by Ron Chernow
A critical element of the relief effort lay in soliciting fresh money from France. In December Congress drafted John Laurens as a special envoy to France, where it hoped he would team up with Benjamin Franklin to wrest a huge loan from the court at Versailles. Laurens, with Thomas Paine acting as his secretary, was to fire up French enthusiasm through compelling eyewitness accounts of the war. Because of Washington’s renown in France, Congress also hoped that a certified member of his military family would receive an effusive welcome. For three days Washington huddled with Laurens and Paine to forge a strategy. “We are at the end of our tether,” Washington told them, “and now or never our deliverance must come.”12 He deemed a foreign loan essential, since America had only a tiny moneyed elite and Congress had mismanaged its finances. If he had to keep confiscating produce from farmers, Washington feared that supporters would find the Continental Army’s methods “burdensome and oppressive,” defeating the idea of a fight for liberty.13
Even as Washington jockeyed to keep his northern army from unraveling, the prospects for victory brightened in the South. On January 17 Brigadier General Daniel Morgan pulled off a spectacular victory at Cowpens, South Carolina, routing a veteran army under the notorious Tarleton. For once, it was the Americans who spread terror by sprinting forward with fixed bayonets. The tally of casualties decisively favored the Americans: more than 300 British soldiers were killed or wounded versus a mere 70 Americans; 500 able-bodied enemy soldiers were captured along with 800 muskets. Sir Henry Clinton later identified the Cowpens disaster as “the first link of a chain of events that followed each other in regular succession until they at last ended in the total loss of America.”14 Washington celebrated the “decisive and glorious victory” and insisted it would have a dramatic effect on the southern campaign.
INEVITABLY, the private appraisal of Washington by his close subordinates was less glowing than their public eulogies. He was too much of a perfectionist to enjoy an easy rapport with his aides, and his discontent sometimes festered before erupting unexpectedly. By dint of the superlative letters he had drafted and his military acumen, Alexander Hamilton had risen to become Washington’s de facto chief of staff. When Congress decided to create three new positions—ministers of war, finance, and foreign affairs—Hamilton’s name was bandied about as a prospective “superintendent of finance.” Before Robert Morris accepted the post, General Sullivan asked Washington to comment on Hamilton’s financial abilities, and the commander seemed taken aback: “How far Colo. Hamilton, of whom you ask my opinion as a financier, has turned his thoughts to that particular study, I am unable to ans[we]r, because I never entered upon a discussion on this point with him. But this I can venture to advance from a thorough knowledge of him, that there are few men to be found of his age who has a more general knowledge than he possesses and none whose soul is more firmly engaged in the cause or who exceeds him in probity and sterling virtue.”15
Although Hamilton subscribed to Washington’s values and principles—which was why he could mimic him so expertly in letters—he expressed misgivings about his personality. Hamilton had taken a long and searching look at George Washington. Working in daily contact with a man burdened by multiple cares, Hamilton inevitably was exposed to Washington’s bad-tempered side. A stoic figure who strove to be perfectly composed in public, Washington needed to blow off steam in private, and the proud, sensitive young Hamilton grew weary of dealing with his boss’s varying moods.
Like many talented subordinates, Hamilton nurtured a rich fantasy life and could easily have imagined himself in Washington’s place. He found a desk job, even such a prestigious one, too lowly and monotonous for his tastes and dreamed of battlefield glory, repeatedly requesting a field command. But he wielded such a skillful pen that Washington was reluctant to dispense with it and turned him down. In December 1780 he also scotched Hamilton’s chance of becoming adjutant general, which would have jumped him over several officers of superior rank and thereby created endless trouble.
On December 14, 1780, Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, which catapulted the young West Indian into a more rarefied social sphere. The orphaned young man must have felt buoyed by a sense of security altogether new in his experience. That January he resolved that “if there should ever happen [to be] a breach” with Washington, instead of settling their differences, he would “never to consent to an accommodation.”16 In other words, Hamilton would not provoke a break, but he was fully prepared to exploit one. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Washington, who felt beleaguered after two mutinies in New Jersey.
Because Washington was obsessed with punctuality, it probably wasn’t coincidental that his rift with Hamilton came when his aide kept him waiting. On the night of February 15, 1781, Washington and Hamilton frantically labored till midnight, preparing paperwork for a meeting with French officers in Newport. The next day Hamilton was going downstairs in the New Windsor farmhouse when he passed Washington coming upstairs. Washington told Hamilton that he wished to see him. Hamilton figured that Washington would wait in his office, so he paused briefly to hand a letter to Tench Tilghman and conversed with Lafayette, then turned around and headed back upstairs. He found Washington glowering at the top of the stairs. “Colonel Hamilton,” Washington said testily, “you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect.” “I am not conscious of it, sir,” Hamilton retorted, “but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.” “Very well, sir,” Washington replied, “if it be your choice.”17 Hamilton estimated that two minutes had elapsed. Under ordinary circumstances, the two men would have quickly repaired the damage, but Hamilton elected to push things past the breaking point.
