LEE WASN’T SORRY. HE was fuming, especially because people were gossiping about the situation in camp. He sent Washington a letter on June 29—which he dated July 1 for reasons only he knew.
“I must conclude that nothing but the misinformation of some very stupid or … wicked person coud have occasioned your making use of such very singular expressions as you did on my coming up to the ground where you had taken post.”
He wanted to know the reasons for the three charges against him. He made awkward attempts to flatter Washington, blaming the harsh words for his performance on Washington’s underlings, chief among them Alexander. “I must repeat that I from my soul believe, that it was not a motion of your own breast, but instigaged by some of those dirty earwigs who will for ever insinuate themselves near persons of high office.”
Washington fired back a letter saying he’d be happy to put Lee on trial. He reiterated that Lee’s retreat was “unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful.” He also let Lee know he’d misdated his letter.
If Lee had been heated before, he was boiling now. He dashed off another letter on June 30, misdating it yet again, expressing his great sorrow at having misdated the first letter. He also let Washington know that the dignity of his office was made of tinsel and that the bright rays of Lee’s truth would burn away all Washington’s mists.
Then he threatened to quit the army.
And then he sent a third letter demanding a swift trial.
He got his wish. On July 4, a day patriots celebrated by firing guns and skyrockets, Alexander was a witness in Lee’s court-martial trial. Lord Stirling presided over the proceedings, which opened in a tavern at New Brunswick. In addition to being charged with failure to obey orders and making a shameful, disorderly retreat, Lee earned himself a third charge of disrespect to the commander-in-chief for two of the letters he’d sent.
THE MEN FACED OFF AND APPROACHED EACH OTHER.
Lee cross-examined Alexander himself at times, but Alexander, cool and thoughtful, was a devastating witness. Other witnesses backed Alexander up. Lee had defenders, including Aaron Burr, who’d been disappointed not to be chosen for Washington’s staff, as Alexander had been. Nonetheless, after a trial that moved from place to place and involved the testimony of thirty-nine people, Lee was found guilty of disobeying orders, of misbehavior before the enemy, and of making an unnecessary and, in a few instances, disorderly retreat. He was also found guilty of disrespecting Washington.
Stirling took the word “shameful” out of two of the charges and suspended Lee from the army for a year. All things considered, it was a light sentence because the court thought he was incompetent rather than disobedient. This wasn’t much consolation for a hot-tempered bonfire of vanity. On December 5, Congress voted to uphold the court’s decision.
Lee did not learn any sort of lesson. He and his supporters kept up the calumny against Washington and Alexander. Eventually, Lee criticized Washington in print.
Laurens, another one of the “earwigs” Lee had disparaged, wanted Alexander to come to Washington’s defense in writing. Alexander held back, most likely because he was being accused along with Washington and couldn’t very well make an unbiased case. So Laurens challenged Lee to a duel, with Alexander as his second.
Duels were not uncommon in the Continental Army. They gave men a way to achieve a sense of justice when their honor had been insulted. A challenge to a duel didn’t automatically mean one would happen. According to the rules of dueling, Lee could have apologized for his words until the day of the duel. But he didn’t—no big surprise given the size of his temper and the wound to his pride. Lee had also insulted von Steuben’s honor, but they resolved the matter before it came to bloodshed.
With Laurens, Lee remained obstinate. And so, at three thirty in the afternoon on that cold December day, Lee and his second, Major Evan Edwards, met Laurens and Alexander in the woods outside of Philadelphia, four miles down Point No Point Road. Each man received a brace of pistols. Lee, a spindly fellow who’d lost the use of two fingers in an Italian duel, proposed they advance upon each other and fire when they’d reached a certain distance. Laurens agreed.
The men faced off and approached each other. When they’d reached the agreed-upon distance, they fired. Laurens, un-injured, prepared to shoot again. Then Lee announced he’d been hit. Laurens and the seconds rushed toward him, offering help. Lee waved them off. It was nothing. A flesh wound. He wanted a second go; he had killed the Italian and lost fingers in that earlier duel.
