Introduction

In America’s capital city filled with impressive monuments to America’s Founding Fathers, military heroes, and political leaders, no official memorial or monument has ever been erected to Alexander Hamilton in Washington, DC. Instead, a lone bronze statue of Hamilton sits on the south patio of the US Treasury Building. This notable omission in the nation’s capital is a classic irony, because no Founding Father played a larger role in the creation of America as we know it today than this remarkable man from the faraway West Indies. Even more, no Founding Father of America overcame greater adversity and more setbacks early in life than Alexander Hamilton, who became a master at doing the impossible, regardless of the odds. This irrepressible young man elevated himself to lofty heights because he possessed an uncanny ability to dream big and almost miraculously overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles stemming from family tragedies, cruel twists of fate, and hard luck that were no fault of his own.

Despite his unpromising beginnings on the tropical islands of Nevis, where he had been born, and St. Croix, as the only Founding Father not born and raised on American soil, Hamilton succeeded by way of his own impressive array of abilities (a true self-made man) as one of the most extraordinary men not only of the Revolutionary War Era, but also of American history. Quite simply and although long overshadowed by the other Founding Fathers who possessed higher social standing and achieved far less (especially on the battlefield) during the war years, Hamilton was one of the best and brightest of his generation. No Founding Father was more naturally gifted or accomplished than Hamilton both on and off the battlefield, other than perhaps General George Washington himself.

Nevertheless, Hamilton became the most paradoxical, and hence least-understood, most controversial, and unappreciated, of all Founding Fathers. In fact, no Founding Father has been more unfairly maligned by untruths and unappreciated for less justifiable reasons than Hamilton, including during the war years, when he was the only Founding Father besides Washington to fight on the battlefield and compile a distinguished military record. And no Founding Father has been more thoroughly distorted by more misconceptions than Hamilton, in part because of his perceived foreignness and dysfunctional upbringing. But ironically, his past in this once-remote tropical paradise saddled the young man with the demons that motivated and relentlessly drove him to excel and to do what seemed absolutely impossible for a lowly immigrant to achieve on American soil, year after year.

Today, Hamilton’s fame as a Founding Father has continued to rest almost entirely on his key political and economic contributions after the American Revolution to lay a central foundation upon which America’s superpower status has long rested. Indeed, he played a leading role with President George Washington in forging the new nation and his legacy lives with us today. Before today’s popular Broadway play Hamilton, which has raised the level of overall awareness about the fiercely driven West Indian, Americans have long mostly known about Hamilton from his fatal duel on July 11, 1804, with Vice President Aaron Burr. What generations of Americans have known least and have little appreciated about Hamilton—in the past and even today—have been his many distinguished military contributions, both on and off the battlefield, especially in regard to his long-overlooked chief-of-staff role and the all-important French Alliance.

And, of course, Hamilton’s image has become readily familiar to generations of Americans since 1928 from his handsome, chiseled face on the ten-dollar bill: a distinguished portrait of the mature Hamilton, the established politician, wealthy attorney, and married man of post–Revolutionary War America. Perpetuating the traditional image of Hamilton in the popular memory, he is depicted in aristocratic civilian attire in this famous portrait, rather than in the military uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army. This enduring popular image has also helped to effectively obscure his all-important wartime role as the dashing young officer, who was the most gifted and dynamic leader of Washington’s staff.

In both war and peace, the central foundation of the modern American nation was laid and created by the most brilliant leadership team in American history, Washington and Hamilton. But this post–Revolutionary War leadership team of two idealistic nationalists would not have forged or excelled for years had not this vital working relationship been first cemented by an inordinate level of trust and mutual respect created by the challenges of the difficult war years, from early 1777 to 1781—a relationship forged in adversity and unprecedented challenges not readily understood, even today. Fortunately for Washington and America, Hamilton was an innovative intellectual and deep-thinking genius, who excelled in multiple fields of endeavor upon which the life of the infant United States often hung by a thread during the war years.

