by Ron Chernow
The contents of all last week’s New-York Gazetteer occasioned Mr. Rivington, the printer, to be surprised and surrounded on the 23rd of November by 75 of the Connecticut Light horse, with firelocks and fixed bayonets, who burst into his house between twelve and one o’clock at noon, and totally destroyed all his types, and put an entire stop to his business, and reduced him at upwards of 50 years of age to the sad necessity of beginning the world again. The astonished citizens beheld the whole scene without affording the persecuted proscribed printer the least assistance. The printing of the New-York Gazetteer will be discontinued until America shall be blessed with the restoration of good government.22
Although the author of this dispatch was anonymous, who else but Hamilton would have filed such a dispatch to St. Croix? From Hercules Mulligan, we know that the one bystander who had the pluck to rise to Rivington’s defense was Hamilton himself. “When Rivington’s press was attacked by a company from the eastward, Mr. H., indignant that our neighbours should intrude upon our rights (although the press was considered a tory one), he went to the place, addressed the people present and offered if any others would join him to prevent these intruders from taking the type away.”23
As with the mob assault against Myles Cooper, the scene at Rivington’s became stamped on Hamilton’s memory, and his horror at such mob disorder foreshadowed his fearful reaction to the French Revolution. Several days after Sears’s men pillaged Rivington’s shop, Hamilton wrote to John Jay and acknowledged that Rivington’s press had been “dangerous and pernicious” and that the man himself was “detestable.” Nevertheless, he felt obliged to condemn the lawless nature of the action:
In times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes. The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority. The due medium is hardly to be found among the more intelligent. It is almost impossible among the unthinking populace. When the minds of these are loosened from their attachment to ancient establishments and courses, they seem to grow giddy and are apt more or less to run into anarchy.24
Clearly, this ambivalent twenty-year-old favored the Revolution but also worried about the long-term effect of habitual disorder, especially among the uneducated masses. Hamilton lacked the temperament of a true-blue revolutionary. 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.
The sequel to the print-shop raid deserves mention. James Rivington was temporarily put out of business, only to be resurrected as a “Printer to His Majesty the King” during Britain’s wartime occupation of New York. Appearances could be deceiving. Even as he reviled the patriots in The Royal Gazette, Rivington was surreptitiously relaying British naval intelligence to Washington, sealed inside the covers of books he sold to patriotic spies. He was to be rewarded in the fullness of time.
While Rivington had been muzzled by his critics, Hamilton himself was still gripped by the publishing itch. For an ambitious young man of a broadly literary bent, polemical broadsides fired at the British ministry presented the surest road to fame. In early January 1776, a self-taught English immigrant, Thomas Paine, who had arrived in Philadelphia two years earlier, provided Hamilton with a perfect model when he anonymously published Common Sense. The onetime corset maker and excise officer issued a resounding call for American independence that sold a stupendous 120,000 copies by year’s end.
By now, Hamilton had switched his journalistic allegiance to the stalwart republican paper of John Holt, the New-York Journal. He probably met Holt through William Livingston, who had cofounded the paper. In 1774, Holt had dropped the royal symbols from his masthead and replaced them with a well-known engraving that Ben Franklin had created to foster his Albany Plan of intercolonial union twenty years before: a copperhead snake sliced into segments and accompanied by the fighting slogan “Unite or Die.” (In Franklin’s version, “Join or Die.”) Robert Troup said that Hamilton published many articles while at King’s, “particularly in the newspaper then edited in New York by John Holt, who was a zealous Whig.”25 Nor had Hamilton given up on poetry. He constantly scribbled doggerel, rhyme, and satirical verse and gave Troup a thick sheaf of these poems, which the latter proceeded to lose during the Revolution.
