Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

  Portraits of Lafayette show a slender, handsome youth in a powdered wig with a long face, rosy lips, and delicately arched eyebrows. Like Hamilton’s, his life was shadowed by early sorrow: his father had died when he was two, his mother when he was thirteen, making him an orphan at the same age as Hamilton. At sixteen, he had married the fourteen-year-old Adrienne de Noailles, the daughter of one of France’s most august families, and he offered America invaluable contacts with the snobbish court of Louis XVI. His meteoric ascent in the Continental Army owed much to a letter that Benjamin Franklin wrote to George Washington from Paris, urging the political expediency of welcoming this well-connected young man. Lafayette agreed to serve without pay, brought a ship to America outfitted at his own expense, and spent lavishly from his own purse to clothe and arm the patriots.

  Many people warmed to Lafayette, finding him full of poetry and fire and fine liberal sentiments. Franklin implored Washington to befriend “that amiable young nobleman” and expressed fear that people would take advantage of his goodness.52 Franklin need not have worried about Washington’s affections. When the young Frenchman was wounded in battle, Washington instructed the surgeon, “Treat him as though he were my son.” For Lafayette, Washington became a revered paternal presence, and he named his only son George Washington Lafayette. Lafayette always had his quota of critics, who regarded him as vain, suspicious, and self-seeking. Thomas Jefferson pinpointed one especially flagrant fault: “His foible is a canine appetite for popularity and fame.”53 For all his love of Lafayette, even Hamilton mocked the “thousand little whims” to which the marquis was prey.54 Whatever his flaws, however, Lafayette proved to be a valiant officer of surprisingly mature judgment and more than rewarded the faith of his admirers.

  The bilingual Hamilton befriended Lafayette with the almost instantaneous speed of all his early friendships and was soon assigned to him as a liaison officer. As in the case of John Laurens, there was such unabashed ardor in Hamilton’s relationship with the marquis that James T. Flexner has wondered whether it progressed beyond mere friendship. Did Hamilton’s grandson mean much or little when he wrote, “There is a note of romance in their friendship, quite unusual even in those days, and Lafayette, especially during his early sojourn in this country, was on the closest terms with Hamilton”?55 Late in the war, Lafayette wrote to his wife, “Among the general’s aides-de-camp is a (young) man whom I love very much and about whom I have occasionally spoken to you. That man is Colonel Hamilton.”56 Where Hamilton was the more extravagant partner in corresponding with Laurens, Lafayette outshone Hamilton when it came to rapturous prose. “Before this campaign, I was your friend and very intimate friend agreeable to the ideas of the world,” Lafayette wrote to him in 1780. But since returning from France, “my sentiment has increased to such a point the world knows nothing about.”57 Was this just a specimen of flowery French writing, voguish at the time, or something more? As with John Laurens, we will never know. But the breathless tone of the letters that Hamilton exchanged with Laurens and Lafayette is unlike anything in his later letters. This may simply have been a by-product of youth and wartime camaraderie. The broader point is that Alexander Hamilton, the outsider from the West Indies, had a rare capacity for friendship and was already attracting a circle of devoted, well-placed people who were to help to propel him to the highest political plateau.

  In early July 1777, Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York fell to the British, prompting King George III to clap his hands and exclaim, “I have beat them! Beat all the Americans.”58 It was a potential calamity for the patriots, since it opened a corridor for General John Burgoyne and his invading army from Canada to push south to New York City, slicing the rebel army in half and isolating New England—an overarching objective of British war policy. Livid at this defeat, Hamilton was unsparing in his censure of the commander held responsible, Philip Schuyler. “I have always been a very partial judge of General Schuyler’s conduct and vindicated it frequently from the charges brought against it,” he wrote to Robert R. Livingston, “but I am at last forced to suppose him inadequate.”59 Historians have proved more charitable toward Schuyler, who was weakened by desertions and the settled malice that his New England troops bore against him as a New York leader and a tough disciplinarian. The British had also pulled off a masterful plan by scaling the steep mountain that overlooked Ticonderoga, permitting its unlikely capture. After suffering many slurs, Schuyler was replaced as head of the army’s Northern Department by Horatio Gates, whom he jeered at as the “idol” of the New Englanders.60 Even though he was exonerated for the loss of Ticonderoga in a subsequent courtmartial that he himself demanded, Schuyler never completely recuperated from the wounding debacle.

