[2] Hamilton attended the United States Military Academy at West Point from July 1832 to June 1835.

[4] From June 1842 to April 1844, he was the Secretary of the United States Legation at Madrid, serving under Washington Irving.

[4] In April 1861, during the American Civil War, Hamilton was appointed a volunteer aide-de-camp to General John E. Wool, who commanded the U.S. Army's Department of the East in New York.

[3] In July 1863, during the New York City draft riots, he again assisted Wool, who reported to Governor Seymour that his "former aid[e], Colonel Alexander Hamilton Jr. ... volunteered especially for this occasion, and [was] constantly in attendance day and night.

"[6] Hamilton wrote to President Lincoln in a letter dated May 26, 1862, calling Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's division of General George McClellan's Army of the Potomac into four separate departments "the grossest mismanagement.