Oddly, the otherwise thorough editors of Hamilton’s papers have reprinted his essays published by the Tory Rivington but have omitted his collaborations with the dissident Holt. Hamilton’s contemporaries knew him as the nameless scribe behind some of the New-York Journal’s most trenchant editorials. “I hope Mr. Hamilton continues busy,” John Jay told Alexander McDougall on December 5, 1775. “I have not received Holt’s paper these three months and therefore cannot judge of the progress he makes.”26 In fact, Hamilton’s contributions were evident there. From November 9, 1775, to February 8, 1776, the New-York Journal ran fourteen installments of “The Monitor,” probably the longest and most prominently featured string of essays that Holt printed before the Revolution. In this series, Hamilton recapitulated the central theme of his anti-“Farmer” essays that the colonies owed their fealty to the king, not to Parliament. Although Hamilton later retracted some of his more hot-blooded opinions, such as his opposition to standing armies, and though he may have regretted his withering mockery of statesmen, royalty, popes, and priests, many of the essays are vintage Hamilton.
In “The Monitor,” Hamilton left many clues to his authorship. Echoing his 1769 letter to Edward Stevens, in which he bemoaned the “grovelling” life of a clerk, he now warned his comrades against “a grovelling disposition” that would degrade them “from the rank of freemen to that of slaves.”27 He expressed views of leadership that closely anticipate his later dicta about the need for decisive, unequivocal action: “In public exigencies, there is hardly anything more prejudicial than excessive caution, timidity and dilatoriness, as there is nothing more beneficial than vigour, enterprise and expedition.”28 At times, he repeated his anti-“Farmer” essays almost verbatim, saying of the British ministry, “They have advanced too far to retreat without equal infamy and danger; their honour, their credit, their existence as ministers, perhaps their life itself, depend upon their success in the present undertaking.”29 Like many prolific authors, Hamilton sometimes quoted himself unwittingly.
The “Monitor” essays reveal Hamilton as an anomalous revolutionary. At the outset, he shows the rousing optimism about the revolutionary future that is the stock-in-trade of radical prose. He delivers a paean to America’s destiny as he prophesies that after the war the country will be elevated “to a much higher pitch of grandeur, opulence, and power than we could ever attain to by a humble submission to arbitrary rule.”30 Yet this hopefulness is hedged by a somber view of human affairs. Hamilton lauds the conduct of his countrymen but cannot refrain from saying sardonically that “it is a melancholy truth that the behaviour of many among us might serve as the severest satire upon the [human] species. It has been a compound of inconsistency, falsehood, cowardice, selfishness and dissimulation.”31 Hamilton also displays a swooning fascination with martyrdom, telling the colonists that they should vow either to “lead an honourable life or to meet with resignation a glorious death.”32 This idea so bewitched him that he ended one “Monitor” essay with a quote from Pope’s Iliad that begins: “Death is the worst, a fate which all must try; / And, for our country, ’tis a bliss to die.”33
Hamilton dashed off the “Monitor” essays at the frenetic pace of one a week— the more incredible as he was still a student and dutifully attending drills in the St. Paul’s churchyard each morning. Even this did not exhaust the scope of his activities. This peerless undergraduate had begun preliminary legal
studies and was combing the superb law library at King’s, steeping himself in the works of Sir William Blackstone and Sir Edward Coke. As he later said, by “steady and laborious exertion” he had qualified for a bachelor’s degree and was able “to lay a foundation, by preparatory study, for the future profession of the law.”34 Hamilton probably spent little more than two years at King’s and never formally graduated due to the outbreak of the Revolution. By April 6, 1776, King’s College, tarred by its earlier association with Myles Cooper, was commandeered by patriot forces and put to use as a military hospital.
After Hamilton published his last “Monitor” installment on February 8, he parlayed his budding fame as a pamphleteer into a military appointment that perfectly suited his daydreams of martial glory. On February 18, he sent a personal dispatch to the Royal Danish American Gazette that announced he was joining the military. The unsigned letter was filled with grim forebodings of martyrdom: “It is uncertain whether it may ever be in my power to send you another line....I am going into the army and perhaps ere long may be destined to seal with my blood the sentiments defended by my pen. Be it so, if heaven decree it. I was born to die and my reason and conscience tell me it is impossible to die in a better or more important cause.”35
What prompted this declaration was that the Provincial Congress had decided to raise an artillery company to defend New York, providing another chance for the upwardly mobile West Indian to excel. Like most revolutions, this one made ample room for talented outsiders. Luckily for Hamilton, Alexander McDougall was in charge of forming New York’s first patriotic regiment. A fiery, pugnacious Scot and former ship captain, McDougall was yet another Presbyterian protégé of William Livingston, who may have provided the introduction. While at King’s, Hamilton borrowed political pamphlets from McDougall and was mortified when they were stolen from his room.
