by Ron Chernow
Adams seemed dazed, infuriated, and plain befuddled by the frantic jockeying around him. On July 18, 1798, he submitted the nominations for general officers to the Senate in the order Washington had noted them, but he hoped their relative ranks would be reversed. Within a week, when Hamilton accepted appointment as inspector general, Republicans were aghast. The Aurora loudly ridiculed Adams’s religion and morality in promoting the self-confessed lover of Maria Reynolds: “He has appointed Alexander Hamilton inspector general of the army, the same Hamilton who published a book to prove that he is AN ADULTERER....Mr. Adams ought hereafter to be silent about French principles.”65
Adams fled to Quincy and stayed there for the rest of the controversy, then complained that his cabinet had plotted behind his back to foist Hamilton on him. He saw himself as a decent, helpless man, tangled in byzantine plots dreamed up by the devious mind of Alexander Hamilton. The controversy simmered throughout the summer. Henry Knox, refusing to be subordinated to Hamilton, complained to McHenry on August 8: “Mr. Hamilton’s talents have been estimated upon a scale of comparison so transcendent that all his seniors in rank and years of the late army have been degraded by his elevation.”66 Fuming, Adams informed McHenry in mid-August that, even though the three nominations had been confirmed, he wanted Knox to take the lead: “General Knox is legally entitled to rank next to General Washington and no other arrangement will give satisfaction.” For good measure, he added that Pinckney “must rank before Hamilton.”67 In early September, Oliver Wolcott, Jr., reminded Adams that Washington had made Hamilton’s appointment his prerequisite for taking command and concluded that “the opinion of General Washington and the expectation of the public is that General Hamilton will be confirmed in a rank second only to the commander in chief.”68
In his reply to Wolcott, Adams let all his bile gush to the surface in a tirade against Hamilton. Even though Hamilton had tendered more than twenty years of outstanding service to his country, he was still blackballed in Adams’s eyes for being foreign born. The president daubed him in demonic colors:
If I should consent to the appointment of Hamilton as a second in rank, I should consider it as the most [ir]responsible action of my whole life and the most difficult to justify. He is not a native of the United States, but a foreigner and, I believe, has not resided longer, at least not much longer, in North America than Albert Gallatin. His rank in the late army was comparatively very low. His merits with a party are the merits of John Calvin—
“Some think on Calvin heaven’s own spirit fell, While others deem him [an] instrument of hell.”
I know that Knox has no popular character, even in Massachusetts. I know, too, that Hamilton has no popular character in any part of America.69 Adams was ventilating his frustration and decided, on second thought, not to send the unfair letter. What he actually wrote to James McHenry was: “Inclosed are the commissions for the three generals signed and all dated on the same day.”70 It was a victory for Hamilton and a humiliating surrender for Adams, who later griped, “I was no more at liberty than a man in prison.”71
By this point, Washington was smarting at how badly Adams had botched things. He told Adams pointedly, “You have been pleased to order the last to be first and the first to be last.”72 Addressing the question of whether Hamilton’s former service entitled him to high military position, he remarked that, as his principal wartime aide, Hamilton had “the means of viewing everything on a larger scale than those who have had only divisions and brigades to attend to, who know nothing of the correspondences of the commander in chief or of the various orders to or transactions with the general staff of the army.”73 In other words, Hamilton had been his chief of staff, not a high-ranking secretary. Adams’s patent displeasure with Hamilton afforded Washington an opportunity to pay his protégé a huge compliment. Washington said that some people considered Hamilton “an ambitious man and therefore a dangerous one. That he is ambitious I readily grant, but it is of that laudable kind which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes in hand. He is enterprising, quick in his perceptions, and his judgment intuitively great.” In sum, Hamilton’s loss would be “irreparable.”74 Far from weakening Washington’s faith in Hamilton, Adams had drawn the two old allies closer together. On October 15, Adams yielded grudgingly to the appointment of Hamilton as inspector general. Knox refused to serve under him, but Charles Cotesworth Pinckney agreed and praised Hamilton. “I knew that his talents in war were great,” he told McHenry, “that he had a genius capable of forming an extensive military plan, and a spirit courageous and enterprizing, equal to the execution of it.”75
Adams’s defeat over Hamilton’s appointment only added to his dislike of the younger man, and the incident never ceased to rankle. To be sure, Hamilton had been cunning, quick-footed, and manipulative and had placed Adams in an awkward spot. But Adams had made the classic mistake of committing his presidential prestige to a fight he could not win. He could not accept that most observers, from Washington to Jay, thought Hamilton the most highly qualified man for the job.
