Shortly after Hamilton came into the world, his father James abandoned the family, fearful that the mother of his child would be charged with bigamy.
In 1768, when Hamilton was likely 13 years old, his mother died, effectively leaving him an orphan.
Shaving two years off his age would have made him a more desirable candidate for an apprenticeship to a local businessman.
If this was Hamilton’s intent, it worked: He was soon hired by an import-export firm and quickly impressed his bosses.
In 1772 they decided to send Hamilton to the American colonies to further his education. Arriving in his new home at the self-declared age of 15 and quickly diving into the political arena.
Hamilton kept up the ruse, and his perceived precociousness only enhanced his reputation as a political prodigy.
2. Hamilton accomplished a lot—probably more than most people realize.
Though he never attained the highest office of his adopted country, few of America’s founders influenced its political system more than Alexander Hamilton.
He was a member of the Continental Congress, an author of the Federalist Papers, a champion of the Constitution and the first secretary of the Treasury.
3. Hamilton was the subject of one of America’s first highly publicized political sex scandals.
In 1791 the married Hamilton met a young Philadelphia woman named Maria Reynolds,.
who claimed she needed cash because her husband had left her with a small daughter to support. Himself an orphan.
Hamilton quickly agreed.
but their financial arrangement soon morphed into a trickier entanglement as the pair embarked on an affair that would last just over a year.
Maria Reynolds was no desperate housewife, however.
She and her husband, James, had carefully planned the affair in an attempt to extort even larger amounts from then-Secretary Hamilton.
who readily coughed up the sums.
After James Reynolds was implicated in another financial scandal.
he informed investigators—a group that included James Monroe and Frederick Muhlenberg—that Hamilton had been using government funds as hush money.
When confronted with this, Hamilton admitted to the affair.
but he also insisted that he had used his own personal funds to cover it up, even showing Monroe his love letters from Maria Reynolds as proof.
Satisfied that this was a private matter, Monroe and Muhlenberg agreed not to expose Hamilton.
However, Monroe gave the letters to his close friend Thomas Jefferson, one of Hamilton’s fiercest political enemies.
Jefferson passed them on to publisher James Callender, already notorious as the preeminent 19th-century peddler of political gossip.