Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757–July 12, 1804) was an Army officer, lawyer, Founding Father, American politician, leading statesman, financier and political theorist. One of America's foremost constitutional lawyers, he was a leader in calling the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787; he was one of the two chief authors of the Federalist Papers, the most important interpretation of the United States Constitution.
Hamilton served chiefly as aide-de-camp to General George Washington, though he also led troops in combat. Under President Washington, Hamilton became the first Secretary of the Treasury; and had much influence over the rest of the government and the formation of policy, including foreign and military policy. Hamilton convinced Congress to use an elastic interpretation of the Constitution to pass far-reaching laws. They included: the funding of the national debt; federal assumption of the state debts; creation of a national bank; and a system of taxes through a tariff on imports and a tax on whiskey that would help pay for it. He admired the success of the British system, and opposed the excesses of the French Revolution.
Hamilton created the Federalist party, the first American political party, which he built up using Treasury department patronage, networks of elite leaders, and aggressive newspaper editors he subsidized both through Treasury patronage and by loans from his own pocket. His great political adversary was Thomas Jefferson who, with James Madison, created the opposition party (of several names, now known as the Democratic-Republican Party). This opposition party intended to counter Hamilton's urban, financial, industrial goals for the United States, and his promotion of extensive trade and friendly relations with Britain. Hamilton retired from the Treasury in 1795 to practice law in New York City, but during the Quasi-War with France he served as organizer and de facto commander of a national army beginning in December, 1798; if full scale war broke out with France, the army was intended to conquer the North American colonies of France's ally, Spain. He worked to defeat both John Adams and Jefferson in the election of 1800; but when the House of Representatives deadlocked, he helped secure the election of Jefferson over Hamilton's long-time political enemy, Aaron Burr.
Hamilton's nationalist and industrializing vision was rejected in the Jeffersonian "Revolution of 1800" as too elitist and hostile to states' rights. However, after the War of 1812 showed the need for strong national institutions, his former opponents -- including Madison and Albert Gallatin -- came to emulate his programs as they too set up a national bank, tariffs, a national infrastructure, and a standing army and navy. The later Whig and Republican parties adopted many of Hamilton's ideas regarding the flexible interpretation of the Constitution and using the federal government to build a strong economy and military. However, his negative reputation after 1800 - both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson viewed him as unprincipled and dangerously aristocratic - did not allow acknowledgment of his role until his style of nationalism became dominant again in the late 19th century, when progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Croly, as well as conservatives such as long-time member of the US Congress Henry Cabot Lodge, revived his reputation. Several twentieth-century Republican politicians took it upon themselves to write biographies of Hamilton.