That There, That's Not Me

Congratulations to Mr. Andrew Tuegel for correctly naming "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers as the Monday Song of the Day.

Before I go to bed, I want to ask a question: Are great leaders born or are they made? As I have read biographies of many of the founders in the past few years, I've been struck by some interesting themes. In particular, it seems as though a large percentage of the founders were voracious readers. They read anything and everything that they could get their hands on. It did not matter if it was a philosophical treatise from Hume or an economic text from Adam Smith. If it was published, the founders were going to read it. Men like John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson were constantly molding themselves into the type of people who would be able to lead our nation in its earliest days.

Here's where my earlier question comes in. Hamilton was not necessarily born into abject poverty, but his upbringing in the Caribbean. His mother died when he was thirteen, and his father, who was never married to his mother, had abandoned Alexander years before his mother's death. It would seem that anyone that would proffer that this de facto orphan would become the chief aide to George Washington in less than 20 years, become the leading theorist of our current form of government, and rise to the position of the first Secretary of the Treasury would be labeled naive at worst and a fool at worst.

So, was Hamilton simply the type of person who was born to succeed and it simply did not matter the type of situation that he endured in his early life or did he need to be immersed in the world of commerce that he found working as a trading clerk after his mother's death? It's a curious question and one that I would love to hear your thoughts on.