Of his boyhood Alexander Hamilton habitually said very little. His political enemies said a good deal but mostly under their breath and only the most illtempered of them, old John Adams, went so far as to call him “the bastard son of a Scots peddler.” Hamilton’s family, by seeking to deny the fact of his illegitimacy, merely focused attention on it. Gertrude Atherton, in her fictionali/ed biography, The Conqueror, told a pretty tale of a blue blood rescued by wealthy relatives from the consequences of his mother’s shame.

All these misguided interpretations have enveloped Hamilton’s boyhood in a murk ol legend and conjecture, through which glares the single bare fact of his illegitimate birth. It is odd that this conlusion should persist. The English and Danish authorities of the islands where he passed his youth kept meticulous records and these records, lor the price oT a little digging, yield all the essential facts. They reveal a story of personal triumph over circumstances far transcending the mere stigma of bastardy.

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