Alexander and Lee’s second both objected. Unless Lee was motivated by personal hostility, Alexander said, he ought to drop it. Lee wouldn’t agree unless his second did, too, so Alexander and Edwards stepped aside for a chat. They both agreed the fight should end. As Lee dripped blood, the foursome headed back to town, hashing out the points of honor that would close the books on the conflict. Lee insisted it was right to gripe about Washington’s military performance with his friends. He also denied saying the worst things he’d been accused of saying. What’s more, he said, he’d always “esteemed General Washington as a man.” That concession was enough for Laurens, and thus concluded Alexander’s first duel.
Afterward, Lee took his dogs with him and moved first to Virginia and then to Philadelphia. Seven other men who’d been insulted by Lee challenged him to duels, but he apologized sufficiently to head those off. Congress voted on a resolution to dismiss him permanently after his suspension ended. It didn’t pass, but it made Lee so mad that he dashed off another round of insults. Provoked, Congress booted him out of the army on January 10, 1780. Within four years, he was dead of tuberculosis.
MEANWHILE, ALEXANDER’S ROLE IN MANAGING the Revolution broadened again, though still not in the way he wished. Both France and Spain—longtime rivals of England—had entered the war on the side of the states. Encouraged by Alexander, Lafayette convinced Washington to deploy French troops on the ground. Alexander continued to use his French with aplomb, both in diplomatic documents and Washington’s communications.
Alexander struck the French officers as smart, well read, witty, and charming. The French impressed Alexander somewhat less. He disliked how they insulted the competence of his countrymen. And then there was the ridiculousness of certain administrative tasks he had to perform on their behalf while he was busy managing soldiers, spies, correspondence, and the movements of the enemy.
Mr. Chouin the French Gentleman who lives at Head Quarters informs he has heard you had a bear-skin, which you would part with; and requests me to inquire if it is so. I told him I thought it very improbable you should have any but what you wanted for your own use; but for his satisfaction would inquire how the matter stands.
Still, Alexander knew how vital the French alliance was. In the early days of the war, they’d smuggled weapons and powder; outright support now was just as vital. Granted, the French did it for their own interests, not for any nobler purpose. But this was the compromise of war, so he grudgingly wrote stupid letters on behalf of petty men who felt entitled to the bearskin rugs of others, all the while growing increasingly frustrated with his role as Washington’s chief aide.
He wanted to command troops, not pen and paper. Death by glory, not by paper cut. Still, he kept at it. By spring, the army remained understaffed. Alexander had a solution—one he’d mentioned in his earlier list of suggestions to Congress, and one he’d talked about with John Laurens. With Laurens at his side, he wanted to bring it up again, no matter how controversial it might seem.
Alexander believed it was time to recruit enslaved men to fight on behalf of the Continental Army. He proposed forming a few battalions of black soldiers to serve in the Revolutionary War—paving the way for their emancipation. Some were already doing so on behalf of the enemy, after all.
ENSLAVING PEOPLE WAS INHUMANE AND INHERENTLY UNJUST.
Laurens had been particularly bold on this front. His father was a major owner of enslaved people and a powerful man in government. And yet, even before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Laurens had taken a different stand: “I think that we Americans, at least in the Southern [colonies], cannot contend with a good grace for liberty until we shall have enfranchised our slaves.”
Enslaving people was inhumane and inherently unjust. “We have sunk the Africans & their descendants below the Standard of Humanity, and almost render’d them incapable of that Blessing which equal Heaven bestow’d upon us all.”
Congress rejected Laurens’s first attempt to integrate the army. In the spring of 1779, though, he left Washington’s family to help defend his home state of South Carolina, which didn’t have enough white residents to constitute a militia. Offering up black men to fight would solve that problem—and Laurens was the most logical leader for those battalions. Alexander acknowledged it would be a tough sell for some people, but letting enslaved people fight and earn their freedom was not only morally just, it was also practical. So he wrote a letter in support of Laurens as the leader of a battalion of black men.
GEORGE WASHINGTON OPPOSED LETTING ENSLAVED MEN FIGHT IN THE ARMY, THOUGH HIS ENSLAVED MAN WILLIAM LEE (AT RIGHT)AIDED HIM THROUGHOUT THE REVOLUTION.
“I have not the least doubt, that [they] will make very excellent soldiers,” he wrote to John Jay, who was then president of Congress. “I will venture to pronounce that they cannot be put in better hands than those of Mr. Laurens.”