Ironically, however, Hamilton’s beginning could not have been more unpromising, unlike the other Founding Fathers. He endured a broken family (a rogue father and a wayward mother), illegitimate and then orphan status, humble origins, and a host of tragedies before he migrated to America just before the Revolutionary War. These setbacks only fueled Hamilton’s desire to succeed almost at any cost. Paradoxically, a perceived “foreignness” of the erudite Hamilton by provincial Americans—including those (even some other Founding Fathers of the aristocracy) who were jealous and suspicious of his many gifts—tarnished his historical image. However, Hamilton was actually more fiercely nationalistic than those America-born leaders who unfairly criticized him and had never risked their lives on the battlefield. Although the high-ranking elitist politicians, especially in Congress, who detested him because this commoner boldly took his better-educated and highly respected elders to task for their many failures that endangered the life of the army and the revolution, Hamilton did whatever he could for America’s benefit as a diehard nationalist at the expense of his own image and reputation. Ironically, his elitist distracters later condemned him for his lack of support for the common man, when he was the most common man among the Founding Fathers.

Most importantly, he evolved into America’s first chief of staff, in the modern sense, for General Washington at his headquarters by the spring of 1777. This was a historic development and a distinguished first in the annals of American military history: the birth of the chief of staff, the second most important position after the army’s commander, in the modern sense. Despite holding only a lieutenant colonel’s rank, and being the youngest staff officer of the general’s military “family,” Hamilton nevertheless played multiple invaluable roles that have been generally unappreciated to this day.

It has been long assumed by generations of American historians that Washington managed the Continental Army largely on his own without a chief of staff, which is one of the great myths of the American Revolution and one that has stubbornly persisted to this day, partly because of the longtime hero worship of the “Father of our Country.” But in truth and far more than has been realized by most American historians, Washington benefitted immeasurably from Hamilton’s influence, whose contributions made Washington a much better and more capable general in the end.

Fortunately for Washington’s management of the Continental Army and dealing with almost insurmountable problems, the general had early possessed a distinct genius (perhaps his most overlooked talent) for recognizing superior ability and talent, especially in regard to young Hamilton’s seemingly boundless potential and promise. As the commander-in-chief’s favorite aide-de-camp and top staff officer—a meticulous workaholic blessed with sound judgments and brilliant insights—for nearly four years, Hamilton contributed significantly to the war effort because he was an original, brilliant, and bold thinker who constantly challenged convention for the overall good of America and the army. Significantly, the famed General Staff of the German military establishment of the World Wars had long cultivated the boldest and most unorthodox (nonconformists and mavericks) individuals from among its most promising students to be original thinkers because they were the ones who eventually excelled in the art of war by thinking outside the dominance of the entrenched, traditional thinking of opposition leadership—a forgotten key to success. Washington was most fortunate because Washington fit all of these requirements of an ideal General Staff officer of the modern period.

Not one of the thirty-two men who served on his personal staff known as the “family”—and even general officers of the Continental Army—was more vital to Washington year after year than Hamilton. He was literally the commander-in-chief’s chosen one and golden boy, who could accomplish almost any task or mission required by “His Excellency,” despite the odds or obstacles. From beginning to end, therefore, Hamilton was Washington’s indispensable right-hand man with a can-do attitude and perfectionist mentality that early transformed him into the primary driving force of Washington’s headquarters staff, the nerve center of the Continental Army and America’s overall resistance effort.

Consequently, Hamilton became inseparable from Washington while serving in his invaluable role as the first chief of staff in the modern sense. Historians have long incorrectly portrayed how Washington operated in little more than a vacuum in his major decision-making at headquarters year after year. In one of the great paradoxes of Revolutionary War historiography, generations of historians have simply assumed and deliberately emphasized that Washington made notable achievements that should actually be credited to Hamilton. Fortunately for America, the talents of each man—Washington and Hamilton—almost perfectly compensated for and complemented what the other lacked to create an unbeatable whole: the most dynamic and successful leadership team of the American Revolution and then of post-war America in regard to the highest office in the land, when Washington served as the nation’s first president.

In part because Hamilton had only recently arrived as a lowly immigrant from the West Indies thanks to influential backers, there long remained an enduring suspicion (especially among his military and political enemies of the upper-class elite, including other Founding Fathers) that he was unworthy of the name American. After the war, he was constantly attacked in the press by Jeffersonian opponents (whose political leader from Monticello never fought on a battlefield or made significant wartime contributions like Hamilton) for being un-American, as if he had never played such a vital role by Washington’s side for so long and during some of the crucial campaigns of the American Revolution. But, in fact, after Washington, no Founding Father contributed more to America’s ultimate victory on the battlefield and overall success as a nation than the much-maligned Hamilton. Therefore, one of the great conundrums and contradictions of American history was how Hamilton’s long list of impressive wartime accomplishments could have become so unappreciated by the nation that he so often risked his life to save, and helped to create both on and off the battlefield for years. For one, history has not been kind to Hamilton. Aristocratic Founding Fathers like John Adams and Jefferson held Hamilton in contempt because of his immigrant status. For such reasons, the Jefferson Memorial stands in impressive fashion from the tidal basin in Washington, DC, while no comparable memorial to Hamilton can be seen to this day.

