Posted on 07/23/2004 1:57:16 PM PDT by Coleus
Theory of a founding father's African ancestry
Friday, July 23, 2004
AS MUCH as I thought I knew about Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, nobody ever told me he was black. Yes. You heard it here first, folks.
And you'll think about it from now on every time you take out a $10 bill.
Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow is the latest one to explore the theory.
I was totally blown away by that information when a friend casually mentioned Hamilton's link to two significant anniversaries - the 250th anniversary of Columbia University, originally Kings College where he was schooled, and the 200th anniversary this month of the duel in Weehawken with Aaron Burr that claimed his life.
Hamilton was black? It was in none of the historical accounts I'd read.
Knowing if it's true would help explain why Hamilton and John Jay worked on legal strategies after the Revolution to keep former slaves and freedmen from being snatched back into slavery. They called it the New York Manumission Society.
"He was a passionate and consistent abolitionist," Chernow told me. "What he says about blacks is very sympathetic."
Hamilton wrote a letter to John Jay objecting to his reasons for rejecting slaves and free blacks as soldiers.
"Their natural faculties are probably as good as ours," Hamilton wrote.
Chernow says having been born and raised in two slave-dominant Caribbean cultures - Nevis, a British Island, and St. Croix, under Danish rule - might explain Hamilton's feelings about improving the lot of blacks in America.
In "Alexander Hamilton," Chernow, the author of the newly released Penguin Press biography quotes him: "The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor in experience."
Chernow says Hamilton never talked about his background, but everybody else - especially his enemies - knew he was born illegitimate and that, with no "family," he had risen fast after arriving on the continent. They called him names - immigrant, foreigner, Creole — punctuated with "bastard."
News accounts of the day called his mother Creole, but Chernow says there's been no proof that he was racially mixed.
Folklore, anonymous statements in the newspaper by political enemies, and the fact that African slaves dominated St. Croix demographics about 14 to one all add to what Chernow calls the "presumption" of blackness in Hamilton's bloodlines. It didn't help that his mother had a less than stellar reputation, having borne him and his brother James after leaving her husband and son on St. Croix and hooking up with her new man on Nevis.
Chernow says there was a "presumption" that his mother was part black, but there's no proof.
"From the time he started to become politically controversial, reports started to occur in the press that he was Creole," Chernow says.
"It does not come from friendly sources. It comes from people who wanted to discredit him." Chernow found a lock of Hamilton's hair, but says geneticists told him race could not be proven definitively using that hair.
William Cissel, a U.S. Park Service historian working on St. Croix, said his mother Rachel Fawcett Levien was listed as white on several census and church burial documents.
Hamilton's blackness is supported only by circumstantial argument.
I say let's dig him up and run some genetic tests on his DNA. It's been done with older bones than his, and we know where he's buried in the Trinity Church churchyard. Why not? A whole cemetery, the African Burial Grounds, was excavated in lower Manhattan and the bones scattered so the foundation of a new federal building could be poured.
Inquiring minds want to know if the Caribbean foreigner responsible for our banking structure and establishing manufacturing in Paterson was of African descent.
One school of thought says color shouldn't matter as long as he did a good job. But it would be a good idea to pin it down for sure to expand our knowledge of colonial history... and to reinforce in African-Americans a sense of "belonging" beyond their slave history.
The message for black youngsters is that African-Americans were present at every stage of the United States' development, and that one of the founding fathers was in fact an African-American.
If nothing else, Hamilton's rise to power and prominence from beginnings that could only be described as Dickensian, is a lesson in overcoming adversity.
Lawrence Aaron is a Record columnist. Contact him at aaron@northjersey.com . Send comments about this column to oped@northjersey.com .
A lot of Caribbean folk were presumed to have partial black ancestry, because planters recognized their kids by slave mothers, but also because poor white indentured servants intermarried with black slaves and freemen.
Hamilton might indeed have these in his ancestry.
Napoleon had a black general, father of Dumas Sr. And grand father of Dumas Jr. The Count of Monte Cristo was partly inspired by his life.
Napoleon’s wife Josephine was also rumored to have black ancestry.
British colonies had more prejudice, but still one saw hints of Creole mixing being accepted.
One patriot who died at Bunker Hill was a “person of colour”.
In Last of the Mohican's, the book, the older “dark” daughter had a Creole mother.
And of course, in Jane Eyre, the hidden wife was from the west Indies, and the hint is that is why she is crazy.
..................
I've read biographies of Hamilton and I think I recall this coming up in a political context. An accusation, because of his sketchy (often described as an orphan or whatever due to his absent father) heritage, maybe. More frequently that he was Jewish, a better political accusation, but also not likely true. Interesting, particularly at a time where in art he's portrayed as black, not Jewish for which a case (imo false) can be made. Thus the ping. Not that interested in arguing the facts of the accusations.
I'm reading the thread backwards. I don't believe there's any evidence of that, her parents were clearly known. But coming from Martinique, she had the aura of being creole, French creole I guess, which arriving in France was an asset in the Court. For an attractive young lady. Attached to a very politically prominent sugar daddy whose name I've forgotten, she marries an artilleryman. Go figure. A fascinating lady, I believe her descendents sit on the thrones of four or five European nations today.
I believe he has descendants. Some could be tested for “possible” African DNA, but with it being so far back it wouldn’t be a sure thing....just a possibility.
“marinkey racial classifications”
What does “marinkey” mean?
He was raised within the Jewish community as an orphan. But he was not Jewish. African? That’s a new one on me.
Welcome to the Tribe. We have latkes.
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