On February 23, the Provincial Congress reported that “Col. McDougall recommended Mr. Alexander Hamilton for Capt. of a Company of Artillery.”36 Robert Troup said that McDougall prodded John Jay (by this time William Livingston’s son-in-law) to wrangle the coveted commission for Hamilton. After being examined, Hamilton received the assignment on March 14, 1776. When doubts arose about this student’s fitness to lead an artillery company, McDougall and Jay persuasively overcame them. Right before Hamiliton received his appointment, he was approached by Elias Boudinot on behalf of Lord Stirling, who had been elevated to brigadier general and desired Hamilton as his military aide. The headstrong Hamilton shrank from being subordinate to anyone and rebuffed an offer that would have tempted his peers. Boudinot informed a disappointed Stirling that Hamilton had accepted an artillery command and “was therefore denied the pleasure of attending your Lordship’s person as Brigade Major.”37
Hercules Mulligan contended that Hamilton’s appointment as artillery captain was premised on the condition that he would muster thirty men; Mulligan bragged that he and Hamilton recruited twenty-five the first afternoon alone. Hamilton assumed an almost paternal responsibility for the sixty-eight men who eventually came under his command. Some of them were illiterate and entered marks instead of signatures into the so-called pay book where Hamilton kept track of their food, clothing, pay, and discipline. According to tradition, he took money from his St. Croix subscription fund and used it to equip his company. He later wrote, “Military pride is to be excited and kept up by military parade. No time ought to be lost in teaching the recruits the use of arms.”38
The twenty-one-year-old captain became a popular leader known for sharing hardships with his gunners and bombardiers. He was sensitive to inequities and lobbied to get the same pay and rations for his men as their counterparts in the Continental Army. As a firm believer in meritocracy, he favored promotion from within his company, a policy adopted by the New York Provincial Congress. His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, “I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness.”39
Throughout his career, Hamilton was fastidious about military dress, insisting that his men be properly attired. “Nothing is more necessary than to stimulate the vanity of soldiers,” he later wrote. “To this end a smart dress is essential. When not attended to, the soldier is exposed to ridicule and humiliation.”40 His men wore blue coats with brass buttons and buff collars and white shoulder belts strapped diagonally across their chests. Within four months, he had secured seventy-five pairs of buckskin breeches for his men and personally advanced them money if needed. Hamilton’s company looked and acted the part. “As soon as his company was raised,” said Troup, “he proceeded with indefatigable pains to perfect it in every branch of discipline and duty and it was not long before it was esteemed the most beautiful model of discipline in the whole army.”41 Later on, as a major general, Hamilton instructed his officers on the need to be personally involved in drilling and training their men.
Hamilton betrayed none of the novice’s typical air of slipshod indecision and made a profound impression on several senior military figures, who joined his swelling circle of admirers. One day, General Nathanael Greene, an ex-Quaker and former ironmonger from Rhode Island, was crossing the Common when Hamilton caught his eye. He was struck by how smartly this young man put his troops through their parade exercises and paused to chat with him. He then invited Hamilton to dinner and was thunderstruck by his immense military knowledge. The largely self-educated Greene was well placed to appreciate Hamilton’s instant expertise, for his own military background was restricted to two years of militia duty. Most of what he knew about war was also gleaned from books. “His knowledge was intuitive,” artillery chief Henry Knox later said of Greene. “He came to us the rawest and most untutored human being I ever met with, but in less than twelve months he was equal in military knowledge to any general officer in the army.”42 George Washington valued Nathanael Greene above all his other generals, and it was likely Greene who first touted Hamilton’s merits to Washington. Like Lord Stirling, Greene may even have offered Hamilton a job as his military aide. If so, Hamilton again spurned a general’s offer.