  In Hamilton’s upset over Ticonderoga one can see that this stateless young man had developed proprietary feelings toward New York. He told Livingston that he was disturbed by the threat to “a state which I consider, in a great measure, as my political parent....I agree with you that the loss of your state would be a more affecting blow to America than any that could be struck by Mr. Howe to the southward.”61 The reference to “your state” suggests, however, that if Hamilton already identified with New York, he still had not committed himself irrevocably to any allegiance to it.

  Hamilton already showed a solid grasp of military strategy. As he surveyed the British forces that summer, he hazarded several predictions that later sounded clairvoyant. First, he thought Burgoyne would be tempted to move down the Hudson toward New York—“The enterprising spirit he has credit for, I suspect, may easily be fanned by his vanity into rashness”—and that this would prove ruinous for him unless Sir William Howe rushed redcoats north from New York City to beef up his forces.62 He didn’t think Howe would be that smart, however, the British having “generally acted like fools.” Instead, he prophesied, again with startling accuracy, that Howe would undertake “a bold effort against our main army” and rashly try to seize Philadelphia.63

  In an era of primitive communications, even a massive armada could vanish at sea for long stretches. When General Howe departed from New York harbor in late July, commanding 267 ships and eighteen thousand soldiers, he dropped out of sight, materialized in Delaware Bay a week later, disappeared again, then resurfaced in the bay in late August. Hamilton was spoiling for a fight to thwart Howe’s entrance into Philadelphia and told Gouverneur Morris in rousing tones, “Our army is in high health and spirits....I would not only fight them, but I would attack them, for I hold it an established maxim that there is three to one in favour of the party attacking.”64 That Hamilton was much too sanguine became woefully evident on September 11 during a bloody clash between British and American troops at Brandywine Creek, outside of Philadelphia. Despite stouthearted resistance by the patriots, the savage fighting ended in a panic-stricken rout and terrible slaughter, with a final tally of 1,300 Americans killed, wounded, or captured—twice the losses inflicted on the British.

  It now seemed futile to try to halt a British advance upon the capital. Washington dispatched Hamilton, Captain Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee (father of Robert E. Lee), and eight cavalrymen to burn flour mills on the Schuylkill River before they fell into enemy hands. While Hamilton and others were destroying flour at Daviser’s (or Daverser’s) Ferry, their sentinels fired a warning shot indicating the approach of British dragoons. To guarantee an escape route, Hamilton had moored a flat-bottomed boat at the river’s edge. He and three comrades now leaped into the craft and pushed off from shore, while Lee and others took off on horseback. Lee recalled the British raking Hamilton’s boat with repeated volleys from their carbines, killing one of Hamilton’s men and wounding another. All the while, the intrepid Hamilton was “struggling against a violent current, increased by the recent rains.”65 Hamilton and his men finally dove from the boat into the swirling waters and swam to safety. Scarcely stopping for breath, Hamilton dashed off a message to John Hancock that urged the immediate evacuation of the Continental Congress from Philade
lphia. Just before Hamilton returned to headquarters, Washington received a letter from Captain Lee announcing Hamilton’s death in the Schuylkill. There were tears of jubilation, as well as considerable laughter, when the sodden corpse himself sauntered through the door.

