Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

  In writing “The Stand,” Hamilton took dead aim against Republicans who had become apologists for French misbehavior: “Such men merit all the detestation of their fellow citizens and there is no doubt that with time and opportunity they will merit much more from the offended justice of the laws.”32 Hamilton mocked Jefferson’s claim that Talleyrand, not the Directory, was to blame for the XYZ Affair. He noted that Talleyrand was the world’s “most circumspect man” and would never have acted without the direct support of the Directory.

  The recourse to so pitiful an evasion betrays in its author a systematic design to excuse France at all events, to soften a spirit of submission to every violence she may commit, and to prepare the way for implicit subjection to her will. To be the pro-consul of a despotic Directory over the United States, degraded to the condition of a province, can alone be the criminal, the ignoble aim of so seditious, so prostitute a character.33

  Hamilton’s indignation with Jefferson was warranted, but the idea that he wanted to reduce the United States to a French province or that his ideas were criminal was cruelly overblown and reminiscent of the most malicious nonsense heaved at Hamilton himself.

  The strident tone of “The Stand” reflects the polarization that had gripped America over the French crisis. Feelings ran so high that Jefferson told one correspondent, “Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch hats.”34 Hamilton thought that America was in an undeclared civil war that had segregated the country into two warring camps. At first, the XYZ Affair seemed a windfall for the Federalists, and their fortunes improved sharply in elections that autumn. Having been strong in the patrician Senate, they now made sweeping gains in the House and even picked up southern seats. But this sudden flush of power in time proved perilous for the Federalists, for they were henceforth to lack the selfrestraint necessary to curtail their more dogmatic, authoritarian impulses, thus paving the way for abuses of power.

  As he braced for potential conflict with France, President Adams had to cope with the ambivalent emotions Americans brought to the vexed subject of war. As colonists, they had been antagonized by the need to quarter and provision redcoats and remembered the arrogance of the standing armies sent to enforce hated laws. Among the fanciful dreams fostered by American independence was the fond hope that America would be spared wars and the need for a permanent military presence. “At the close of our revolution[ary] war,” wrote Hamilton, “the phantom of perpetual peace danced before the eyes of everybody.”35 Gordon Wood has observed, “Since war was promoted by the dynastic ambitions, the bloated bureaucracy, and the standing armies of monarchies, then the elimination of monarchy would mean the elimination of war itself.”36 Hamilton, by contrast, believed that war was a permanent feature of human societies.

  Many Republicans deplored standing armies as tools used by oppressive kings to subdue popular legislatures. The Declaration of Independence had protested standing armies kept in the colonies in peacetime. At the Constitutional Convention, Elbridge Gerry had bawdily likened standing armies to a tumescent penis: “An excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”37 Jefferson wanted to ban standing armies in the Bill of Rights. He thought state militias and small gunboats sufficient to guard American shores. Republican orthodoxy declared that citizen-soldiers could defend the nation and obviate the need for a permanent military. Jeffersonians also feared that war would engender the powerful central government favored by Hamilton. In Madison’s view, “War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”38 Unlike many Federalists, John Adams thought a navy and militia would suffice to guard the country and feared a large standing army as a “many bellied monster.”39 Hobbled by this aversion to a federal military, the country was reduced to a regular army of just a few thousand troops when Washington left office.

  During the Revolution, Hamilton had despaired of reliance on militias and learned to respect the superiority of trained soldiers. During the war scare with France, he saw a chance to promote a robust national defense and advanced a pet project for a fifty-thousand-man army: twenty thousand regulars joined by thirty thousand auxiliaries. The president reacted with contempt. “The army of fifty thousand men ...appeared to me to be one of the wildest extravagances of a knight errant,” Adams later wrote, harping again on Hamilton’s foreign birth. “It proved to me that Mr. Hamilton knew no more of the sentiments and feelings of the people of America than he did of those of the inhabitants of one of the planets.”40 As far as Adams was concerned, “Hamilton’s hobby was the army.”41

