Did Alexander Hamilton own slaves? Did he engage in slavery?

An excellent article by Ankeet Ball, on the Columbia University and Slavery website, is titled Ambition and Bondage: An Inquiry on Alexander Hamilton and Slavery. Summarizing literature and original research, Ball concludes “Though from his early life he adopted a comprehensive hatred of the institution of slavery, Hamilton harbored boundless ambitions, for himself and for the philosophical rights he believed in that would eventually become instrumental in his economic plan for the United States. Whenever confronted with the choice of furthering his ambitions or choosing to weaken slavery in the United States, Hamilton chose the former. This trend in Hamilton’s life does not detract from the monumental accomplishments of the most famous student of Columbia College, for Hamilton, despite submitting to his personal ambitions, did what he could to cripple slavery until his death in 1804.”

The New York Slavery Records Index focuses on records, and we have had to decide whether to include records of slavery and Alexander Hamilton in our database.Until recently we did not, because none of the types of records we have been indexing referred to him. For example, Hamilton’s census records do not enumerate any enslaved persons in his household. He did not emancipate or register the births of any enslaved persons.  

However, we recently discovered a document that has caused is to reassess the decision. The document, titled An account of the malignant fever, lately prevalent in the City of New York. The document is an account of a Yellow Fever epidemic in 1798, by James Hardie, a physician at Bellevue, who compiled an extensive report on the epidemic including a list of all of the people who died and were interred in the various burying grounds and cemeteries of the city. The following is page 106 of the report:

In the middle of the page is the following entry: Hamilton Alexander, major-general, the black man of, 26 Broadway. Alexander Hamilton resided at 26 Broadway in 1798. Hardie’s entries distinguished enslaved people from free people in several ways, sometimes referring to them as slaves, but consistently referring to them as possessions with expressions like “the slave of” or “belonging to” and referring to free employees by their occupation, like “the servant of.” Thus it appears that Dr. Hardie thought that the “black man of” was enslaved to Alexander Hamilton.  

That does not mean that Dr. Hardie’s impression was correct. It is possible that the black man was employed by Alexander Hamilton, or perhals “of” him because he was being assisted by Alexander Hamilton.