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Alexander Hamilton and the Abolition of Slavery in New York
A group of persons belonging to the monied aristocracy gathered in dimly lit meeting hall on the edge of New York City in the late 1790s. Many of them were conservative bankers, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians who enjoyed high social status after the recent war for independence from Great Britain. The meeting was not all that it seemed. These gentlemen, donned in white-topped boots and powdered wigs, were not discussing shares in the newly incorporated National Bank, the lucrative fur trade, or even who won the last duel. Instead, they assembled to display their indignation over slavery. One member told of a master who brutally beat his female house servant. Another argued against New Yorkers capturing and selling free blacks to the West Indies or the American South. The meeting ended with each member signing a petition to the state legislature calling for the gradual abolition of slavery in New York. Yet, as they entered their houses later that same evening, many of these abolitionists were greeted by slaves, who took their overcoats, brought them a tanker of Madeira, and shined their buckled shoes.
Alexander Hamilton was not only a member of the group but an officer in the Society for the Promotion of the Manumission of Slaves, and he too was not all that he seemed. By today's standards, Hamilton was an arch-conservative. At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton supported an elected monarchy with strong emphasis on rule by the rich and powerful. One of his biographers describes him: "Hamilton made no secret of his belief in the advantages of an aristocratic power in the common-wealth, or of his reasons for that belief.(2) One may wonder why Hamilton joined a society that threatened the understood social and racial caste system of the era? After further examination, another question arises as well. What kind of abolitionist was Hamilton if he owned slaves?
Closer analysis shows that Hamilton was at best ambivalent about the abolition of slavery. Unlike his enemy and fellow slaveowner, Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton never clearly, sincerely, or eloquently denounced slavery in his personal or private works, despite his membership in the Manumission Society. Hamilton's wavering on this issue is not typical of how he...