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By Shane White
St. Martin's Press, 2015
317 pages, $27.99
Virtually unknown to historians of any stripe, Jeremiah G. Hamilton did indeed conduct business on Wall Street and some contemporaries referred to him as the "Prince of Darkness." The veracity of the rest of this book's intriguing title is, however, doubtful. Author Shane White, the Challis Professor of History at the University of Sydney, is the first to admit that he could not ascertain Hamilton's birthplace or parentage. Hamilton might have been born in Richmond, Virginia. Or Haiti. Or Puerto Rico. Or maybe even India (though White doubts that one). Hamilton could have been born free. Or enslaved. If the latter, he might have run away. Or been manumitted. Or even purchased his freedom.
Most of what White was able to discover about Hamilton comes from court cases, newspaper diatribes or public records. Those sources, however, provide conflicting information and no photograph or portrait of the man has survived. (Hence the brilliance of the cover design.) In the federal census, Hamilton was counted as "white," probably because his wife, a young woman of Euroamerican descent, answered the door each time a census taker rang the bell of his fine home. To many of his neighbors, including those who tried to lynch him during the 1863 draft...