Alexander Hamilton, Revolutionary

A LEXANDER HAD NEVER wanted to be an aide. He’d turned it down the first times he was offered, becoming an artillery captain instead. It was only the prestige and honor of George Washington’s request, plus his lingering illness, that had made Alexander agree to it in the first place. He’d only ever wanted the chance to distinguish himself on the battlefield.

He’d been trapped behind a desk nearly four years. In that time, he rarely took days off, only for his wedding and when he was bedridden, and not always then. True, he had nowhere in particular to go. New York, his former home, was in the hands of the British. His school-era friends Elias Boudinot, William Livingston, Robert Troup, and others were engaged in the war effort. Hugh Knox and his family were reachable only by letter.

Washington and the rest of his aides had become Alexander’s family. So he’d stuck with them. He’d made an enormous difference on behalf of the Continental Army and the revolutionary cause—everything from writing letters to recruiting and managing spies to making key decisions on behalf of Washington. He’d weighed in on military strategy, planned attacks, translated for foreign allies, and negotiated on behalf of prisoners of war.

But he was still just a lieutenant colonel. He’d have had a higher rank if he hadn’t taken a desk job. More people would have known his name and known his worth.

The politics of promotions were ridiculous, and they’d been part of the reason Benedict Arnold became a traitor. The letters Washington had sent to Arnold after he was denied a well-deserved promotion, urging Arnold not to make hasty judgments—Alexander Hamilton had written those on Washington’s behalf. So he knew and felt the frustration of politics and the bumbling of Congress when it came to appointments. Even von Steuben hadn’t been given the command he deserved after literally writing the book on how to run an army. How was Alexander, who had no family connections and no record of glory, ever supposed to be noticed?

THE FRUSTRATION WAS DEEP AND GROWING.

The frustration was deep and growing. Friends like John Laurens received field commands even though Alexander had better qualifications. And then Laurens was offered another post Alexander wanted: secretary to the minister plenipotentiary to France. It was a big diplomatic job, and he could have negotiated on behalf of America with the French.

Laurens had wanted the position to go to Alexander. “I am sorry that you are not better known to Congress; great stress is laid upon the probity and patriotism of the person to be employed in this commission. I have given my testimony of you in this and the other equally essential points.”

After Laurens turned it down, Congress’s votes were split between other candidates, and no one ended up in the post. Eliza’s father also lobbied on behalf of opportunities for Alexander. Lafayette was trying, too. He’d requested that Alexander help plan an offensive against Staten Island in October 1780. Washington refused. In November, Hamilton vented some of his frustration to Washington:

“There was a batalion without a field officer, the command of which I thought, as it was accidental, might be given to me without an inconvenience. I made an application for it through the Marquis, who informe me of your refusal on two principles—one that giving me a whole batalion might be a subject of dissatisfaction, the other that if an accident should happen to me in the present state of your family, you would be embarrassed for the necessary assistance.”

When the Staten Island attack was called off, Alexander made the best case he could for command of the next one. And then Washington called off that, too. He didn’t put Alexander up for promotions despite recommendations from Lafayette and Greene. When Congress was looking for a superintendent of finance, Congressman John Sullivan asked Washington whether Alexander knew anything about the subject.

Washington stayed mum. “I am unable to ansr because I have never entered upon a discussion of this post with him.” Though he gave Alexander a recommendation, the general wildly undersold him. Not only did Alexander tote huge volumes of finance with him from camp to camp, but he’d written correspondence with Washington on the subject. They’d been in each other’s company for nearly four years. Alexander burst with passion and knowledge on the topic. Washington just didn’t want to let him go.

Laurens, meanwhile, got an even better job offer, to be an actual minister to France—which he took this time. Laurens had been gone for a while, of course, but other aides had departed in October 1780, forcing Alexander to postpone his wedding to handle the swelling workload. When Alexander did return after marrying Eliza, Washington’s family had one aide left besides Alexander, Tench Tilghman, and he was too sick to work. So it was only Alexander and Washington, both of whom itched for the battlefield. They hadn’t had any combat of note since Monmouth, and the months since had been awful.

