Jefferson and Hamilton (15 page)

When Congress created the Continental army, it allotted Washington one aide-de-camp and a military secretary. But given the commander’s staggering workload, the number of aides was from time to time increased. Thirty-two men eventually served in this capacity, normally about five or six at any one time. Many went on to achieve prominence, though among them Hamilton alone is widely known today. Hamilton was the nineteenth officer chosen as an aide to Washington and one of four to be appointed within a six-week period between January and March 1777. Several aides served Washington only briefly before moving on to what must have seemed to be more attractive positions. In fact, the opening that led to Hamilton’s appointment came about when George Baylor left to assume command of a cavalry regiment. Hamilton must have initially imagined that something along these lines would be his fate.
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The aides lived at headquarters and daily interacted with Washington. As
their commander said, they were “confined from morning to evening” with their assignments.
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Ordinarily, they had two principal jobs: They helped Washington with his correspondence and from time to time were dispatched as emissaries to other field officers or civilian authorities. Washington insisted that his aides be intelligent, well educated, and skilled writers, or “ready Pen-men,” as he put it. No less important, they were to be cultivated and adept at meeting and conversing with others. Washington’s practice, as one of his aides subsequently revealed, was to give the aide notes for a letter; the aide then drafted the letter, Washington edited or approved it, and the aide prepared the fair copy that was to be sent off. It has been estimated that some twelve thousand letters were signed by Washington during the war and that his aides prepared some five thousand additional documents, including orders, rosters, payrolls, and the like. Washington had two further requirements: He expected his aides to respect the confidentiality of what transpired at headquarters, and he demanded their blind loyalty.
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Whatever Hamilton anticipated when he took the job, he quickly discovered that Washington was a demanding boss. If an aide was a disappointment, he got rid of him, usually by reassigning him to a post in the field. But Hamilton was good—very good. He was so good, in fact, that Washington soon thought him indispensable. Years later Washington characterized Hamilton as his “principal & most confidential aid.”
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Hamilton was famously bright and industrious, the most published author in the army, experienced in dealing with businessmen, and fluent in French, which proved valuable once French officers began arriving in America during 1777. (A French officer who met Hamilton in 1780 described him as an “accomplished gentleman” who spoke and wrote French “perfectly.”)
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Furthermore, as Hamilton had no family, he never left the army. Headquarters was his home. In all these ways, Washington found young Hamilton to be useful, but contrary to what many have said, the commander did not see his young aide as the son he never had. Washington may have felt paternal affection for the Marquis de Lafayette, who arrived during the summer of 1777, but he was neither tender nor friendly with others. Washington judged men according to how they could be of use to him. With Hamilton, as with his other aides, Washington never let down his guard, never tried to be a father, friend, or companion. Hamilton may never have wished for comradery with Washington, but he must have yearned for displays of warmth and approachability. When it never came, he pragmatically grew to see Washington as nothing more than his means to bigger and better things.

Life at headquarters was not all work. The main meal of the day was taken in mid-afternoon, which had been Washington’s practice at Mount Vernon.
Washington and what he called his “family”—his aides—were joined on an almost daily basis by several general officers and the officer of the day, usually a young captain. Not infrequently, civilian authorities, including congressmen and governors, showed up. An important businessman might be present from time to time and, later in the war, foreign officials occasionally joined the repast. When the army was in winter quarters, generally between November and April, the families of officers often came for extended stays. At times, twenty or more were at the table. Washington did not play the host. He left that duty to his aides on a rotating basis, so that every two or three days it fell to Hamilton to preside by offering toasts and setting the conversation in motion. Hamilton required little prompting. Even as a young man, his presence filled a room. Charming and loquacious, and possessed of the gift of wit, he often was the dominant force at the table, winning over slight acquaintances and total strangers. One visitor, the wife of a cavalry officer, described Hamilton as “sensible, genteel, polite.” A young Pennsylvania colonel thought he acted with “ease, propriety and vivacity.” General Nathanael Greene was convinced that Hamilton’s affability and good humor were akin to “a bright gleam of sunshine, ever growing brighter as the general darkness thickened.”
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A French envoy who visited the army in 1779 thought Hamilton not just “very pleasant” but also more industrious and conscientious than his cohorts. “If courage, assiduity, and penetration, mingled with a few traces of ambition, can raise a man above his equals, in a nascent republic, some day you will hear of him,” the diplomat predicted.
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Battles were infrequent in the War of Independence, but twice in 1777 Hamilton found himself in harm’s way. London planned a campaign for that summer in which General Howe was to move north from Manhattan while another British army, under General John Burgoyne, invaded northern New York from Canada. The Continentals, forced to defend the Hudson, would be caught in the pincers and destroyed. It was a superb plan, but Howe scuttled it. Envisaging few problems for Burgoyne, Howe chose to invade Pennsylvania. He thought taking Philadelphia, the seat of Congress, would deal a severe blow to American morale. Moreover, Washington would have to abandon his Fabian tactics and defend the city. Howe was convinced that if he could get the Continental army onto a battlefield, he could defeat it.

