Editing Alexander Hamilton (section)

===Slavery===
Hamilton is not known to have ever owned slaves, although members of his family did. At the time of her death, Hamilton's mother owned two slaves and wrote a will leaving them to her sons. Due to their illegitimacy, however, Hamilton and his brother were held ineligible to inherit her property and never took ownership of the slaves.<ref name="New-York Journal"/>{{rp|17}} As a youth in Saint Croix, Hamilton later worked for a company that traded slaves as well as sugar and other staples of the [[Triangular trade|Transatlantic economy]].<ref name="New-York Journal"/>{{rp|17}} Historians have discussed whether Hamilton personally owned slaves later in life.<ref>Multiple sources:
* {{cite book |last=Miller |first=John Chester |title=Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation |date=1959 |publisher=Harper Torchbooks |location=New York |page=122 (''note'') |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00mill/page/122/mode/2up |quote=Although Hamilton was a member of the New York Manumission Society, he held slaves throughout his life.}}
* {{cite book |last1=Hendrickson |first1=Robert A. |title=Hamilton I, 1757-1789 |date=1976 |publisher=Mason/Charter |location=New York |page=432 |url=https://archive.org/details/hamilton0000hend |quote=It is not known whether either Betsy or Hamilton owned a slave.}}
* {{cite book |last1=McDonald |first1=Forrest |title=Alexander Hamilton: A Biography |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00forr |date=1982 |publisher=W. W. Norton |page=[https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00forr/page/373 373] (''Footnotes'') |isbn=978-0-393-30048-2 |quote=Historians have sometimes asserted that Hamilton, despite his activities in behalf of emancipation, did personally own slaves, though his family stoutly denied it.}}
* {{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=David Brion |title=The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 |date=1999 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |page=172 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Problem_of_Slavery_in_the_Age_of_Rev/9lsvDwAAQBAJ |quote=Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay were figures of prominence who either owned or had owned Negro slaves.}}
* {{cite book |last1=Sterne |first1=William Randall |title=Alexander Hamilton: A Life |date=2003 |publisher=HarperCollins |location=New York |isbn=9780060195496 |page=293 |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00rand/page/292/mode/2up |quote=Hamilton himself never owned a slave, but he could never convince his wife to free her one slave, her body servant.}}
* {{cite book |last=Hogeland |first=William |editor-last1=Romano |editor-first1=Renee C. |editor-last2=Potter |editor-first2=Claire Bond |title=Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America's Past |publisher=Rutgers University |location=New Brunswick, New Jersey |date=2018 |pages=28 |chapter=From Ron Chernow's 'Alexander Hamilton' to 'Hamilton: An American Musical' |isbn=978-0-8135-9033-2 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G3BADwAAQBAJ |quote=Many in both the North and South had deep concerns, no doubt often sincere, about the vileness of the institution [of slavery]. Many of those same people also held people in bondage, including Hamilton himself.}}</ref>

[[Ron Chernow]], in his 2004 [[Alexander Hamilton (book)|biography of Hamilton]], argued that, while there is "no definite proof" that Hamilton personally owned slaves, "oblique hints" in Hamilton's papers suggest "he and Eliza may have owned one or two household slaves."<ref name=chernow210>Chernow, p. [https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00cher/page/210 210].</ref> Hamilton handled slave transactions as the legal representative of his own family members, and his grandson, [[Allan McLane Hamilton]], interpreted some of these journal entries as being purchases for himself.<ref name="Allan McLane Hamilton">{{cite book |last=Hamilton |first=Allan McLane |author-link=Allan McLane Hamilton |year=1910 |chapter=Friends and Enemies |title=The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton: Based Chiefly Upon Original Family Letters and Other Documents, Many of Which Have Never Been Published |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YmgoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA268 |location=New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |publication-date=1910 |page=268 |access-date=October 13, 2016 |quote=It has been stated that Hamilton never owned a negro slave, but this is untrue. We find that in his books there are entries showing that he purchased them for himself and for others.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=McDonald |first1=Forrest |title=Alexander Hamilton: A Biography |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00forr |date=1982 |publisher=W. W. Norton |page=[https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00forr/page/373 373] (''Footnotes'') |isbn=978-0-393-30048-2}}</ref> In 1840, however, his son John maintained that his father "never owned a slave; but on the contrary, having learned that a domestic whom he had hired was about to be sold by her master, he immediately purchased her freedom."<ref>Hamilton, John C., The Life of Alexander Hamilton, D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1834–1840, vol. 2, p. 280</ref>

