Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

  Being Washington’s chief secretary was much more than a passive, stenographic task. “At present my time is so taken up at my desk,” Washington had written to Congress in September, “that I am obliged to neglect many other essential parts of my duty. It is absolutely necessary . . . for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders.”23 Washington further explained that his letters were drafted by aides, subject to his revision. Hamilton’s advent was thus a godsend for Washington. He was able to project himself into Washington’s mind and intuit what the general wanted to say, writing it up with instinctive tact and deft diplomatic skills. It was an inspired act of ventriloquism: Washington gave a few general hints and, presto, out popped Hamilton’s letter in record time. Most of Washington’s field orders have survived in Hamilton’s handwriting. “The pen for our army was held by Hamilton and for dignity of manner, pith of matter, and elegance of style, General’s Washington’s letters are unrivalled in military annals,” wrote Robert Troup.24 Hamilton was loath to admit that he served as a military adviser to Washington, lest this cast doubt on his boss’s abilities, but he offered him opinions on many matters. Another aide, James McHenry, said that Hamilton “had studied military service, practically under General Washington, and his advice in many instances (a fact known to myself ) had aided our chief in giving to the machine that perfection to which it had arrived previously to the close of the revolutionary war.”25

  Pretty soon, the twenty-two-year-old alter ego was drafting letters to Congress, state governors, and the most powerful generals in the Continental Army. Before long, he had access to all confidential information and was allowed to issue orders from Washington over his own signature. Timothy Pickering, then adjutant general, was later adamant that Hamilton was far more than the leading scribe at headquarters. “During the whole time that he was one of the General’s aides-de-camp, Hamilton had to think as well as to write for him in all his most important correspondence.”26

  As Hamilton evolved from private secretary to something akin to chief of staff, he rode with the general in combat, cantered off on diplomatic missions, dealt with bullheaded generals, sorted through intelligence, interrogated deserters, and negotiated prisoner exchanges. This gave him a wide-angle view of economic, political, and military matters, further hastening his intellectual development. Washington was both military and political leader of the patriots, already something of a de facto president. He had to placate the Continental Congress, which insisted on supervising the army, and coordinate plans with thirteen bickering states. Both Washington and Hamilton came to think in terms of the general welfare, while many other officers and politicians got bogged down in parochial squabbles. In their mutual desire for a professional army and a strong central authority that would mitigate local rivalries, the two men felt the first stirrings of an impulse that would someday culminate in the Constitution and the Federalist party. Like Washington, Hamilton was scandalized by the dissension and cowardice, the backstabbing and avarice, of the politicians in Philadelphia while soldiers were dying in the field.

  During his first weeks on Washington’s staff, Hamilton began building a network that became the foundation of his future political base at home. He agreed to update New York politicians about military affairs and exchanged twice-weekly reports with a newly appointed body called the New York Committee of Correspondence, placing him in regular contact with leaders such as Gouverneur Morris, John Jay, and Robert R. Livingston. On April 20, 1777, when the New York State Constitution was approved, Hamilton expressed general satisfaction with it. In commenting to Morris, Hamilton foreshadowed his later views, arguing that the election for governor “requires the deliberate wisdom of a select assembly and cannot be safely lodged with the people at large.” On the other hand, he still showed the radical influence of his student days when he worried that a separate senate, elected solely by propertied voters, will “degenerate into a body purely aristocratical.”27 In fact, the state’s aristocratic landowners were hugely disappointed when General Philip Schuyler of Albany was defeated for governor by General George Clinton, the champion of the small farmers. Hamilton’s future father-in-law was stung by the defeat, and, while expressing admiration for Clinton, Schuyler complained that “his family and connections do not entitle him to so distinguished a predominance.”28 One day, Hamilton was to inherit this Schuyler-Clinton feud as his own.

  Shortly after Hamilton joined Washington’s staff, Charles Willson Peale visited the New Jersey headquarters and executed the first portrait of Hamilton, a miniature on ivory. It shows him in a blue-and-buff uniform with gold epaulets and the green ribbon of an aide-de-camp. He has close-cropped hair and a long, sharp nose and fixes the viewer with an intense gaze. He had not yet acquired the urbane selfassurance that later marked his demeanor. There was something still lean and unformed about his face, which gradually widened with age and came to look almost too large for his trim, dapper body.