TENCH TILGHMAN WAS THE ONLY OTHER AIDE WORKING BESIDE ALEXANDER FOR A GRUMPY WASHINGTON DURING THE WINTER OF 1780–81.

FIGHTING TENDED TO DIE DOWN DURING THE winter. As a result, tensions grew in the cramped quarters, which Washington found little better than those of Valley Forge. Washington was moody. He had whipped people on the battlefield with his cane when they’d disappointed him. He’d laced Charles Lee with an epic stream of castigation at Monmouth. One witness said his face during a rage looked like a thundercloud about to blast lightning. Now Alexander bore the brunt of the storms.

Pent-up frustrations came to a head in the middle of February 1781. Washington passed Alexander on the stairs and requested a meeting. Alexander promised he’d be right there, but first he dropped off a letter with Tench Tilghman. Before Alexander could make his way back to Washington, Lafayette held him by the button as they chatted.

When Alexander made his way back up the stairs, Washington loomed at the top, his face stormy.

“Colonel Hamilton,” he said, “you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I must tell you, Sir, you treat me with disrespect.”

Disrespect. Alexander had been nothing but respectful. He’d served the man loyally for four years, postponing his own wedding in the process. He’d been denied promotions. Recognition. The chance to prove himself on the battlefield and to help win this frustrating, endless, awful war. He’d put up with Washington’s moods and put off his dreams, and now he was done. This was exactly why he’d never wanted to be dependent on anyone but himself for his success in the first place.

As much as Alexander didn’t want to cause an argument with the great man, when one presented itself, he seized the opportunity, and he quit. (But not without disputing Washington’s perception of time. He hadn’t kept him waiting ten minutes. It had been two at most.) He went home to Eliza immediately, leaving Lafayette and Tilghman to figure out the meaning of the argument they’d overheard in the cramped office.

ONCE AGAIN, A STORM—BUT THIS TIME A HUMAN one—changed Alexander’s life. He was no longer part of Washington’s family, but the loss was survivable because he’d been brought into another. He had his wife. He had her parents and sisters. He had somewhere to go. And even though Washington wanted to make up before even an hour had passed, Alexander held his ground.

This didn’t mean he left headquarters for good straightaway. It also didn’t mean his esteem for Washington was less. He admired the man’s integrity and leadership abilities. Still, it was time Washington repented his terrible moods. Alexander would endure them no more.

He continued working at headquarters until the end of April 1781. He kept the rupture between himself and the general secret for the most part. It wouldn’t do to have anyone question Washington’s authority. Living elsewhere with Eliza, he started searching for a field command, sending out a discreet inquiry to Nathanael Greene. Lafayette, who wished Alexander would remain at headquarters, offered him command of a Virginia artillery unit, though Alexander didn’t pursue it.

A few days after Lafayette’s offer, Alexander wrote a letter to the general, asking him directly for a command.

“Your Excellency knows I have been in actual service since the beginning of 76. I began in the line and had I continued there, I ought in justice to have been more advanced in rank than I now am. I believe my conduct in the different capacities in which I have acted has appeared to the officers of the army in general such as to merit their confidence and esteem; and I cannot suppose them to be so ungenerous as not to see me with pleasure put into a situation still to exercise the disposition I have always had of being useful to the United States. I mention these things only to show that I do not apprehend, the same difficulties can exist in my case (which is peculiar) that have opposed the appointment to commands of some other officers not belonging to what is called the line.”

WASHINGTON WASTED NO TIME IN SAYING NO.

Washington wasted no time in saying no. He didn’t want to push his luck politically.

No one with sense would dispute Alexander’s abilities. Washington had to balance the need to reward Alexander’s work with the needs of the men in the field who also merited promotion.

“I beg you to be assured I am only influenced by the reasons which I have mentioned,” Washington said.

Months passed. Alexander’s father-in-law tried to get him an appointment to Congress as a representative of New York. It fell through. Meanwhile, Alexander and Eliza had a baby on the way. He missed her terribly when circumstances forced them to be apart, and the only thing that made his frustrating existence at headquarters bearable as he waited for a field command was the letters she wrote.

