No one more fully appreciated Alexander Hamilton and his many achievements, both on and off the battlefield, toward achieving decisive victory for America than General George Washington. For more than four years, the close working relationship between Washington and Hamilton was a generally forgotten key partnership and dynamic leadership team that played an important role in winning America’s ultimate victory in the end. Together these two men of divergent backgrounds created one of the most effective winning teams of the American Revolution. Indeed, “No person worked so closely with George Washington throughout the years of war and nation building than Alexander Hamilton, and this historic relationship saw Washington and Hamilton in accord on the great issues of their day.”1
Most importantly, Hamilton was not only Washington’s first and only chief of staff in the modern sense, but also the first chief of staff in the history of the United States military. As with his decision to make General Nathanael Greene his top lieutenant and then wisely assigning him to command the Southern theater of operations in 1780, Washington’s decision to appoint Hamilton to his staff in a staff officer position that evolved into his chief of staff was a true “stroke of genius.” Indeed, this decision paid immense dividends for most of the war, making him a more capable military commander on multiple levels. From the beginning, no one was better or more adept at translating Washington’s ideas into practical plans for his top lieutenants to execute on the battlefield and in the art of diplomacy, especially with the French allies, than Hamilton. While serving under Washington’s long shadow, Hamilton was one of the forgotten secrets of the Virginian’s overall effectiveness as the army’s commander for an extended period: Ironically, a too often overlooked success story of the American Revolution.2
Nevertheless, Hamilton’s long list of significant wartime contributions (military, diplomatic, economic, and political) have been tarnished by his enemies, including some of America’s most powerful men, including Founding Fathers, especially Jefferson. Creating long-lasting negative stereotypes rooted in the hatreds and jealousies (which began in wartime) that rose to the fore during postwar politics, these very personal and politically based assaults on Hamilton’s character (including even the most ridiculous charge of his alleged un-Americanism) severely damaged the legacy of his many wartime accomplishments to his day. This was a character assassination from mostly self-serving and agenda-driven politicians who had never fought on the battlefield. They unleashed their venom on Hamilton, as if their political target had never made such a significant and disproportionate role in saving America’s life during the revolution’s darkest days.
What Hamilton’s many personal enemies seemed to have forgotten were his efforts in successfully protecting Washington from removal from command and salvaging his increasingly maligned reputation, while serving as his “favorite aide-de-camp” and invaluable chief of staff year after year. Even more, what Hamilton’s haters also conveniently overlooked were his extensive efforts toward the creation of a strong, professional military to replace the weak militia-based system that almost early caused America’s demise in the war years, including the establishment of a military academy (West Point). These sturdy national foundations and core strengths later served America and the world well in facing the threats of Fascism and Communism in the twentieth century and Terrorism in the twenty-first century. In war and peace, the dynamic partnership of Washington and Hamilton (the most highly effective leadership team of the American Revolution) was truly one that helped to change the course of not only American but also world history.3
Like Washington and from beginning to end, Hamilton was a diehard nationalist, and they both saw stronger government as America’s only solution in war and peace. This central foundation cemented their close bond during the war years and afterward, especially in Washington’s presidency. As usual, Hamilton said it best: “We must secure our union on solid foundations.” Along with fellow nationalist Washington who never lost his faith in the promise of America, he was one of the leading advocates for the scrapping of the weak Articles of Confederation that had only helped to pave the way to the young republic’s ruin. Therefore, Hamilton played a vital role in convincing Washington to come out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention to end of political folly of the Articles of Confederation and then become the first president of the United States of America in order to unify a divided nation and its squabbling politicians, when the infant republic lay on the verge of dissolution From beginning to end, few people were more of a truly diehard American and nationalistic than this gifted immigrant from the Caribbean, who was criticized by being un-American. This sad legacy was one of the great ironies in American history.