Howe was partially correct. Washington brought his army into Pennsylvania and posted it at Chadd’s Ford, on the Philadelphia side of Brandywine Creek. Washington may not have believed that he could prevent his adversary from taking Philadelphia, but he intended to make Howe pay a heavy price for gaining his prize. The clash took place on September 11, a hot late-summer
day. The contest was a savage, daylong fray, and the British had roughly a 2,000 man advantage. Washington spent most of the battle at a field headquarters a short distance from the battlefield. Hamilton remained at his side. However, late in the engagement, as intelligence flowed in about British movements, the commander sprang on his mount and rode like the wind to take command at the scene of the fighting. One observer said that the general’s powerful charger sprang over “all the fences without difficulty,” and presumably so too did Hamilton’s mount, for he accompanied Washington into the midst of peril. Fighting, sharp and bloody, swirled about them for at least two hours until the sun pitched over the horizon. Mercifully for the rebels, darkness ended the battle. A British sergeant may have exaggerated when he said later that Washington’s army would have faced a “total overthrow” had there been only one more hour of daylight. However, the redcoat was right in implying that things had not gone well for the Continentals. The Americans had lost more than 1,100 men, twice the number of British casualties.
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Washington now knew for certain that he could not prevent the British from taking Philadelphia, and he wisely chose not to risk his army a second time against Howe’s entire force. But Washington remained full of fight. He suspected that some congressmen, who soon would have to flee Philadelphia, would be unhappy with his performance. He also knew that Burgoyne was in deep trouble, unable to fight through a rebel army commanded by Horatio Gates, and probably with little likelihood of retreating to Canada. Washington may have already guessed that Gates was certain to be lionized for his success, and it may have been a factor in is his decision to plan a surprise attack, an operation that might replicate his brilliant Trenton-Princeton campaign.

While planning his move, Washington ordered Hamilton to join an operation to destroy flour mills along the Schuylkill River before the enemy could take them. It was a dangerous undertaking. At one mill, redcoat dragoons attacked as Hamilton and his four comrades were crossing the river on a flat-bottomed boat. One rebel soldier was killed and another wounded, as was the boatman. Hamilton dove off the vessel into the dark, numbingly cold water and swam for safety. When he disappeared from view in the swift river current, the survivors in his party reported that Hamilton was presumed dead. Later that day, in the chilly autumn darkness of early evening, Hamilton, shivering in his wet uniform, appeared at headquarters, touching off a passionate celebration.
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Soon after Hamilton reported, Washington directed him to alert Congress to abandon Philadelphia “immediately without fail, for the enemy have the means of throwing a party this night into the city.”
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The congressmen were awakened in the wee hours of the morning. They fled so rapidly, and in such
a state of alarm, that in his haste one New Englander forgot to saddle up before he spurred his horse.
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As it turned out, the British waited eight more days before marching into Philadelphia, a period when Washington once again sent Hamilton into the field. This time, Hamilton was ordered into Philadelphia to requisition blankets, clothing, and horses from the civilian population. So desperate was the situation—the commander said that without these materials “the ruin of the army, and perhaps the ruin of America” might be at hand—that Washington vested Hamilton with authority to seize that which the residents would not willingly surrender. Hamilton was put in command of upwards of 150 infantrymen and cavalry troops, and over two days the soldiers garnered a treasure trove of precious goods.
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Soon after Philadelphia fell, Washington struck at Germantown, north of the city, where Howe had posted about half of his army. As at Trenton, Washington had a numerical superiority, but on this occasion he failed to score a sensational victory. Unlike the Hessians, the British were not caught off guard, and that was only the start of Washington’s problems. A thick morning fog shrouded entire divisions, sowing confusion among the battalion commanders. As Washington directed operations in one sector of the battlefield, Hamilton remained at his side. The fighting was intense. In three hours, both sides lost about the same number of men as at Brandywine, but at day’s end the Continentals could point to no gains from their attack.
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A month after Germantown, Washington sent Hamilton on another mission. The American commander needed men if he was to undertake any further major initiatives before going into winter quarters. Washington knew that the victorious Gates had a surplus of manpower, for he had indeed scored a huge victory at Saratoga. (Burgoyne had surrendered 5,900 men, the so-called Convention Army that eventually would be sent into captivity in Charlottesville.) At the end of October, Washington selected Hamilton as his emissary to ride to Albany, New York, and request that Gates relinquish three brigades to the main Continental army.
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Choosing Hamilton for the undertaking was ill-advised. This was an errand that might require delicate negotiations, a realm in which Hamilton had no experience. Furthermore, Gates was unpopular with many New Yorkers, who loathed him for having connived with Congress to overthrow the initial Continental commander of the northern theater, Albany’s General Philip Schuyler. Hamilton not only was close to many of those New Yorkers, but he was also anxious not to alienate Schuyler, who remained a powerful political figure in the state. In fact, in the midst of his talks with Gates, Hamilton
slipped away and dined with Schuyler at the general’s mansion, and probably reassured this possible benefactor of his loyalty. What is more, in European armies it was standard practice to send only a senior officer on a mission of this sort. Gates, who had served in the British army for years before immigrating to the colonies, was all-too-familiar with Europe’s protocol. He was offended when Hamilton appeared at his door.

Predictably, that meeting, and a second session four days later, went badly. Gates had no desire to give up any of his men, especially as Congress had ordered him to retake Fort Ticonderoga, which had fallen to Burgoyne at the start of his campaign. For his part, Hamilton was apprehensive that he would fail as an envoy, and in the course of the talks he anxiously wrote to Washington: “Perhaps you will think me blameable” for not persuading Gates to relinquish the men. He argued forcefully, he said later, telling Gates that his reasons for refusing to comply with Washington’s request were “unsubstantial.” Gates responded “warmly,” causing Hamilton to subsequently admit that at times he was “at a loss how to act.” In the end, Hamilton pried loose only one brigade from Gates. He departed Albany with bitter feelings toward the hero of Saratoga.
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The day after Hamilton left Albany, he fell ill. He recovered quickly, only to relapse later in November with symptoms that sound like influenza, perhaps complicated by sheer exhaustion. He was bedridden for days with a high fever, chills, and aches, and more than a month passed before he regained his strength and could make the long ride in the midst of winter to rejoin his commander. Hamilton did not see Washington again until mid-January, when they were reunited at Valley Forge.
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