page_title: Alexander Hamilton
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Hamilton / Education
caption_attribution_description: Statue of Alexander Hamilton by William Ordway Patridge standing outside of Columbia University's Hamilton Hall
context_page_description: Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman, politician, legal scholar, military commander, lawyer, banker, and economist. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was an influential interpreter and promoter of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the founder of the nation's financial system, the Federalist Party, the United States Coast Guard, and the New York Post newspaper. As the first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of George Washington's administration. He took the lead in the Federal government's funding of the states' debts, as well as establishing the nation's first two de facto central banks, the Bank of North America and the First Bank of the United States, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, government-controlled banks, support for manufacturing, and a strong military.
  Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Charlestown, Nevis. He was orphaned as a child and taken in by a prosperous merchant. When he reached his teens, he was sent to New York to pursue his education.
context_section_description: The Church of England denied membership to Alexander and James Hamilton Jr.—and education in the church school—because their parents were not legally married. They received "individual tutoring" and classes in a private school led by a Jewish headmistress. Alexander supplemented his education with a family library of 34 books.
  In October 1772, he arrived by ship in Boston, and proceeded from there to New York City, where he took lodgings with Hercules Mulligan, the brother of a trader who assisted Hamilton in selling cargo that was to pay for his education and support. In 1773, in preparation for college work, Hamilton began to fill gaps in his education at the Elizabethtown Academy, a preparatory school run by Francis Barber in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He came under the influence of William Livingston, a leading intellectual and revolutionary, with whom he lived for a time.
  Hamilton entered King's College (now Columbia) in New York City in the autumn of 1773 "as a private student", and officially matriculated in May 1774. His college roommate and lifelong friend Robert Troup spoke glowingly of Hamilton's clarity in concisely explaining the patriots' case against the British in what is credited as Hamilton's first public appearance, on July 6, 1774, at the Liberty Pole at King's College. Hamilton, Troup, and four other undergraduates formed an unnamed literary society that is regarded as a precursor of the Philolexian Society.
  Church of England clergyman Samuel Seabury published a series of pamphlets promoting the Loyalist cause in 1774, to which Hamilton responded anonymously with his first political writings, A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress and The Farmer Refuted.  Seabury essentially tried to provoke fear in the colonies, and his main objective was to stop the potential union among the colonies. Hamilton published two additional pieces attacking the Quebec Act, and may have also authored the fifteen anonymous installments of "The Monitor" for Holt's New York Journal. Hamilton was a supporter of the Revolutionary cause at this pre-war stage, although he did not approve of mob reprisals against Loyalists. On May 10, 1775, Hamilton won credit for saving his college president Myles Cooper, a Loyalist, from an angry mob by speaking to the crowd long enough for Cooper to escape.
  Hamilton was forced to discontinue his studies before graduating when the college closed its doors during British occupation of the city. When the war ended, after some months of self study, by July 1782 Hamilton passed the bar exam and in October 1782 was licensed to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
caption: A statue of Hamilton outside Hamilton Hall, overlooking Hamilton Lawn at Columbia University in New York City
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