While trying to fend off Hamilton as inspector general, Adams became correspondingly unyielding in his desire to name his son-in-law, Colonel William Smith, a brigadier general, a rank one rung below major general. The handsome young colonel had given John and Abigail Adams no end of grief. He was chronically indebted from speculation and a year earlier had temporarily abandoned their daughter, Nabby. Smith had mostly survived on sinecures doled out by President Washington. Later on, he was imprisoned twice: once for debt and once for enlisting in a scheme to liberate Venezuela. Despite Smith’s irresponsible shenanigans, Adams now wanted to fob him off on America as a brigadier general, and Washington was flabbergasted. “What in the name of military prudence could have induced the appointment of [William Smith] as brigadier?” Washington asked Secretary of State Pickering. “The latter never was celebrated for anything that ever came to my knowledge except the murder of Indians.”76
At first, Pickering tried to dissuade Adams from this disastrous choice, but the stubborn president “pronounced his son-in-law a military character far, very far, superior to Hamilton!!!” Pickering recalled.77 Dusting off an old proverb, Pickering said, “Mr. Adams has always thought his own geese swans.”78 Pickering secretly lobbied the Senate to veto the appointment—another instance of disloyalty, if a pardonable one. When the Senate duly rejected Smith, Abigail Adams detected “secret springs at work” and thought some senators were “tools of they knew not who.”79 Pickering contended that Adams’s disdain for him dated from that event.
Two years later, Adams again tried to elevate his son-in-law to a regimental command. Hamilton chided him, as gingerly as possible, that the appointment might look like favoritism: “There are collateral considerations affecting the expediency of the measure, which I am sure will not escape your reflection....I trust this remark will not be misunderstood.”80
Adams wrote back blind with rage: “I see no reason or justice in excluding him from all service, while his comrades are all ambassadors or generals, merely because he married my daughter. I am, Sir, with much regard your most obedient and humble Servant John Adams.”81
John Adams had a long memory when it came to slights. On May 9, 1800, Benjamin Goodhue, a Federalist senator from Massachusetts, found himself in an unforgettable tête-à-tête with an apoplectic president. Adams returned to the Senate’s rejection of William Smith for brigadier general and blamed Goodhue, Pickering, and Hamilton. As Goodhue related this remarkable outburst, Adams claimed that “we had killed his daughter [metaphorically] by doing this; that rejection originated with Hamilton, and from him to Pickering, who he said (with extreme agitation and anger) influenced me and others to reject him; that Col. Smith was a man of the first military knowledge in the U.S. and was recommended to the appointment by Genl. Washington.” (Washington’s letter directly belies this assertion.) Goodhue went on to state that Adams’s “resentment appeared implacable towards the conduct of the Sen
ate in those instances which resulted, as he said, with no other view than to wound his feelings and those of his family.” Throughout the discussion, Goodhue said, Adams exhibited “a perfect rage of passion that I could not have expected from the supreme executive.”82 Many such stories circulated among the Federalists about Adams’s incontinent wrath.
Another intricate appointment battle involved Aaron Burr, who had left the U.S. Senate the year before and returned to the New York Assembly. To appease the Republicans, Adams wanted to name Burr a brigadier general. Hamilton was pushing measures to defend seaports against French incursions and sat on a local military committee with Burr to improve New York City’s defenses. For the moment, the mutable Burr was flirting with the Federalists, and Robert Troup was agog that Burr, an enthusiast for the French Revolution, was now helping to equip the city against a possible French assault. Troup told Rufus King that Burr’s “conduct [is] very different from what you would imagine. Some conjecture that he is changing his ground.”83 Burr and Hamilton were more openly amicable than they had been for some time.