Unfortunately, Hamilton had a special talent for making enemies in extremely high places. Therefore, during an intensive political war that he could not win, the personal attacks of the Anti-Federalists on Hamilton’s reputation left him exhausted and depressed, especially after Washington’s sudden death at Mount Vernon in December 1799: the old winning team and partnership that had functioned so well from 1777 to 1781 was no more. An increasingly disillusioned Hamilton wondered at the bitter irony of being so widely denounced by his fellow Americans, after having long faithfully served America’s best interests during the infant nation’s struggle for life. Nevertheless, Hamilton found himself under almost greater pressure and assault on American soil than even the men of Lord Charles Cornwallis’ Army at Yorktown in October 1781. His political and personal foes succeeded in transforming this remarkable man of boundless faith and hope in the greatness of America’s future into a tormented soul.
Given his long list of military accomplishments from Trenton to Yorktown and especially as Washington’s invaluable chief of staff, Hamilton was haunted by dark feelings of a certain sense of betrayal by his fellow Americans. Struck by the nagging paradox that seemed almost as cruelly unfair as John Laurens’ needless death in an ill-advised charge in a remote South Carolina backwater during a late August 1782 skirmish of no importance whatsoever, Hamilton felt persecuted by the cycle of injustices and haunting paradoxes stemming from this “base world.” Therefore, a world-weary Hamilton lamented without exaggeration only two years before he was fatally cut down by a pistol shot fired by Aaron Burr: “Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the U[nited] States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself…. Yet I have the murmur of its friends no less than the curses of its foes. What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me.”4
Ironically, these were almost the identical haunting words—but for different reasons—that he had penned to his best friend John Laurens in a January 8, 1780, letter: “I feel I am not fit for this terrestreal Country.”5 Then, barely nine months later for only trying to do what was right for preserving America’s life by emphasizing the gross failures of Congress partly as an attempt to save the Continental Army, Hamilton also confided to Laurens how “you are almost detested [as much as I] as an accomplice with the administration.”6 In the same September 12, 1780, letter, Hamilton wrote that “I hate the world,” in part because of so many personal and political enemies, military and civilian, that he had gained only because he had always put America’s interests first and had succeeded in so many endeavors on America’s behalf.7
On February 13, 1783, a frustrated Hamilton wrote another candid letter to Washington, as though he was still serving as the general’s chief of staff on an active campaign or a tented encampment: “Flattering myself that your knowledge of me will induce you to receive my observations I make … in regard to the public good [therefore] I take the liberty to suggest my ideas to you on some matters of delicacy and importance … there has not been a period of the war which called more for wisdom and decision for Congress. Unfortunately for us we are a body not governed by reason or forthright[ness] but by circumstances.”8
Hamilton’s gloomy realization that America was not for him was only tragically reinforced when his beloved first son, nineteen-year-old Philip Hamilton, was killed in a needless duel that resulted from attacks on his father’s maligned reputation: “the most afflicting [blow] of my life,” wrote the grieving father, who had received a mortal wound to his soul. Hamilton had advised him not to fire a shot at his lawyer opponent, whose sharp tongue had so viciously lashed at his father’s character without mercy. A graduate of Columbia College (King’s College) where his father had been educated, Philip was doomed to an ill fate that abruptly ended a most promising life. Philip had been in the womb of his young wife Betsey when Hamilton had risked his life in leading the daring charge that overwhelmed Redoubt Number Ten at Yorktown. What tormented Alexander Hamilton the most was the nagging thought that Philip was fatally wounded in a duel to defend his father’s good name against outrageous slander. When the teenage Philip, who had been named after his mother’s father General Philip Schuyler, died shortly after a dueling pistol’s bullet cut him down on November 23, 1801, at Weehawken, New Jersey, his father’s once unbreakable spirit suffered a severe blow with the handsome young man’s death. Hamilton was devastated by the tragic loss of his son’s life that resulted in a traumatic blow from which he never recovered, experiencing the most grievous pain that any parent could feel in losing his beloved child.