While Washington could be gruff, he knew when he crossed a line and was quick to extend apologies. He hated friction with people and avoided personal confrontations whenever possible. Now he showed exemplary patience with the brashly capable Hamilton. Instead of pulling rank and waiting for the young man to make amends, Washington responded with a magnanimous gesture. An hour later he sent Tench Tilghman to offer apologies and requested “a candid conversation to heal a difference which could not have happened but in a moment of passion.”18 Hamilton was having none of it. As he told his father-in-law, “I requested Mr. Tilghman to tell him that I had taken my resolution in a manner not to be revoked; that as a conversation could serve no other purpose than to produce explanations mutually disagreeable, though I certainly would not refuse an interview if he desired it, yet I should be happy [if] he would permit me to decline it.”19 Doubtless shocked by his aide’s intransigence, Washington regretfully acquiesced in Hamilton’s decision to leave his staff.
Since Philip Schuyler was a friend of Washington, Hamilton knew he owed his father-in-law an explanatory letter. He conjured up a moody, irritable boss and said he had found that Washington “was neither remarkable for delicacy nor good temper.” 20 He made the startling statement that he had rebuffed Washington’s attempts at social intimacy. “For three years past,” Hamilton wrote, “I have felt no friendship for him and have professed none. The truth is our own dispositions are the opposites of each other and the pride of my temper would not suffer me to profess what I did not feel. Indeed, when advances of this kind” were made, Hamilton responded in a way that showed “I wished to stand rather upon a footing of m[ilitary confidence than] of private attachment.”21 Hamilton also portrayed Washington as somewhat vain and insulated from criticism, a man “to whom all the world is offering incense.”22 If Washington promised him better treatment and succeeded in inducing him to return to work, Hamilton predicted, “his self-love would never forgive me for what it would regard as a humiliation.”23 Evidently the young Alexander Hamilton intended to teach George Washington a lesson. As he boasted to James McHenry, Washington “shall, for once at least, repent his ill-humor.”24
Hamilton agreed to stay on temporarily as Washington sought a replacement. For a br
ief interval even Martha Washington was pressed into secretarial service, drawing up a fair copy of at least one letter for her husband. Hamilton had suggested to Washington that they keep their altercation secret for the sake of the war effort. Washington agreed and was then startled to discover that Hamilton had babbled about the episode to several friends, giving his version of events. To Lafayette, Washington expressed astonishment: “Why this injunction on me while he was communicating it himself is a little extraordinary! But I complied and religiously fulfilled it.”25 Perhaps because he spied facets of his younger self in Hamilton, Washington was forgiving toward him, even when he tested his patience. He may even have felt some secret guilt for not having rewarded Hamilton with the field command he coveted. Whatever the tensions of their relationship, Washington never shed his admiration for Hamilton’s outstanding abilities.
In April, having left Washington’s family, Hamilton began to badger his ex-boss for a field command, and Washington reacted with perplexity. “I am convinced that no officer can with justice dispute your merit and abilities,” he assured Hamilton, but he didn’t see how he could promote him without offending more senior officers. 26 He feared that Hamilton would interpret his decision as belated punishment for their rift: “My principal concern arises from an apprehension that you will impute my refusal of your request to other motives than those I have expressed.”27 Once again Washington had responded to their difficulties in a classy and dignified manner.
Eventually rumors circulated about the temporary estrangement between the two men. Years later John Adams recalled the episode thus: Hamilton “quitted the army for a long time, as I have heard, in a pet and a miff with Washington.”28 On another occasion, Adams wrote, “those who trumpeted Washington in the highest strains at some times spoke of him at others in the strongest terms of contempt . . . Hamilton, [Timothy] Pickering, and many others have been known to indulge themselves in very contemptuous expressions, but very unjustly and ungratefully.”29 In the spring of 1783 Hamilton opened up in private to James Madison about Washington’s occasionally querulous personality. As Madison recorded in his journal, “Mr. Hamilton said that he knew General Washington intimately and perfectly. That his extreme reserve, mixed sometimes with a degree of asperity of temper, both of which were said to have increased of late, had contributed to the decline of his popularity.”30 At the same time Hamilton regarded Washington as a man of unimpeachable integrity who would “never yield to any dishonorable or disloyal plans.”31
Whatever his reservations, Hamilton had hitched his fortunes to Washington’s career and refrained from public criticism of him. He knew that Washington alone had held the army together since its creation. Most important, the two men were shaped by the same wartime experiences and shared basic concerns about the country’s political structure, especially the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation and the need for a powerful central government that would bind the states into a solid union, restore American credit, and create a more permanent army. As an immigrant, Hamilton bore no loyalty to a particular state, which perhaps made it easier for him to adopt a continental perspective congenial to Washington’s. Their congruent political values lashed Washington and Hamilton together into a potent political partnership that would last until the end of Washington’s life.
Lawrence Washington. George Washington revered his older half brother, who set a pattern of military service that George faithfully followed.
Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie. Though he was an early champion of Washington during the French and Indian War, the two men clashed before the end of Dinwiddie’s tenure as colonial governor of Virginia.
