Beschreibung:

MANUSCRIPT - HAMILTON, ALEXANDER] Practical Proceedings in the Supreme Court of the State of New York . [Vicinity of Albany: circa 1787 (the latest date within text)] and likely bound after 1798 (watermark to bulking paper) but before 1810. Early boards, housed in a folding case. 7 3/4 x 6 3/8 inches (20 x 16.5 cm). The first leaf is titled in manuscript, with an attribution of the work to Hamilton. The Practical Proceedings, a 177 pp. manuscript, is written in ink on recto and verso of 88 leaves (lacks one leaf, p. 23-24) and is possibly in the hand of Albany attorney Abraham Van Vechten, the front pastedown with his ownership signature ("Ab. Van Vechten's"). The verso of p. 177 and the rear board bearing the name of Van Vechten and several other related attorneys in another hand (discussed below). Practical Proceedings is comprised of thirty-eight legal topics with discussion, each headed in script. The manuscript on paper watermarked "G R" over a crown and with red vertical ledger rules to the margins, the first blank and final leaf without these rules and presumed to be the endpapers of a previous binding. Below the manuscript is a grouping of 22 mostly blank leaves, likely bulking paper added when the book was re-bound, as these leaves have a differing watermark dated 1798 and feature a larger crown. Contained within these leaves is a partial manuscript, being lecture notes titled "Of injuries to things real ... delivered by Mr. [James] Gould," likely in the hand of Peter Gansevoort, Jr, circa 1808-10. The whole within a circa 1798-1810 binding of paper covered boards with leather backing and corners, the lower board with "Hamilton's Practice" in manuscript three times, the upper board with the signature of Peter Gansevoort, Jr. The manuscript very dark and legible with marginal chipping affecting the page numbers and the final words on a line to a few leaves, the first leaf with a few spots and browning, the boards detached and the manuscript laid in, the first 31 leaves completely detached but the balance generally still held together in signatures, the front pastedown with the early 20th century bookplate of the New York City Bar Association reporting the book gifted by Mrs. Abraham Lansing. The earliest surviving manuscript copy of Alexander Hamilton's influential Practical Proceedings, the first practice manual for lawyers dealing with the transition from English to American law. Written in preparation to join the New York Bar after his distinguished service in the American Revolution, the manuscript is a testament to the precocious mind of its original author and a treasure of American legal history. At 17 in 1771, Alexander Hamilton was a penniless orphan living in St. Croix. When the owner of the trading firm where he was apprenticed fell sick, young Hamilton quickly learned to give orders to the ships' captains, map voyages, defend against smugglers and other valuable skills. Earning a scholarship, Hamilton studied at Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey before arriving at King's College, now Columbia University, where he read law by day including Blackstone and Locke - and penned Revolutionary pamphlets by night. With the outbreak of war, Hamilton organized a regiment and served with valor at the Battle of Trenton gaining the attention of General Washington, whom he served as aide-de-camp for the next four years. In 1780 in Albany, Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of a wealthy and influential political family. In 1782, Hamilton took advantage of a law passed by the New York Assembly that suspended the requirement of a tough three-year clerkship for aspiring lawyers who had lost valuable time in service to the country during the war. Hamilton prepared by reading law in the Albany office of James Duane and filed for a six-month extension of his studies before applying for the New York Bar, an extension that was only granted to Hamilton and his eventual nemesis Aaron Burr. Finding that there was n