Therefore, Hamilton was never the same after the tragic death of his dark-haired son who was so promising and so much like his father. Only three years later, Hamilton himself died in the same tragic manner and for the same hollow reasons as his beloved “Little Phil,” while standing on the same fatal patch of dueling ground on New Jersey soil. Equally ironic, the soil of New Jersey, the so-called “crossroads of the revolution,” was where Hamilton had so often earlier risked his life and led his New York “Provincial Company of Artillery” with distinction during Washington’s surprising winter victories at Trenton and Princeton, where enemy bullets and cannonballs had miraculously failed to strike him. Before the final showdown at Yorktown, Hamilton had won his greatest military fame on battlefields in the Garden State, including at Monmouth Court House in the summer of 1778.9
If only Hamilton had acted on his best personal instincts to depart the United States for a new life in his native Caribbean, then such a decision would have saved him from the fatal duel that ended his life before age fifty. In the cruelest paradox, Hamilton’s worst foreboding about meeting a tragic end on American soil—although not on a battlefield where everlasting glory would have been forthcoming—was ultimately fulfilled, following his son’s tragic demise at age nineteen. As he had long feared, it was this perplexing “American world” that led to the untimely tragic deaths of both father and son on Weehawken’s fatal dueling grounds. In a strange way, it was what this fractious republic had become, as distinct from his lofty, idealized virtuous vision of a model republic based on Age of Enlightenment ideologies, which was ultimately as much responsible for Alexander Hamilton’s death as the well-aimed shot from a former member of Washington’s staff.
All in all, Hamilton’s rise in America had been meteoric, making his fall at Weehawken even more tragic. In the heady glow of his Yorktown success in mid-October 1781 that won the army’s admiration and America’s gratitude, Hamilton never forgot how he had ridden back to Betsey, when she was expecting their first child, Philip (born on January 22, 1782). It was the happiest and most fulfilling time of his young life when only the brightest of futures beckoned. A hopeful immigrant who had migrated to America and to a strange land with no money in his pocket or hardly knowing a soul, he had beaten the odds and defied all probability by accomplishing far more than anyone had imagined possible on his own abilities.
Hamilton had fulfilled his loftiest ambitions, becoming an authentic American war hero who had won glory not only at Yorktown but also on the battlefields of 1776–1778. With a high level of tactical skill and bravery, Hamilton had made a name for himself throughout the army as a resourceful battlefield commander, who rose to the challenge when the crisis was greatest.10 But while his family life had become extremely satisfying after the war, he still grappled with the demons of the past. In a letter to his brother James Hamilton, Jr., now living on the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean, in June 1785, he asked almost pathetically: “what has become of our dear father? It is an age since I have heard” from him.11
Alexander Hamilton’s postwar image as a Founding Father eventually earned him a permanent place in the American popular memory, but ironically at the high price of obscuring his crucial Revolutionary War contributions as Washington’s brilliant chief of staff. Thanks to his efforts as the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury in Washington’s Administration (because the Washington and Hamilton friendship and partnership were renewed after the infamous New Windsor, New York, incident on February 16, 1781) to promote the Constitution, a stronger centralized government, a more powerful military, and a modern financial system for boundless future growth, especially industrial, Hamilton played a leading role in creating the modern United States that rose to prominence on the world stage in the twentieth century.
In fact, like no other Founding Father, Hamilton was most responsible for setting the young American nation on the correct road to future superpower status. Nevertheless, Hamilton became the most tarnished Founding Father in no small part because he was Jefferson’s eternal enemy. Indeed, the marble bust display of Hamilton at Monticello was little more than a display trophy of the crucifying Anti-Federals, who had waged their political warfare with no mercy.
But unlike so many others during the American Revolution, Hamilton never lost his faith in America and its bright, shining future: the dream of America that had lifted him up and gave him opportunities to excel. Many vivid memories of struggling for liberty beside his comrades never dissipated from his heart and mind as Hamilton grew older and wealthier after the war: crossing the ice-clogged Delaware River on a stormy December night and transporting his New York cannon safely across the river in the cold blackness; his New York artillery pieces roaring from the snowy heights that overlooked Trenton and punishing the Hessian garrison; helping to reverse the tide of the hard-fought battle at Monmouth by helping to stem a rout and then leading counterattacks; and orchestrating the daring nighttime assault that overwhelmed Redoubt Number Ten on October 14, 1781, to ensure the surrender of an entire British-Hessian-Loyalist Army during America’s most decisive victory. No matter what happened to him in life, Hamilton most of all cherished the fond memories of what he had accomplished in leading his brave light infantrymen onward in capturing Redoubt Number Ten that changed the course of not only American history but also world history.