After Boston fell to the Continental Army in March—a shock for the British and a tonic to patriotic spirits—New York loomed as the next battlefront, and the city braced for impending invasion. Hamilton had already informed his distant St. Croix readers, “This city is at present evacuated by above one half of its inhabitants under the influence of a general panic.”43 Starting in March, Lord Stirling had supervised four thousand men who sealed off major streets and strung a network of batteries and earthworks across Manhattan from the Hudson to the East River. Hamilton’s company constructed a small fort with twelve cannon on the high ground of Bayard’s Hill, near the present-day intersection of Canal and Mulberry Streets.
In April, Washington came down from New England to oversee military preparations in New York and employed as his headquarters a Hudson River mansion called Richmond Hill, later the home of Aaron Burr. By a curious coincidence, Burr, fresh from the failed patriot assault on Quebec, visited Washington in June and accepted his offer to serve on his military staff, or “family,” as it was known. By some accounts, the aristocratic young Burr had grandiose expectations and imagined that Washington would confer with him on grand matters of strategy. When he realized that he would be relegated to more prosaic duties, he quickly quit in disgust and sent a letter to Washington protesting that less-qualified men had been promoted ahead of him. He then went to work for Major General Israel Putnam. Something about Aaron Burr—his penchant for intrigue, a lack of sufficient deference, perhaps his insatiable chasing after women—grated on George Washington. Much of Burr’s political future was shaped by his decidedly cool wartime relations with Washington, while other contemporaries, Hamilton being the prime example, profited from the general’s approbation.
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bsp; During this period, Washington was at least marginally aware of Hamilton. An exacting captain, Hamilton ordered the arrest of a sergeant, two corporals, and a private for “mutiny,” and they received mild punishments in a court-martial. Washington pardoned the two principal offenders before issuing general orders for Hamilton to assemble his company on May 15, 1776, “at ten o’clock next Sunday morning upon the Common.”44 A month later, as we learn from the Royal Danish American Gazette, Hamilton gallantly led a nighttime attack of one hundred men against the Sandy Hook lighthouse outside New York harbor. “I continued the attack for two hours with fieldpieces and small arms,” the war correspondent– cum–artillery captain reported, “being all that time between two smart fires from the shipping and the lighthouse, but could make no impression on the walls.”45 Hamilton did not lose any men and said the raid miscarried because he lacked sufficient munitions and because the enemy had been tipped off to the attack. With the speed of youthful dreams, Hamilton had moved from the fantasy to the reality of combat leadership.
Back in Manhattan, the young captain found a city engaged in a spree of wanton violence against Tory sympathizers. Many Loyalists were subjected to a harrowing ritual known as “riding the rail,” in which they were carried through the streets sitting astride a sharp rail borne by two tall, strong men. The prisoners’ names were proclaimed at each street corner as spectators lustily cheered their humiliation. One bystander reported, “We had some grand Tory rides in the city this week....Several of them were handled very roughly, being carried through the streets on rails, their clothes torn off their backs and their bodies pretty well mingled with the dust....There is hardly a Tory face to be seen this morning.”46
Because New York had been a citadel of Tory sentiment, there was a pervasive fear of clandestine plots being hatched against Washington, whose capture or assassination would have been an inestimable prize to the British. Indeed, the former New York governor, William Tryon, tried to orchestrate just such a plan. On June 21, as Hamilton returned from Sandy Hook, a cabal to murder General Washington and recruit a Loyalist force to aid the British was laid bare. New York’s Tory mayor, David Mathews, was charged “with dangerous designs and treasonable conspiracies against the rights and liberties of the United Colonies of America.”47 Others implicated in this shocking plot included several members of Washington’s personal guard, especially Sergeant Thomas Hickey. Mayor Mathews admitted to having contact with the British and was imprisoned in Connecticut, but a defiant Hickey produced no witnesses at his court-martial and was sentenced to death.