Hamilton expressed support for limited emancipation during the [[American Revolutionary War]], when he endorsed a plan to recruit enslaved men to serve in the [[Continental Army]]. As a necessary inducement, Hamilton wrote, the Black soldiers should be promised their freedom upon enlistment. He dismissed objections that enslaved men were "too stupid" to fight well, arguing that their "want of cultivation" and "habit of subordination" made them ideal soldiers. Whereas officers should be "men of sense and sentiment," good enlisted men were unthinking "machines," a role to which white men, unaccustomed to a "life of servitude," were comparatively less suited than Blacks.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hamilton |first1=Alexander |editor1-last=Hamilton |editor1-first=John C. |title=The Works of Alexander Hamilton [...] |volume=1 |date=1850 |location=New York |pages=76–77 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Works_of_Alexander_Hamilton_Correspo/cnABAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 |chapter=Hamilton to President of Congress}}</ref> In 1785, he joined his close associate [[John Jay]] and more than 30 fellow New Yorkers in founding the [[New York Manumission Society]]. The Society lobbied successfully for legislation to [[Gradual emancipation (United States)|gradually abolish]] slavery in New York.<ref name="New-York Journal"/> Rather than legally emancipate all enslaved people in the state, the 1799 act declared all children born after July 4, 1799 free pending a period of apprenticeship lasting 28 years for men and 25 years for women. Enslaved people born prior to that date were not emancipated, and the final end of slavery in New York did not occur until 1827.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Zilversmit |first1=Arthur |title=The First Emancipation |date=1969 |publisher=University of Chicago |location=Chicago |pages=182, 214 |url=https://archive.org/details/firstemancipatio0000arth}}</ref>

In his letter recommending the enlistment of Black soldiers in the Continental Army, Hamilton rejected the racial [[essentialism]] found in the contemporaneous writings of Jefferson and other leading white intellectuals, asserting "their natural faculties are as good as ours."<ref>{{cite book |first=John Chester |last=Miller |title=Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nWRbVDAUP2gC&pg=PA41 |year=1964 |publisher=Transaction |pages=41–42 |isbn=978-1-4128-1675-5}}</ref> He never advocated for the [[American Colonization Society|colonization]] of free people of color outside the United States, which many contemporaries considered essential to any plan for emancipation.<ref name="New-York Journal">{{cite journal |last1=Horton |first1=James Oliver |title=Alexander Hamilton: slavery and race in a revolutionary generation |journal=New-York Journal of American History |date=2004 |volume=65 |pages=16–24 |url=http://www.alexanderhamiltonexhibition.org/about/Horton%20-%20Hamiltsvery_Race.pdf |access-date=April 2, 2017 |archive-date=July 8, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210708062531/http://www.alexanderhamiltonexhibition.org/about/Horton%20-%20Hamiltsvery_Race.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|22}} In the 1790s, Hamilton's political agenda sometimes came into conflict with proslavery interests. When the enslaved population of [[Saint-Domingue]] [[Haitian Revolution|rose up]] against their French enslavers, Hamilton and other Federalists supported the revolutionaries and urged closer economic and diplomatic ties with [[First Empire of Haiti|new nation of Haiti]].<ref name="New-York Journal"/>{{rp|23}} His suggestions shaped the [[Constitution of Haiti|Haitian constitution]], promulgated the year after his death.<ref name="New-York Journal"/>{{rp|23}} At other times, political expediency led Hamilton to form close relationships with slaveholders like [[William Loughton Smith]] whose support was critical to the strength of the Federalist Party in South Carolina.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cooke |first1=Jacob Ernest |title=Alexander Hamilton |date=1982 |publisher=Scribner's |location=New York |page=45 |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderhamilto00cook}}</ref>