  Quartered at Jacob Arnold’s tavern, Hamilton lived in cheek-by-jowl intimacy with his new military family. So that he could summon his aides at any hour, Washington preferred to have them shelter under one roof. Sometimes, on frosty nights, the general would wrap himself in a blanket and lie thinking on a couch until interrupted by a sudden messenger on horseback. “The dispatches being opened and read,” recalled his adopted grandson, “there would be heard in the calm deep tones of that voice . . . the command of the chief to his now watchful attendant, ‘Call Colonel Hamilton.’”29

  The four to six young aides usually slept in one room, often two to a bed, then worked long days in a single room with chairs crowded around small wooden tables. Washington typically kept a small office off to the side. During busy periods, the aides sometimes wrote and copied one hundred letters per day, an exhausting grind relieved by occasional dances, parades, and reviews. At night, the aides pulled up camp stools to a dinner table and engaged in lively repartee. Hamilton, though the youngest family member, was nevertheless Washington’s “principal and most confidential aide,” as the general phrased it.30 Instead of resenting him, the other aides treated Hamilton affectionately and nicknamed him “Ham” or “Hammie.”31 For an orphaned boy from the Caribbean, what better fate than to become part of this elite family?

  Once again, the young immigrant had been transported to another sphere. Though past horrors would always lurk somewhere in his psyche, he spent the rest of his life in the upper stratum of American society, a remarkable transformation for someone with his rootless past. Unlike tradition-bound European armies, topheavy with aristocrats, Washington’s army allowed for upward mobility. Though not a perfect meritocracy, it probably valued talent and intelligence more highly than any previous army. This high-level service completed Hamilton’s rapid metamorphosis into a full-blooded American. The Continental Army was a national institution and helped to make Hamilton the optimal person to articulate a vision of American nationalism, his vision sharpened by the immigrant’s special love for his new country.

  Hamilton won admirers for his sprightly personality as well as intelligence. General Nathanael Greene remembered his presence at headquarters as “a bright gleam of sunshine, ever growing brighter as the general darkness thickened.”32 Such comments were echoed by those who knew Hamilton in after years. Harrison Gray Otis, later a senator, wrote: “Frank, affable, intelligent and brave, young Hamilton became the favorite of his fellow soldiers.”33 Lawyer William Sullivan likewise found Hamilton eloquent, high-minded, and openhearted but also noted that he always had his fair share of detractors: “He was capable of inspiring the most affectionate attachment, but he could make those whom he opposed fear and hate him cordially.”34 With a ready tongue and rapier wit, Hamilton could wound people more than he realized, and he was so nimble in debate that even bright people sometimes felt embarrassingly tongue-tied in his presence.

  Hamilton was surrounded by a congenial group of young aides for whom he felt a familial warmth. He shared correspondence with
Robert H. Harrison of Alexandria, Virginia, a respected lawyer and a neighbor of Washington. Ten years older than Hamilton, Harrison treated him fondly and nicknamed him “the little Lion.”35 Another early comrade was Tench Tilghman, who started out with a light-infantry company in Philadelphia. For nearly five years, Washington said, Tilghman was his “faithful assistant,” and he later applauded him as “a zealous servant and slave to the public” and as a man of “modesty and love of concord.”36 Richard Kidder Meade joined the staff around the same time as Hamilton and elicited warm praise from him: “I know few men estimable, fewer amiable and when I meet with one of the last description it is not in my power to withhold affection.”37