Hamilton’s outspokenness and directness in speaking his mind continued to make him new enemies in the years after the war. This situation was just a continuation of when he had served as the boyish-looking Washington’s chief of staff and principal protector of the general’s much-derided reputation, when his outspokenness—especially against the incompetence of an ineffective Congress that had long caused the army so much suffering and deaths—earned him countless enemies in high places, including leading generals and politicians. But Hamilton had managed to escape their wrath because he was Washington’s right-hand-man.
However, Hamilton became more vulnerable after Washington ended his service as a two-term president. His political foes fully exploited the opportunity when Hamilton’s criticisms about Vice President Aaron Burr’s lack of character and morality were printed in newspapers. Hamilton refused to take back anything that he said, because he sincerely believed it was true, which was the case. He, therefore, accepted Burr’s challenge to settle their differences in an affair of honor. On the early morning of July 11, 1804, on the Hudson’s west bank at Weehawken, Bergen County, New Jersey, Hamilton faced Vice President Burr. For Hamilton, this confrontation was still another issue of personal honor as during the war years. Ironically, Burr had briefly served as Washington’s aide-de-camp, but these once-close bonds of a revolutionary brotherhood were no more by this time. As on the hard-fought fields of Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth in New Jersey from 1776 to 1778, Hamilton was no stranger in facing death or the possibility of shortly meeting his Maker from hostile fire.
Before meeting Burr with a matching pair of smoothbore flintlock pistols, Hamilton wrote that he was morally and philosophically opposed to dueling to settle personal differences. Therefore, he was determined to freely “expose [his] own life” instead of “taking the life of another” human being, even a bitter enemy. Nevertheless, as he had been Washington’s “Little Lion” in serving at headquarters and on the battlefield, Hamilton faced Burr with his usual courage on the dueling grounds just outside Philadelphia at exceptionally close range. As previously planned and relying on the power of reason rather than passion that was the very cornerstone of his being since before the American Revolution, Hamilton wasted his first shot in the reasonable gentleman’s expectation that Burr would do the same to settle this matter of honor with customary dignity to satisfy both parties.
But still recalling Hamilton’s scathing testimony against his beloved commander General Charles Lee about his performance at the battle of Monmouth Court House during the general’s court martial proceedings in 1778, Burr had other ideas about the precise definition of honor. Unlike Hamilton, therefore, he allowed his strong passion to overrule his reason, violating the native West Indian’s most sacred personal principle. The many varied successes of Hamilton’s past—especially in preserving Washington’s reputation and position—had now come back to haunt him at this moment, when he found himself suddenly staring down the barrel of Burr’s dueling pistol. Unlike Hamilton, Burr was not about to forget and forgive. Clearly, there was no reasonable settlement of differences between gentlemen as Hamilton anticipated and fully expected. Hamilton might now have regretted having lost his former cynicism that had served him so well during the American Revolution.
No one knows Hamilton’s last thoughts when he saw Burr taking careful aim at him just before he fired his fatal shot which was the final betrayal of his misplaced faith in his fellow human beings. Consequently, perhaps a look of astonishment must have appeared on Hamilton’s mature but still handsome face, because of the shattering of his life’s last illusion when Burr squeezed the trigger. But immediately before he was hit by Burr’s .54 caliber bullet, Hamilton might have became stoically reconciled to his tragic fate which was the bitterest of ironies: dying needlessly like his best friend John Laurens in a meaningless South Carolina skirmish and his own promising son in a meaningless duel of honor in which there was no real honor—two of America’s best and brightest. Just before he was struck by Burr’s lead bullet, then perhaps Hamilton merely accepted the haunting realization that it seemed as if the lives of America’s most virtuous men, literally the best and brightest, had to end tragically. If so, then he might have understood how he now somehow had to suffer the same sad fate as Laurens and his own son.
After having served for years with distinction as Washington’s chief of staff and on America’s battlefield’s from New York to Virginia, Hamilton died at age forty-seven with a measure of peace for all that he had accomplished for America and Washington on July 12, 1804. He left behind a grieving widow and their children. Ironically, after having had so many close calls during the war, he had received his fatal wound from an England-made weapon in peacetime.
