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ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

LEXANDER HAMILTON was born in the island of Nevis, in the British West Indies, on the 11th of January, 1757. He was of Scotch blood on the paternal, and of Gallic on the maternal side. He lost his mother when a child, and his education was intrusted to a Presbyterian clergyman, by the name of Knox, of the island of St. Croix. At twelve years of age, he was placed in the counting room of a merchant of that island, where his talents and ambition soon displayed themselves. The following prophecy of the future man is from a letter written to a fellow-clerk before he was thirteen: "I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station; I mean, to prepare the way for futurity."

In 1772, Hamilton came to New York, and at the close of 1773, entered Columbia College, where he made "extraordinary displays of richness of genius and energy of mind." It was during his college life that the country was roused to the consideration of British aggression and American independence. He took strong and decided revolutionary grounds, and wrote and spoke in so clear and forcible a manner as to attract the attention of the wisest minds engaged in that controversy. Dr. Cooper, principal of the college, and several others of the ablest tory writers,

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