Alexander Hamilton Papers
Documents filtered by: Author="Hamilton, Alexander" AND Period="Jefferson Presidency" AND Project="Hamilton Papers"
sorted by: date (descending)
Permanent link for this document:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-26-02-0001-0242-0001

From Alexander Hamilton to James A. Hamilton, [June 1804]

To James A. Hamilton1

[New York, June, 1804]

My Dear James

I have prepared for you a Thesis on Discretion. You may need it. God bless you.

Your affectionate father.

A. H.

Hamilton, Reminiscences description begins James A. Hamilton, Reminiscences of James A. Hamilton: or Men and Events, at Home and Abroad, During Three Quarters of a Century (New York, 1869). description ends , 40.

1In describing this letter and its enclosure, James A. Hamilton wrote: “In 1804 a student in Columbia College being required to deliver a speech at one of the exhibitions, I asked my father to prepare one for me. With his usual kindness he complied, and a few days before the fatal duel handed me a manuscript with a note.…

“The first impression as to the words underscored was, that I might need the Thesis as an exercise. Immediate subsequent events of the most painful character induced the belief that it was intended as an admonition that I wanted that ‘homely virtue,’ discretion, of which the thesis treated. How far I have profited by the admonition this relation of the errors of my life may prove. The reader may perhaps say that in attempting to write these reminiscences I have shown that the admonition was thrown away.” (Reminiscences, 40.)

Index Entries