The odds against this plan were long. Even Washington opposed letting enslaved men into the army, although his enslaved man—Billy Lee, who’d left a wife and child to serve Washington during the war—accompanied him everywhere on the battlefield.
THE ODDS AGAINST THIS PLAN WERE LONG.
Washington’s position was especially puzzling given his tendency to argue that British taxation on colonists was tantamount to slavery. He wasn’t usually given to hyperbole. But when it came to enslaved people, he could be callously so.
Conflicted as he was, Washington had agreed in 1778 to let Rhode Island form a black regiment at the urging of Colonel James Mitchell Varnum. With the promise of freedom, Rhode Island recruited a regiment of more than two hundred black soldiers, as well as some Narragansett Indians. The men served for five years, much longer than the standard nine-month militia stint. One observer called them the sharpest-looking, most precise soldiers in the war.
In all, more than six thousand tribal citizens and enslaved black people fought on the side of the patriots. An additional five hundred free Haitian men fought for the states as well. (Many enslaved people and Indians fought for the Crown, betting they’d fare better with the king than with the colonials, particularly after Virginia’s royal governor issued a 1775 proclamation promising freedom for all slaves who fought for the Crown.) Despite Varnum’s success, and despite the great numbers of black men who fought, the case for arming enslaved men was especially tough to make in the South.
Alexander wasn’t naïve. “I foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice.”
But it was the rational and moral thing to do. “If we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out will be to offer them ourselves. An essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their muskets. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, and I believe will have a good influence upon those who remain, by opening a door to their emancipation. This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me to wish the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favour of this unfortunate class of men.”
It was no small thing to argue in favor of giving an enslaved person a gun. Alexander, who’d grown up watching acts of resistance by enslaved people and the gruesome means used to crush them, knew the risks of arming people who’d been enslaved and abused.
With the weight of Alexander’s argument, Laurens received conditional approval to arm three thousand black men. If the recruits performed faithfully, they’d be rewarded with their freedom and $50, though they could not keep their guns. The condition was challenging, though. The legislatures of South Carolina and Georgia, whose economies depended on slavery, had to approve.
They emphatically did not.
“We are much disgusted here at Congress recommending us to arm our slaves,” wrote a member of the South Carolina government. “It was received with great resentment, as a very dangerous and impolitic step.”
The South Carolina legislature threatened to surrender Charleston to the British over the matter. It didn’t come to this, but the plan was defeated. On June 30, 1779, British General Henry Clinton issued a proclamation that freed any enslaved person who sought refuge with the British Army. Alexander was discouraged. “Prejudice and private interest will be antagonists too powerful for public spirit and public good,” he wrote to Laurens.
THERE WAS NOT MUCH TO LOVE ABOUT WAR. Alexander had endured starvation. Injuries and illness. Freezing temperatures. Death. The crushing boredom of writing routine letters and military orders. The terror and confusion of the battlefield. The outrage and frustration of conspiracies. And always there was the uncertain outcome of combat against a bigger, better-equipped, more experienced enemy.
But there was friendship in the midst of the dark days. Alexander and Laurens had become the dearest of friends in the trenches of war and at Washington’s table. They were alike as brothers—smart, proud, and brave to the point of madness. Hamilton had other friends. But this bond was like no other in his life, and when Laurens went home to South Carolina to defend his state from the redcoats, Alexander missed him.
“I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you,” he wrote in April 1779. “You know … how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But you have done it and as we are generally indulged to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so awfully instilled into me.”
Laurens was in command of a battalion, something Alexander dearly wished for himself. But he was proud of his friend and happy, just as he was pleased to forward letters that had arrived back at Washington’s headquarters after Laurens’s departure. One was from Laurens’s wife and contained news of his baby daughter, who had been born during the war and whom he’d never seen.
That was another thing Alexander wanted for himself: a woman to love. A family. He suggested Laurens might find a wife for him in South Carolina. It would be hard work, he joked, but a great way for Laurens to prove his friendship.