“Indeed Betsey, I am intirely changed—changed for the worse I confess—lost to all the public and splendid passions and absorbed in you. Amiable woman! nature has given you a right to be esteemed to be cherished, to be beloved; but she has given you no right to monopolize a man, whom, to you I may say, she has endowed with qualities to be extensively useful to society. Yes my Betsey, I will encourage my reason to dispute your empire and restrain it within proper bounds, to restore me to myself and to the community. Assist me in this; reproach me for an unmanly surrender of that to love and teach me that your esteem will be the price of my acting well my part as a member of society.”

YET HE YEARNED TO FIGHT.

As he waited for the right opportunity, he wrote a long letter to the man who had become the superintendent of finance, Robert Morris. The letter, some of which Eliza transcribed, addressed solutions to the problems that had crippled the war effort and would hamper the fledgling nation. Morris was impressed.

Alexander also wrote the first “Continentalist” essays published in the New-York Packet. In these essays, he examined the flaws in the United States’ newly ratified Articles of Confederation and how the nation might shift from the power structure of war to peacetime governance. Civil war was a risk without a strong federal government. He was not quite twenty-seven, but he saw clearly the systems and structure the nation would need.

ROBERT MORRIS, THE SUPERINTENDENT OF FINANCE FOR THE UNITED STATES, WAS IMPRESSED BY ALEXANDER’S KNOWLEDGE OF ECONOMICS.

Finally, on the last day of July, orders from Washington came. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton would lead a battalion. He chose his college friend Nicholas Fish as his second in command. Then he made sure his men had shoes to wear, as well as tents, paper, kettles, and pails. Alexander would not be defeated for lack of shoes and gear. He’d learned those lessons of war well.

MEANWHILE, TERROR STRUCK ELIZA, WHO WAS in Albany. During an oppressively hot afternoon, three guards at the Schuyler mansion were napping in the cellar, and three more were lying on the lawn, trying to cool off. The family was gathered in the front hall when a servant announced that a stranger was at the gate.

Although Schuyler was retired from service, he was still helping the Continental Army. The British had put a bounty on his head, making him a target of kidnappers. Schuyler had been warned of this, and he was ready. The family barred the doors. Philip dashed upstairs to alert the guards with a shot outside his window. His family followed.

A group of twenty Tories and Indians burst into the house. Then Mrs. Schuyler remembered her baby—she’d left her asleep downstairs in her cradle. She rushed toward the stairs, but Philip held her back. Her life mattered more than their baby’s.

The other Schuyler women wouldn’t stand for it. Because Eliza and Angelica were pregnant, Peggy dashed down two flights of stairs to rescue her baby sister. The head of the raiders, thinking she was a servant, blocked her way.

ELIZA’S FATHER, PHILIP SCHUYLER, HAD A BRITISH BOUNTY ON HIS HEAD.

Peggy rescued the girl, and as she was racing up the stairs, an Indian threw a tomahawk at her. The blade sank into the banister. Philip Schuyler called out the window to trick the raiders into thinking they were surrounded. They fled with three guards and some of the family’s silver.

Alexander’s heart pounded when he heard the tale. “It has felt all the horror and anguish attached to the idea of your being yourself and seeing your father in the power of ruffians as unfeeling as unprincipled; for such I dare say composed the band. I am inexpressably happy to learn that my [love] has suffered nothing in this disagreeable adventure, and equally so to find that you seem at presen[t] to be confirmed in your hopes.”

This war had to end. He wanted only to be happy and alone with Eliza, his better angel. Forget the glories of public service. He wanted the comforts of private life. But first, he had to bring his battalion to the South. He had no time to say good-bye to her in person. The army had to race, stealthily, to Yorktown.

A LITTLE MORE THAN THREE YEARS BEFORE that fateful moment, an idea had struck. It was a risky notion—trading a sure thing for theoretical benefit down the road. But this was where Alexander shone: seeing the vast landscape of the future and understanding its contours.

The question at hand concerned the fate of General Henry Clinton, the British commander who’d made himself into a fat target. His predecessor, General Howe, had botched things for the British in Saratoga. The loss was devastating in other ways for the Crown. Chief among the blows: it had drawn the French to the American cause. As a result, the British had replaced General Howe with Clinton.

