Adams’s patent displeasure with Hamilton afforded Washington an opportunity to pay his protégé a huge compliment. Washington said that some people considered Hamilton “an ambitious man and therefore a dangerous one. That he is ambitious I readily grant, but it is of that laudable kind which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes in hand. He is enterprising, quick in his perceptions, and his judgment intuitively great.” In sum, Hamilton’s loss would be “irreparable.”
