Alexander Hamilton (23 page)

Probably the first book that Hamilton absorbed was Malachy Postlethwayt’s
Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,
a learned almanac of politics, economics, and geography that was crammed with articles about taxes, public debt, money, and banking. The dictionary took the form of two ponderous, folio-sized volumes, and it is touching to think of young Hamilton lugging them through the chaos of war. Hamilton would praise Postlethwayt as one of “the ablest masters of political arithmetic.”
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A proponent of manufacturing, Postlethwayt gave the aidede-camp a glimpse of a mixed economy in which government would both steer business activity and free individual energies. In the pay book one can see the future treasury wizard mastering the rudiments of finance. “When you can get more of foreign coin, [the] coin for your native exchange is said to be high and the reverse low,” Hamilton noted.
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He also stocked his mind with basic information about the world: “The continent of Europe is 2600 miles long and 2800 miles broad”;
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“Prague is the principal city of Bohemia, the principal part of the commerce of which is carried on by the Jews.”
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He recorded tables from Postlethwayt showing infant-mortality rates, population growth, foreign-exchange rates, trade balances, and the total economic output of assorted nations. Hamilton’s notes from Postlethwayt showcase his exemplary discipline in undertaking private courses of study.

Like the other founding fathers, Hamilton rummaged through the wisdom of antiquity for political precedents. From the
First Philippic
of Demosthenes, he plucked a passage that summed up his conception of a leader as someone who would not pander to popular whims. “As a general marches at the head of his troops,” so should wise politicians “march at the head of affairs, insomuch that they ought not to wait the
event
to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the
event.
”
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Nearly fifty-one pages of the pay book contain extracts from a six-volume set of Plutarch’s
Lives.
Thereafter, Hamilton always interpreted politics as an epic tale from Plutarch of lust and greed and people plotting for power. Since his political theory was rooted in his study of human nature, he took special delight in Plutarch’s biographical sketches. And he carefully noted the creation of senates, priesthoods, and other elite bodies that governed the lives of the people. Hamilton was already interested in the checks and balances that enabled a government to tread a middle path between despotism and anarchy. From the life of Lycurgus, he noted:

Among the many alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the kings in matters of consequence did...foster and qualify the imperious and fiery genius of monarchy by constantly restraining it within the bounds of equity and moderation. For the state before had no firm basis to stand upon, leaning sometimes towards an absolute monarchy and sometimes towards a pure democracy. But this establishment of the senate was to the commonwealth what the ballast is to a ship and preserved the whole in a just equilibrium.
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Hamilton was especially attentive to the amorous stories and strange sexual customs reported by Plutarch. He registered in the pay book how in ancient Rome two naked young noblemen whipped young married women during the celebration of Lupercalia and “how the young married women were glad of this kind of whipping as they imagined it helped conception.”
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Hamilton was also intrigued that Lycurgus allowed a worthy man to ask permission of another husband to impregnate his wife, so that “by planting in a good soil he might raise a generous progeny to possess all the valuable qualifications of their parents.”
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This same Lycurgus tried to make the married women “more robust and capable of vigorous offspring” by allowing selected virgins and young men to “go naked and dance in their presence at certain festive occasions.”
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For anyone studying Hamilton’s pay book, it would come as no surprise that he would someday emerge as a first-rate constitutional scholar, an unsurpassed treasury secretary, and the protagonist of the first great sex scandal in American political history.

Restless at his desk, Hamilton longed to spring into combat, and he found a dramatic chance to do so in June 1778. The direction of the war had shifted in February when the French, heartened by the victory at Saratoga, decided to recognize American independence and signed military and commercial treaties with the fledgling nation. An ebullient John Adams spoke for many Americans when he exulted that Great Britain “is no longer mistress of the ocean.”
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As part of their response to French entry into the war, the British replaced General Howe with Sir Henry Clinton as commander of their forces. Hamilton had been unimpressed by Howe’s leadership. “All that the English need to have done was to blockade our ports with twenty-five frigates and ten ships of the line,” Hamilton told a French visitor. “But, thank God, they did nothing of the sort.”
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If anything, he was even less dazzled by General Clinton. One day, Henry Lee broached to Washington an ingenious plan for kidnapping Clinton, who was quartered in a house on Broadway in New York. He had a large garden out back, overlooking the Hudson River, where he napped in a small pavilion each afternoon. Lee wanted to sneak men across the Hudson at low tide and snatch Clinton as he dozed. Hamilton spiked the plan with a cogent objection, telling Washington that if Clinton was taken prisoner “it would be our misfortune, since the British government could not find another commander so incompetent to send in his place.”
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When General Clinton learned in mid-June that a French fleet had sailed for America, he feared that it might team up with the Continental Army and entrap his occupation force in Philadelphia. To avert this, he decided to evacuate the city and concentrate his troops in the more easily defensible New York. This meant that a huge British army of nine thousand men, laden with provisions filling fifteen hundred wagons—the baggage train stretched for twelve miles—would need to troop across New Jersey with perilous slowness. With supply lines stretched dangerously thin, these lumbering British forces would be exposed to the fire of the Continental Army. Washington saw an opportunity to score a telling blow against a vulnerable adversary and highlight the gains made by his men at Valley Forge under Steuben’s vigorous stewardship.

