Working as an accounting clerk in an mercantile in St. Croix, the bright and ambitious young lad quickly impressed his employer. Through this early experience, Alexander Hamilton was first exposed to international commerce and learned about the business of money and trade. Hamilton's boss, a businessman named Nicolas Cruger, so valued Hamilton's work when it came to accounting that he and other businessmen pooled their resources with a minister and newspaper editor named Hugh Knox to send Hamilton to America for an education. Hamilton had impressed Knox with an eloquent letter he had written describing a ferocious hurricane that had hit the island in 1772.

In 1777, after Hamilton fought in that year's battles of Brandywine Creek, Germantown and Princeton, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the Continental Army. During his early service in the fight for American independence, he caught the attention of General George Washington, who made Hamilton his assistant and trusted adviser. For the next five years, Hamilton put his writing skills to work. He wrote Washington's critical letters, and composed numerous reports on the strategic reform and restructuring of the Continental Army. Around the same time, Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, who was from an affluent New York family. 
Growing restless in his desk job, in 1781, Hamilton convinced Washington to let him taste some action on the battlefield. With Washington's permission, Hamilton led a victorious charge against the British in the Battle of Yorktown. Cornwallis's surrender during this battle would eventually lead to two major negotiations in 1783: the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain, and two treaties signed at Versailles between France and Britain and Spain. These treaties and several others comprise the collection of peace agreements known as Peace of Paris, officially marking the end of the American Revolutionary War.