offhand in his life that he might have lied about. you have to picture the situation. hamilton comes to north america. he starts his college education around the age of 18. now that would be a normal age to be a freshman today. at the time aaron burr enters college at age 13. there are a lot of other examples and many colleges, i think there were nine at the time, the average age of admission was 15. if you are wonderboy and everyone your entire life has told you that you're the whiz kid, do you want to be the oldest boy by several years in your freshman class? i think hamilton who must have had an intense feeling of frustration and lost time, nobody knew anything about him, i think it is at that point that he shaved a couple years from his age. we know for instance when he is in st. croix and already publishing poetry, he writes a letter to the editor that he's a

youth of approximately 16, which meant he must have been 17. i mean, so we could -- we get different references to it and we can see that hamilton probably changed his age but again, we don't have any record of hamilton's birth. we don't have his birth certificate so what i offer in the book is i felt i couldn't keep going back and forth about the age and i finally felt that the preponderance of unbiased evidence to my mind was in favor of the 1755 date. of course, hamilton was so precocious that even saying that he was born two years earlier and using that as my date still made it so he was 34 when he was treasury secretary instead of 32. he still is amazingly advanced for his age at every point of the way.

>> i was going to ask a question about what john adams thought of alexander hamilton. you already alluded or mentioned that he was one of his enemies. what was the source of this? was it personality, his values? i'd like to hear more about that please. >> the source of the enmity between john adams and alexander hamilton, this is of course one of these titanic feuds that seemed to mark hamilton's life. on the one hand if you're john adams who was 20 years older than hamilton, at the time that john adams was one of the towering figures of the continental congress, alexander hamilton is an undergraduate at kings college. adams goes off a distinguished -- on distinguished diplomatic missions to paris, london, the netherlands. adams comes back and suddenly this guy who had ban kid --

adams had never met him before. as far as adams was concerned he, adams was a towering figure of the revolution and this upstart is suddenly appointed treasury secretary. john adams becomes vice president and as vice president he is almost totally excluded from the interpolicy making circle -- the inner policy making circle of washington's government. you all know the famous line adams said about the vice president, the most useless office that ever the imagination of man contrived. it hasn't always been that way. we've had two extraordinarily powerful vice presidents in recent years but it was true that washington did not turn to adams for advice. and within the cabinet, of the three people, jefferson and hamilton, it's clear hamilton doesn't always win but he clearly wins more than any other figure. and so i think there is a certain kind of natural envy and resentment. adams then in 1796 election feels that hamilton has connived

to deny him the presidency. this was not entirely his imagination. hamilton did not think adams had presidential temperament. adams makes the controversial decision to retain washington's second-term cabinet. adams comes to feel that these three men are more loyal to hamilton who's gone back to new york as a lawyer than they are to adams. one thing that i discovered in the book because john adams certainly had his reasons for resenting hamilton, hamilton also had his reasons for resenting adams. as the leader -- coleader of the federalist party with adams you could see where adams would legitimately take umbrage from being completely excluded from the cabinet. imagine today if you were one of the two leading republicans in

the country and you couldn't even get george w. bush to take a phone call from you. well, i mean, adams refused to reply to hamilton's letters. he would say, hey, look, i'm the other cohead of the party. so that you could see where adams -- where hamilton would have legitimate grievances. also as i document at length in the book adams for all of his purity of heart and patriotism and good nature repeatedly makes references to hamilton's illegitimacy. he calls hamilton the creole bastard. he calls hamilton the bastard brat of a scotch peddler. at every opportunity he calls him a bastard and this as i show in the book gets its way back to hamilton on a number of occasions. hamilton tends to go berzerk, understandably, whenever anyone refers to it and hamilton ends up writing this really withering open letter to john adams during the 1800 election. i think it was more damaging to

hamilton than adams and then of course the break between the two men is absolutely irrevocable and during the extraordinary correspondence between adams and jefferson during the 22 years after hamilton's death there are moments in reading that where it struck me that the one big bond john adams and thomas jefferson always had no matter what else they disagreed on was that ..