Free Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow Page A

lectured the vessel’s skipper in a peremptory tone that someday would be familiar to legions of respectful subordinates: “Reflect continually on the unfortunate voyage you have just made and endeavour to make up for the considerable loss therefrom accruing to your owners.” 6 The adolescent clerk had a capacity for quick decisions and showed no qualms about giving a tongue-lashing to a veteran sea captain. So proficient and eager to lead was he that he must have been slightly deflated when Nicholas Cruger returned to St. Croix in March 1772.
    Hamilton’s apprenticeship provided many benefits. He developed an intimate knowledge of traders and smugglers that later aided his establishment of the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs Service. He saw that business was often obstructed by scarce cash or credit and learned the value of a uniform currency in stimulating trade. Finally, he was forced to ponder the paradox that the West Indian islands, with all their fertile soil, traded at a disadvantage with the rest of the world because of their reliance on only the sugar crop—a conundrum to which he was to return in his celebrated “Report on Manufactures.” It may be that Hamilton’s preference for a diversified economy of manufacturing and agriculture originated in his youthful reflections on the avoidable poverty he had witnessed in the Caribbean.
    While Kortright and Cruger mostly brokered foodstuffs and dry goods, at least once a year the firm handled a large shipment of far more perishable cargo: slaves. On the slave ships, hundreds of Africans were chained and stuffed in fetid holds, where many suffocated. So vile were the conditions on these noisome ships that people onshore could smell their foul effluvia even miles away. On January 23, 1771, during Hamilton’s tenure, his firm ran a notice atop the front page of the local bilingual paper, the Royal Danish American Gazette: “Just imported from the Windward Coast of Africa, and to be sold on Monday next, by Messrs. Kortright & Cruger, At said Cruger’s yard, Three Hundred Prime SLAVES.” 7 The following year, Nicholas Cruger imported 250 more slaves from Africa’s Gold Coast and complained that they were “very indifferent indeed, sickly and thin.” 8 One can only imagine the inhuman scenes that Hamilton observed as he helped to inspect, house, groom, and price the slaves about to be auctioned. To enhance their appearance, their bodies were shaved and rubbed with palm oil until their muscles glistened in the sunlight. Some buyers came armed with branding irons to imprint their initials on their newly purchased property. From the frequency with which Nicholas Cruger placed newspaper notices to catch runaway slaves, it seems clear that the traffic in human beings formed a substantial portion of his business.
    By the time Hamilton arrived on St. Croix, the burgeoning slave population had doubled in just a decade, and the planters banded together to guard against uprisings or mass escapes to nearby Puerto Rico, where slaves could secure their freedom under Spanish rule. In this fearful environment, no white enjoyed the luxury of being a neutral spectator: either he was an accomplice of the slave system or he left the island. To remove any ambiguity in the matter, the government in Copenhagen issued a booklet, “The St. Croixian Pocket Companion,” which spelled out the duties of every white on the island—duties that would have applied to Hamilton starting in 1771. Every male over sixteen was obligated to serve in the militia and attend monthly drills with his arms and ammunition at the ready. If the fort fired its guns twice in a row, all white males had to grab their muskets and flock there instantly. On days when renegade slaves were executed at Christiansvaern, the white men formed a ring around the fort to prevent other slaves from interfering. Any slave who attacked a white person faced certain death by hanging or decapitation—death that probably came as a