  The following year, James McHenry became an aide to Washington. Born and educated in Ireland, McHenry had studied medicine with Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia. He was able to minister to Hamilton’s various maladies, including a malarial infection that recurred every summer, probably a legacy of his tropical boyhood. To correct Hamilton’s constipation, McHenry instructed him to skip milk and go easy on the wine. “When you indulge in wine let [it] be sparingly— never go beyond three glasses—but by no means every day.”38 (That three glasses of wine was considered abstemious says much about the immoderate consumption of the day.) Warmhearted, with a touch of the poet, McHenry wrote heroic verse and often accompanied Hamilton in entertaining Washington’s family with songs. Hamilton referred to “those fine sounds with which he and I are accustomed to regale the ears of the fraternity.”39

  From McHenry’s diary, we can see that many of Washington’s aides sneaked in romantic flings during inactive intervals that spring. In February, many wives of high-ranking officers—Mrs. Washington, Mrs. Knox, and Mrs. Greene, as well as Lady Stirling and her daughter, Lady Kitty—arrived and organized dainty little tea parties in the evening. One visitor, Martha Bland of Virginia, cast admiring eyes on the handsome young aides, finding them “all polite, sociable gentlemen who make the day pass with a great deal of satisfaction to the visitors.”40 One day, she joined a riding party headed by George and Martha Washington and was clearly taken with Hamilton, “a sensible genteel polite young fellow, a West Indian.”41 In this socially fluid situation, Hamilton could meet and court well-bred young women as social equals. Colonel Alexander Graydon recalled a self-possessed Hamilton surrounded by several adoring ladies at dinner, saying that he “acquitted himself with an ease, propriety and vivacity, which gave me the most favorable impression of his talents and accomplishments,” as he displayed “a brilliancy which might adorn the most polished circles of society.”42

  One thing grew crystal clear at Morristown: Hamilton was girl crazy and brimming with libido. Throughout his career, at unlikely moments, he tended to grow flirtatious, almost giddy, with women. No sooner had he joined Washington’s staff than he began to woo his old friend Catherine Livingston, daughter of his former patron, William Livingston, now the first governor of an independent New Jersey. In an April 11 letter to Kitty, Hamilton struck the note of badinage favored by young rakes of the day:

  After knowing exactly your taste and whether you are of a romantic or discreet temper as to love affairs, I will endeavour to regulate myself by it. If you would choose to be a goddess and to be worshipped as such, I will torture my imagination for the best arguments the nature of the case will admit to prove you so....But if...you are content with being a mere mortal, and require no other license than is justly due to you, I will talk to you like one [in] his sober senses.

  That Hamilton was being more than playful with Kitty Livingston is shown in his declaration in the letter that the end of the Revolution would “remove those obstacles which now lie in the way of that most delectable thing called matrimony.”43

  When Hamilton received Livingston’s belated reply to his rather forward letter, he passed it around among the other aides. “Hamilton!” one confided. “When you write to this divine girl, it must be in the style of adoration. None but a goddess, I am sure, could have penned so fine a letter!” In his response to Livingston, Hamilton made clear that some family members thought he was excessively preoccupied by the opposite sex. “I exercise [my pen] at the [risk] of being anathematized by grave censors for dedicating so much of my time to so trifling and insignificant a toy as—woman.” Though Livingston, apparently, had spurned his advances—he chides her apathy—he concludes philosophically that “I shall probably be in a fine way” and tells her that “ALL FOR LOVE is my motto.”44 We can discern Hamilton’s ambivalence toward fashionable young women as he alternately flatters and belittles Kitty. As in his first boyish love poems in St. Croix, Hamilton could fancy young women as chaste goddesses or naughty little vixens. Which type he ultimately preferred, he still may not have known.

  In the late spring of 1777, Hamilton began the most intimate friendship of his life, with an elegant, blue-eyed young officer named John Laurens, who formally joined Washington’s family in October. One portrait of Laurens shows a short, commanding figure in a pose of supreme assurance, with one arm akimbo and the other resting on the hilt of a long, curved sword. He was the son of one of South Carolina’s most influential planters, Henry Laurens, who succeeded John Hancock as president of the Continental Congress that November. Hamilton and Laurens, both French Huguenot on one side of their families and English on the other, seemed like kindred spirits, spiritual twins. Both were bookish and ambitious, bold and enterprising, and hungered for military honor. Both were imbued with a quixotic sense that it was noble to die in a worthy cause. Like Hamilton, Laurens was so sure of himself that he could seem brusquely overbearing to those who disagreed with him. More than any friend Hamilton ever had, Laurens was his peer, and the two were long paired in the fond memories of many who fought in the Revolution.

