Alexander Hamilton probably had a distinct accent
from the Reddit thread (x):
“Any answer to this question basically resolves to:
Did the British-administered Leeward Islands have a distinct accent?
Did Hamilton possess this accent by the time he moved to the mainland colonies?
Would this accent have meaningfully distinguished him from other English speakers in colonial America?
As far as I can tell, there is no extant account of anything unusual regarding Hamilton’s own speech. I checked three separate biographies and found no mention of an unusual accent. The best I can find is an angry “satirical” essay about Hamilton that highlights his alien status but only tangentially refers to a dialect or accent difference.
It is also important to keep in mind that American (or “pre”-American) people did not have a cohesive accent either, given the geographical diversity of immigrants. The divergence of speech into what we think of as “British” accent (which is, of course, really a massively subdivided array of possible accents; someone from London speaks differently than someone from Cumbria) and “American” accent (same deal–does someone from Mississippi sound the same as someone from Wisconsin?) does happen gradually after the Revolution, but the popular notion that 1770s-era colonial America was full of people speaking in received pronunciation is an imaginary construction by more recent popular media.
In most urban centers (and most places the so-called “founding fathers” liked to hang out), English was a mutually intelligible language, regardless of accent. But you’ve also got to consider that Martin Van Buren–who was elected president and was born in America–grew up speaking Dutch as a first language and went through his entire public life with a firmly Dutch accent.
Since Hamilton came from Nevis, one of the British-administered Leeward Islands (he moved between a number of these during his early life), but moved to St. Croix, which was controlled by the Danish, at 13, his accent formation was probably influenced by his time in both Nevi and St. Croix. We know that accent formation is still particularly malleable into one’s early twenties, but that accent formation comes primarily from peers rather than parents (so Hamilton’s mother, who was French and English, would not have factored particularly heavily into the development of Hamilton’s own accent).
The best source I can find that discusses English-Caribbean accent among the Leeward Island colonies is in “Euro-Caribbean English varieties,” Jeffrey Williams’ chapter in The Lesser Known Varieties of English: An Introduction, eds. Schreier et al. We read here that “different European ethnic groups settled in different areas of the islands [and] formed their own villages, with each developing its own distinctive accent” (140). Williams also offers a table that identifies the primary ethnic groups that settled in St. Kitts (which contains, as a subcategory, the island of Nevis), as Irish, Scottish, and English, noting the existence of both a local non-creolized dialect, a local creole, and the use of the “standard” English language on the island. (139-140). The primary thing we get out of Williams is the notion that accents are specific to the combination of influences on a given island and that they are all distinct from each other–so Hamilton’s first 13 years in Nevis would have given him a “distinct” accent.
When Hamilton moved to St. Croix, he found an island where, in the words of Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow, “as a rule, the merchants of St. Croix were natives of the British Isles, so that English, not Danish, functioned as the island’s lingua franca.” Hamilton was multilingual (we know he spoke English and French fluently at this point), but his work in a trading company likely put him into contact most regularly with English speakers, many of them from them from London or other large British urban centers.
By the time Hamilton comes to the mainland American colony in 1772, his accent is probably “set.” For the most part, this subject does not generally come up in writing or secondhand accounts (at least as revealed through a few biographies I searched).
One interesting incident comes from Chernow’s biography–he mentions that George Clinton, governor of New York and future Vice President, got into a substantial argument with Alexander Hamilton. At one point, Clinton, in response to a “declaration of war” offered by Hamilton, responded with a pseudonymous series of essays and newspaper articles which featured a caricature of Hamilton–literally named “Tom Shit,” who was a “mustee” (an old derogatory term for a white person with mixed-race ancestry) and produced “Creolian” writing. Tom Shit is also portrayed as a “subject of his Danish Majesty.” So there’s a number of political attacks going on here, but the “Creolian” writing one seems somewhat appropriate for this discussion. Whether Clinton’s responding to an actual tendency in Hamilton’s writing toward unfamiliar English construction as a result of his Caribbean upbringing or whether he’s just trying to slander Hamilton in any way possible is unclear, and Chernow doesn’t offfer much elucidation on this specific point.
By the way, I’d give page numbers for Chernow’s biography, but the electronic copy I’m looking at doesn’t have them and I have no idea why. The book itself is just called Alexander Hamilton.
“Creole” does occasionally reappear as a charge against Hamilton, but it largely seems to be a racial concern rather than a linguistic one. More often, it’s group in with charges alluding to his illegitimacy–basically your run of the mill Revolutionary Era ad hominem attack.
Hamilton’s accent was likely informed by his childhood in both Nevis and St. Croix and would have been “distinct” because of this, along with the relatively advanced age of his migration to the mainland colony.
Hamilton’s accent would not have been particularly out-of-place given the wide array of English accent spoken in colonial America, even among the “founding fathers.”
Evidence of Hamilton’s linguistic difference largely seems to boil down to racialized attacks in service of some larger political agenda, rather than objective commentary on the way he speaks.”