BRITISH GENERAL SIR HENRY CLINTON WAS INCOMPETENT—AND ALEXANDER MADE GOOD USE OF THAT.

Howe had never impressed Alexander. Clinton impressed him even less. Clinton had taken over a house on Broadway in New York, one with an ample garden overlooking the Hudson River. Every afternoon, he trotted himself out to a backyard pavilion for a little nap. It would be so easy, one of Washington’s men suggested, to sneak up at low tide and capture the general as he snoozed.

And it sounded like an excellent plan until Alexander voiced an objection. To capture Clinton “would be our misfortune, since the British government could not find another commander so incompetent to send in his place.”

THE BRITISH GENERAL CHARLES CORNWALLIS WAS KNOWN AS A “MODERN HANNIBAL.”

Washington agreed they were, in fact, better off with a nincompoop in command. Now they were poised to see if this chess move would at last pay off.

Another British general, Charles Cornwallis, was nobody’s nincompoop. Nathanael Greene called Cornwallis “a modern Hannibal.” Lafayette considered him the best the British had. But Cornwallis was under the command of Clinton, and in June, Clinton ordered Cornwallis to set up a defensive post at either Williamsburg or Yorktown.

Cornwallis balked. These spots were vulnerable to attack by sea. But Clinton held firm, arguing that it was unlikely for the Americans and their allies to have a superior naval fleet any time soon.

Clinton recommended a spot between the York and James Rivers. Cornwallis did as ordered. He took his nine thousand troops—loyalists, redcoats, and Hessians—and occupied Yorktown and Gloucester Point, the same spot Washington had considered dangerous because soldiers stationed there could be trapped between a naval force and an army. All it would take was a few temporary fortifications to block a retreat.

Cornwallis got unlucky. As he established a fort at Yorktown, the French fleet from the West Indies was on its way to nearby Chesapeake Bay. That meant the Americans had access to the naval force they needed—the one Clinton doubted would arrive.

Washington leapt at the opportunity. Everything depended on speed and secrecy. Alexander, his loyalties now with his pregnant wife, let Eliza know where he was headed, and how hard it would be for him to be away from her:

“I cannot announce the fatal necessity without feeling every thing that a fond husband can feel. I am unhappy my Betsey. I am unhappy beyond expression, I am unhappy because I am to be so remote from you, because I am to hear from you less frequently than I have been accustomed to do.”

There was a chance Cornwallis would slip out of the trap. Over the next fifteen days, Alexander and his well-shod men marched two hundred miles to the swift beat established by the fife and drum. They penetrated forests. They crossed rivers. They passed through cities while inhabitants watched from the open windows of their houses.

THE CHESAPEAKE BAY AND THE YORK AND JAMES RIVERS MEET NEAR WHERE CORNWALLIS WAS TRAPPED.

By September 10, the French fleet had reached Chesapeake Bay with dozens of ships and three thousand troops—even after holding off the British fleet during the Battle of Capes on September 5. Cornwallis was trapped—the British navy could not get through now and needed to return to New York to repair damaged ships. The usually gloomy Washington was so giddy he waved his hat and handkerchief like a happy child. The stars had aligned themselves beyond his dreams.

Alexander wrote to Eliza: “Circumstances that have just come to my knowledge, assure me that our operations will be expeditious, as well as our success certain.”

Cornwallis fortified his defenses, rationed food, and waited for Clinton’s reinforcements. They were on their way, Clinton promised.

THE USUALLY GLOOMY WASHINGTON WAS GIDDY.

But all was not well for the Continental Army. The soldiers hadn’t been paid and refused to go farther. Robert Morris and Washington had to make an appeal to the French commander, Comte de Rochambeau, for a loan. Rochambeau gave Washington half of what he had. Cash in hand, the troops continued.

Alexander and his men marched a few miles on September 9 to Chesapeake Bay, where they boarded ships and sailed south. Days into their journey, the weather turned stormy. High winds whipped at the rain drumming from cloud-darkened skies.