Alexander had a checklist. “She must be young, handsome (I lay most stress upon a good shape) sensible (a little learning will do), well bred (but she must have an aversion to the word ton) chaste and tender (I am an enthusiast in my notions of fidelity and fondness) of some good nature, a great deal of generosity (she must neither love money nor scolding, for I dislike equally a termagant and an economist). In politics, I am indifferent what side she may be of; I think I have arguments that will easily convert her to mine. As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint. But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better.”
It was hard to be happy without money, he knew. He wasn’t likely to earn much, so he hoped his future wife would have some, or at least enough to cover her own extravagances. “If you should not readily meet with a lady that you think answers my description you can only advertise in the public papers and doubtless you will hear of many competitors for most of the qualifications required, who will be glad to become candidates for such a prize as I am. To excite their emulation, it will be necessary for you to give an account of the lover—his size, make, quality of mind and body, achievements, expectations, fortune, &c.”
And in case Laurens sketched Alexander’s portrait for a prospective bride, he wanted to make sure Laurens did justice to the length of his nose—by which Alexander actually meant a part somewhat lower down.
He was kidding, of course. In truth, he was not really in want of a wife, not then anyway. “I have plagues enough without desiring to add to the number that greatest of all… . Did I mean to show my wit? If I did, I am sure I have missed my aim.”
Alexander might not have been ready to marry, but he loved being around women. He’d written several flirtatious letters to Kitty Livingston, one of his friend William Livingston’s daughters, and after he figured out she wasn’t interested, he let her know that he’d be all right, and that “ALL FOR LOVE is my motto.”
All for love.
It wasn’t just about having an itchy nose, though there was that. Alexander hungered for something deeper. Laurens was with his parents in South Carolina, and Alexander hadn’t been permitted to go. The military family wasn’t the same without Laurens. And after the war ended—however it ended—Washington’s surrogate family would disperse, and Hamilton would once again be alone in the world.
“ALL FOR LOVE IS MY MOTTO.”
And it wasn’t a wonderful world to feel alone in. The war weighed like an ocean on his shoulders, enough to sink him into depression. In one dark moment, he confessed, “I am chagrined and unhappy, but I submit. In short, Laurens, I am disgusted with everything in this world but yourself and very few more honest fellows and I have no other wish than as soon as possible to make a brilliant exit. ’Tis a weakness; but I feel I am not fit for this terrestreal Country.”
WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS IN MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY, WERE MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE THAN THOSE IN VALLEY FORGE.
But there was light in the midst of despair as Washington’s family established winter camp once more in Morristown. This second encampment was much better than the first, and the presence of families nearby gave opportunities for socializing, even joy. There were dinners and music and dress-up and dancing. The officers—Alexander chief among them—chipped in money to put on dances at a storehouse near headquarters. They served food and drink, and people hitched their horses to sleighs and drove through snowy, dark nights to bask in the warmth and cheer. A few women caught Alexander’s hungry eye early in the winter, and his fellow officers teased him about them.
The arrival of Elizabeth Schuyler changed everything. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, petite, and strong, she delighted him.
“Hamilton is a gone man,” one of his roommates at headquarters observed.
Eliza was staying nearby with the Cochran family in their two-story clapboard house with a tiny front porch. The house was a quarter mile from headquarters, and Alexander visited every night, bounding up the five steps to the front door.
One evening he returned to headquarters after a giddy night spent wooing Eliza. The sentry, who knew Alexander well, asked him for the password. He couldn’t remember. Never mind that he was fluent in Greek, Latin, and French. Never mind that he understood complex principles of economics and warfare. That password, whatever it was, had flown out of his skull entirely. He stood at the door, hand to his forehead, trying his best to pry it from the lobes of his brain. But a few hours in Eliza’s intoxicating company had erased it. The sentinel wouldn’t let Alexander pass. Finally, a fourteen-year-old boy, who was no doubt acquainted with the spell of hormones, coughed up the password, along with the observation that “the soldier-lover was embarrassed.”
ELIZABETH SCHUYLER CAME FROM A FAMILY OF BEAUTIFUL AND TALENTED SISTERS.
Eliza had many charms at her disposal. She was the second daughter of a wealthy and powerful family. Her father was a general, and all the Schuyler daughters were intelligent, attractive, and musical. They were romantic, too—four out of five of them eloped, including one who escaped her bedroom on a rope ladder.
