Was Alexander Hamilton Secretly Raised Jewish?

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Alexander Hamilton helped shape the Constitution or design America’s financial system, he was a child on the island of Nevis, raised among the merchants and schools of a thriving Jewish community. For generations, historians assumed Hamilton’s faith was Christian, but recent research from historian Andrew Porwancher tells a different story.

In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Porwancher pieces together overlooked records from Hamilton’s Caribbean youth and reaches a surprising conclusion: Hamilton was most likely born and educated in a Jewish household. That possibility casts new light on one of the nation’s most complex founders. Porwancher joins us to tell the story of a particular court case where Hamilton stood up for Jews. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
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

(00:34):
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 (00:53):
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,

(01:14):
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

(01:35):
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

(01:57):
good reason to be anxious. After all, Hamilton's principal witnesses
were Jews. An anti Semitic 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

(02:20):
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

(02:41):
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

(03:04):
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

(03:24):
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 bating suggested that perhaps the egalitarian
rationale for the war had yielded to entrenched prejudice. Hamilton

(03:46):
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

(04:09):
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

(04:30):
perpetuating a dark history of anti Semitism 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

(04:53):
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

(05:15):
a powerful vindication of revolutionary ideals. He emerged victorious by
a vote of twenty eight to six.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
I hereby declare this session adjourned.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
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

(05:54):
involving freedom of the press, in which his zeal was
so strikingly displayed. Norris's co counsel, Robert Troupe, drew similar conclusions.
In a letter to the American Ambassador to Great Britain.
Troop relayed the details of the trial and observed, our
friend Hamilton never appeared to have his passions so warmly

(06:15):
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

(06:39):
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 anti Semitism in court

(07:01):
vividly illustrates how the roots of religious equality in the
United States are inseparable from Hamilton's.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Own, and it's special thanks to Andrew Poorwanscher when we
get at those roots of anti Semitism, 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 story, Leehabib, Here,

(07:34):
as we approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
I'd like to remind you that all the history stories
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(07:57):
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