Alexander’s mood darkened. He wrote Eliza, “How chequered is human life! How precarious is happiness! How easily do we often part with it for a shadow! These are the reflections that frequently intrude themselves upon me, with a painful application. I am going to do my duty. Our operations will be so conducted, as to economize the lives of men. Exert your fortitude and rely upon heaven.”

The skies cleared. They sailed a period of days until they came ashore south of Williamsburg and began to march once more. At last, by September 24, they were within miles of the British hunkered down in Yorktown—450 long miles from where they’d begun.

The next day, the French admiral, Comte de Grasse, got cold feet. British ships were sailing toward him, and he began to doubt his chances in battle. What’s more, should a gale strike, they would be exposed. He let Washington know he planned to set sail as soon as a favorable wind arrived.

Washington couldn’t believe it. Victory was at hand, and his ally was throwing it away.

But then, de Grasse found his courage and decided to stay. The game was back on.

Meanwhile, the French and American allies crept toward their quarry, trading shots with the enemy every so often. On September 29, Alexander and his men crossed a muddy bog. The British launched cannonballs, blasting off one man’s leg and killing three others, before retreating that night to their inner defenses. Washington tasted victory. They’d need to move quickly. “The present moment offers in prospect the epoch which will decide American Independence and the Glory and superiority of the Allies.”

For six days, Alexander and the rest of the army feverishly bundled sticks to reinforce earthwork fortifications, all while British and Hessian forces blasted cannons at them.

Things could not have looked worse for Cornwallis. On October 2, Clinton wrote to let him know the fleet was delayed a few days for repairs. Cornwallis was trapped with no way out and no immediate salvation. To complicate matters, enslaved people eager for freedom had escaped their masters and come down the river to the British encampment in Portsmouth. Many were infected by smallpox and were dying by the scores. Cornwallis regretfully had to abandon them in Portsmouth when he evacuated for Yorktown.

Many of his troops were sick and hungry, too, having no food but rotting meat and wormy biscuits. Doctors who bled the ill found pink blood, indicating the men were anemic. One in four had typhoid fever. Even though the ill black men had been left behind, smallpox found its way to Yorktown, infecting white loyalists and black recruits alike. Cornwallis was down to thirty-five hundred men fit for combat.

The French and American forces were sixteen thousand strong. The Continental Army, which had once been a collection of poorly trained men who drank more than they ought and sometimes wandered away from duty, worked through the night on October 2, digging parallel trenches and dragging cannons and loaded wagons behind horses. They’d distracted the British by sending a detachment to fire elsewhere, and while the enemy took aim, they’d prepared a two-mile line and laid foundations for a pair of redoubts within six hundred yards of enemy lines. It was an astonishing feat of productivity, coordination, and determination.

THE CONTINENTAL ARMY WORKED DAY AND NIGHT TO PIN THE BRITISH IN PLACE AT YORKTOWN.

On October 7, after days of hard labor, Alexander moved his infantry into place. They planted flags and, accompanied by the drums of war, Alexander gave his men orders to rise out of the trench and run through ceremonial steps of soldiery. This was madness. He was risking his men’s lives for no reason. But in doing so, he stunned the British so soundly that they didn’t fire a shot. (They also happened to be out of range.)

On October 12, still emotionally feverish, he wrote Eliza. He scolded her lightly for not sending him more letters and teased that she should make it up to him by giving birth to a son, because he wouldn’t be able to resist the charms of a daughter. His heart melted at the thought of a baby in his wife’s arms. He knew it was distracting him from the business of soldiering. Not for long, though. Not for long.

“Five days more the enemy must capitulate or abandon their present position; if they do the latter it will detain us ten days longer; and then I fly to you. Prepare to receive me in your bosom. Prepare to receive me decked in all your beauty, fondness and goodness. With reluctance I bid you adieu.”

Firing against the British had begun in earnest three days earlier. The dead and the wounded lay everywhere, minus arms, legs, and even heads. The wounded who lived cried out into air made thick with the smoke of burning houses.

Clinton had never imagined the Americans could do such damage in so short a time. Cornwallis, meanwhile, reeled to learn reinforcements were again delayed. There was no way he could last until the middle of November. His only chance was to escape via the York River, but his men were dropping swiftly under blazing artillery fire, and the French and American troops kept digging closer by the hour.