  Born in Charleston, South Carolina, a few months before Hamilton was born in Nevis, Laurens had a privileged upbringing on one of the state’s biggest slave plantations. In 1771, while Hamilton toiled away as a clerk in St. Croix, Laurens’s father enrolled him in a cosmopolitan school in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a versatile, accomplished student, who excelled in the classics, fenced, drew, and rode. While breathing in the republican atmosphere of Geneva, he prepared to become a barrister. In 1774, he studied law at the Middle Temple in London. This was a time of antislavery ferment, spurred by Lord Mansfield’s legal decision that a slave became free by being brought to England. Laurens became a passionate convert to abolitionism, which was to create a strong ideological bond with Hamilton.

  After Lexington and Concord, Laurens clamored to return home but was deterred by his fretful father, who worried about his son’s youthful lust for combat. Henry Laurens always had a strange foreboding that his impetuous son would die in battle. After reading Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1776, John Laurens grew ever more impatient to recross the Atlantic but remained trapped in England by an unexpected circumstance. He had impregnated a young woman, Martha Manning, whose wealthy father, William Manning, was a close friend of Henry Laurens. With his chivalric sense of honor, John Laurens married Manning in a clandestine ceremony in October 1776. Four months later, after Martha gave birth to a daughter, Laurens immediately boarded a ship back to Charleston. Not long after he returned, he signed on with the Continental Army and won the absolute trust of Washington, who invited him to join his family and gave him confidential missions “which neither time nor propriety would suffer me to commit to paper,” Washington wrote.45

  Hamilton and Laurens took an instant liking to each other and became inseparable. Hamilton later lauded his friend’s “zeal, intelligence, enterprise.”46 As the war progressed, Hamilton wrote to Laurens with such unbridled affection that one Hamilton biographer, James T. Flexner, has detected homoerotic overtones in their relationship. Because the style of eighteenth-century letters could be quite florid, even between men, one must tread gingerly in approaching this matter, especially since Laurens’s letters to Hamilton were warm but proper. It is worth noting here, however, how frequen
tly people used the word feminine to describe Hamilton— the more surprising given his military bearing and virile exploits. When John C. Hamilton was preparing his father’s authorized biography, he omitted a loose sheet that has survived in his papers and that describes the relationship between Hamilton and Laurens thus: “In the intercourse of these martial youths, who have been styled ‘the Knights of the Revolution,’ there was a deep fondness of friendship, which approached the tenderness of feminine attachment.”47 Hamilton had certainly been exposed to homosexuality as a boy, since many “sodomites” were transported to the Caribbean along with thieves, pickpockets, and others deemed undesirable. In all thirteen colonies, sodomy had been a capital offense, so if Hamilton and Laurens did become lovers—and it is impossible to say this with any certainty—they would have taken extraordinary precautions. At the very least, we can say that Hamilton developed something like an adolescent crush on his friend.

  Hamilton and Laurens formed a colorful trio with a young French nobleman who was appointed an honorary major general in the Continental Army on July 31, 1777. The marquis de Lafayette, nineteen, was a stylish, ebullient young aristocrat inflamed by republican ideals and eager to serve the revolutionary cause. “The gay trio to which Hamilton and Laurens belonged was made complete by Lafayette,” Hamilton’s grandson later wrote. “On the whole, there was something about them rather suggestive of the three famous heroes of Dumas.”48 Lafayette always spoke of his two American friends in the most affectionate terms. Of Laurens, he wrote that “his openness, integrity, patriotism, and splendid gallantry have made me his devoted friend.”49 In describing Hamilton, Lafayette was still more effusive, calling him “my beloved friend in whose brotherly affection I felt equally proud and happy.”50 Eliza Hamilton confirmed that “the marquis loved Mr. Hamilton as a brother; their love was mutual.”51