Hamilton was skeptical that Burr would abandon his Republican comrades but was content to see what would happen. He must have been grateful that Burr had used his good offices the previous fall to cool off his confrontation with Monroe. When one military man appeared in New York that summer, he asked if Hamilton would take it amiss if he visited Burr. “Little Burr!” exclaimed Hamilton cheerily, explaining that they had always been on good terms despite political differences. “I fancy he now begins to think he was wrong [in politics] and I was right.”84 So Hamilton took seriously the idea that Burr might be mulling over a switch in party affiliation, and he wished to encourage it cautiously.
Burr mirrored Hamilton in his military daydreams, and he was attracted by an appointment to the new army. This may explain his short-lived political rapport with Hamilton. “I have some reasons for wishing that the administration may manifest a cordiality to him,” Hamilton wrote guardedly to Wolcott when Burr set out for Philadelphia in late June 1798. “It is not impossible he will be found a useful cooperator. I am aware there are different sides, but the case is worth the experiment.”85 Around this time, Hamilton chatted with Burr about an appointment. Aware of bad blood between him and Washington, Hamilton asked Burr whether he could serve faithfully under the general. Burr unhesitatingly replied that “he despised Washington as a man of no talents and one who could not spell a sentence of common English.”86
Having tussled with Washington over Hamilton and William Smith, Adams compounded his mistake by asking the former president to take on Burr as a brigadier general despite their well-known history of friction. Washington refused, pulling no punches: “By all that I have known and heard, Colonel Burr is a brave and able officer, but the question is whether he has not equal talents at intrigue?”87
Years later, Adams still spluttered with emotion at this retort: “How shall I describe to you my sensations and reflections at that moment. [Washington] had compelled me to promote over the heads of Lincoln, Clinton, Gates, Knox, and others and even over Pinckney . . . the most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable, and unprincipled intriguer in the United States, if not in the world, to be second in command under himself and now dreaded an intriguer in a poor brigadier.”88 In retirement, Adams mused that if Burr had become a brigadier general in 1798, it might have tethered him to the Federalists and assured his own reelection in 1800. Indeed, Adams was right in one respect: Washington blundered by recruiting only Federalists to top military positions, while Adams had wished to include two Republicans—Burr and Frederick Muhlenberg—as brigadiers. Had the army taken on a more bipartisan complexion, it might well have been more popular.
Alexander Hamilton was now addressed as General Hamilton and was so listed in the New York City directory. With his congenital weakness for uniforms, he allowed a painter from the British Isles, P. T. Weaver, to capture him in dazzling military dress, braided with epaulettes. A hardness now sharpened Hamilton’s features—his profile was finer, his gaze more direct than in other pictures—yet he complimented the portrait and, in a sentimental gesture, gave it to his old friend from St. Croix, Edward Stevens.
Ever the master administrator, Hamilton flung himself into the gargantuan task of organizing an army with unflagging energy. For five weeks in November and December 1798, he conferred in Philadelphia with Washington, who made his first resplendent return to the capital in twenty months, appearing in uniform on horseback. Charles C. Pinckney and Secretary of War McHenry joined the planning sessions. Hamilton sketched out this phantom force in microscopic detail, producing comprehensive charts for regiments, battalions, and companies. In a typical passage, Hamilton was to write, “A company is subdivided equally into two platoons, a platoon into two sections and a section into two squads, a squad consisting of four files of three or six files of two.”89 He assigned ranks to officers, set up recruiting stations, stocked arsenals with ammunition, and drew up numerous regulations.
