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.