Jeremiah Hamilton (The Prince of Darkness), Wall Street’s first black Millionaire
Who was Jeremiah Hamilton (b.1807-d. 1875)? There is no known image of him, no oil paintings, no sketches, not even a photograph. He almost certainly did have photographs taken of him, and most likely commissioned a painting, but if any likeness have survived, it is probably cataloged under miscellaneous or as ‘subject unknown’.
Jeremiah G Hamilton was the only black American broker on Wall Street and was the only black millionaire in mid 19th-century New York. During his time Wall Street, Black intellectuals belittled his relentless pursuit of wealth as crass and undignified. Modern American historians also ignored Hamilton and his prominence in Wall Street during the 1840s and 50s. Today he is all but forgotten. Yet during his lifetime, Jeremiah Hamilton was a larger-than-life figure, a man who demanded to be in the forefront and spotlight. He left a huge footprint on the historical record: There are literally tens of thousands of words of newsprint about him, and well over 50 court cases involving him as either the plaintiff or defendant in New York City court archives. His business practices were controversial; where most black entrepreneurs sold their goods to other blacks, “Hamilton cut a swath through the lily-white New York business world of the mid-1830s, a domain where his depredations and business dealings soon earned him the nickname of “The Prince of Darkness”. Other whites, and Blacks too, who had even less affection for him, simply called him Hamilton. Jeremiah Hamilton’s life provides a unique and illuminating insight into Black life in New York, before and during the Civil War, and provides an example of how a Black American, in the most racist times in American history, still thrived and made a name for himself, in spite of the unbelievable obstacles set in front of him.
Details of Hamilton’s early years are contradictory. Surviving contemporary newspaper articles claimed that he was born the Free parents in Richmond Virginia, however his death certificate stated that he was born in the West Indies and listed Port au Prince, Haiti as the birthplace of his parents. Hamilton was highly literate, fluent in French, extremely capable in working with numbers, and full of ambition. During his lifetime, he would speak of his past in ways that would be an advantage for himself, thus there are no definitive records on his early days. When Hamilton finally made his first mark documented in history, it was in the counterfeiting trade.
In 1828, when Hamilton was just 21 years old, he ran a large cargo of counterfeit coins from Canada through New York into Haiti for a consortium of prominent New York merchants.
The Haitian authorities discovered the scam and Hamilton was nearly caught. Counterfeiting was illegal in Haiti and a judge sentenced him, in absentia, to be executed. Proclamations nailed to the polls all over the island offered a $300 reward for his capture. For 12 days, Hamilton hid around Port au Prince Harbor until he could escape on board a vessel bound for New York.
By the time of the great fire of 1835, which was one of the most destructive events in New York City history, Hamilton was living in New York and renting an office on Wall Street. He made considerable profits from the disaster, taking ruthless advantage of the victims of the fire, to pocket some $5 million dollars in today’s currency. Within months after the fire, he invested heavily in New York’s real estate boom, buying 47 lots of land at Halet’s Cove, in present-day Astoria, in addition he bought docks, wharves, and tracks of land up the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, NY. He at this time was also investing into the Wall Street stock market.
Jeremiah Hamilton was more ruthless and aggressive toward his competitors on Wall Street than most businessmen. Wall Street was never a place for the weak of heart, and in the unregulated marketplace of the antebellum era, New York businessman played ruthlessly and mercilessly in the pursuit of wealth. Hamilton played this game better than almost all of his white competitors, and he loved it.
When Hamilton first began investing on Wall Street in the mid 1830s, white brokers initially sensed that this wealthy black man would be an easy mark, so they lined up to try and take advantage of him… but they all were in for a big surprise. His enemies found out that he was utterly ruthless and calculating, and the people who invested in him found that he made them a lot of money. Not only was Hamilton a formidable foe in terms of profiting on the stock market and investing, he was also formidable in the court room. Jeremiah Hamilton was a serial litigant, meaning that he did not hesitate to file lawsuits against his enemies; as a matter of fact, filing lawsuits became Hamilton’s weapon of choice.
The main reason that Jeremiah Hamilton’s story, in terms of his dealings on Wall Street, was not lost in time was because these lawsuits were on record the New York Court system, and the records revealed that Hamilton and the insurance Industry were always suing each other during this time, so much so that there are tens of thousands of words written on record about their court cases.
Jeremiah Hamilton’s relationship with the insurance industry was a continuous battle. In the 1830s, the New York marine insurance firms blackballed him and refused underwrite his ventures. He was rumored to have scuttled (deliberately sink or let water flood the vessel) a few heavily insured vessels… a charged that most likely had some truth. In 1843, the Atlantic insurance company accused him of conspiring to defraud them of $50,000 (in 1843 monetary value…..$1 in 1843 is the equivalent in purchasing power to about $347 in 2020). The insurance company eventually drop their legal case, but not before Hamilton claimed that the insurance company hired goons to drown him in the East River.
