Alexander Hamilton-9501 "How important is Hamilton to New York? Would New York have become the world financial capital it is without Alexander Hamilton?

CHERNOW: It is poignant, symbolic, and fitting that he ended up being buried at Trinity Church, right in the heart of the financial district, and so close to the stock exchange and Wall Street. Of course, the history of Wall Street is inseparable from New York. I asked Steven Wheeler, the archivist of the New York Stock Exchange, what were the first securities originally traded on Wall Street at the time of the famous Buttonwood Agreement. There were only five, and Alexander Hamilton directly created them all."

"An Interview with Ron Chernow," author of Alexander Hamilton.

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"Does the fact that Hamilton's widow lived fifty years after his death make the tragedy worse?

CHERNOW: Yes, and with the added poignancy that at the time of Hamilton's death, seven of their eight children were also still alive, the eighth having died in a duel three years earlier. One of the things that I was most at pains to do was to edit Eliza Hamilton back into the story, because she tried so hard to edit herself out. She ran the New York Orphan Asylum Society for several decades. I dug out all the records, and she wasn't just lending her name to it--she was really running it--dealing with the finance committee, arbitrating disputes--and it frustrated me that there was this missing founding mother. She is usually mentioned as a weak, religious, weepy, neurasthenic woman--as if she hadn't done anything. In fact, she was a strong, gutsy lady who was still mentally sharp and active until the end of her life."

"An Interview with Ron Chernow," author of Alexander Hamilton.

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"George Will said something like Hamilton's monument is not a physical building; it is the world that we see around us. In many ways the shape of the government today is much closer to the shape of the government that Hamilton had envisioned."

From "An Interview with Ron Chernow," the author of Alexander Hamilton.