Surprisingly, despite this incident, Hamilton retained Washington’s confidence. Many years after the war, the general would defend Hamilton to John Adams, stating that the young man had served as his “principal & most confidential aid” and that he had found him “enterprising, quick in his perceptions, and his judgment intuitively great: qualities essential to a great military character.”37
Hamilton’s role in trying to leverage the army to get the Continental Congress to start collecting taxes, which would get the Army paid.