Hamilton’s remarkable success story—literally a case of rags to glory—was the very personification of the American dream to people around the world today: taking advantage of existing opportunities and rising higher on one’s own abilities and hard work, overcoming the odds regardless of background, religion, or social status, not to mention the fact that in a nation that was built through successive tides of immigrants looking for a coveted piece of the American dream, Hamilton was one of the original immigrants. Possessing an uncanny ability to rise above adversity and hardship that were too great for most people to overcome, Hamilton’s meteoric rise from Caribbean obscurity and dysfunctional family background to the leading player on Washington’s staff and a revered war hero was a true Horatio Alger story.

After he became disillusioned with America’s failing war effort and lack of unity, this cerebral young man was focused on solving infant America’s seemingly insolvable military, economic, and political problems while serving on Washington’s staff during the war. Nevertheless, he still remained an outsider and maverick—actually assets—in fundamental ways, especially as an innovative problem solver which set him apart from a mostly conservative officer corps, consisting mostly of traditional America-born men of a higher class and social standing. These orthodox types were the least likely individuals to develop original ideas that provided solutions to new and complex problems. Partly because of such reasons and his outstanding success in multiple fields of endeavor, Hamilton made a good many wartime enemies, including influential members of Congress, and, he remained at odds with powerful politicians of the Virginia Dynasty, especially Thomas Jefferson, and other Anti-Federalists, after the war.

As Washington fully recognized, Hamilton was very different from his peers who were far more provincial and less gifted. Hamilton’s overall outlook of life reflected his sharply dissimilar and broader background, which embodied more wide-ranging experiences, including on an international level in the Caribbean. Therefore, Hamilton was a free-thinking and open-minded newcomer to America without the burden of regional biases or prejudices that damaged America’s war effort from the beginning. This “Hamilton difference” provided keen insights, original thinking, and accurate assessments that served him so well in advising Washington, especially during high-level dealings with upper-class French military leaders.

Hamilton’s well-grounded and sophisticated progressive opinions were cosmopolitan beyond his years and well beyond the narrow regional views of many revolutionary leaders, especially during the American Revolution. This was especially true in regard to slavery, specifically the young man’s hatred of slavery. As he emphasized in an appeal to the Continental Congress in 1779, Hamilton believed in black equality to whites, which was a view extremely rare in his day and unmatched by any Founding Father, especially slave owners—a significant difference among the Founding Fathers that has been long overlooked. He utterly rejected the prevalent concept of black inferiority with a self-assured ease, and boldly appealed to Congress to allow slaves to fight for their freedom and that of America. In time, Hamilton became a principal leader of the New York Manumission Society. For a wide variety of reasons and especially in regard to his lowly immigrant background, Hamilton’s life was very much a paradox: The ultimate outsider who became the ultimate insider and visionary nationalist who stood at the very center of some of the most dramatic moments in America’s story from Washington’s headquarters to his presidency of the world’s newest republic.

Today, Hamilton has become known primarily because of his disproportionate and significant contributions in the drafting of the United States Constitution, and his service as America’s first Secretary of the Treasury. He also founded the national bank, established a solid base for future industrial growth, and played a leading role in the adoption of stronger government institutions. His innovations were intended to make the new republic financially stable and functional, thus ensuring a bright future, while helping to preserve the fragile union of diverse states: the laying of the very foundation for the modern American nation. These contributions were especially significant and timely because the upstart United States of America was fully expected by many people, especially European leaders, to fail miserably and to be shortly relegated to the dust bin of history.

However, the breadth of these well-known postwar achievements has obscured Hamilton’s astonishing career as one of the most remarkable officers of the Continental Army, when he served by Washington’s side for nearly four years. As fate would have it and in Washington’s giant shadow, he was largely unseen behind the scenes at Washington’s headquarters, especially in regard to decision-making and coordinating intelligence activities. This was no accident. The stoic Hamilton actually allowed the limelight to shine on Washington, because he was the symbol of self-sacrificing patriotism and the overall resistance effort that had to be promoted at all times.

