Hamilton had an odd kind of genius about waging war. In this, as in so many other ways, good and bad, he was the opposite of John Adams. Two years earlier, when the war was barely underway, he had foreseen how the Americans should fight. Hamilton wrote in an essay that The circumstances of our country put it in our power, to evade a pitched battle. It will be better policy, to harass and exhaust the soldiery, by frequent skirmishes and incursions, than to take the open field with them, by which means, they would have the full benefit of their superior regularity and skill.62