Ironically, few people, if any, at the time remembered that he had played leading roles in saving Washington’s position as commander-in-chief or had served as chief of staff for years. In the end, one of America’s brightest shining lights was extinguished on a day that was as hot as on his native Nevis and St. Croix so far away. His final journey in a coffin, topped with his hat and sword, of mahogany (a beautiful wood long exported from his native West Indies) was a slow funeral procession to the south side of the graveyard of Trinity Church on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, New York City, to be buried near his beloved son Philip on July 14, 1804.
Before he had breathed his last in New York City, Hamilton might have thought back of when he had so proudly worn an officer’s blue uniform as a republican soldier during a sacred struggle for an infant nation’s freedom: Washington’s chief of staff when he worked year after year as part of a highly effective leadership team with America’s “father” in a special relationship of vital importance when the dignified commander-in-chief was “an Aegis very essential to me” wrote Hamilton; helping to save the day by rallying panic-stricken troops under a blazing New Jersey sun at Monmouth; providing years of wise advice (military, political, logistical, diplomatic, and economic) to America’s top civilian and military leaders, especially Washington; enduring Morristown’s and Valley Forge’s harshest winters that he had ever experienced because he had recently immigrated from the Caribbean; the close friendships and camaraderie between him and his fellow esteemed members of Washington’s little “family” of promising young officers; raising the spirits of Washington and his staff members with his sense of humor and unsurpassed wit during the revolution’s darkest days; embracing the idealistic promise of America with all his heart and soul; doing all in his power—mental, moral, and physical—so that America ultimately prevailed during its desperate struggle for life; never losing his faith in the great republican dream and egalitarian vision of a brighter future not only for the American people, but also for all mankind; the breathtaking sight, illuminated by the yellow-red flashes of musketry, the flowing “Stars and Stripes” planted atop Redoubt Number Ten to signify one of the war’s most important victories; and the personal satisfaction in all that he had accomplished for Washington and in having played so many key roles during America’s struggle for survival.
Ironically, when Hamilton was fatally cut down by the pistol shot fired by Burr, no Founding Father (after Washington) had accomplished more both on and off the battlefield to ensure America’s ultimate victory than the one who had the most inauspicious start in life and the most difficult life from beginning to end. Nevertheless, he was still looked upon by many Americans, especially his many enemies, as nothing more than a detested “foreigner” who was undeserving of the revered name of American. But without Hamilton and his contributions, there might be no America today. Indeed, when Hamilton died in New York City, his faith of a bright future for America did not die with him, because he left behind enduring political, military, and economic legacies that lived on: His ever-lasting gifts to America and generations of Americans, including those yet unborn.12
Hamilton had left his permanent mark on the peoples’ republic in the most significant and fundamental ways. America would never be the same again, thanks to Hamilton’s many invaluable contributions in war and peace. From beginning to end, he was a shining star and innovative, bold freethinker, who was well ahead of his time. As demonstrated by his actions and words not long after his arrival on America’s shores, this hopeful, young immigrant from the West Indies was actually more truly American than most Americans, when he was shot down without mercy by Burr.
With his trademark open-minded thinking unencumbered by ancient rules and prejudices (regional or national), Hamilton stood on moral principle to go against conventional and traditional thought with his most radical proposal in conjunction with John Laurens: boldly advocating the use of black troops to fight for America in order to replenish the army’s limited manpower in the South more than a century and a half before African Americans were officially incorporated into an integrated United States military in the post-World War Two period. Hamilton’s early promotion of black soldiers and his strong abolitionist views, including as a founder of the New York Manumission Society after the war, did not sit well with the aristocratic Virginia elite, especially slave-owners.
From the obscure depths of a lowly exile on a remote Caribbean island—a mere speck in a turquoise sea—without a bright future and from a broken family, Hamilton’s meteoric rise on American soil as a self-made man and visionary was nothing short of miraculous. Against all odds, Hamilton persevered through the hard times and setbacks not of his own making to come out a better man and an authentic American war hero, while greatly benefitting America in war and peace to ensure that the republic became a stronger nation.
