A JEWISH FOUNDING FATHER? ALEXANDER HAMILTON’S SECRET LIFE

Thousands of miles from the Old World, on a sun-kissed island in the West Indies, a young boy named Alexander Hamilton began a most unlikely journey in the 1750s. His meteoric rise from Caribbean obscurity to American founder has long captivated historians and, more recently, Broadway audiences. Yet one crucial aspect of Hamilton’s life has remained submerged for centuries: the weight of the evidence suggests that he was in fact Jewish. Drawing on untapped sources in the West Indies, Professor Porwancher make the case for Hamilton’s Jewish ancestry and explore his ongoing relationships with Jews throughout his lifetime. Although he cast off any Jewish identity in his adulthood in the United States, Hamilton never forgot his origins. He emerged as a singular champion of American Jewry against the forces of anti-Semitism. Andrew Porwancher is the Wick Cary Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches constitutional history. He has degrees from Cambridge, Brown, and Northwestern, and has held fellowships at Oxford, Yeshiva University, and Princeton.