Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

The young aide-de-camp was revealed as a forceful personality in his own right, not just a proxy for the general.

strengthened his preference for strict hierarchy and centralized command as the only way to accomplish things—a view that was to find its political equivalent in his preference for concentrated federal power instead of authority dispersed among the states.

Because Conway persisted in maligning Washington, he was summoned to the dueling ground by General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway’s mouth that came out the back of his head.

Hamilton yearned for a field command, but Washington could not afford to sacrifice his most valuable aide.

Forced to accept at face value the depreciated paper issued by Congress and the states, farmers and merchants balked at selling food and clothing to the army and often ended up hawking their wares instead to the well-fed, well-clad redcoats carousing in Philadelphia.

The republican partiality for state militias in lieu of a strong central army threatened to undermine the entire Revolution.

You should not beggar the councils of the United States to enrich the administration of the several members.”6 Such statements presaged Hamilton’s later nationalism. Ironically, George Clinton became his bête noire, exemplifying the very parochial state power against which he inveighed.

Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton never saw the creation of America as a magical leap across a chasm to an entirely new landscape, and he always thought the New World had much to learn from the Old.

For anyone studying Hamilton’s pay book, it would come as no surprise that he would someday emerge as a first-rate constitutional scholar, an unsurpassed treasury secretary, and the protagonist of the first great sex scandal in American political history.

America’s idolatry of George Washington may have truly begun at the battle of Monmouth. One of America’s most accomplished horsemen, Washington at first rode a white charger, given to him by William Livingston, now governor of New Jersey, in honor of his recrossing of the Delaware.

So severe was Burr’s sunstroke that it rendered him effectively unfit for further combat duty in the Revolution. Suffering from violent headaches, nausea, and exhaustion and probably irked by his lack of promotion under Washington, Burr took a temporary leave of absence in October.

The battle of Monmouth was not an outright victory for the patriots, and the British Army escaped intact the next day. Most observers termed it a draw.

Among Charles Lee’s sympathizers was Aaron Burr, who missed no chance to belittle Washington’s military talents.

Laurens challenged Lee to a duel to avenge the slurs against Washington. Hamilton agreed to serve as his second, the first of many such “affairs of honor” in which he participated.

How was Hamilton affected by his first duel? He saw two gentlemen who had exhibited exemplary behavior and fought for ideals rather than just personal animosity. The object had not been to kill the other person so much as to resolve honorably a lingering dispute. Both Laurens and Lee walked away with their dignity more or less intact.

retraction of the story or disclosure of its source. He intimated that he would demand a duel if the charges had actually been made,

Aware that it clashed with his religious beliefs, Hamilton always retained some nagging reservations about dueling, which became more pronounced in later years.

He told Laurens that he still yearned for the success of his virtuous scheme for black battalions but worried that private greed, indolence, and public corruption would undermine this good work.

“There is no virtue [in] America. That commerce which preside[d over] the birth and education of these states has [fitted] their inhabitants for the chain and . . . the only condition they sincerely desire is that it may be a golden one.”

The Continental Army had a sizable following of “camp ladies,” and John Marshall was scandalized by the open debauchery that he encountered when visiting the army that September: “Never was I a witness to such a scene of lewdness,” he complained to a friend.

Parts of his letter were sophomoric, with Hamilton making bawdy references to the size of his nose—jocular eighteenth-century shorthand for his penis—but

But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better.

It was not the first time that Hamilton had glancingly alluded to suicide or emigration or suggested that he was miscast on the American scene.

On February 2, 1780, hard on the heels of Cornelia and Polly, Elizabeth Schuyler arrived in Morristown, accompanied by a military escort, to stay with relatives.

He had already met her on his flying visit to Albany in 1777 when he coaxed General Horatio Gates into surrendering troops to Washington.

Although a touch absentminded, Hamilton ordinarily had a faultless memory,

By the time Hamilton left Morristown in early March to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the British in Amboy, New Jersey—scarcely more than a month after the courtship began—he and Schuyler had decided to wed.

the three sons (John Bradstreet, Philip Jeremiah, and Rensselaer) and five daughters (Angelica, Eliza, Margarita, Cornelia, and the as yet unborn Catherine).

The daughters had enough spunky independence that four of the five eventually eloped,

younger sister Margarita (always called Peggy), he

Schuyler—whom Hamilton called either Eliza or Betsey—remains

Schuyler had received some tutoring but little formal schooling. Her spelling was poor, and she didn’t write with the fluency of other Schuylers.

Hamilton had been devout when younger, but he seemed more skeptical about organized religion during the Revolution.

Hamilton refrained from a formal church affiliation despite his wife’s steadfast religiosity.

Though Schuyler knew that Hamilton was a figure of awesome intelligence, he won her more with his kindly nature than with his intellect.

Eliza Hamilton gave correspondents a list of his qualities that she wanted to illustrate, and it sums up her view of his multiple talents: “Elasticity of his mind. Variety of his knowledge. Playfulness of his wit. Excellence of his heart. His immense forbearance [and] virtues.”22 When

I have still a part for the public and another for you,”

Eliza’s married older sister,

spent the rest of his life beguiled by both Eliza and Angelica, calling them “my dear brunettes.”

Eliza reflected Hamilton’s earnest sense of purpose, determination, and moral rectitude, while Angelica exhibited his worldly side—the wit, charm, and vivacity that so delighted people in social intercourse.

She was to serve as muse to some of the smartest politicians of her day, including Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and, most of all, Hamilton. Angelica was one of the few American women of her generation as comfortable in a European drawing room as in a Hudson River parlor, and there was a gossipy irreverence about her that seemed very European. Unlike Eliza, she learned to speak perfect French.

Hamilton’s married life was sometimes a curious ménage à trois with two sisters who were only one year apart.

Their shared love for Hamilton seemed to deepen their sisterly bond.

He and his business partner, Jeremiah Wadsworth, negotiated lucrative contracts to sell supplies to the French and American forces.

he provided Angelica with the opulent, high-society life that she apparently craved.

“Be indulgent, my child, to your inferiors,” Schuyler once advised his son John, “affable and courteous to your equals, respectful not cringing to your superiors, whether they are so by superior mental abilities or those necessary distinctions which society has established.”

Descended from an early Dutch settler who arrived in New York in 1650 (the surname may have been German), Schuyler was counted among those Hudson River squires who presided over huge tracts of land and ruled state politics.

Philip Schuyler had

married Catherine Van Rensselaer,

On April 8, 1780, Philip Schuyler sent Hamilton a businesslike letter, saying he had discussed the marriage proposal with Mrs. Schuyler, and they had accepted it.