Washington had survived the Conway Cabal only to have his authority challenged by General Charles Lee, an experienced officer who had been captured by the British in a tavern in late 1776 and had only recently been released after a fifteenmonth captivity. Lee was a thin, quarrelsome, eccentric bachelor who spoke four foreign languages, had lost two fingers in an Italian duel, and traveled everywhere with his pack of dogs at his heels. He had briefly married an Indian woman, leading the Mohawks to nickname him, with good reason, Boiling Water. He was a talented but impossibly temperamental man who believed devoutly in his own military genius. Arrogant and indiscreet, he told Elias Boudinot that “General Washington was not fit to command a sergeant’s guard.”
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He also ridiculed efforts made by Steuben and Hamilton to bring professional order to the army.

On June 24, 1778, Washington convened a council of war to debate whether to pounce on the retreating British Army. Hamilton took minutes. The opinionated Lee immediately poured scorn on Washington’s plan, saying the Americans would be trounced by the superior Europeans and that it was foolhardy to court trouble when the French were soon to arrive. Hamilton—who dismissed Lee as “a driveler in the business of soldiership or something much worse”—writhed quietly.
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To his astonishment, the officers agreed with Lee’s views and in a manner, scoffed Hamilton, that “would have done honor to the most honorable society of midwives.”
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Washington preferred to operate by consensus, but he decided to override this vote and give orders to strike at the enemy “if fair opportunity offered.”
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Lee refused to serve as second in command for what he deemed a misguided maneuver. Only after Washington called his bluff and assigned the position to Lafayette did Lee back down and consent to ride out and take command of the advancing forces.

For the next few days, Hamilton, as a liaison officer to Lafayette, was constantly in motion, riding through muggy nights to reconnoiter enemy lines and convey intelligence among the officers. By the night of June 27, the British were encamped near Monmouth Court House in Freehold, New Jersey, with Lee and his soldiers lying only six miles away. Washington ordered Lee to attack in the early morning “unless there should be very powerful reasons to the contrary.”
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Washington, three miles farther back, would then bring up the rear with the army’s main contingent. Hamilton drafted Washington’s directive to Lee that night, telling the latter to “skirmish with [the enemy] so as to produce some delay and give time for the rest of the troops to come up.”
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June 28, 1778, was to be an unforgettable day because of, among other things, the stifling heat. The thermometer reached the high nineties, and some soldiers rode naked from the waist up. During this day, horses and riders alike expired from heat prostration. The battle was supposed to start with Lee taking on the British rear guard. After hearing small-arms fire that morning, Hamilton was sent ahead by Washington to scout Lee’s movements, and he was stunned by the tumult he found: far from engaging the enemy, as directed, Lee’s men were in a full-blown retreat. Not a word of this had been communicated to Washington. Hamilton rode up to Lee and shouted, “I will stay here with you, my dear general, and die with you! Let us all die rather than retreat!”
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Once again the young aide did not hesitate to talk to a general as a peer. Hamilton also spotted a threatening movement by a British cavalry unit and prevailed upon Lee to order Lafayette to charge them.

When Washington got wind of the chaotic flight of his troops, he galloped up to Lee, glowered at him, and demanded, “What is the meaning of this, sir? I desire to know the meaning of this disorder and confusion!”