What’s more, everybody loved Eliza. She was physically fit and energetic, and worldly in a way Alexander loved. She’d learned to play backgammon from none other than Benjamin Franklin. Her formal education was slight, but she had curiosity about the world in general. Her father had kept her informed about the war, and she had met many political leaders.
Alexander was so bent on impressing the family he sent a letter to Eliza’s sister Peggy: “She is most unmercifully handsome and so perverse that she has none of those pretty affectations which are the prerogatives of beauty. Her good sense is destitute of that happy mixture of vanity and ostentation which would make it conspicuous to the whole tribe of fools and foplings… . In short, she is so strange a creature that she possess all the beauties virtues and graces of her sex without any of those amiable defects.”
Eliza, who was equally smitten, had the time of her life that winter at her aunt and uncle’s house. She once asked Alexander why he sighed. He wrote a poem in response, which she put in a little leather bag and wore around her neck for the rest of her life:
ANSWER TO THE INQUIRY WHY I SIGHED
BEFORE NO MORTAL EVER KNEW
A LOVE LIKE MINE SO TENDER—TRUE—
COMPLETELY WRETCHED—YOU AWAY—
AND BUT HALF BLESSED E’EN WHILE YOU STAY.
IF PRESENT LOVE [ILLEGIBLE] FACE
DENY YOU TO MY FOND EMBRACE
NO JOY UNMIXED MY BOSOM WARMS
BUT WHEN MY ANGEL’S IN MY ARMS
ELIZA HAMILTON THOUGHT MARTHA WASHINGTON WAS AN IDEAL WOMAN.
She and Martha Washington—Alexander’s surrogate mother—rapidly developed a fondness for each other, too. The general’s wife was almost fifty, small and plump, with frosty hair. Eliza loved her.
“She wore a plain, brown gown of homespun stuff, a large white handkerchief, a neat cap, and her plain gold wedding ring, which she had worn for more than twenty years,” Eliza remembered. “She was always my ideal of a true woman.”
Was Eliza also Alexander’s ideal woman? In many ways. But as much as he gushed about her, he also couldn’t resist flirting with one of her sisters. Angelica was a year older. Beautiful, elegant, worldly, and vivacious. She spoke French, unlike Eliza. She had a husband already, businessman John Barker Church, or she might have been Alexander’s first choice. The relationship fed a part of them that wasn’t fully satisfied by their more stolid spouses, a part that needed a bit of intellectual fire and ambition.
“I LOVE YOU MORE AND MORE EVERY HOUR.”
As spring came to Morristown, so did certainty about his future. Hamilton wrote to Eliza’s parents asking permission to marry her. On April 8, 1780, they agreed. As soon as he had a free moment, he wrote to his future mother-in-law: “Though I have not the happiness of a personal acquaintance with you, I am no stranger to the qualities which distinguish your character and these make the relation in which I stand to you, not one of the least pleasing circumstances of my union with your daughter.”
He didn’t let Laurens know of his romance and engagement until June 30. Laurens had been taken prisoner by the British when Charleston was captured in May, and Alexander was thinking of that when he explained what had become of his heart.
“I give up my liberty to Miss Schuyler,” he wrote. “She is a good-hearted girl who, I am sure, will never play the termagant. Though not a genius, she has good sense enough to be agreeable, and though not a beauty, she has fine black eyes, is rather handsome, and has every other requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy.” The marriage, he promised Laurens, would not diminish their friendship.
All summer long, Hamilton poured his heart out through his pen to his fiancée. Some letters were so long he ran out of space—so he turned the page sideways and wrote up the margin.
“I love you more and more every hour. The sweet softness and delicacy of your mind and manners, the elevation of your sentiments, the real goodness of your heart, its tenderness to me, the beauties of your face and person, your unpretending good sense and that innocent simplicity and frankness which pervade your actions; all these appear to me with increasing amiableness and place you in my estimation above all the rest of your sex.”
In another letter, he wrote, “My heart overflows with every thing for you, that admiration, esteem and love can inspire. I would this moment give the world to be near you only to kiss your sweet hand.”
He kept her up to date on her father’s health, and he asked what she wanted him to wear to their wedding. He also worried. He once dreamed she was holding another man’s hand, and he feared his poverty would be a burden.
