Alexander Hamilton, like Thomas Jefferson, was a study in paradox. Though on opposite sides on most issues, they shared one thing in common — they were both off-the-charts brilliant.

Their birth and upbringing could not have been more different; Jefferson, born to a wealthy Virginia planter, Hamilton the illegitimate child born on the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis.

Nobody is “self-made” as the over-used saying suggests, but Hamilton comes as close as any.

After a devastating hurricane struck his small island, the fifteen year-old Hamilton wrote a dramatic account of the events. When some New England businessmen read the story they were so struck by the lucidness and strength of the young man’s writing, and deciding that his obvious talent should not go to waste, they put him on a ship to America, where he soon enrolled in The King’s College (now Columbia University).

A brilliant, meticulously crafted smoke.