As only a lieutenant colonel in his twenties and a relative newcomer to America’s shores who had spent most of his life in the West Indies, Hamilton’s wartime responsibilities, as early delegated to him by his appreciative commanding general who knew that the young man could always get the job done, were truly sweeping for the fulfillment of a chief of staff’s responsibilities. Washington’s trust in this young man of such exceptional promise, which shortly grew to a heavy dependence that continued unabated for most of the war and even during his presidency after the war, was demonstrated in the most important fields of endeavor: strategy, politics, intelligence, planning, logistics, training, and diplomacy with the Continental Congress, politicians, generals, and the French allies. Hamilton’s diplomatic skill and fluency in French paid considerable dividends in regard to America’s proud and sensitive primary partner, which was absolutely necessary for easy communications and better understanding between culturally dissimilar allies (former enemies in the previous war) that were essential to eventually achieving decisive victory in the end.

Equally significant for America’s successful war effort, Hamilton played an invaluable role in protecting Washington’s leadership position and reputation when the rising tide of criticism, including that coming from ambitious fellow generals and members of Continental Congress against the Virginian with losing ways, and when more successful rivals sought to replace him by Machiavellian means. Year after year, therefore, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton served as Washington’s ever-vigilant guardian angel, helping to ensure that he securely remained the army’s commander and symbol of America’s resistance effort until the war’s end.

In multiple roles of extreme importance, Hamilton repeatedly rose to the fore when the battlefield situation was especially crucial, from the battle of Trenton as a New York artillery commander, to the battle of Monmouth Court House as Washington chief of staff, and all the way to the battle of Yorktown as the tactically astute commander of light infantry in the crucial attack. Incredibly and like very few others, Hamilton excelled in every branch of the service, except cavalry, and only because he never had an opportunity to do so.

While women of all ages loved Hamilton, he made enemies of men very easily, and often without significant cause, thanks to his brilliance and success that generated considerable jealousy. Partly because of his many enemies of influence, high-ranking generals and politicians, (especially Jefferson after the war), who grossly distorted the historical record to diminish his many significant contributions and political and economic legacies, Hamilton has become America’s most controversial Founding Father for reasons mostly unjustified. On the other hand, he could count on the loyal friendship of many of America’s leading men, especially Washington, who fully understood his true value to himself and America, and never lost his faith in Hamilton.

His determined and dogged perseverance, born of his earlier life struggle for existence in the Caribbean, was another key to Hamilton’s amazing wartime and postwar successes that continuously astounded Washington and other Founding Fathers. In the West Indies as well as in America, Hamilton fought to overcome a series of formidable obstacles and social prejudices set firmly in place to block his rise because of the arbitrary dictates of class, wealth, and social background. This was one fundamental reason why he so enthusiastically embraced America’s egalitarian spirit and struggle for liberty that boldly defied the unfair social foundations of the aristocratic elite and the traditional ruling class.

As fully demonstrated at the battles of Trenton (late 1776) and Princeton (early 1777) and other hard-fought contests when he earned distinction while commanding a New York state battery with tactical skill, Hamilton was early recognized as a gifted young officer by senior leaders, including Washington. Hamilton’s sterling reputation and seemingly endless promise opened the door to Washington’s invitation—one of his best decisions and far more than he realized at the time—to join in his staff on March 1, 1777. For ample good reason, he was nicknamed Washington’s and the Continental Army’s “Little Lion.” Hamilton’s sobriquet of Little Lion did not stem from either his youth or slender form, but from his eagerness to win battlefield distinction, and an almost suicidal courage that repeatedly defied death in crisis situations. Some observers even believed that the young man possessed a death wish.

During this era, the term “little” referred to humble origins. The dashing Hamilton, who wore a resplendent uniform with meticulous care as if educated at a European military academy, actually stood above average height of the time at five foot and seven inches in a lithe, well-proportioned form. But Hamilton’s lively personality, intelligence, leadership abilities, and other natural gifts were truly outsized. As mentioned, this scholarly intellectual was also a man of action. During the battle of Monmouth Court House, New Jersey, on June 28, 1778, Hamilton, with saber in hand and dashing back and forth on horseback, played a key role. Here, he rallied shaken troops and even led a counterattack to help save the day, after having shouted “let us all die here rather than retreat” in the face a spirited British counterattack. This is but one example of Hamilton’s fighting spirit in a key battlefield situation.

