Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

In one glowing passage, Hamilton invoked the colonists’ natural rights: “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”63

Clearly, Hamilton was reading the skeptical Scottish philosopher David Hume, and he quoted his view that in framing a government “every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end in all his actions but private interests.” The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.

Most of all, the episode captured the contradictory impulses struggling inside this complex young man, a committed revolutionary with a profound dread that popular sentiment would boil over into dangerous excess.

One scandalized British soldier complained that the American riflemen “conceal themselves behind trees etc. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advance sentries, which done, they immediately retreat. What an unfair method of carrying on a war!”16

He saw too clearly that greater freedom could lead to greater disorder and, by a dangerous dialectic, back to a loss of freedom. Hamilton’s lifelong task was to try to straddle and resolve this contradiction and to balance liberty and order.

tarried

For Hamilton, his encounters with the two obdurate generals 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.

Right before Christmas, Hamilton set out to rejoin Washington, only to collapse again near Morristown. He was taken back in a hired coach for further rest in Peekskill, where he was nourished on a hearty diet of mutton, oranges, potatoes, quail, and partridge. Not until January 20, 1778, did Hamilton rejoin his colleagues at winter quarters in Valley Forge, near Philadelphia—a bleak place that could scarcely have elevated the spirits of the convalescing colonel.

inimitable

The unhappiness with Washington was understandable. His military performance in New York and Philadelphia had been lackluster, and his setbacks at Brandywine and Germantown were fresher in people’s memories than his spirited raids at Trenton and Princeton. The rivalry between Washington and Gates mirrored a political split in Congress. John and Samuel Adams, Richard Henry Lee, and others who wanted tighter congressional control over the war were sympathetic to Gates.

blackguard.

raffish

James Wilkinson turned on his mentor and challenged Gates, but when the latter broke down and cried apologetically, the duel was called off. 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. Cadwalader showed no regret. “I have stopped the damned rascal’s lying tongue at any rate,” he observed as his opponent lay in agony on the ground.93 Somehow, Conway managed to survive, but his career in the Continental Army was definitely over.

“As a general marches at the head of his troops,” so should wise politicians “march at the head of affairs, insomuch that they ought not to wait the event to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the event.”

imperious

ballast

amorous

cogent

reconnoiter

umbrage

peremptory

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. This beautiful horse dropped dead from the heat, and Washington instantly switched to a chestnut mare. By sheer force of will, he stopped the retreating soldiers, rallied them, then reversed them. “Stand fast, my boys, and receive your enemy,” he shouted. “The southern troops are advancing to support you.”

Many people were struck by Hamilton’s behavior at Monmouth, which showed more than mere courage. There was an element of ecstatic defiance, an indifference toward danger, that reflected his youthful fantasies of an illustrious death in battle.

intrepidity.”

reticence,

Always insecure about his status in the world, Hamilton was a natural adherent to dueling, with its patrician overtones. Lacking a fortune or family connections, he guarded his reputation jealously throughout his life, and affairs of honor were often his preferred method for doing so. The man born without honor placed a premium on maintaining his.

adjutant

calumny

France had also decided to wage war on Britain for reasons having to do less with ideological solidarity with America—it scarcely behooved Louis XVI to encourage revolts against royal authority—than with a desire to subvert Britain and even the score after losing the French and Indian War. The French also sought better access to Caribbean sugar islands and North American ports. This early lesson in Realpolitik—that countries follow their interests, not their sympathies—was engraved in Hamilton’s memory, and he often reminded Jeffersonians later on that the French had fought for their own selfish purposes.