His eloquent defense concluded with saying that the press has "a liberty both of exposing and opposing tyrannical power by speaking and writing truth."

"[1][2] His estate in Philadelphia, known as Bush Hill, was inherited by his son, William Hamilton, who leased it for use as the vice-president's house during the years that the city was the temporary capital of the United States.

[3] About 1697, Hamilton immigrated to Accomac County, Virginia in British America, where he continued his study of law and taught a classical school.

[4] On March 6, 1706,[4] he married Preeson's widow Ann, daughter of Thomas and Susanna Denwood Brown, who were members of a prominent Quaker family.

[6] Two years after his marriage, on March 26, 1708, Hamilton purchased from John Toads a 600-acre estate, known as "Henberry", on the north side of the Chester River in Kent County, Maryland.

[5] In his address to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1739, Hamilton spoke of "liberty, the love of which as it first drew me to, so it constantly prevailed on me to reside in this Province, tho' to the manifest prejudice of my fortune."

Hamilton was probably his real name, but, for private reasons, he saw fit to discard it for a time, possibly due to his family's involvement of the Glorious Revolution and the Jacobite Rising of 1689.

At the end of the year, during the winter of 1712/13, William Penn hired Hamilton in a replevin case against Berkeley Codd.

As Hamilton was presenting cases before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on April 29, 1715, he did not learn about his selection until his return to Maryland on May 5, 1715.

[citation needed] The crowning glory of Hamilton's career was his defense of John Peter Zenger in 1735, which he undertook pro bono.

In his newspaper, Zenger had asserted that judges were arbitrarily displaced, and new courts were erected, without the consent of the legislature, by which trials by jury were taken away when a governor was so disposed.

The attorney-general charged him with the crime of seditious libel, and Zenger's lawyers James Alexander and William Smith, objecting to the legality of the judge's commissions, were stricken from the list of attorneys.

[8] Hamilton feared that the advocate, who had subsequently been appointed by the court, might be overawed by the bench, at the head of which was Chief Justice De Lancey, a member of the governor's council.

He admitted that Zenger had printed and published the article but advanced the doctrine, novel at the time, that the truth of the facts in the alleged libel could be set up as a defense.

[6] In addition, a group of prominent residents contributed to the production of a 5½-ounce gold box that was presented to Hamilton as a lasting mark of their gratitude to him.

The commission, which was to be made up of at least three or more of these individuals, was given full power on behalf of the proprietors for the "running, marking, and laying out" of any boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

[11] From 1736 to his death in 1741, Hamilton was the mentor of young Benjamin Chew, who later became Attorney General and Chief Justice of Pennsylvania.

In 1737 he was appointed judge of the vice-admiralty court by Deputy Governor George Thomas,[4] the only office he held at the time of his death.

Andrew Hamilton, along with Thomas Lawrence and John Kearsley, were appointed to a committee to decide upon plans for the building, select a site for construction, and hire contractors.

[13] Hamilton, in company with his son-in-law, William Allen, purchased the ground now known as Independence Square, whereon to erect "a suitable building" to be used as a legislative hall.

[citation needed] When the federal capital was located in Philadelphia, Bush Hill was rented to the government as the house of the vice-president, as William Hamilton was on an extended stay in England.

[citation needed] Hamilton and his son James were among the founders of Lancaster, which in 1729 became the fourth county in the province of Pennsylvania.

After the sale of his estate in the 1800s,[3] Hamilton and the remains of his family were moved and reinterred in a mausoleum located at Christ Church.

[15] On August 6, two days after Hamilton's death, Benjamin Franklin published in his Pennsylvania Gazette an editorial of appreciation for the attorney and politician.

[16] On February 16, 1734, Margaret Hamilton married William Allen, a mayor of Philadelphia who founded Allentown, Pennsylvania.