Besides achieving ultimate victory and creating a strong nation for survival in a dangerous world, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, imbued with the republican spirit of the Age of the Enlightenment ideologies, most of all wanted America to truly live-up to its lofty ideals. To him, this meant that America should end slavery to remain true to its most basic founding principles. Ahead of his time and at the risk of his career and good standing in serving as Washington’s chief of staff, he boldly advocated for the use of black soldiers to fight for their own and America’s freedom in the South. He was a leading advocate of this audacious proposal to Congress risking his reputation, especially among the highest-ranking Southern politicians and military men in America.

In addition, Hamilton also early befriended when Washington initially remained cool to still another opportunistic foreign officer (especially when he had been endorsed by rival General Horatio Gates) seeking higher rank and served as a liaison officer early on to Prussian Baron Freidrich Wilhelm von Steuben. Von Steuben later led the way in transforming the Continental Army into a well-drilled military organization to match their professional and superior opponent. Hamilton early recognized the Prussian’s true value, while helping to make the German’s acclimation into the Continental Army a relatively smooth one.

For the first time in any single volume, the primary emphasis of this book will be to reveal how a young immigrant from the West Indies made so many all-important contributions as the commander’s principal aide-de-camp and closest confidant during most of the war years, the invaluable chief of staff role: the often overlooked story of the dynamic leadership team of Washington and Hamilton during the war’s most critical periods at headquarters and on the battlefield. What has been most often forgotten was the fact that this was a truly symbiotic relationship between these two men, separated by social standing and in age by more than two decades and dissimilar life experiences, a close rapport which played a vital role not only in America’s ultimate success in the end, but also the nation’s long life in the future.

Therefore, this book will present the long overlooked and generally unappreciated story of the detailed inter-workings of America’s most important leadership team and most vital partnership during the America Revolution’s most crucial years. Quite simply and what has been almost entirely forgotten was the fact that after General Washington, Hamilton filled the most important position in America’s military from March 1777 to early 1781.

Indeed, this ultra-nationalist team of Washington and Hamilton played a leading role in not only winning the war, but also in charting the new nation’s future course well into the twenty-first century. The symbiotic Washington–Hamilton relationship was America’s most important and crucial partnership in early American history, and the chief of staff role was the vital glue that kept this dynamic relationship together in both war and peace.

Generations of military and academic historians have long wondered about what was the most important link that so closely united these two Founding Fathers and bonded them tightly together for so long, especially when their relationship was an impersonal, work-based one. Consequently, this book has been written to answer this enduring mystery—Hamilton’s all-important role as Washington’s chief of staff, comparable to that of the equally brilliant Louis Alexandre Berthier for Napoleon. Significantly, just as Berthier was the most important chief of staff of the Napoleonic Wars and was one of the forgotten secrets of Napoleon’s string of amazing successes across Europe, so too did Hamilton serve as the invaluable chief of staff who made Washington a much better general.

In the end, Hamilton’s many invaluable and diverse contributions for such an extended period might well have saved not only the commander-in-chief position of George Washington, but also played a larger role in separating winner from loser in the American Revolution. Although obscured by Washington’s giant shadow that has long diminished the importance of his unparalleled and unprecedented role as chief of staff in the modern sense, Hamilton’s wartime years have presented a striking paradox, because no one accomplished more during the war years and gained less credit for what he achieved for such an extended period at such a high level. For good reason when he gave his farewell address and submitted his resignation as commander-in-chief to Congress at Annapolis, Maryland, on December 23, 1783, Washington especially thanked his trusty aides-de-camp, and no one was more deserving of his most sincere thanks than Hamilton, because his larger-than-life role from beginning to end.

In one of the great ironies of Revolutionary War historiography, the most important position in the Continental Army (Washington’s indispensable right-hand man for most of the war), after commander-in-chief of course, has been long minimized by historians in one of the most glaring omissions in the historical record. Generations of American historians have long focused exclusively on the accomplishments that Washington achieved, as if these successes were made entirely on his own—as if his gifted chief of staff named Alexander Hamilton never existed. Therefore, one of the most important roles of any military officer in the annals of American history has been long overlooked for reasons based more on jealousy, pettiness, and heated postwar politics than the facts.

Phillip Thomas Tucker, PhD

Washington, DC

August 15, 2016