At the center of the talented group of young men who constituted Washington’s military family were John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had grown up in poverty on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. Laurens had grown up on his father’s rice plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. Both men were intimately familiar with African slavery and both believed that it was incompatible with the ideals of liberty and freedom for which they were fighting. For America to be truly free, slavery must come to an end, and Laurens believed he knew how it could one day come about.