In addition to having troubles on the New York Stock Exchange, because of his race in his success, Hamilton had issues with the secondary stock exchanges in New York City. The New Board, one of those secondary New York Stock Exchanges, made a rule to expel any member who bought or sold shares for Hamilton. One New York city newspaper editor suggested that the reason was, “Hamilton is a colored man; and so, forsooth, his money is not to be received in the same field with their’s…” Yet most brokers and merchants were more interested in the color of the black man’s money than his skin, and they continued to invest with him. On Hamilton’s part, he simply brushed away the obstacles placed in his way, or connived to get around them, and carried on amassing his fortune.
Hamilton did not shy away from getting into physical confrontations with his enemies. In an 1843 court case, a witness who was also a prominent judge, viciously attacked Hamilton’s character in the course of the trial. Hamilton, who no longer could not take such vicious verbal attacks, stood up and announced that the judge was an unreliable witness. When the two met outside the court chamber, they continued to argue, then they shoved each other, and this escalated into a full brawl. When the judge struck Hamilton with his cane, Hamilton retaliated by attempting to hit the judge with the horse cart ladder. The New York City press documented all of this at the time and had a field day.
In the 1850s, Hamilton would take on Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of America’s wealthiest and most ruthless tycoons, over the control of the Accessory Transit Company, a company set up by Vanderbilt and others during the California gold rush in the 1850s, to transport would be prospectors from the east coast of the United States to the West Coast. In the obituary of the National Republican, the day after Vanderbilt died in 1877, the writer stated that “there was only one man who ever fought the Commodore to the end and that was Jeremiah Hamilton…”
The writer did not explain who Hamilton was nor mentioned his skin color, noting only that although Vanderbilt did not fear Hamilton (the Commodore was known to not fear anyone), but…the Commodore nonetheless “respected him.”
The 2 Worlds of Jeremiah Hamilton
Jeremiah Hamilton lived into worlds. On Wall Street, he was the black broker who relished his predatory role, aggressively working deals to his advantage (Thus he was called the Prince of Darkness). But in his everyday life on the streets of New York, he was forever reminded that his skin color relegated him into third class citizenship among white people. Hamilton never made an effort to be accepted within the small circle of affluent Black New Yorkers (they were disgusted with his shameless pursuit of wealth at any expense), but Hamilton was also never accepted by the white New Yorkers either, so he lived basically in isolation: neither black nor white wanted to be associated with him on personal terms. But socially, Hamilton had to be a white racist’s worst nightmare. Even though most white New Yorkers hated seeing Hamilton because he was a wealthy and successful black man living among them, along with a white wife (of 40 years) and their 9 children, the white wall brokers and investors were torn between their racial hatred and their love of making money. Their love of making money was stronger, thus they tolerated Hamilton because he made them lots of money.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Hamilton existence on Wall Street really became absurd. He was still accumulating money ruthlessly, not caring whom he upset or crushed in his way, and as long as he was making money for his investors, no one really bothered him. He was a master at manipulating speculative share values to his advantage, and he had the habit of saddling his clients with any losses, but pocketing the profits that were made —a habit that often landed him in court. During this time, Hamilton did not moderate his behavior or lifestyle. He lived as a wealthy man. This self assured behavior by a Black man in white society may have been tolerated only on Wall Street, because on any other street in America, Hamilton would have been strung up from a lamp post. And in July, 1863 when the draft riots erupted in New York City, Hamilton was reminded quickly that all his money could not save him ultimately American White racism.
On the second evening of the rioting, somewhere between 12 to 20 White men and boys descended on the house where Jeremiah Hamilton and family lived. The white rioters kicked in the basement door and rushed up the stairs to the ground floor where they were confronted by the 40-year-old Mrs. Hamilton, who told them that her husband was away. A curious white neighbor (Hamilton lived in an affluent white neighborhood) came to the house to see what was all the noise about, when one of the rioters pulled out and pointed a cocked pistol to his chest and told him that “there is a nigger living here with two white women, and we are going to bring him out and hang him on the lamp post.” That night Hamilton barely escaped with his life.
After the Civil War, Hamilton’s life took on the appearance of respectability. He frequented the New York Society Library and read the philosophical works of Bacon, Milton and Aristotle. At the time of his death in 1875, one obituary damned him as “the notorious colored capitalist long identified with commercial enterprises in this city.” , But other attributes were gentler, noting that Hamilton was “with one exception, the oldest wall street speculator” and emphasizing that “his judgment in banking was highly esteemed, and he was often consulted by prominent bankers.” Harpers Bazaar described him as “an intelligent, gentlemanly man.” He was buried in his family lot in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, next to two of his daughters.
The story of Jeremiah Hamilton’s life destroys the white washed view that the financial powerhouse of Wall Street was always White, and totally segregated from the African American past. When Hamilton died in May 1875, obituaries called him the richest black man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of $250 million today. Hamilton is yet another example that exposes the myth that American history is just white Americans history, when in fact, American history is more colorful (both racially and personality wise), more interesting, and especially more enlightening than what is being taught in our schools across this country in this day and age.
SOURCES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Hamilton
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jeremiah-g-hamilton-1807-1875/
The Historical Memory Recovery Channel 