To Find Out More

Two excellent one-volume biographies of Hamilton are available: Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox , by John C. Miller (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), and Alexander Hamilton: A Biography , by Forrest McDonald (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). Albert S. Bolles’s three-volume The Financial History of the United States , first published a century ago, still gives the best, clearest account of the makings of the American economic system. An interesting exploration of the relationship between Jefferson and Hamilton is to be found in John S. Pancake’s Jefferson and Hamilton (Woodbury, N.Y.: Barren, 1974). To really get to know Hamilton’s thinking, the best source, by far is his own marvelously readable writing. The relevant documents were collected in a single volume by Columbia University Press in 1934 as Papers on Public Credit, Commerce, and Finance .

—J.S.G.