  Hamilton’s blood boiled as France grew more audacious in attacking American ships. In May 1798, a French privateer captured American vessels outside New York harbor. “This is too much humiliation after all that has passed,” Hamilton protested to Secretary of War McHenry. “Our merchants are very indignant. Our government [is] very prostrate in the view of every man of energy.”42 That month, amid growing fears of an imminent French invasion, Congress decided to create a separate Navy Department with twelve new frigates and a “Provisional Army” of ten thousand men. The euphemistic language was significant: a permanent or standing army was anathema. In July, Congress provided for an “Additional Army” of twelve infantry regiments and six cavalry companies. These numbers exceeded what Adams wanted, though they fell short of Hamilton’s fantasies. Adams, who sometimes portrayed himself as a passive spectator of his presidency, blamed Hamilton for pushing through this larger army: “Such was the influence of Mr. Hamilton in Congress that, without any recommendation from the President, they passed a bill to raise an army.”43 As war hysteria grew, trade with France was embargoed, and American naval vessels were empowered to pounce on any French ships threatening American trade. The so-called Quasi-War with France was under way.

  It proved impossible to separate the war from partisan domestic wrangles. Republicans feared that the unacknowledged agenda behind this burgeoning military establishment was not to defend America from France so much as to save America for the Federalists and stifle domestic dissent. Sometimes, Hamilton had trouble keeping the issues apart in his mind because he thought that, if France invaded, many Jeffersonians would aid the interlopers and “flock to the standard of France to render it easy to quell the resistance of the rest.”44

  Hamilton hovered in a queer limbo during this period. He felt both powerful and powerless. He was a private citizen and lawyer, yet alleged by some to be more influential than the president himself. He certainly had unparalleled access to Adams’s cabinet and often sent them letters that they repeated verbatim in memos for the president, without identifying Hamilton as the source. At the same time, Hamilton struggled to redeem his reputation after the disclosure of his assignations with Maria Reynolds. Writing to Rufus King, Robert Troup noted the paradox that Hamilton’s legal practice was “extensive and lucrative” but that he was still under siege from the scandal. “For this twelvemonth past this poor man—Hamilton I mean—has been most violently and infamously abused by the democratical party. His ill-judged pamphlet has done him incomparable injury.”45

  One might have thought that Hamilton would crow in triumph after Congress approved a new army. Surely he was slated for a commanding position. Instead, in personal letters to Eliza, he again seemed weary of public life and hankered for a more retired existence. When Eliza went off to Albany in early June 1798, leaving him with the older boys, Hamilton seemed incurably lonesome. “I always feel how necessary you are to me,” he wrote to her. “But when you are absent, I become still more sensible of it and look around in vain for that satisfaction which you alone can bestow.”46 More than at any time since their courtship, Hamilton showed his deep emotional dependence upon his wife. She provided a psychological anchor for this turbulent man who was disenchanted with publi
c life. “In proportion as I discover the worthlessness of other pursuits,” he wrote to Eliza, “the value of my Eliza and of domestic happiness rises in my estimation.”47 One suspects that Alexander and Eliza had slowly repaired the harm done by the Reynolds affair, that she had begun to forgive him, and that they had recaptured some earlier intimacy. Perhaps it took this scandal for Hamilton to recognize just how vital his wife had been in providing solace from his controversial political career.

  By 1798, many people were trying to woo Hamilton back into public life. When one of New York’s two senators resigned, Governor John Jay offered the post to Hamilton. “If after well considering the subject, you should decline an appointm[en]t,” he told Hamilton obligingly, “be so good as to consult with some of our most judicious friends and advise me as to the persons most proper to appoint.”48 Congressman Robert G. Harper, a South Carolina Federalist, dangled before Hamilton the prospect of becoming secretary of war, hinting that he had sounded out President Adams on the subject. Both times, Hamilton declined, for he was stalking bigger game. For someone of his vaulting ambition, the leadership of the new army was a shiny, irresistible lure, especially with the presidency foreclosed. Fisher Ames said that the only distinction that Hamilton devoutly craved was not money or power but military fame. “He was qualified beyond any man of the age to display the talents of a great general.”49 Many Federalists assumed that if France attacked America, Washington would head the war effort with Hamilton loyally at his side, in a rousing reenactment of the Revolution. “The old chief is again furbishing his sword,” Robert Troup reported excitedly to Rufus King. “If there be a conflict and he is invited, he will take the field. And so will Hamilton.”50

