Alexander Hamilton (32 page)

Hamilton probably felt, for the moment, that he was the happiest man in the world. The wedding to Eliza Schuyler ended his nomadic existence and embedded him in the Anglo-Dutch aristocracy of New York. His upbringing, instead of making him resent the rich, had perhaps made him wish to reclaim his father’s lost nobility. Through marriage, he acquired an important base in a state in which politics revolved around the dynastic ambitions of the foremost Hudson River families. For the first time in his life, Alexander Hamilton must have had a true sense of belonging.

His friendship with Philip Schuyler was to prove of inestimable value to Hamilton’s career. At one point, when asking for Eliza’s hand, Hamilton evidently told the general of his illegitimacy. “I am pleased with every instance of delicacy in those who are dear to me,” Schuyler wrote in response, “and I think I read your soul on that occasion you mention.”
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Having come from opposite ends of the social spectrum, the two men had arrived at similar political conclusions and proved steadfast allies. Like Hamilton, Schuyler chafed at the impotence of Congress and the Articles of Confederation and wanted to invest George Washington with “dictatorial powers,” if necessary, to win the war.
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He distrusted the yeomen and artisans who had elected the populist George Clinton as New York’s first governor instead of him. Having felt scapegoated for the fall of Fort Ticonderoga, Schuyler urged Hamilton to respond emphatically to personal attacks. “A man’s character ought not to be sported with,” he once wrote, “and he that suffers stains to lay on it with impunity really deserves none nor will he long enjoy one.”
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Such a man was not likely to curb Hamilton’s predilection for feuds and duels.

Hamilton’s wedding may have heightened the frustrations that he was quietly experiencing with Washington. The general could be a tetchy boss, and Hamilton witnessed the anger he choked down in public. One observer remarked, “The hardships of the revolutionary struggle…had shaken the masterly control Washington had gained over his passions, and the officers of his staff…had to suffer, not un-frequently, from the irritable temper and punctilious susceptibility of their commander.”
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Hamilton was too proud and gifted, too eager to advance in rank, to subordinate himself happily to anyone for four years, even to the renowned Washington.

Hamilton still hungered for a field command. He wanted fluttering flags, booming cannon, and bayonet charges, not a desk job. That October, as Lafayette prepared to mount a raid on Staten Island, he had asked Washington if Hamilton could lead a battalion. Washington vetoed the idea, saying he could not afford to give up Hamilton. Right before the wedding, Hamilton applied to lead a charge against British posts in northern Manhattan. “Sometime last fall when I spoke to your Excellency about going to the southward,” he reminded Washington, “I explained to you candidly my feelings with respect to military reputation and how much it was my object to act a conspicuous part in some enterprise that might perhaps raise my character as a soldier above mediocrity.”
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Again, Washington spurned Hamilton.

Then Alexander Scammell tendered his resignation as adjutant general. Two generals—Nathanael Greene and the marquis de Lafayette—lobbied to have Hamilton replace him. Washington again balked, saying that he could not promote the young lieutenant colonel over full colonels. Washington’s predicament was clear. He had plenty of combat officers, but nobody could match Hamilton’s French or his ability to draft subtle, nuanced letters. After almost hourly contact with Washington for four years, Hamilton had become his alter ego, able to capture his tone on paper or in person, and was a casualty of his own success.

It would be a time rich in political disappointments for Hamilton. Right before his wedding, Congress decided to send an envoy extraordinary to the court of Versailles to join Benjamin Franklin in raising a substantial loan and expediting supply shipments. General John Sullivan nominated Hamilton, who had been a proponent of such a loan; Lafayette also took up the cudgels for him. Three days before Hamilton’s wedding, John Laurens was unanimously chosen instead, even though he stubbornly maintained that Hamilton was better qualified. Laurens thought Hamilton’s nomination faltered only because he was insufficiently known in Congress. Earlier in the year, when Laurens had tried to secure Hamilton a post as secretary to the American minister in France, Hamilton had analyzed his own rejection thus: “I am a stranger in this country. I have no property here, no connections. If I have talents and integrity…these are justly deemed very spurious titles in these enlightened days.”
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These disappointments only buttressed his belief in meritocracy, not aristocracy, as the best system for government appointments.

The day after Hamilton’s wedding, Congressman John Mathews of South Carolina nominated him as minister to Russia. Again, he was passed over. Hamilton now feared that he would be shackled to his desk for the duration of the conflict—for him, a degrading form of drudgery. He wanted one last chance for battlefield honor, which would be a useful credential in the postwar political world. Perhaps the marriage to Eliza Schuyler emboldened Hamilton to challenge Washington and assert his independence. After all, he was no longer a penniless young immigrant, lacking in property and connections.

