Alexander Hamilton was a soldier of fortune of the highest type. He was born on the island of Nevis, in the West Indies. He was of illegitimate birth; his father was Scotch and his mother French. Endowed with a high order of intellect, possessed of indomitable energy and passionate ambition, he went forth into the world determined to win both.[69] Chance threw him into the colonies at a time when the agitation for independence was at its height. He landed at Boston in October, 1772; thence he went to New York, where in his sixteenth year he entered King's (now Columbia) College. At first he affiliated with the Loyalists, but soon deserted to the Disunionists, which gave him greater opportunities of realizing his ambitious dream. As a Loyalist the world would never have heard of him, but as John Marshall informs us, he ranks next to Washington as having rendered more conspicuous service to the United States than any other man in the Revolution. A great orator, a talented lawyer, a good soldier, master of every field he entered, punctilious and haughty of temperament, he scorned to bend even to the proud spirit of Washington. His position on Washington's staff was literally a secretaryship more civil than military. It was "the grovelling condition of a clerk," which his youthful genius revolted at. This caused him to resign his staff appointment. Alexander Hamilton was the deviser and establisher of the government of the United States. He it was that framed the Constitution, who urged and secured its adoption by the original thirteen states at a time when but a rope of sand bound them together. To Hamilton, more than any other man, is due the fact that the United States today form a nation. He lived long enough to see the nation to which he gave political stability submitting itself in entire respect and confidence to the declaration contained in the most remarkable document ever written. [69] In a letter written by Hamilton when he was but thirteen years of age, employed as a clerk, he declared: "I condemn the grovelling condition of a clerk to which my future condition condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station." Like many of his contemporaries he was an _intrigaunt_, injuring his health and impairing the sanctity of his home, and was destined to meet his death at the hands of a man more dissolute than himself, and destitute of his honorable traits of character.