Alexander Hamilton and the Hurricane

Alexander Hamilton wrote a stirring account of Hurricane San Augustin at St. Croix in 1772. A hurricane in Florida in 1945. (Everett Collection/Shutterstock)

Alexander Hamilton was born a bastard and grew up an orphan. Some might say that he didn’t get a fair shake at the start. He was born in Nevis, a very small island that was part of the British West Indies. He was born on Jan. 11, 1755. Or 1757. There isn’t an official record of his birth. His father, James Hamilton, had left the family early in his childhood, and only a few years before his mother, Rachel Faucette, died.

Alexander Hamilton, circa 1785. Engraving by Girsch. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

By the time he reached adolescence, Hamilton was working as a clerk about 150 miles from Nevis in St. Croix. At the time, this island was a Danish possession. Hamilton, possessing no formal education, educated himself and cultivated a gift for prose, even poetry. The social storms of his life had tossed him but never capsized him. When a physical storm tore through St. Croix on Aug. 31, 1772, he would unwittingly capitalize on its destructive power.

The Preacher

Several months before the storm ever formed, a friendship had developed in St. Croix between Hamilton and the Ulster Scot Presbyterian minister Hugh Knox. The 39-year-old preacher, who had studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), had brought with him a passion for the Bible, as well as other books. Knox, apparently noting Hamilton’s literary talents, made his personal library available to the teenager.

In addition to serving as a preacher, Knox was a journalist and a stand-by editor of the local Royal Danish American Gazette. Hamilton was a parishioner of Knox’s church and a sometime contributor to the newspaper. But a piece that wasn’t meant for the newspaper initiated Hamilton’s social and political momentum.

Words After the Storm

In the Dutch Church of St. Croix, Knox stood before his bedraggled congregation in hopes of inspiring the locals to trust in God in spite of the recent bedevilment of their island. A week prior, Hurricane San Agustin had roared through the Caribbean Islands, leveling homes and buildings, flooding streets and villages, leaving many destitute and some dead. Knox described the hurricane as “the most dreadful known among these islands, since their first settlement.”

Detail of account by Alexander Hamilton of Hurricane San Augustin in 1772. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

The words in his sermon were piercing. He began by noting the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3 in writing, “The wise man has told us that there is ‘a time and season for every purpose under the Heaven.’” The words from Knox were a direct reflection of the storm, but they also seemed a direct reflection of Hamilton’s life.

Knox stated that God had “marked out, in a very especial manner, the duty of two particular seasons”: prosperity and adversity. The season of prosperity was a call to “be joyful.” “The day of adversity; the evil and troublous day; the day of want, fear, danger, or affliction, calls for another, and a very different duty. In the day of adversity, we are called to consider!”

As Hamilton listened to Knox’s sermon, he must have considered his own adversities, of which there had been plenty. He indeed had taken time to consider and forced himself to rise above his situation. Hamilton had somehow managed to maneuver toward a semblance of prosperity despite a dead mother and an estranged father. He had become an eloquent writer and thinker without an education. He had faced those days of adversity with sheer determination and a mindset on the future. His perseverance through those days of adversity would culminate in his description of a great storm.

Inspired by Sermon and Storm

Possibly inspired by Knox’s sermon, Hamilton went home that same day and wrote his “imperfect account of one of the most dreadful Hurricanes that memory or any records whatever can trace.” Despite his humble admission that it would be “impossible” for him to describe it, his excited language and astonishing imagery created a fully immersive recollection for the reader. In that opening paragraph, he describes the “horror and destruction,” suggesting that “it seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place.” Incredibly, he ties together nearly all the elements of the storm and its destruction in one sentence, writing, “The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into Angels.”

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Alexander Hamilton’s hurricane letter, as published in the Royal Danish American Gazette on Oct. 3, 1772. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

Concluding this impressive sentence with a Christian symbol, his second paragraph is in some ways a reflection of Knox’s sermonal references to the Book of Psalms. It’s as if Hamilton is channeling a Davidic form in his prose with the lamenting verse: “Where now, oh! vile worm, is all thy boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of thine arrogance and self sufficiency?” and then following with praise-like resolve in declaring, “He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage—even him have I always loved and served.”

As the letter comes to a close, Hamilton seems to make a direct correlation between Knox’s theme, stating with apostolic overtures: “Yet hold, Oh vain mortal! Check thy ill timed joy. Art thou so selfish to exult because thy lot is happy in a season of universal woe? Hast thou no feelings for the miseries of thy fellow-creatures?”

The powerful, almost accusatory rhetoric, was never written for public consumption. It was written to his father, who was living in St. Kitts, an island connected to Nevis. It seems as though Hamilton isn’t merely addressing the recent storm, but also the man who had abandoned him; his older brother, James; and his mother.

In the letter, Hamilton references a mother and child suffering together with the image of a father noticeably absent: “See tender infancy pinched with hunger and hanging on the mothers knee for food! See the unhappy mothers anxiety. Her poverty denies relief, her breast heaves with pangs of maternal pity, her heart is bursting, the tears gush down her cheeks. Oh sights of woe! Oh distress unspeakable! My heart bleeds, but I have no power to solace!”

The passion behind this letter is hard to pin solely on a destructive storm and biblical inspiration. His call for assistance and compassion conjures an image of a preacher imploring a congregation of wealthy sinners, though it’s directed at one man. “O ye, who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them. Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withhold your compassion. What are you[r] sufferings compared to those?”

The San Agustin Hurricane seems to have had a near-galvanizing effect, creating a storm-like eruption in Hamilton, which allowed him to roar and crash through the lines of his letter.

Printing the Letter

When Knox read the letter, he was undoubtedly pleased with Hamilton’s powerful prose that read like a sermon perhaps he himself would have preached. He thought so highly of the letter that he asked the teenager if he could print it in the newspaper. Hamilton demurred for several weeks, perhaps for very personal reasons, before relenting. Knox noted at the beginning of the printed version that “The Author’s modesty in long refusing to submit it to Publick (sic) view, is the reason of its making its appearance so late as it now does.”

The published letter quickly garnered much attention among the business class in St. Croix. They immediately noticed a talent that shouldn’t be wasted on a clerk’s stool. The businessmen, along with Knox, who may have been his primary sponsor, collected enough funds to send Hamilton to King’s College (now Columbia University) the following year. Hamilton thrived in school, and when the revolution broke out, he became Gen. George Washington’s aide-de-camp, often writing Washington’s letters. When the war ended, he became a statesman, and not only assisted in writing the Constitution, but also led the charge to convince Americans (New Yorkers specifically) to adopt the new Constitution through the 85 Federalist Papers, of which he wrote 51. He was the first Secretary of the Treasury, and is also credited with assisting Washington in his famous 1796 Farewell Address.