“Tell me my pretty damsel have you made up your mind upon the subject of housekeeping? Do you soberly relish the pleasure of being a poor mans wife? Have you learned to think a home spun preferable to a brocade and the rumbling of a waggon wheel to the musical rattling of a coach and six? … If you cannot my Dear we are playing a comedy of all in the wrong, and you should correct the mistake before we begin to act the tragedy of the unhappy couple.”
Eliza was certain Alexander was the man for her. She adored housekeeping and had been her mother’s own chief of staff in tending the Schuyler home. Money didn’t move her. His bravery and brilliance did. She believed in him, in the good he’d done for the world, and in all the good works he had yet to do. She would take care of his children and his home, and, as much as possible, be a partner to him in every endeavor.
Eliza and her family saw to the wedding planning while he was preoccupied with the business of war—which had taken dramatic turns over the summer and fall. At last the day came. The wedding, on December 14, 1780, was a small affair held in the southeast parlor of the Schuylers’ two-story brick mansion. The room was cozy but high-ceilinged, with elaborate wood paneling, soaring windows, and a crackling fireplace.
Eliza’s large family attended. Alexander’s friend Major James McHenry was the only one able to accompany him from headquarters. Alexander had invited his brother and father, but neither was able to join. He promised Eliza he’d make sure she met his father someday. Alexander hadn’t seen the man since he was a boy, but he hadn’t given up on him.
“I shall again present him with his black-eyed daughter, and tell him how much her attention deserves his affection and will make the blessing of his gray hairs,” he wrote.
George and Martha Washington also stayed behind, but the general sent congratulations. “Mrs. Washington most cordially joins me, in compliments of congratulations to Mrs. Hamilton & yourself, on the late happy event of your marriage & in wishes to see you both at head Quarters.”
During the ceremony, Alexander carried a small, white linen handkerchief. Elizabeth’s was larger and more ornate, its edges embroidered with flowers. The ring he gave her was unusual: made of two slender gold bands that swung open. One was engraved with ALEXANDER 1780. The other, ELIZABETH. This ring, with its two finely wrought halves, would stay on her finger for nearly seventy-five years, through times of happiness and times of heartbreak.
For now, though, there was joy. Hamilton’s heart was full. He had a family, a real one, large and lovely, at last.
FOR THEIR WEDDING, ALEXANDER GAVE ELIZA A GIMMEL RING MADE WITH INTERLOCKING BANDS INSCRIBED WITH BOTH OF THEIR NAMES AND THE YEAR OF THEIR MARRIAGE.
BUT ALL WASN’T GLEE AND ROSES. AS ALEXANDER planned his life with Eliza, the irritating and overrated General Horatio Gates continued to undermine Washington, and by extension, Alexander. Washington was trying to play nice with Gates. Gates had refused a command at the fort of West Point, claiming he was too old, and even took a personal leave for a few months. But by June 1780, the army needed him back to lead a southern campaign.
Gates was nervous about the charge. He had a depleted army and not enough funds, spirits were low, and he wouldn’t have Benedict Arnold, who’d made all the difference at Saratoga. Ultimately, Gates botched the job. He failed to deploy scouts, and his army of four thousand marched straight into two thousand British troops. At the Battle of Camden, 80 percent of the American forces were killed, hurt, or taken prisoner. Gates himself fled on horseback, abandoning his own troops.
HORATIO GATES LED THE AMERICANS TO A BRUTAL DEFEAT NEAR CAMDEN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
Alexander wrote to Eliza about the debacle.
“Gates has had a total defeat near Cambden in South Carolina.” The vigor of his retreat—he covered 180 miles in three days—proved he wasn’t too old and weak to fight. Just too much of a poltroon. “He has confirmed in this instance the opinion I always had of him.”
Meanwhile, Washington—often with Alexander as his scribe—navigated the twisty politics of war. It was true that Congress had denied Benedict Arnold a promotion in 1777 after a series of extraordinary deeds, which had left him with a leg shattered by a musket ball. Washington supported Arnold despite a court-martial and at last rewarded Arnold’s leadership with a huge army command. He’d be in charge of the light infantry for a planned attack on New York. Using his leg as an excuse, Arnold surprised Washington by turning down the post. He asked, instead, for the command of West Point. Washington offered it without hesitation in June 1780.
