The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton

Andrew Porwancher

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780691212708
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Frühe amerikanische Geschichte

The untold story of the founding father's likely Jewish birth and upbringing—and its revolutionary consequences for understanding him and the nation he fought to create In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption and revolutionizes our understanding of an American icon.This radical reassessment of Hamilton's religious upbringing gives us a fresh perspective on both his adult years and the country he helped forge. Although he didn't identify as a Jew in America, Hamilton cultivated a relationship with the Jewish community that made him unique among the founders. As a lawyer, he advocated for Jewish citizens in court. As a financial visionary, he invigorated sectors of the economy that gave Jews their greatest opportunities. As an alumnus of Columbia, he made his alma mater more welcoming to Jewish people. And his efforts are all the more striking given the pernicious antisemitism of the era. In a new nation torn between democratic promises and discriminatory practices, Hamilton fought for a republic in which Jew and Gentile would stand as equals.By setting Hamilton in the context of his Jewish world for the first time, this fascinating book challenges us to rethink the life and legend of America's most enigmatic founder.

1

Genesis

AS JEWISH IDENTITY BEGINS with a mother, so must this story. Alexander Hamilton’s mother, Rachel Faucette, was born a Christian around 1729 on the island of Nevis in the British Caribbean. Her parents, John and Mary, had a troubled marriage that culminated in a legal separation in 1740. John Faucette died five years later and left the entirety of his estate to Rachel. Determined to begin their lives anew, Mary and Rachel sailed 150 miles northwest to St. Croix, an isle of stunning scenery in the Danish West Indies.¹ An American poet visiting St. Croix in the eighteenth century insisted that “even those that have no taste to admire the beauties of nature would at the view be forced to confess that the valleys of Paradise were now displayed to the eye.”² St. Croix was part of the Leeward Islands, a string of small isles dotting the eastern Caribbean.

The tropical heat and rich soil of West Indian islands like St. Croix were ideal for producing the era’s ultimate cash crop: sugar.³ European powers often waged bloody battles with one another for control over these lucrative colonies.⁴ So profitable was the sugar trade that Britain, for instance, extracted more riches from its collection of Caribbean islands than from the entirety of its territory in North America. During negotiations that ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763, the French had to decide between keeping their vast expanse of Canada or the sugar island of Guadeloupe. They chose Guadeloupe.⁵ Denmark was among those Old World kingdoms lured by the promise of Caribbean sugarcane. The business-minded Danes preferred to use the purse over the sword, and they peacefully acquired St. Croix from France for 142,000 rigsdalers (Danish rix-dollars) in 1733.⁶

Rachel Faucette and her mother were part of a diverse wave of migrants descending on St. Croix in its early years under Danish rule. Whereas other European nations sought to populate their West Indian islands with their own countrymen, Denmark shrewdly foresaw the benefits of a more inclusive immigration policy. After all, sugar plantations were risky undertakings.⁷ The costs of the requisite machinery and slave labor meant significant upfront investment. Droughts, diseases, and hurricanes could summarily wipe out a plantation before a profit was realized.⁸ The Danes reasoned that if foreigners wanted to hazard their capital on St. Croix, then Denmark could happily levy its duties on whichever planters managed to win the sugarcane lottery. Relatively few residents of St. Croix were Danish.⁹

Among those who took advantage of St. Croix’s open borders were Jews. The Caribbean at large was a magnet for Jewish merchants. Jews had been a stateless people for centuries who lived as outsiders in other lands. Barred by law from many professions, they often assumed the role of cultural intermediaries who served as tradesmen between societies. Jews thus cultivated acumen in commerce and languages not purely by choice but in large part because of their marginality. These very skills proved especially valuable in the early modern era (1500–1800), an age of New World colonization and rising global commerce. Jews became important players in port cities across northern Europe, North and South America, and the West Indies. Not only did Jews boast mercantile expertise and linguistic ability, but they were tapped into transatlantic networks of fellow Jews spread throughout the Atlantic world. Colonial powers willing to accept a Jewish presence stood to profit for their tolerance.¹⁰

Sephardic Jews of Spanish-Portuguese ancestry composed the bulk of Caribbean Jewry, but some Ashkenazi Jews of German and Polish origin also migrated to the islands.¹¹ Jewish communities in the West Indies were to be found on British colonies like Barbados, Jamaica, and Nevis; on the Dutch isles of St. Eustatius and Curaçao; and on one of Denmark’s other Caribbean territories, St. Thomas.¹² St. Croix never developed the sizable population of Jews that these other islands claimed—in Curaçao, for instance, Jews comprised nearly 40 percent of the free population by 1785¹³—but St. Croix could still tally a handful of Jewish residents.¹⁴