By October 14, the second trench was done. The patriots needed only to take over a pair of British defensive redoubts to win. Washington put Lafayette in charge of one force. Lafayette put one of his aides in charge of the other. Alexander was incensed. He had seniority over Lafayette’s man, but Lafayette wouldn’t change his mind, so Alexander fired off a letter to Washington making his case.

For once, Washington agreed. No doubt he didn’t want the most thrilling campaign of the war to be led entirely by the French. But it also might have been time to give Alexander the command he’d craved for years.

Alexander, jubilant, ran to his tent to tell Nicholas Fish. “We have it! We have it!”

Washington ordered a swift and silent bayonet attack, made with unloaded guns that could not accidentally discharge and alert the enemy. Lafayette and his French troops would rush the redoubt on the left. Alexander and his infantry would take the one on the right.

WASHINGTON ORDERED A SWIFT AND SILENT BAYONET ATTACK.

That night, the French and American allies lit the sky with mortar fire. Under the glare of rockets, Alexander’s men rose from the trenches. A quarter mile of earth separated them from the tenth redoubt, soil that had been churned for days by cannon blasts and blood. Bayonets in hand, they sprinted through heavy enemy fire. With no more need for silence, they screamed like wild men. Soldiers specializing in engineering ran in front to clear a path for the bayonets, barely staying ahead of Alexander and his bellowing soldiers.

When they reached the enemy stronghold, Alexander launched himself atop the parapet. He waved his men onward. Within ten minutes, they’d lined up in formation and captured the enemy. The attack had been perfectly executed. There were no more than eight casualties. Alexander was fit to burst with pride. He ensured the British prisoners were treated with honor and justice, even when one American infantry captain threatened to kill an officer.

CORNWALLIS OFFICIALLY SURRENDERED ON OCTOBER 19, 1781, AS A MILITARY BAND PLAYED “THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.”

Lafayette’s brigade suffered more losses from a stronger resistance, but they too succeeded. Meanwhile, Cornwallis told Clinton his situation was critical. Their defenses were destroyed and their soldiers, weakened. The York River beckoned. Night fell on October 16, and Cornwallis tried to guide his men safely to the sea through the pounding of artillery. Stormy weather held them back.

A warm sun rose on October 17. A British officer climbed atop the parapet to the rhythm set by a boy with a drum. He removed a white handkerchief from his coat and waved it.

Cornwallis was too ill to take part in the ceremony of surrender that followed. His stand-in, Charles O’Hara, had met Alexander in 1778 when Alexander negotiated prisoner exchanges. The two men had made a promise then: they’d take care of each other should either be taken prisoner. Now O’Hara was asking him to make good on his word. Alexander did.

In their victory, the Americans captured 7,247 soldiers and 840 sailors. The triumph effectively ended the war, though some fighting continued. Alexander, astride his horse, watched the British leave the city accompanied by the ballad “The World Turned Upside Down.”

“Your father will tell you the news. Tomorrow Cornwallis and his army are ours. In two days after I shall in all probability set out for Albany, and I hope to embrace you in three weeks from this time. Conceive my love by your own feelings, how delightful this prospect is to me. Only in your heart and in my own can any image be found of my happiness upon the occasion. I have no time to enlarge. Let the intelligence I give compensate for the shortness of my letter. Give my love to your Mama to Mrs. Carter to Peggy and to all the family.

He tore home so swiftly he wore out his first set of horses. When he arrived in Albany, his exhaustion gave way to illness. Once more, he was bedridden.

When he arose months later, he was a new man. The one-time orphan was a husband. A hero. A man of honor. On January 22, 1782, he added something else to his list: father.

“You cannot imagine how entirely domestic I am growing,” he told a friend from Washington’s staff. “I lose all taste for the pursuits of ambition.”

He quit the military and waived his wartime pay—five years’ worth. He wanted nothing but the company of his wife and son. Or so he thought.

CHAPTER SIX

**‘I MUST TELL YOU, SIR, YOU TREAT ME with DISRESPECT’**