Because of its location, West Point was a strategic fort. It was also a mess. There was no guard house, nowhere to store gunpowder, nowhere to keep prisoners. Arnold might be just the man to turn things around. Not long after Arnold took the post, Washington planned an inspection. Two aides rode ahead to let Arnold know the general was on his way to Robinson House, where Arnold and his wife, Peggy, were staying. Arnold, who’d been upstairs with Peggy, called for a horse. He galloped off, promising to return in an hour.
BENEDICT ARNOLD WAS ONE OF THE BRAVEST AND BEST AMERICAN SOLDIERS … UNTIL HE BETRAYED THEM.
Suspecting nothing, Washington, Alexander, and the others arrived. They ate breakfast. When they arrived at West Point for inspection, they found it in disarray. Strangely, they couldn’t find Arnold. When they returned to Robinson House, the reason became clear.
A packet of letters had been discovered in the boot of a British officer who’d been caught in civilian clothes behind enemy lines—which made everyone suspect he was a spy. The papers, which were in Arnold’s handwriting, made it clear he intended to sacrifice West Point to the British, and maybe even Washington and his military family in the process.
“Arnold has betrayed us!” Washington said.
It was unthinkable and yet undeniable.
Alexander set out immediately after him, but he was too late. Arnold was already on board the Vulture en route to British-held New York City. When Alexander returned, he found Arnold’s young, attractive blond wife in a state of madness.
IT WAS UNTHINKABLE AND YET UNDENIABLE.
“It was the most affecting scene I ever was witness to,” he told Eliza. “She for a considerable time intirely lost her senses. The General went up to see her and she upbraided him with being in a plot to murder her child; one moment she raved; another she melted into tears; sometimes she pressed her infant to her bosom and lamented its fate occasioned by the imprudence of its father in a manner that would have pierced insensibility itself.”
She’d suckered him. Later, when Peggy Arnold was permitted to leave, she joined her old friend Theodosia Prevost, who was married to a British colonel stationed in the West Indies. Peggy told Theodosia she’d tricked Alexander and Washington with her performance—a tidbit Theodosia eventually passed on to her secret American lover, Aaron Burr.
In the midst of the drama, West Point was more vulnerable than ever. Alexander, taking charge, sent word to Nathanael Greene to send reinforcements.
MAJOR JOHN ANDRÉ WAS EVERYTHING ALEXANDER ADMIRED.
Meanwhile, the British officer, Major John André, was being held prisoner at a tavern in Tappan, New York. André was everything Alexander admired: handsome, educated, well traveled, a rising military star with refined manners and elegance. Tall and smart, with a gentle expression, he was a valued aide to a military leader. In many ways, he was Alexander’s mirror image on the British side of the war.
André’s general, Henry Clinton, made the case for his immediate return. Washington wouldn’t hear of it. This was no common prisoner of war. He was out of uniform and on the wrong side of the front lines, which made him a spy. That meant he wasn’t entitled to an officer’s privileges. Above all, Washington was furious that the British had corrupted one of his most trusted and gifted men. André would pay the price.
AN ARTIST IMAGINED JOHN ANDRÉ’S JOURNEY FROM THE VULTURE TO THE SHORE OF HAVERSTRAW BAY ON THE HUDSON RIVER.
André’s plight hit Alexander hard. If André was in fact a spy, and not an unlucky man caught in the wrong clothes on the wrong side of the line, he’d swing from the gallows. But if he were to be treated as the officer he was, he’d get a more honorable death by gunfire.
Washington had Alexander write up the offense for a board of officers who’d sit in judgment. It pained Alexander to do so. “He came within our lines in the night on an interview with Major General Arnold and in an assumed character; and was taken within our lines, in a disguised habit, with a pass under a feigned name and with the inclosed papers concealed upon him.”
HE BEGGED FOR AN HONORABLE DEATH.
André admitted he’d done these things. He begged for an honorable death nonetheless. “Let me hope, Sir,” he wrote to Washington, “that if ought in my character impresses you with esteem towards me, if ought in my Misfortunes marks me as the Victim of policy and not of Resentment, I shall experience the Operation of these Feelings in your Breast by being informed that I am not to die on a Gibbet.”