  On military matters, John Adams was often adrift. For all his dogged committee work in the Continental Congress and sturdy promotion of an American fleet, he had not experienced combat and perhaps felt deprived of some essential glory. “Oh, that I was a soldier!” he had written in 1775. “I will be. I am reading military books. Everybody must and will and shall be a soldier.”51 The fraternal bond that knit Washington and his former officers into an elite caste excluded Adams. In matters of war, nobody could possibly measure up to the exalted Washington, who would be needed to confer legitimacy on any new army.

  After Congress authorized the provisional army, Hamilton beseeched Washington to take the lead. He again exhibited perfect pitch in addressing his mentor. “You ought also to be aware, my dear Sir,” Hamilton told him, “that in the event of an open rupture with France, the public voice will again call you to command the armies of your country.” Washington’s friends were reluctant to summon him from retirement, “yet it is the opinion of all those with whom I converse that you will be compelled to make the sacrifice.”52

  Now somewhat infirm at sixty-six, Washington thought the military required an able man in his prime. Should he agree to serve, he confided to Hamilton, “I should like previously to know who would be my coadjutors and whether you would be disposed to take an active part if arms are resorted to.”53 Washington signed the letter, “Your affectionate friend and obed[ien]t ser[van]t”—a style that underscored their new peer relationship. So, without prompting, Washington made Hamilton’s cooperation a precondition for heading the new army.

  On June 2, Hamilton informed Washington that he would join the army only if given the number-two post: “If you command, the place in which I should hope to be most useful is that of Inspector General with a command in the line. This I would accept.”54 The inspector general would be the second spot, carrying the rank and pay of major general. Since Washington expected any French invasion force to be far more mobile and daring than the stodgy British armies he had fought during the Revolution, he thought the inspector general should be an energetic young man. And Hamilton was his undisputed choice.

  During the next few weeks, Hamilton sent a flurry of messages to Adams’s cabinet about war preparations. He tossed off stiffly worded dispatches, as if he were the president in absentia. Flashing, as usual, with a surplus of ideas, he told Treasury Secretary Wolcott that the United States should boost taxes, take out a large loan, and establish “an academy for naval and military instruction.”55 He furnished a precise description of the new navy he envisioned: six ships of the line, twelve frigates, and twenty small vessels. Hamilton was typically quick, clear, and decisive in his recommendations. It is easy to understand why Adams’s cabinet warmed to his executive prowess and equally easy to understand why Adams resented his highhanded intrusion. The flinty Timothy Pickering later recounted three testy exchanges with Adams as to who should supervise the new army:

  A[dams]: “Whom shall we appoint Commander-in-Chief?”

  P[ickering]: “Colonel Hamilton.”

  Then on a subsequent day:

  A: “Whom shall we appoint Commander-in-Chief?”

  P: “Colonel Hamilton.”

  Then on a third day:

  A: “Whom shall we appoint Commander-in-Chief?”

  P: “Colonel Hamilton.”

  A: “Oh no! It is not his turn by a great deal. I would sooner appoint Gates or Lincoln or Morgan.”56

  Adams preferred these three senior veterans of the battle of Saratoga. Pickering explained wearily to Adams that the ailing Daniel Morgan had “one foot in the grave,” that Horatio Gates was “an old woman,” and that Benjamin Lincoln was “always asleep.” Pickering later drew the moral for Hamilton’s son: “It was from these occurrences that I first learned Mr. Adams’s extreme aversion to or hatred of your father.”57 Such petulant talks occurred two years before Adams’s “discovery” of Hamilton’s influence over his cabinet.