After Hamilton returned to military service in early January 1781, he hired a guide to lead him south through the narrow mountain passes to Washington’s headquarters, now located at a Dutch farmhouse on the Hudson River at New Windsor. Eliza soon joined him, and they shared lodgings in the nearby village. The young bride often assisted Martha Washington in entertaining officers, and she observed George Washington in a vignette of domestic heroism that remained engraved on her memory. A fire broke out in a shed adjoining his headquarters, and Washington instantly bounded down the stairs from his second-floor office, grabbed a washtub full of suds from the farmer’s wife, dumped the suds on the blaze, then dashed back and forth with other tubs until the fire was extinguished. Meanwhile, Eliza’s new husband felt less than enamored of Washington. He had been snubbed over too many appointments and meditated an open break. He resolved that “if there should ever happen [to be] a breach between us,” he was determined “never to consent to an accommodation.”
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It was an inauspicious moment for Hamilton to clash with Washington. The Continental Army was experiencing another abominable winter. That January, mutinies erupted among Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops, who had not been paid for more than a year and protested the eternal shortages of clothing, shoes, horses, wagons, meat, flour, and gunpowder. Many wanted to return home at the expiration of their three-year enlistments but were prevented from doing so by their officers. So demoralized were these troops that some officers feared they might even defect to the British. Hamilton applauded when Washington took draconian steps to suppress the mutineers and refused to negotiate until they had laid down their weapons. On February 4, Hamilton wrote to Laurens that “we uncivilly compelled them to an unconditional surrender and hanged their most incendiary leaders.”
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With this uprising quelled, Hamilton was now ready for a showdown with Washington, who remained edgy after the uprising of his men. On February 15, the two men worked till midnight as they readied dispatches for the French officers at Newport. The next day, a frazzled Hamilton was going downstairs in the New Windsor farmhouse as the general mounted the steps. Washington said curtly that he wanted to speak to Hamilton. Hamilton nodded, then delivered a letter to Tench Tilghman and paused to converse briefly with Lafayette on business before heading back upstairs. In a letter written to Philip Schuyler two days later, Hamilton narrated the confrontation that ensued:

Instead of finding the General as usual in his room, I met him at the head of the stairs, where accosting me in a very angry tone, “Col[onel] Hamilton,” (said he), “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 replied without petulancy, but with decision “I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.” “Very well, sir,” (said he), “if it be your choice,” or something to this effect and we separated. I sincerely believe my absence, which gave so much umbrage, did not last two minutes.
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Remarkably enough, it was Washington who made the largehearted, conciliatory gesture after this altercation and within an hour sent Tilghman to see Hamilton. Tilghman said that Washington regretted his fleeting temper and encouraged Hamilton to come and patch things up. Hamilton, now twenty-six, had the colossal courage, or colossal cheek, to turn down cold the commander in chief. Where others were awed by the godlike Washington, Hamilton knew too well his mortal foibles. “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.”
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Washington reluctantly honored Hamilton’s decision to leave his staff.

Hamilton knew these events would shock Philip Schuyler, Washington’s warm friend, who had been thrilled to have the general’s aide-de-camp as his son-in-law. Hamilton told Schuyler that he wanted to command artillery or light infantry, but he knew a fuller explanation was required. He had not acted rashly, he insisted. He had long hated the personal dependence that accompanied his position and had found Washington to be much more temperamental than his exalted reputation allowed. Their working relationship had done “violence to my feelings.”
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Then Hamilton made a stunning revelation: Washington had wanted to be closer all along. It was Hamilton who had rebuffed him:

For three years past, 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 [have been made] to me on his part, they were rec[eived in a manner] that showed at least I had no inclination [to court them, and that] I wished to stand rather upon a footing of m[ilitary confidence than] of private attachment. You are too good a judge of human nature not to be sensible how this conduct in me must have operated on a man to whom all the world is offering incense.
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The same day, Hamilton wrote to James McHenry in a more vindictive tone, showing that he was severely disillusioned with Washington and tired of feeling browbeaten. “The great man and I have come to an open rupture…. He shall, for once at least, repent his ill-humour. Without a shadow of reason and on the slightest ground, he charged me in the most affrontive manner with treating him with disrespect.”
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Hamilton acknowledged that Washington’s popularity was necessary to the patriots, and he promised to keep their rift a secret, but he had no intention of revising his decision.

The rupture with Washington highlights Hamilton’s egotism, outsize pride, and quick temper and is perhaps the first of many curious lapses of judgment and timing that detracted from an otherwise stellar career. Washington had generously offered to make amends, but the hypersensitive young man was determined to teach the commander in chief a stern lesson in the midst of the American Revolution. Hamilton exhibited the recklessness of youth and a disquieting touch of
folie de grandeur.
On the other hand, Hamilton believed that he had been asked to sacrifice his military ambitions for too long and that he had waited patiently for four years to make his mark. And he was only asking to risk his life for his country. If Hamilton were simply the brazen opportunist later portrayed by his enemies, he would never have risked this breach with the one man who would almost certainly lead the country if the Revolution succeeded.

Fortunately, Washington and Hamilton recognized that each had a vital role to play in the war and that this was too important to be threatened by petty annoyances. Despite their often conflicted feelings for each other, Washington remained unwaveringly loyal toward Hamilton, whom he saw as exceptionally able and intelligent, if sometimes errant; one senses a buried affection toward the younger man that he could seldom manifest openly. Where Hamilton had reservations about Washington as a general, he never underestimated his prudence, character, patriotism, and leadership qualities. In the last analysis, the durable bond formed between Hamilton and Washington during the Revolution was based less on personal intimacy than on shared experiences of danger and despair and common hopes for America’s future. From the same situation, they had drawn the same conclusions: the need for a national army, for centralized power over the states, for a strong executive, and for national unity. Their political views, forged in the crucible of war, were to survive many subsequent attempts to drive them apart.

EIGHT

GLORY

F
or a month after their feud, Washington and Hamilton performed their charade admirably, pretending that nothing had happened between them. Hamilton requisitioned two horses—one for him, one for his baggage—and rode off with Washington in early March to perform his last stint as interpreter in a conference with the comte de Rochambeau and other French officers at Newport. On March 8, Washington, Hamilton, and their French counterparts rode out on horseback for a sunset review of the French fleet, and that same day Hamilton drafted his last letter under Washington’s signature. A few days later, Washington departed for what he called “my dreary quarters at New Windsor,” and Hamilton headed off to the Schuyler mansion in Albany.
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One of the most brilliant, productive partnerships of the Revolution had ended.