The wind is blowing something fierce. I made a pot of coffee. And I’ve been up for a couple of hours – sitting in bed – with books spread out around me:<\/p>\n
— Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton
\n— Willard Sterne Randall’s biography of Alexander Hamilton
\n— my Library of America copy of The Federalist Papers
\n— my Library of America copy of Hamilton’s writings
\n— my Library of America copy of Washington’s writings<\/p>\n
I read and cross-reference. Every sentence leads to a tangent. I track down original sources. I read the entire thing as opposed to an excerpt in the books. For example, when Hamilton was a teenager – he wrote a letter to his (deadbeat) father describing a devastating hurricane that had hit the West Indies. His father happened to show it to the Reverend Hugh Knox (one of Hamilton’s first elderly-gentlemen mentors) – who was so impressed with the writing, and the power of description – that he sent it to the Royal Danish Gazette – the local paper – where it was printed (excerpt here<\/a>). It caused a sensation – who wrote it? Who is that boy? Etc. Hamilton’s family was already relatively notorious in that small world – due to his illegitimacy, and the mounting personal tragedies … but with his letter about the hurricane, Hamilton became “famous” in another way. For his power of writing, and his precocious ability with his pen. It got him quite a bit of attention – men in power who wanted to help this young brilliant boy with no prospects – and it was that letter that launched the series of events that would get Hamilton out of the West Indies and up to New York, to get a college education. Anyway, it’s a famous letter. Most books about Hamilton publish excerpts of it only, to give you a taste for it (they always include the “Oh! vile worm!” section because it is so frantic and so overblown. He is so angry at God, it seems – the world is a dreadful dark and random place. Is this a teenage boy who wrote this??) The good thing about the Library of America collections (of which I have many <\/a>– most of the important ones anyway) is you get to read the whole thing, not just an excerpt. So I’ve been going back and forth, as my whim takes me … reading the whole hurricane letter, or the whole of his famous letter to his friend Edward Stevens which ends with “In short I wish there was a War”, etc. I’m lovin’ my primary source library on this windy freezing morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wind is blowing something fierce. I made a pot of coffee. And I’ve been up for a couple of hours – sitting in bed – with books spread out around me: — Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton — Willard … Continue reading