Was Alexander Hamilton Secretly Raised Jewish?

Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. We’re about to hear the untold story of Alexander Hamilton’s likely Jewish birth and upbringing, in its revolutionary consequences for understanding him and the nation this Founding Father fought to create. Here to tell the story is Andrew Borwancher. Andrew is a professor of legal history at Arizona State University. This story is adapted from his book ‘The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton.’ Let’s take a listen.

Speaker 2: ‘I fear prepossessions are strongly against us,’ Hamilton wrote to his wife Eliza, ‘but we must try to overcome them.’ It was the first day of a high-profile trial where he was serving as legal counsel for a merchant accused of fraud. Hamilton seemed to brace for the worst, adding, ‘If I should lose my cause, I must console myself with finding my friends. With the utmost eagerness, I will fly to them.’ It had been five years since Hamilton stepped down as Treasury Secretary to take up legal practice in Manhattan. He had earned a reputation as the premier litigator of the New York bar by wetting his encyclopedic knowledge of law with his gift for courtroom oratory. Although Hamilton was remarkably self-assured in his endeavors, and the facts in the foregoing case were squarely on his side, he felt uncharacteristically discomfited as the trial commenced. There was good reason to be anxious. After all, Hamilton’s principal witnesses were Jews. An antisemitic trope at the time held that the Jewish faith actually encouraged its adherents to lie under oath in courts of law. This ugly stereotype had deep roots in European history and had migrated to the New World. Hamilton’s opposing council Gouvenir Morris would prove all too willing to resort to religious prejudice in a bid to gain favor with the court. Morris knew he could not compete with Hamilton on legal grounds. Instead, Morris told the court he had no intention of referencing law books and would appeal to the principles written on the heart of man. Morris’s closing argument degenerated into a base attack on Hamilton’s two Jewish witnesses, alluding to them as ‘these Jew witnesses,’ Morris sought to impugne their credibility purely on the basis of their religion. ‘Jews are not to be believed upon oath,’ he insisted bluntly. A large crowd gathered in court the next day to see how Hamilton, ever the relentless fighter, would respond. This case had become more than a mere legal dispute between merchants. At issue was the momentous question of whether American justice would be blind to religion. The Revolution had rested on a radical promise of equality. Morris’s Jew-baiting suggested that perhaps the egalitarian rationale for the war had yielded to entrenched prejudice. Hamilton understood the stakes for both American Jewry and the country, and he resolved to defend the former to realize his vision for the latter. Referencing Morris’s attack on the Jews, Hamilton asked the court, ‘Has he forgotten what this race, whence were, when under the immediate government of God himself, they were selected as the witnesses of his miracles and charged with the spirit of prophecy?’ Hamilton moved from a discussion of the Jews, the chosen people, to the sordid history of their suffering. Hamilton’s message was clear: Morris was perpetuating a dark history of antisemitism that had plagued Jews since antiquity. Hamilton proclaimed that the allegorical Lady Justice protected Jews the same as she did all others, be the injured party, Jew or Gentile, Christian, or pagan, foreign or native. She closed him with her mantle, in whose presence all differences of faiths or births, passions or prejudices, all, all are called to acknowledge and revere her supremacy. In a young republic caught between Old World hierarchies and New World hopes, Hamilton’s defense of equality for Jews was a powerful vindication of revolutionary ideals. He emerged victorious by a vote of twenty-eight to six.

Speaker 1: ‘I hereby declare this session adjourned.’

Speaker 2: Hamilton, generally renowned for the verve of his legal performances, had demonstrated an emotional investment in the case that exceeded even his usual standards. A New York Supreme Court justice later recollected that of the countless trials Hamilton litigated with energy and fervor, there was at most only one other involving freedom of the press, in which his zeal was so strikingly displayed. Norris’s co-council, Robert Troupe, drew similar conclusions. In a letter to the American Ambassador to Great Britain, Troupe relayed the details of the trial and observed, ‘Our friend Hamilton never appeared to have his passions so warmly engaged in any cause.’ What no one could imagine was that Hamilton, in all likelihood, shared with his witnesses a Jewish upbringing. The case for Hamilton’s Jewish identity in his Caribbean boyhood, as detailed in my book ‘The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton,’ involves debunking a string of myths about his origin story. And although Hamilton did not identify as Jewish in the United States, the foregoing trial suggests that Hamilton’s youth may go a long way toward explaining his American adulthood. Like all people, Hamilton was indelibly molded by his beginnings. His emphatic critique of antisemitism in court vividly illustrates how the roots of religious equality in the United States are inseparable from Hamilton’s.

Speaker 1: Own, and it’s special thanks to Andrew Poorwanscher. When we get at those roots of antisemitism, going all the way back to that trial, ‘Jews were not reliable witnesses.’ What a tragic thought! The story of Alexander Hamilton defending Jews in court. Here on Our American Stories, Lee Habib. Here, as we approach our nation’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, I’d like to remind you that all the history stories you hear on this show are brought to you by the great folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn’t just a great school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale.edu to find out about their terrific free online courses. Again, go to Hillsdale.edu and sign up for your terrific online courses.