Sarah “Sally” Cary Fairfax, the enchanting woman who captivated Washington’s imagination in his early adulthood and perhaps in the years beyond. This rather romanticized painting, done in the early twentieth century, is based on a photograph of an original but now vanished portrait of her.
George William Fairfax. Washington’s longtime friend chose either to accept or to overlook Washington’s fascination with his wife.
On a visit to Mount Vernon in 1772, Charles Willson Peale sketched these delicate miniatures of Washington’s family.
Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. Though never a radiant beauty, Martha Washington provided the ideal social setting and emotional support for her husband’s career.
John Parke “Jacky” Custis. Washington grew frustrated with the incurable indolence of his wayward stepson, who died shortly after the Yorktown campaign.
Martha Parke “Patsy” Custis. Washington harbored tender feelings for his stepdaughter, who was afflicted with epilepsy from an early age.
When John Trumbull painted this dashing portrait of Washington in 1780, he inserted at right William Lee, the slave who served the general devotedly throughout the Revolutionary War.
General Charles Lee. This caricature of the vain, eccentric general, a rival to Washington, pokes fun at his love of dogs and spindly body. Lee’s misconduct at Monmouth effectively terminated his career.
Puffed up to heroic proportions after his victory at Saratoga, General Horatio Gates failed to dislodge Washington as commander in chief and was later disgraced during the battle of Camden.
The warm, ebullient Henry Knox served with distinction as Washington’s artillery chief during the war but had a checkered success as secretary of war during his presidency.
Nathanael Greene. Always touted as Washington’s favorite general, Greene met an untimely death after the war, robbing Washington of an influential political ally.
Phillis Wheatley. Washington’s appreciative response to the ode written about him by this Boston slave signaled an early advance in his views on slavery.
Brilliant, crusty, and opinionated, John Adams evolved from an early booster of Washington into an envious detractor in later years.
Sir Henry Clinton, one of the many distinguished British commanders whom George Washington managed to send down to defeat.
Charles Cornwallis, first Marquess Cornwallis. Although associated with the stunning defeat of British forces at Yorktown, Cornwallis was an aggressive commander who inspired a healthy fear among American generals.
Benedict Arnold. A staunch admirer of Arnold’s derring-do throughout the war, Washington was staggered by the exposure of his massive treachery.
Peggy Shippen Arnold. Feigning temporary madness when her husband’s treason was revealed, she managed to hoodwink Washington, Hamilton, and Lafayette into believing her innocent of the scheme.
George Washington portrayed in the aftermath of his Yorktown victory. The Marquis de Lafayette stands between Washington and his beloved aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman, who grasps the articles of capitulation.
Fired by sparkling intelligence and unstoppable ambition, Alexander Hamilton flourished as a wartime aide to Washington and later as treasury secretary because the two men agreed on so many policy issues.
“Baron” von Steuben. Colorful, flamboyant, and profane, Steuben performed wonders as the drillmaster at Valley Forge, introducing a new professionalism and forging discipline in the Continental Army.
The chief political opponents of Washington’s presidency.
At first a trusted adviser to Washington and his peerless tutor on the Constitution, James Madison emerged unexpectedly as his most formidable adversary in Congress.
While Washington’s secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson teamed up with Madison, in a sometimes covert partnership, to contest the policies of the administration, inaugurating a major political party in the process.
An ardent admirer of Washington early in the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine later turned into a scathing critic.
As the editor of an opposition paper, Philip Freneau heaped so many aspersions on Washington that the exasperated president denounced him as a “rascal.”
Elizabeth Willing Powel, a married woman of exceptional intelligence and literary flair, was Washington’s most intimate female friend and confidante during his
presidency.
This image of Martha Washington captures both her sweetness and her sadness in later years.
Frances “Fanny” Bassett, a niece of Martha Washington’s, came to live at Mount Vernon in early adolescence and, with her winning personality, ended up as a much-loved surrogate daughter.
The Washington Family. This classic portrait of George and Martha Washington includes the two Custis grandchildren they reared: George Washington Parke Custis, left, and Eleanor Parke Custis, right. The slave depicted at right may have been William Lee or Christopher Sheels.
This painting of an aging President Washington shows just how haggard and careworn he appeared during his contentious second term.
Part of Washington’s attachment to Hamilton sprang from his persistent concern for his personal papers, which he saw as guaranteeing his posthumous fame and preserving his record from distortion by posterity. The way Washington fussed over these documents confirms that he knew he was a historic personage and reflected his awareness that his personal saga was inextricably entwined with that of the new nation. As early as August 1776, while bracing for Howe’s assault on New York, he had shown solicitude for his papers, sending a box of them to Philadelphia for safekeeping. The following year he had a chest with strong hinges constructed to hold them. After Hamilton left his employ in April 1781, Washington asked Congress to hire secretaries to make copies of his wartime correspondence. “Unless a set of writers are employed for the sole purpose of recording them,” he explained, “it will not be in my power to accomplish this necessary work and equally impracticable perhaps to preserve from injury and loss such valuable papers.”32 Instead of the rough originals, Washington wanted clerks who wrote “a fair hand” to produce a magnificent set of bound papers.33