  After the Continental Congress adjourned that night, John Hancock read Hamilton’s letter predicting that the enemy might pounce on Philadelphia by daybreak. Many members decided to abandon the city and exited posthaste after midnight. In his diary, John Adams told of being awakened at 3:00 a.m. and informed of Hamilton’s dire forecast. Adams grabbed his belongings, mounted his horse, and sped away with other congressmen before dawn. “Congress was chased like a covey of partridges from Philadelphia to Trenton, from Trenton to Lancaster,” Adams wrote with his usual gift for evocative language.66

  It turned out that Hamilton’s warning had been premature, as the British stalled for more than a week before entering the city. Washington took advantage of this interlude to resupply his troops, who were desperately short of blankets, clothing, and horses. With reluctance, he invested Hamilton with tyrannical powers and placed one hundred men at his disposal, authorizing him to requisition supplies from Philadelphia residents. It was an assignment of the utmost gravity, and Washington feared that if it miscarried it would “involve the ruin of the army, and perhaps the ruin of America.” As his orders to Hamilton specified:

  Painful as it is to me to order and as it will be to you to execute the measure, I am compelled to desire you immediately to proceed to Philadelphia and there procure from the inhabitants contributions of blankets and clothing and materials to answer the purposes of both....This you will do with as much delicacy and discretion as the nature of the business demands.67

  This extraordinary grant of power to his twenty-two-year-old aide demanded of him both exquisite tact and unyielding firmness. In a war being fought for democracy, the preservation of popular support was all-important. Hamilton had to impose discipline and importune citizens with sufficient tact to arouse sympathy instead of resentment. His training as a clerk helped him to keep careful accounts and issue receipts to residents. Washington wanted him to evacuate any horses that could be commandeered by the British, and Hamilton drew up a sensible list of the people who should be exempt from the edict: the poor, the transient, those about to leave the city, and those dependent on horses for their livelihood. Working at a nonstop pace for two days, Hamilton loaded up so many vessels with military stores and sent them up the Delaware “with so much vigilance, that very little public property fell with the city into the hands of the British general,” wrote John Marshall, later chief justice of the Supreme Court.68 Aided by these supplies, Washington engaged the British at Germantown on October 4. Although another thousand patriots were killed, wounded, or captured, General Howe was at least pinned down in Philadelphia and prevented from moving north to reinforce General Burgoyne.

  In many ways, “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne—a dissolute, vainglorious man who was fond of mistresses and champagne and craved a knighthood—was more suited for the pleasures of peace than the arts of war. The renowned British actor David Garrick had starred in his play The Maid of the Oaks in Drury Lane. Burgoyne and his army marched down the Hudson Valley in early October 1777 with all the cumbersome pomp of royalty. As if proceeding to a coronation, not a battle, Burgoyne loaded up no fewer than thirty carts with his personal belongings, dragged by horses through fly-ridden bogs and swamps. Burgoyne epitomized the snobbery rife among the British officers. If anything, he believed that the British had shown too much clemency toward the American upstarts. “I look upon America as our child,” he had said in 1774, “which we have already spoiled by too much indulgence.”69

  The original British battle plan for severing New England from other rebel colonies had envisioned Burgoyne’s force from the north converging with those of Lieutenant Colonel Barrimore St. Leger from the west and General Howe from the south. Instead, with Howe in Philadelphia, Burgoyne found himself fighting alone, isolated in the upper Hudson Valley against patriot troops led by General Horatio Gates. Burgoyne’s surrender of his entire army of 5,700 men at Saratoga in midOctober was the pivotal moment of the war: a victory so large, so thrilling, and so decisive that it emboldened the wavering France to enter the conflict on the patriotic side.

  The victory meant that Washington could siphon off some of Gates’s troops to strengthen his own shaky position to the south. The continental ranks had been thinned by the expiration of one-year enlistments—a recurring problem. Not long after receiving the wonderful news from Saratoga, Washington summoned a war council of five major generals and ten brigadiers, with Hamilton drafting the minutes. Word had begun to make the rounds that this young aide was far more than some docile clerk. Benjamin Rush, the radical Pennsylvania congressman, grumbled that Washington had allowed himself to be “governed by General Greene, General Knox, and Colonel Hamilton, one of his aides, a young man of twenty-one years.”70 At the meeting, the generals agreed that Gates must transfer a hefty chunk of his troops to Washington, since the Saratoga victory had drastically curtailed the British threat in New York. The emissary chosen to impart this most unwelcome piece of news to Gates was Alexander Hamilton.

