Prince of Darkness

Starred review from August 1, 2015
A specialist in African-American history pieces together the remarkable career of an antebellum Wall Street broker who was married to a white woman, ambitious, ruthless, successful, and black: in short, "a racist's nightmare come to life." An 1875 death notice of Jeremiah G. Hamilton labeled him "The Richest Colored Man in the Country." Relying almost entirely on newspapers, government files, court records, the public cloud of dust kicked up by Hamilton's tumultuous financial maneuvering, and his otherwise private life, White (History/Univ. of Sydney; The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons and Speech, 2005, etc.) recovers a surprising amount of information about this amazing wheeler-dealer. The natty, shrill-voiced Hamilton enjoyed fine living-he bought only the best homes, cigars, and lawyers-and serious books. During the course of compiling his $2 million fortune, he was at various times sentenced to death in absentia in Haiti for his role in a counterfeiting scheme, banned from coverage by New York insurance companies, and blackballed by the stock exchange. He exploited the financial chaos amid the ashes of the city's Great Fire of 1835 and smartly used the Bankruptcy Act to recover from the 1837 panic. In a largely unregulated Wall Street, with gambling and speculation rife, the ethically challenged Hamilton beat his slippery white adversaries at their own game-and they resented him for it. Combative (in old age, he fought off a Broadway pickpocket), endlessly litigious (he once sued Cornelius Vanderbilt), Hamilton understood the importance of the press and manipulating public opinion. White expertly mines the era's penny press for stories and characters-William Thompson, junk shop and brothel owner, Thomas Downing, oyster-house proprietor, himself book worthy-that help explain the era's racial climate and Hamilton's notoriety as assessed by the likes of John Russwurm, publisher of New York's first African-American paper, the Herald's race-baiting James Gordon Bennett, and Hamilton's ally, the Sun's Benjamin Day. Superb scholarship and a sprightly style recover an unaccountably overlooked life in our history.

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September 1, 2015

Though Jeremiah Hamilton (d. 1875) was one of the first African Americans to make his fortune on Wall Street, amassing over a million dollars in the 1840s and 1850s while fighting constant prejudice and discrimination, his life was uncelebrated and nearly forgotten. White (history, Univ. of Sydney) revives the remarkable story of Hamilton in this biography. It was not an easy task. There are no related manuscripts, personal documents, photographs, or portraits; it is not even known where Hamilton was born. White relies almost exclusively on newspaper accounts and court records. Hamilton's often questionable business dealings made him a fixture in the press and led to frequent legal troubles. But these records don't give a complete picture of the man, leaving White with unanswered questions about his subject. VERDICT Hamilton's story is gripping; so, too, is his puzzling near disappearance from the historical record. White does an excellent job drawing out the facts of Hamilton's life and supplementing them with details from the history of Wall Street and of other African American New Yorkers of the era. Recommended for readers interested in African American history, New York City, or the history of American business.--Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2015
Though now historically obscure, Jeremiah Hamilton, at his death, was the richest black man in America, worth more than $250 million in modern currency. Hamilton's obscurity springs from more than the usual reasons that so little is written about the history of black Americans in the nation's first centuries. Aside from the anomaly of being a wealthy black man in the particularly unwelcome landscape of Wall Street, Hamilton was no race hero. He started his career as a broker and ruthless investor by selling counterfeit Haitian currency in the chaos of its liberation. He went on to all manner of skulduggery, including railroad stock speculation and insurance fraud, often with the backing of wealthy white investors who sought to keep their names out of the papers. The black press disparaged Hamilton for his avaricious pursuit of money, even at the expense of other blacks. The author draws on a trove of public documents, including newspaper accounts and court documents, to offer a portrait of a relentlessly driven man. Despite the fact that Hamilton left no personal papers behind, White details his incredible life, marriage to a white woman, and contentious presence on Wall Street, in the process revealing the ways that historians reconstruct the past. An engaging look at an extraordinary man.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)