  On June 22, President Adams sent an ambiguously worded inquiry to Washington, asking for advice about leadership of any new army: “In forming an army, whenever I must come to that extremity, I am at an immense loss whether to call out the old generals or to appoint a young set.”58 Adams told Washington that he hoped to consult him periodically. In a striking example of political gaucheness, Adams then nominated Washington to command the new army before he had a chance to register an opinion. On July 3, the Senate hastily approved the choice. With a few conspicuous exceptions, Hamilton had always treated Washington with punctilious courtesy and was taken aback that Adams had made the appointment without first securing Washington’s consent. On July 8, he wrote to the first president from Philadelphia, “I was much surprised on my arrival here to discover that your nomination had been without any previous consultation of you.” Yet he urged Washington to accept: “Convinced of the goodness of the motives, it would be useless to scan the propriety of the step.”59

  To ensure Washington’s acceptance, Adams dispatched James McHenry on a three-day mission to Mount Vernon. The secretary of war toted a batch of communiqués, including Washington’s commission and a letter from the president. Unbeknownst to Adams, McHenry also bore a message from Hamilton that was anything but friendly toward the president and faulted his expertise in military affairs: “The President has no relative ideas and his prepossessions on military subjects in reference to such a point are of the wrong sort....Men of capacity and exertion in the higher stations are indispensable.”60 Because of his advancing age, Washington did not intend to take the field until a war actually arrived, so his chief deputy would be the effective field commander. Both McHenry and Pickering knew of Adams’s dislike of Hamilton and schemed behind their boss’s back to get Washington to choose Hamilton. As it happened, Washington did not need coaching, telling McHenry that he would entertain only Hamilton or Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as his deputy. In a confidential letter, Washington bluntly advised Pickering that Hamilton’s “services ought to be secured at almost any price.”61 Before McHenry returned to Philadelphia, Washington slipped him a sheet naming the three men he wished to see as his major generals, listed in order: Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Henry Knox. Writing to Adams, Washington made the appointment of his general officers a precondition for accepting the
commanding post.

  What a world of trouble was packed into the seemingly inoffensive list. John Quincy Adams later identified the feud over this list as the “first decisive symptom” of a schism in the Federalist party.62 Ideally, Washington wanted the three men ranked in exactly the order he had given—that is, with Hamilton given precedence as his second in command. There were complications aplenty, however, not the least that Adams wished to reverse the order and have Knox and Pinckney supersede the upstart Hamilton. For Adams, this was a straightforward assertion of presidential prerogative. After all, Washington had not named his own subordinates during the Revolution. To Washington, however, it seemed a rough slap in the face and violated his basic conditions for taking the assignment.

  Though Washington rated Hamilton’s abilities above those of Knox and Pinckney, he knew they had some legitimate claims to preference. During the Revolution, Knox had been a major general and Pinckney a brigadier general, while Hamilton had been a lowly lieutenant colonel. Washington claimed that this outdated hierarchy no longer counted. This was a touchy matter for the hearty, affable Henry Knox. The three-hundred-pound former secretary of war had been a brigadier general when Hamilton was a mere collegian and captain of an artillery company. Knox had been an early booster of Hamilton, perhaps even instrumental in getting him the job on Washington’s staff, and Hamilton told McHenry how pained he was by any conflict with Knox, “for I have truly a warm side for him and a high value for his merits.”63 All the same, their relative stations had shifted in the intervening years. It was Hamilton who had been preeminent in Washington’s cabinet and Hamilton who had overseen the military campaign during the Whiskey Rebellion when Knox was distracted by real-estate dealings in Maine. Afterward, Knox had thanked Hamilton profusely: “Your exertions in my department during my absence will never be obliterated.”64 Nevertheless, Knox was stung to learn that Washington now planned to demote him below Hamilton and Pinckney. Washington laid greater stress on the recruitment of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. He calculated that the French might invade the south, hoping to gain the support of local Francophiles and arm the slave population. He thought it politic to have a southerner and worried that Pinckney might refuse a place inferior to Hamilton.