But no single wartime role was more important to America’s fortunes than that of Washington’s brilliant chief of staff and chief adviser, when he forged a truly “unbeatable” team with the commander-in-chief. The intellectual and assiduous Hamilton was the model chief of staff, establishing a template for the modern chief of staff in America’s military establishment today. As the brilliant Louis-Alexandre Berthier (who had served with French forces at Yorktown and Hamilton might have talked to him) was to Napoleon as a longtime chief of staff, so Hamilton was the same guiding force to Washington year after year. Napoleon wisely understood the supreme importance of a chief of staff that was performed so well by Berthier (he became one of Napoleon’s twenty-six marshals), and Washington likewise benefited greatly from Hamilton’s multi-faceted contributions in his capacity. In the end, it was no accident or coincidence that Napoleon lost at Waterloo because he was without Berthier. In still another strange twist of fate, Berthier was destined to die as tragically and prematurely like Hamilton, falling from a building onto a cobblestone street under mysterious circumstances.
On multiple levels, no Founding Father other than Washington made more significant wartime contributions to American victory from 1776 to 1781 than one of the youngest and brightest shining stars of the Continental Army. Hamilton’s arrival in the colonies in 1773 and not long before the American Revolution’s beginning was still another sign from above that America’s cause was indeed blessed by a kind “Providence [which] is for some wise purpose,” as Washington believed to his dying day.13
Because he knew this undeniable truth better than anyone else, Washington paid a rare tribute, although considerably understated by him, to Hamilton: “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.”14 Unsurprisingly, Washington forgot to mention how in the course of Hamilton’s intelligence gathering and backdoor maneuvering to save the position of General Washington, he changed the course of not only the American Revolution but also American history.15
In the end, perhaps Colonel Timothy Pickering, Washington’s trusty adjutant, said it best: “During the long series of years, in war and peace, Washington enjoyed the advantages of Hamilton’s eminent talents, integrity and felicity, and these qualities fixed [Hamilton forever] in [Washington’s] confidence to the last hour of his life.”16 Nevertheless, after the war, “few men would remember redoubt 10” and how it fell on the night of October 14, 1871, and the supreme importance of its capture by Hamilton, however.17
In a significant understatement, Washington was unable to find exactly the right words to fully convey what Hamilton truly meant to him from 1777 to 1781, while performing as his sage chief of staff, who had seemingly always bestowed wise advice and invaluable council, until the commander-in-chief became heavily, if not utterly, dependent on the young man. Even if Washington had found the proper words to describe the importance of Hamilton’s multiple roles over such a lengthy period during the turning point moments of the American Revolution, most Americans of the day (and including today) simply would not have believed the truth about how such a young officer born of humble origins in the West Indies could have possibly so extensively benefitted one of the wealthiest men in America in so many ways year after year by his sparkling brilliance.
However, Washington’s actions spoke louder than his words. Continuing the close teamwork of a dynamic partnership that had been cemented during the war years, Washington chose Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury when he became the first president of the United States. Even more, Hamilton was most responsible for first convincing a reluctant Washington come out of retirement at Mount Vernon to unite a badly splintered nation to serve as the nation’s first president, including in a second term. Thereafter, the team of Washington and Hamilton was reunited in the first presidency, continuing a remarkable success story from beginning to end: one of the most important alliances and partnerships of not only the American Revolution and the early republic, but also in American history. Without the timely union of these two remarkable men and their close working relationship, the revolution might not have been won, and a long life for the American republic would not have been ensured after the war.
Clearly, Washington’s heavy dependence on Hamilton as his capable chief of staff, close confidant, and adviser throughout the war years was a habit that the first president faithfully continued long after the American Revolution and fortunately for the fate of America. Hamilton wrote Washington’s speeches, including his famous Farewell Address, as if the two men still wore blue Continental uniforms at headquarters, when it had seemed that the great dream of America was doomed to an early death. As during the war years at headquarters, Hamilton became the first president’s chief political advisor, continuing to bestow sage advice and insight. All the while, Washington benefitted immensely from the contributions of his most brilliant adviser, who was truly King Solomon–like in wisdom, and the main driving force of his staff in war and peace.
