Alexander Hamilton, American

Alexander Hamilton is one of the least understood, most important, and most impassioned and inspiring of the founding fathers.

An impoverished immigrant when he first came to American shores at age fifteen, Hamilton defined what it meant to be American in an age when the definition was up for grabs. He pounced on the opportunities available in New York and rose rapidly as a patriot, war hero, prominent lawyer, pioneering journalist, and author of two-thirds of The Federalist Papers.

An aide to Washington in the Revolutionary war, he was named the first Secretary of the Treasury at the age of thirty-two, in which post he audaciously mapped a system of law and finance that almost single-handedly lifted the new nation into a capitalist era. His economic vision was expansive, celebratory, idealistic, and yet also pragmatic. He deserves to be honored today as the founding father of American capitalism.

As the author of so many of The Federalist Papers, not to mention Washington's Farewell Address and several key arguments used by Chief Justice John Marshall, Hamilton fashioned key elements of the American political system. As the founder of the New York Post, and one of the most prolific writers in the age of pamphleteers like Tom Paine, Hamilton also deserves to be remembered as one of the fathers of American journalism.

Finally, as evidenced by his extraordinary preemptive confession of a sexual affair and subsequent blackmailing, Hamilton deserves to be remembered for an honesty, passion, and conviction that was as rare in his day as it is in ours.