  It is remarkable that Washington would have drafted his young aide for such a tough assignment. After Saratoga, Horatio Gates was the hero of the day, the darling of New England politicians, and this only deepened the mutual antipathy between him and Washington. Gates had even snubbed Washington by refusing to inform him directly of his victory. Thus, Hamilton’s mission was fraught with a multitude of perils. From a general at the zenith of his popularity, he had to pry loose a sizable number of troops and to do so, if possible, without issuing any orders. Hamilton would have to ride three hundred miles and then bargain with Gates without any further opportunity to consult with Washington. Clearly, the imperious Gates would feel demeaned by having to negotiate with a diminutive twenty-two-year-old. Hamilton would need to tap all the cunning and diplomacy in his nature.

  To invest Hamilton with a suitable aura of power, Washington drafted a letter to Gates in which he introduced his aide and defined his mission: “to lay before you a full state of our situation and that of the enemy in this quarter. He is well informed . . . and will deliver my sentiments upon the plan of operations...now necessary.”71 The discretion delegated to Hamilton was impressive. If Hamilton found Gates using the requested troops in a manner that benefited the patriotic cause, “it is not my wish to give any interruption,” Washington wrote. If that was not the case, however, “it is my desire that the reinforcements before mentioned . . . be immediately put in motion to join this army.”72 If there was a single moment during the Revolution when its outcome hinged on spontaneous decisions made by Alexander Hamilton, this was it.

  Instructions in hand, Hamilton rode off to Albany at a furious pace, covering sixty miles a day for five consecutive days, riding like a man possessed. En route, he stopped on the eastern shore of the Hudson at Fishkill and lectured General Israel Putnam on the need for him to shift two brigades southward to help Washington. Hamilton did not shrink from exercising his own judgment. Acting on his own initiative, he induced Putnam to promise an additional seven hundred members of a New Jersey militia. He explained to Washington that “I concluded you would not disapprove of a measure calculated to strengthen you, though but for a small time, and have ventured to adopt it on that presumption.” Eager to move on, he told Washington that a quartermaster was “pressing some fresh horses for me. The moment they are ready I shall recross the [Hudson] River in order to fall in with the troops on the other side and make all the haste I can to Albany to get the three brigades there sent forward.”73

  The instant Hamilton arrived in Albany on November 5, 1777, he arranged a hasty meeting with Horatio Gates. For Hamilton, it was Benedict Arnold, not Gates, who had merited the real laurels at Saratoga. He regarded Gates as a vain, cowardly, inept general, and subsequent events were to bear ou
t his scathing judgment. With gray hair and spectacles set low on his long, pointed nose—he was later derided by his men as “Granny Gates”—the heavyset Gates was a much less imposing presence than Washington. The illegitimate son of a duke’s housekeeper, he had studied at British military academies and fought in the French and Indian War. Now swollen with pride from his victory, Gates was reluctant to cede any of the brigades under his command. Instead of listening meekly, Hamilton spoke to Gates in a firm tone and told him how many troops he should spare. Gates retorted that Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander in New York, might still march up the Hudson and endanger New England. As a sop, Gates finally agreed to send Washington a single brigade, commanded by a General Patterson, instead of the three Hamilton had stipulated. After the meeting, Hamilton snooped about and discovered that Patterson’s six-hundred-man brigade was “by far the weakest of the three now here,” as he then wrote candidly to General Gates. “Under these circumstances, I cannot consider it either as compatible with the good of the service or my instructions from His Excellency, General Washington, to consent that that brigade be selected from the three to go to him.”74 Hamilton was careful to be neither too forward nor too deferential as he skillfully blended his own opinions with those of Washington. “I used every argument in my power to convince him of the propriety” of sending troops, an exasperated Hamilton told Washington, “but he was inflexible in the opinion that two brigades at least of Continental troops should remain in and near this place.”75 Hamilton later reproached Gates for “his impudence, his folly and his rascality.”76