There are several facets of the information war — one of them involves basic education, including that of history — especially American history. The topic of American history never fails to fascinate — and I must admit that while I knew some of this about Alexander Hamilton, I didn’t know much of it. Here is another excellent video from Prager University:
Alexander Hamilton: You know the name, but what do you know about the man? Joseph Tartakovsky, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, details how Hamilton took a country with no past and envisioned its future.
It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that Alexander Hamilton invented the United States of America.
George Washington was the guiding star; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary; and Benjamin Franklin, the sage. But Hamilton was the pragmatist, the man who got it done.
This most self-made of self-made men took a country with no past and planned its future.
He was born on January 11, 1755 on the island of Nevis. This was not the Caribbean of your cruise fantasy—quite the contrary. As Ron Chernow writes in his biography of Hamilton, “While other founding fathers were reared in tidy New England villages or cosseted on baronial Virginia estates, [Hamilton] grew up in a tropical hellhole…”
Sugar plantation slave auctions were a regular feature of island life. The spectacle—buyers swinging branding irons as they surveyed the human “merchandise”—made a permanent impression on Hamilton: He was a fierce abolitionist his entire life.
Abandoned by his father at an early age, his mother died of yellow fever when he was 14, leaving the teenage boy destitute. A local judge had to buy him shoes so that he could attend her funeral.
He soon took a job as clerk for a local merchant. Before long, he was running the business—coordinating shipments of mules and codfish, calculating currency exchanges, and advising sea captains on how to deal with pirates. It was an unmatchable apprenticeship in trade, credit, and commerce.
Read more: Prager University