For the moment, Washington delegated plenary power to him. Hamilton told one general, since Washington had “for the present declined actual command, it has been determined ...to place the military force everywhere under the superintendence of Major General Pinckney and myself.”90 Not just the new army but the old one stationed on the western frontier came under Hamilton’s direct command, while Pinckney oversaw the southern troops. Hamilton exercised his far-flung authority from a small office at 36 Greenwich Street in Manhattan. From the outset, his work was often thankless. He drew no salary until November and then earned only $268.35 a month, one-quarter of what he had taken home as a lawyer. More than half of his legal clients, fearing distractions, dropped him when he was made inspector general. Hamilton could not resist government service but could never quite reconcile himself to the pecuniary sacrifice. In pleading for more money with McHenry, he said, “It is always disagreeable to speak of compensations for one’s self, but a man past 40 with a wife and six children and a very small property beforehand is compelled to wa[i]ve the scruples which his nicety would otherwise dictate.”91
Frequently laid up with poor health that winter, Hamilton had to conjure up an entire army aided by a single aide-de-camp, twenty-year-old Captain Philip Church, Angelica’s eldest son. He was so exceedingly good-looking that Hamilton told Eliza that his presence “gives great pleasure to the ladies who wanted a beau.”92 This Anglo-American young man had led an improbable life. Educated at Eton with young noblemen and trained as a legal apprentice at the Middle Temple in London, he was now handling clerical work for a major general in the U.S. Army. Contemptuous of President Adams for touting his inept son-in-law, Hamilton engaged here in some minor nepotism of his own. He admitted to the president that Church’s appointment was “a personal favour to myself ” and added, “Let me at the same time beg you to be persuaded, Sir, that I shall never on any other occasion place a recommendation to office on a similar footing.”93 Nevertheless, he pressed James McHenry to name several Schuyler relatives as lieutenants.
A chronic stickler for etiquette, Hamilton entered into the minutiae of protocol and dress, showing an unrestrained love of military matters. The most fastidious tailor could not have dictated more precise instructions for Washington’s uniform: “A blue coat without lapels, with lining collar and cuffs of buff, yellow buttons and gold epaulettes of double bullion tag with fringe, each having three stars. Collar cuffs and pocket flaps to have full embroidered edges and the button holes of every description to be full embroidered.” For Washington’s hat: “A full cocked hat, with a yellow button gold loop, a black cockade with a gold eagle in the center and a white plume.” For his boots: “Long boots, with stiff tops reaching to the center of the knee pan, the whole of black leather lined above with red morocco so as just to appear.”94 Hamilton’s descriptions of other uniforms were no less meticulous.
His mind percolating with ideas, Hamilton also designed huts for each rank. The huts for lieutenant colonels h
ad to measure fourteen by twenty-four feet, while majors were given fourteen by twenty-two feet: “It is contemplated that the huts be roofed with boards, unless where slabs can be had very cheap.”95 After learning the value of training manuals from Steuben during the Revolution, the indefatigable inspector general devised one for drill exercises. What, for instance, should a soldier do when a commander barked “Head right”? Hamilton answered: “At the word ‘right,’ the soldier turns his head to the right, briskly but without violence, bringing his left eye in a line with the buttons of his waistcoat and with his right eye looking along the breasts of the men upon his right.”96 He signed up the German-born John De Barth Walbach to test cavalry systems used in Prussia, France, and Great Britain and to figure out which would work best in an American setting. To identify the ideal length and speed of the marching step, he conducted experiments using pendulums that vibrated at 75, 100, and 120 times per minute.
So encyclopedic was Hamilton’s grasp of military affairs that he laid down the broad outlines of the entire military apparatus. He viewed the new army as the kernel of a permanent military establishment that would free the country from reliance on state militias. To foster a corps of highly trained officers, he pursued an idea that he and Washington had discussed: establishing a military academy. Contrary to many of his compatriots, Hamilton thought America had much to learn from Europe about military affairs. “Self-sufficiency and a contempt of the science and experience of others are too prevailing traits of character in this country,” he wailed to John Jay.97 (This attitude was of a piece with his dismay over the Jeffersonian faith that Americans had much to teach the world but little to learn from it.) He had already pressed a leading French military authority to present him with “a digested plan of an establishment for a military school. This is an object I have extremely at heart.”98 For a military academy, Hamilton wanted a site on navigable water, with easy access to cannon foundries and small-arms manufacturers. A few weeks later, he galloped off to tour the fortress at West Point.