Alexander Hamilton To Be Celebrated on His 250th Birthday

Before the Long-Term Capital Management collapse nearly paralyzed the world's capital markets, and before the stock market crashes of 1987 and 1929, there was America's first widespread financial crisis: the Panic of 1792.

Today it's a little-known footnote to American financial history. But if it weren't for the quick thinking of a New Yorker named Alexander Hamilton, and his actions as America's first central banker, the events surrounding Wall Street's first bona fide crash could have meant doom for the struggling, cash-strapped republic.

Descendants of Hamilton, as well as an ambassador, historians, and grateful Wall Street executives, will gather around his grave in the Trinity Churchyard at Broadway and Wall Street tomorrow at 3 p.m. to begin a series of events to commemorate the 250th birthday of the most financially savvy of the Founding Fathers.

"His was a rare financial mind," the Henry Kaufman professor of financial institutions and markets at New York University's Stern School of Business, Richard Sylla, said. "In the early 1790s, five securities were listed in the newspapers as the main items traded: three U.S. Treasury bonds, the stock of the Bank of New York, and the stock of the Bank of the United States. All five were creations of Hamilton."

Although Americans say they think like Jeffersonians, they live like Hamiltonians, pundits say. It was this immigrant, from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis, who was prescient enough to establish a strong monetary system, which funded American growth and expansion throughout the 19th century and beyond.

"We like Jefferson for saying ‘all men are created equal,'" Mr. Sylla said. "But he owned 200 slaves and did a lot to perpetuate slavery as a strong proponent of states' rights over federal authority. Hamilton detested slavery and even argued — as no other great American leader did for a century or more — that blacks were every bit as talented as whites, but had been ground down by slavery."

Hamilton undoubtedly would be pleased with this week's observances, which include a post-cemetery symposium with Mr. Sylla at the new, permanent exhibition on the Hamilton's life and legacy at the Museum of American Finance at 48 Wall St., the same address where he founded the Bank of New York in 1784.

In July 2004, history buffs were concentrating on the re-enactments of the fatal duel 200 years before between Hamilton and Aaron Burr, then vice president. (Burr was a better shot, apparently, than the current vice president.) And just a month earlier, some lawmakers were proposing that Hamilton's image on the $10 bill be replaced with President Reagan's.

"There was such an uproar in the country that I don't think that issue will ever be raised again," the founder of the Friends of Alexander Hamilton & Descendants Committee, Ron Gross, said.

Mr. Gross, a native of Paterson, N.J. (a town — you guessed it — founded by Hamilton in 1792), formed his association during 2004 re-enactment festivities in New Jersey and related events at Hamilton's Harlem Heights home.

This time around, Mr. Gross credits the scale of the 250th birthday celebration with a note he received from the ambassador of St. Kitts and Nevis to America, Izben Williams, which questioned to what extent New Yorkers were going to acknowledge the big day of the island's native son.

Mr. Gross is a member of Trinity Church, the Episcopal church at the head of Wall Street to which Hamilton also belonged — and in whose churchyard he was buried following the duel with Burr.

When Mr. Gross and church officials began discussing plans for a ceremony at Hamilton's grave, they learned that the nearby Museum of American Finance would be holding a series of events later tomorrow evening that cast more attention on Hamilton's role as a sophisticated financier, and less on the duel that ended his life at age 47.

The Stern School's Mr. Sylla chose to concentrate his presentation at tomorrow evening's festivities on Hamilton's role as a central banker and "crisis manager," especially as it relates to the 1792 crash.

"America is the wealthiest society in world history, with a strong central government, but one kept under control by numerous checks and balances, and with a strong military, and the largest and most innovative financial system in the world," Mr. Sylla said. "You would have to say that we live in a country more Hamiltonian than any other label we might put on it."