Lee took umbrage at the peremptory tone. “The American troops would not stand the British bayonets,” he replied.
To which Washington retorted, “You damned poltroon, you never tried them!”
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Washington did not ordinarily use profanities, but, faced with Lee’s insubordination that morning, he swore “till the leaves shook on the trees,” said one general.
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America’s idolatry of George Washington may have truly begun at the battle of Monmouth. One of America’s most accomplished horsemen, Washington at first rode a white charger, given to him by William Livingston, now governor of New Jersey, in honor of his recrossing of the Delaware. This beautiful horse dropped dead from the heat, and Washington instantly switched to a chestnut mare. By sheer force of will, he stopped the retreating soldiers, rallied them, then reversed them. “Stand fast,
my boys,
and receive your enemy,” he shouted. “The southern troops are advancing to support you.”
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Washington’s steady presence had a sedative effect on the flying men. He summarily ordered Lee to the rear and goaded the troops into driving the British from the field. As he watched this legendary performance, Lafayette thought to himself, “Never had I beheld so
superb a man.
”
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Hamilton, not prone to hero worship, was awed by Washington’s unflinching courage and incomparable self-command. “I never saw the general to so much advantage,” he told Elias Boudinot. “His coolness and firmness were admirable. He instantly took maneuvers for checking the enemy’s advance and giving time for the army, which was very near, to form and make a proper disposition....By his own good sense and fortitude he turned the fate of the day.... [H]e directed the whole with the skill of a master workman.”
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Hamilton’s bravery likewise left an enduring image. Famished for combat, he was in “a sort of frenzy of valor,” Lee contended.
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He seemed ubiquitous on the battlefield. When Hamilton found one brigade in retreat and feared the loss of its artillery, he ordered them to line up along a fence and then charge with fixed bayonets. Riding hatless in the sunny field, Hamilton was exhausted from the heat by the time his horse was shot out from under him. He toppled over, badly injured, and had to retire from the field. Aaron Burr and John Laurens also had horses shot from under them that day. So severe was Burr’s sunstroke that it rendered him effectively unfit for further combat duty in the Revolution. Suffering from violent headaches, nausea, and exhaustion and probably irked by his lack of promotion under Washington, Burr took a temporary leave of absence in October.
Many people were struck by Hamilton’s behavior at Monmouth, which showed more than mere courage. There was an element of ecstatic defiance, an indifference toward danger, that reflected his youthful fantasies of an illustrious death in battle. One aide said that Hamilton had shown “singular proofs of bravery” and appeared “to court death under our doubtful circumstances and triumphed over it.”
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John Adams later said that General Henry Knox told him stories of Hamilton’s “heat and effervescence” at Monmouth.
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At moments of supreme stress, Hamilton could screw himself up to an emotional pitch that was nearly feverish in intensity.
The battle of Monmouth was not an outright victory for the patriots, and the British Army escaped intact the next day. Most observers termed it a draw. Still, the ragtag continentals had killed or wounded more than one thousand troops—four times the number of American casualties—proving to naysayers that they could perform admirably against tip-top European soldiers. “Our troops, after the first impulse from mismanagement, behaved with more spirit and moved with greater order than the British troops,” Hamilton rejoiced. “I assure you I never was pleased with them before this day.”
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Enraged that Lee had fumbled a tremendous opportunity, Hamilton applauded Washington when he arrested Lee for disobeying orders and making a shameful retreat. Hamilton was an eager witness against Lee during a court-martial that took place at New Brunswick in July under Lord Stirling’s supervision. “Whatever a court-martial may decide,” Hamilton warned Elias Boudinot, “I shall continue to believe and say his conduct was monstrous and unpardonable.”
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Among Charles Lee’s sympathizers was Aaron Burr, who missed no chance to belittle Washington’s military talents.
On July 4 and 13, Hamilton gave damaging testimony at the court-martial, recalling that Lee had taken no measures to stop the enemy’s advance, even after being told to do so by Washington. He told of troops fleeing in wild disorder and of Lee’s failure to notify Washington of this retreat. In a dramatic finale, Lee crossexamined Hamilton and accused him of having expressed in the field a contrary opinion of his conduct. “I did not,” rejoined Hamilton. “I said something to you in the field expressive of an opinion that there appeared in you no want of that degree of self-possession, which proceeds from a want of personal intrepidity.” Hamilton further informed the general that there had appeared in him “a certain hurry of spirits, which may proceed from a temper not so calm and steady as is necessary to support a man in such critical circumstances.”
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It was a curious clash indeed: the youthful aide pontificating to a veteran general on the ideal mental state of a field commander.
In the end, Charles Lee was found guilty on all counts but given a relatively lenient sentence: suspension from the army for one year. In October, the disgraced general assured Burr that he planned “to resign my commission, retire to Virginia, and learn to hoe tobacco.”
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But he did not let matters drop there, and he and his minions continued to vilify Washington and even Hamilton for having testified in the court-martial. In late November, Hamilton encountered Major John Skey Eustace, a worshipful young aide-de-camp to Lee and almost his adopted son. Hamilton tried to approach him in a conciliatory manner, even though Eustace was telling people that Hamilton had perjured himself in the court-martial. Eustace later described to General Lee his encounter with Hamilton: