Alexander Hamilton

"Without some directing and organizing genius like his, the consolidation of the Union must have been delayed, and have been accomplished with much travail.... He was fortunate in finding an opportunity for their exercise in a crisis which enabled him to render greater services to the country than have been rendered by almost any man in her history, with the exception of Washington and Lincoln."
The life of Alexander Hamilton is an essential chapter in the story of the formation of the American Union. Hamilton's work was of that constructive sort which is vital for laying the foundations of new states. Whether the Union would have been formed under the Constitution and would have been consolidated into a powerful nation, instead of a loose confederation of sovereign states, without the great services of Hamilton, is one of those problems about which speculation is futile.
Where the organization of a strong government degenerated in Rome and France into absolutism, it tended in America, under the directing genius of Hamilton, to place in the hands of the people a more powerful instrument for executing their own will. So powerful a weapon was thus created that Hamilton himself became alarmed when it was seized by the hands of Jefferson, Madison, and other democratic leaders as the instrument of democratic ideas, and those long strides were taken in the states and under the federal government which wiped out the distinctions between classes, abolished the relations of church and state, extended the suffrage, and made the government only the servant of the popular will.
"A capital example of well-balanced and thoroughly interesting condensed biography, covering the salient points of Hamilton's life, and bringing out his political attitude, his temperament and his service to the country with entire distinctness." -The Outlook
"The fine head of Hamilton greets the reader of his biography, the keen face of a cultivated, intellectual gentleman. His life was so closely interwoven with the story of our formation as a nation that it acquires a certain value and stateliness. The biography is most excellently done." -The Christian Advocate
"The little volume on Alexander Hamilton, written by Mr. C. A. Conant is only an outline of the great career of its subject, but it shows the skill of the trained student and writer in its clearness and proportion. Mr. Conant seems to be of the opinion that the form of government, its successful establishment, and its later greatness, are due to Hamilton more than to any other man." -The Dial
"An account in the modern historical method of the fight for a strong central government against the rights of the sovereign states. In a large sense, this is a biography of Hamilton, since it was so largely his work but though there is some reference to his peculiar fitness for this great task, owing as well to his comprehensive and organizing mind as to the fact that he was not born and nurtured in any of the jealous colonies." -The Churchman
"Mr. C. A. Conant sketches in fascinating style the career of the great statesman." -Texas School Journal