As America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton served as the chief architect of the American banking system and stronger national government to lay the central foundation for today’s United States of America. But of course, none of these successes were possible had not Washington and Hamilton first evolved into a highly successful team first in wartime during the lengthy struggle to ensure the Continental army’s survival, but was the same as the republic’s survival. Quite simply, the most effective high-level partnership and leadership team during the Revolutionary War became the key collaboration that led to the creation of the Constitution and a “more perfect Union” in the end: during both of these most crucial periods in the life of the United States, no one played a greater or more important role as Washington’s vital supporter, advisor, confidant, and friend than Hamilton. Clearly, few individuals have made so many important contributions in the history of any nation.
One modern historian made the appropriate connection between Hamilton’s key position in Washington’s Administration, that was only a continuation of his all-important wartime role by Washington’s side during the darkest days of the revolution, and his disproportionate contributions that played key roles in saving Washington, the army, and the infant republic from 1777 to 1781: “this supremely confidant and extraordinarily able young man threatened to dominate the executive and to emerge as a kind of Prime Minister, with Washington as a kind of limited constitutional” head.18
But while the native West Indian’s accomplishments were forgotten in time by generations of Americans who were given the wrong view of Hamilton by educators, Hamilton’s wife Betsey (Elizabeth Schuler Hamilton), who lost her husband and son to the madness of dueling for the sake of society’s distorted views of the meaning of honor, perhaps said it best when she correctly informed one of his political opponents about one of her husband’s most enduring legacies, not long after he died in New York City thirty-six hours after having been shot: “Never forget that my husband made your government” of the United States of America. Hamilton’s final words to his wife were some of the most heartfelt that he had ever written, because he wished for “the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world. Adieu, best of wives and best of Women. Embrace all my darling Children for me.”19 For Hamilton, that better world existed at some place that he had never known in his eventful life.
In some strange, inexplicable cosmic equation that was a balancing of sorts, it was almost as if Hamilton’s life had been ordained to meet a tragic end precisely because he was blessed with so many exceptional gifts possessed in total by so few others. As he sincerely lamented with some anguish as the years and the day’s ever-changing values passed by him, Hamilton was indeed not made for this world. In the end, Hamilton’s remarkable life was like a Greek Tragedy of the kind that he knew so well from his classical education, but also an American tragedy for America’s most gifted and brilliant Founding Father.
But his legions of detractors could never take away Hamilton’s lengthy list of achievements on and off the battlefield, and what he accomplished for America. Emphasizing exactly why he had risked his life on so many fields of strife across America, Hamilton penned these late October 1787 words in imploring the American people to adopt the proposed United States Constitution because what was at stake was nothing less than “the fate of an empire in many respects, the most interesting in the world [and if not adopted then] deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”20
From early 1777 to early 1781, young Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, only a few years removed from a miserable dead end in his native West Indies, was Washington’s right hand man, closest confidant, and his irrepressible chief of staff, whose vital wartime roles on so many levels of supreme importance have been long unappreciated even today in the nation that he played such a large role in creating in war and peace.
And no list of Hamilton contributions were more important than when serving as Washington’s chief of staff. It has been long thought that Napoleon had been the first commander to employ a chief of staff in the modern sense, but this was not the case. What young Hamilton accomplished from early 1777 to early 1781 was an achievement that was unprecedented in the annals of military history, because he served as the first chief of staff in the modern sense. Ironically, this remarkable achievement and crucial role—second only to General George Washington’s role in terms of overall importance—has been the one most overlooked by historians to this day.
A key player in the success of Napoleon’s campaigns across Europe, the brilliant Berthier became the most celebrated chief of staff in history, casting a giant shadow over Hamilton’s earlier role that was equally, if not more, brilliant. As America’s first chief of staff in the modern sense, Hamilton set a remarkable historical precedent and an incredibly high bar for military leaders far into the future and even to this day. In the end, Alexander Hamilton became the very embodiment of the American dream and much more, demonstrating that anything was possible by someone who refused to be limited by artificial boundaries of class, wealth, and society.