Answers to Go with Susan Smith
Q. What exactly is the “Spanish Main”?
A. This patron had checked out our OverDrive eBook edition of Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton when he saw that our copy of the book was checked out. He used his San Marcos Public Library card so there was no charge.
Chernow’s book begins with Hamilton’s birth on the Caribbean island of Nevis and childhood on St. Croix. This is where our reader came upon a reference to the Spanish Main.
The phrase was familiar to both of us, but the exact meaning was elusive so we pulled out our reference copy of the “New Century Cyclopedia of Names.” This three volume set includes proper names for people, places, historical events, literary characters, works of art, mythological and legendary persons and places, etc.
Here is the entry on the Spanish Main: “The name formerly applied, somewhat vaguely, to the north coast of South America… Sometimes it included the Isthmus of Panama and Central America, or all the continental lands bordering on the Caribbean Sea, as distinguished from the islands. Many modern writers appear to suppose that the Spanish Main was the Caribbean Sea (a popular use of the name). It is in this sense that the Spanish Main is associated with piracy – from the fact that the Spanish treasure ships were the prizes most sought by pirates, and the Caribbean was the easiest place to capture them.”
Let’s refer to the “New Century Cyclopedia of Names” for more on Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton’s mother, a woman of Huguenot descent, left her husband to live with James Hamilton, a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Alexander Hamilton was born of this liaison. After his father’s bankruptcy (and abandonment of the family,) Alexander, aged 12, went to work in a counting house. By the time he was 15, his mother had died.
His precocious abilities so impressed some of his relatives and friends that they arranged to send him to the American colonies where he could acquire a better education and find wider opportunity.
He enrolled in 1774 at King’s College (soon to become Columbia College, now part of Columbia University), and became an eloquent advocate of the patriot cause.
In 1776, he became a captain of artillery in the Continental Army. He attracted the attention of George Washington, who made Hamilton a member of his staff.
He later distinguished himself in the battle of Yorktown. He was a member of the Continental Congress (1782-1783) and the Constitutional Convention (1787). Hamilton was second only to James Madison in securing ratification of the United States Constitution.
As President Washington’s secretary of the treasury, he worked constantly for a strong central government, a sound financial system, the chartering of the Bank of the United States, and the development of industry. This work and his alignment with the rich made him the object of suspicion among agrarians and people outside of the commercial centers on the Eastern seaboard.
The Federalist Party of John Adams and Hamilton was opposed by the Anti-Federalists who were later called Republicans, and eventually Democrats. The Anti-Federalists were led by Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.
John Adams, the Federalist candidate, became our second president. Anti-Federalist Jefferson became the third president, when Hamilton supported Jefferson instead of Burr in the Electoral College. Burr became vice president.
In 1804, Hamilton again frustrated Burr’s ambitions by opposing Burr’s election as governor of New York. The dispute that followed led to Burr’s challenge to a duel, which Hamilton accepted. Burr shot Hamilton on Weehawken Heights.
Hamilton was 47 when he died. His rise from a childhood of poverty on a Caribbean Island to his role as an American Founding Father is indeed memorable.