Amid the polyglot mix of Brits, Germans, Spaniards, Dutch, Danes, and Jews on St. Croix, the largest group by far consisted of African slaves. The sugar trade depended on a steady supply of slave labor. By 1755, St. Croix’s slaves would outnumber free people nearly seven to one.¹⁵ Caribbean slavery was particularly barbaric. Interminable hours cutting sugarcane, bouts of tropical disease, and unrelenting heat all exacted a brutal toll on those in bondage. Most slaves perished within just five years.¹⁶ Slaves who faced capital punishment for a given offense often exhibited visible relief that their cruel existence was reaching its end. As one slave owner conceded, “Many who have been hanged or decapitated went to their deaths with the greatest cheerfulness.”¹⁷ The picturesque beaches, azure waters, and verdant hills of St. Croix must have made for a perverse beauty in the eyes of slaves, who found themselves in hell amid nature’s paradise.

When Rachel Faucette and her mother arrived in St. Croix after a twenty-hour journey,¹⁸ their ship most likely disembarked at the growing port town of Christiansted. The dominant structure along the harbor was Fort Christiansvaern. It housed the colonial governor, the offices of the Danish West India Company, and—as Rachel would personally discover—a prison. The West India Company’s warehouse stood opposite the fort and included a courtyard for slave auctions.¹⁹ There prospective buyers would inspect naked slaves, peering into their mouths and checking limbs for defects.²⁰ Merchants and officials built their houses along King Street, Company Street, and Strand Street, three parallel avenues that began near the water and ran inland. Free blacks were barred from constructing homes in central Christiansted and instead relegated to a separate neighborhood. The Danes demonstrated a unique degree of forethought in urban planning; Christiansted’s orderly growth along a grid offered a stark contrast to the hodgepodge development of other West Indian islands. Visitors often marveled at the tidy nature of life on St. Croix.²¹

On this map of St. Croix, the insets show the street layouts for the island’s two towns: Frederiksted on the west end and Christiansted on the north shore. Source: Kort og tegninger (1600–1920), Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives, Copenhagen).

For Rachel and Mary Faucette, St. Croix was an obvious choice for the next stage of their lives. Rachel’s older sister, Ann, had already moved there with her wealthy husband, James Lytton, who purchased a sugar estate on St. Croix that came to be known as the Grange.²² Plantations like his were oriented around a “great house,” typically European or neoclassical in style. A planter and his family occupied the upper story of a great house while using the ground floor for storage. Such homes were strategically situated on a property to catch ocean drafts, though the breeziest parcel of land was reserved for the windmill. A great house’s dense walls and vaulted ceiling were designed to withstand hurricanes, which could strike with little notice and even less mercy.²³

Guests visiting an estate for a dance would ride their carriages up an imposing tree-lined drive. The host family made use of imported luxuries like porcelain and silver. Under the Caribbean moon, the sound of the minuet, aroma of flowers, and flavor of punch easily mingled. But come daylight, the unforgiving sun beat down on the slaves toiling in the cane fields. These slaves often lived in simple huts on the estate, lined in two rows with a road in between where the women prepared meals amid playing children. In addition to boiling cane juice into sugar, plantations also produced rum and molasses. Oxen then carted these valuable commodities to the wharf for shipment to ports throughout the Atlantic world.²⁴

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James Lytton was probably the one who introduced Rachel Faucette to his business associate—and the man she would marry—Johan Michael Levine.²⁵ Hamilton himself would describe Levine as a “fortune-hunter” who was “bedizzened with gold, and paid his addresses to my mother, then a handsome young woman.”²⁶ Levine acquired a stake in a sugar plantation in 1744. After seeing his investment come to naught, he redirected his energies toward St. Croix’s next most lucrative crop: cotton. While the prime real estate on the western side of the island was designated for sugar, the sloping hills of eastern St. Croix were profitably employed for cotton production.²⁷ Levine’s swanky wardrobe surely gave Rachel the impression he was a planter of substantial means.²⁸

The vast body of historical scholarship on Hamilton, often excellent in its analysis of his adult years, has been less thorough in documenting his family history. Levine is a consummate example of an understudied and misconceived figure in Hamilton’s past. Many Hamilton biographers fail to mention Levine at all.²⁹ Others acknowledge his presence in Rachel’s story but offer no comment on his religious identity.³⁰ Those who do engage with the question of Levine’s faith often make misguided assumptions. Uncovering Levine’s religious background is key to unlocking Hamilton’s own.

Levine’s name raises the possibility of a Jewish identity, specifically ancestry in the tribe of Levi from ancient Israel. His surname appears in various spellings in the historical record, and several of these formulations (“Levin,” “Lewin,” “Lavien”) correspond to surnames used by Jews of Levitic descent in the eighteenth century.³¹ Before coming to St. Croix, Levine worked as a merchant, a co...