He was found guilty by the board and sentenced to death by hanging, exactly the thing he feared.
Alexander was devastated. He’d been keeping André company in his confinement, chatting about art, poetry, music, and travel. He’d encouraged his friends at camp to do the same, to make André’s last few days of life gentler. Some people wanted Alexander to propose a prisoner exchange—Arnold for André. Alexander knew André would say no, and he didn’t want André to think he was dishonorable himself, so he didn’t propose it. He did slip a letter, signed AB, to General Henry Clinton when a group of British officers came to Washington to plead for André’s life.
Sir,
It has so happened in the course of events, that Major André Adjutant General of your army has fallen into our hands. He was captured in such a way as will according to the laws of war justly affect his life. Though an enemy his virtues and his accomplishments are admired. Perhaps he might be released for General Arnold, delivered up without restriction or condition, which is the prevailing wish. Major André’s character and situation seem to demand this of your justice and friendship. Arnold appears to have been the guilty author of the mischief; and ought more properly to be the victim, as there is great reason to believe he meditated a double treachery, and had arranged the interview in such a manner, that if discovered in the first instance, he might have it in his power to sacrifice Major André to his own safety.
I have the honor to be &c
A B
Alexander wasn’t naïve about the political challenges of prisoner exchanges. For two years, he’d negotiated these exchanges with the British, a frustrating exercise. He complained about these men to Eliza. “One of their principal excellencies consists in swallowing a large quantity of wine every day.”
Nonetheless, he hoped André’s life could be spared by intervention from the man at the top. Clinton refused. It would have meant death for Arnold and an end to the possibility of turning patriots into spies. He was willing to exchange other prisoners and was outraged that Washington was considering André a spy when he was simply a messenger.
ANDRÉ HAD ONE LAST REQUEST: “YOU WILL WITNESS TO THE WORLD THAT I DIE LIKE A BRAVE MAN.”
Others, including Benedict Arnold, wrote on André’s behalf. “I shall think myself bound by every tie of Duty and honor to retaliate on such unhappy Persons of Your Army as may fall within my power.” Arnold was livid. As part of this retaliation, he outed Hercules Mulligan as a spy to the British military in New York. Mulligan was jailed but eventually released for lack of evidence—his cover was that good.
The letters for André arrived too late to make a difference.
On October 2, 1780, André smiled, bowed his head, and strode to the hillside gallows wearing his officer’s uniform. It was 5:00 p.m., one day after the board’s decision. With dignity, André walked past Alexander and the rest of Washington’s men, including Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington’s spymaster, who afterward wept.
When André saw the gallows, he hesitated. “Must I then die in this manner?”
It was unavoidable, he was told.
“I am reconciled to my fate,” André said, “but not to the mode.” Then he reassured himself. “It will be but a momentary pang.” He sprang onto the cart that would lift him to the height of the hanging rope, and he made his final request: “You will witness to the world that I die like a brave man.”
“MUST I THEN DIE IN THIS MANNER?”
A blindfold was tied. The cart moved. André swung. And then he was dead. Straightaway, his body was lowered into the nearby earth and covered in soil.
Alexander honored André’s last request, writing a four-thousand-word letter to Laurens. “Among the extraordinary circumstances that attended him, in the midst of his enemies, he died universally esteemed and universally regretted.”
He seethed that Washington had been so stubborn and that such a good man had died in dishonorable fashion. Nothing was more important than a man’s honor. At this point, he wasn’t sure how much more of the general he could bear.
Life had grown darker than ever in Washington’s shadow. Alexander complained about it in a letter to Laurens. That depression he’d felt earlier was back with a vengeance. “I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. This whole is a mass of fools and knaves.”
As much as Eliza made him glad to be alive, the idea of glory beckoned intensely. It was not enough to be George Washington’s chief of staff. Alexander wanted to win the war with his own leadership skills and military know-how. He’d pay for glory with his own blood if need be. He was done with paper and ink.
In the months leading up to his wedding, he’d asked for a field command and Washington refused. Again. Winter was coming. So was a huge and life-altering fight between Alexander and the man who loved and frustrated him most: His Excellency, the leader of the Continental Army, George Washington.
