Washington was acutely aware of the impression his physical presence made on others. When Washington wanted to impress people, as he did Hamilton at that time, his method was to invade their space.5 Standing close and facing them directly, he would look straight down into their eyes. The intent was to make them feel as if they held his undivided attention, while also making them aware of his imposing stature. His speech was purposeful, measured and without animation. All this combined to win Hamilton over. Later, as Hamilton got to know him better, he grew to understand that Washington was not always as confident as he seemed. Though he had trained himself to conceal his emotions, he had a “tell” of clenching his jaw during conversation, which must have revealed when his thoughts were straying. The flashy uniform, the graceful, courtly manners and the diplomatic reserve were all designed to conceal a secret that only those closest to him knew.
George Washington was born on the family farm in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on February 11, 1732. He had a tough start in life. He lost his father, Augustine, when he was just reaching adolescence, leaving him to scrabble mostly on his own for success in a world where family and social connections mattered most. Augustine’s death left Washington to be raised by his desperate, demanding and disturbingly negative mother, Mary Ball. Due largely to the pressures she placed on him at an early age, Washington emerged from his youth an extraordinarily self-conscious young man, hypersensitive to criticism and plagued by benumbing self-doubt.
Mary Ball Washington was still a young woman when Augustine died. She might have remarried, but instead she chose to single-handedly raise six children and run the plantation on her own.6 Though only eleven at the time, George was the oldest among Augustine’s children with Mary Ball, and was expected to pull the most weight. The family was moderately well-off, but as hard as she worked, Mary Ball was never able to do more than keep the plantation afloat. Devoting so much time to the farm left her little time for her children. To ease the pressure on Mary Ball, George’s older half brother Lawrence, from Augustine’s previous marriage, offered to take George in. As he spent more time away from his mother, Washington’s relationship with her grew strained. Her eventual passing inspired little emotion in him, and in the years following her death he never found the time to place a headstone at her grave.
Washington entered young adulthood spurred by a strong sense of destiny, tempered by loss. Like many others in eighteenth-century America, by the time Washington reached his twenties, he was already intimately acquainted with death. Malaria, diphtheria, tuberculosis, yellow fever and smallpox were common causes of untimely death in colonial America, striking down the old and the young without prejudice. When his brother Lawrence contracted tuberculosis, George traveled with him to Barbados, where it was hoped the climate would improve his health. Lawrence did not recover, however, and George contracted smallpox. Yet his brother’s death, and the death of Lawrence’s wife and young daughter a few years later, profoundly changed his fortunes in life. By their deaths, Washington inherited Mount Vernon, and his prospects brightened. His good fortune convinced him that he must be destined for great things. When he later joined the military, his belief that he was “protected” was reinforced by his miraculous escapes from injury in battle. Despite having horses shot out from under him, Washington always emerged unscathed.
Washington’s physical stature also contributed to his feelings of destiny. In a culture that valued rugged masculinity, even as a young man Washington stood out for his height and powerful build. He was tall, with long, strong arms and big hands. From the front, his narrow shoulders, wide hips, and large, athletic legs made him appear impressively solid, if bottom-heavy. He cut a memorable figure and rarely entered a room without notice.
In his youth, Washington was a bit of a dandy. His letters reveal a man who labored over his appearance with the fussiness of a bride preparing for her wedding day.7 For the insecure young Washington, who was eager to make a name for himself, wearing a well-made suit or smart waistcoat may have been a way to compensate for the flawed man he believed he was underneath.
The myth about Washington never telling a lie is just that—a myth. The young Washington was not above lying or cheating if it made him look good. When he was a lowly British Army major, years before the Revolution, a skirmish with French troops resulted in the death of a diplomat who was his prisoner at the time. The nervous young major blamed the diplomat’s death on the incompetence of his men. And when the poorly constructed stockade he ordered built to house prisoners was easily overrun by a small band of French scouts, Washington could find fault with everyone but himself. As a final and lasting insult to the men he led, after the war he teamed up with a friend to cheat the enlisted men out of the land the colony of Virginia had promised them for their service. He secretly changed the terms of the agreement with the Virginia colonial government to ensure that only officers—not enlisted men—received payment for their sacrifices.8
By the time he and Hamilton first met, however, it was decades later, and Washington was more like the honorable figure most schoolchildren would recognize today. The mature Washington was a hero of the French and Indian War, a fabulously wealthy landowner, and a respected member of Virginia’s political elite.
Though Hamilton was barely out of his teens when they first met, Washington must have been struck by how much he resembled the young man Washington had only pretended to be. The youthful Hamilton was brimming with promise and the confidence that flowed from a genuine belief that he truly possessed the skills and qualities necessary to achieve his ambitions. Washington saw in him none of the self-consciousness, self-doubt or insecurities that he himself had carried at that age. Even then, Hamilton was a natural leader and a man of undeniable intellectual gifts. And, unlike the young Washington, he believed that honor was more important than riches or fame. Washington could not have known it at the time, but the admirable Hamilton had begun life in conditions just as precarious as he had.
In an age when a person’s bloodlines were a large determinant of social success, Alexander Hamilton’s family history hung over him like a dark cloud. As he moved in the highest levels of society, he hid the fact that his mother, Rachel, had been briefly imprisoned for adultery and that his father, James, was a depressed, depressing ne’er-do-well and constant disappointment to the most important people in his life. There were rumors, fed by John Adams and others, that Hamilton’s mother was a prostitute and an octoroon.9 The rumors about his mother were unfounded, but the ones about his father James being the black sheep of a noble Scottish family were true. After spending a decade with Rachel and fathering two sons by her out of wedlock, James went out one afternoon to run an errand and never returned. Alexander was ten at the time, and though he would establish an irregular correspondence with his father in later years, they never saw each other again.
After James left, Rachel, brilliant and resourceful, gathered the boys and moved from Nevis to the island of St. Croix, where she opened a shop with money borrowed from family. As an illegitimate child, Hamilton could not attend the local Catholic school, but Rachel was able to afford sporadic tutoring for him and his brother. When Hamilton was eleven, he and his mother contracted tropical fever—he survived, she did not. Hamilton and his brother were shuffled back and forth between relations before finally coming to rest in the company of virtual strangers. His brother became apprenticed to a furniture maker, and Hamilton took a job working for a merchant.
Although his start in life placed him at a disadvantage, it is hard to imagine that someone of Hamilton’s ambition and intellectual resources would be down for long. As he entered his teenage years, the shop owners put him in charge of store operations. Though Hamilton hated the work, he applied himself. In his free time, he read every book he could put his hands to. He was poor and lonely, but he was determined to make something of himself. In a letter to a close friend, Hamilton revealed his desperate desire to be something more than a common clerk:
My youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I’m no philosopher, you see, and may be justly said to build castles in the air. My folly makes me ashamed yet we have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant…. [As he continues, he makes clear the extent to which he is willing to go to achieve success in life.] My ambition is so prevalent that I contemn the grov’ling and condition of a clerk or the like to which my fortune &c. condemns me and would willingly risk my life tho’ not my character to exalt my station.10
While other boys his age were distracting themselves with games and girls, Hamilton applied himself to the mastery of currency exchange rates, to languages and to marketing. Writing would be his ticket to a new life. An article he published in the local newspaper about a hurricane on the island was so well received that friends and acquaintances took up a collection to send him to study in America.
Hamilton was only nineteen when he arrived in New York City, but he was a remarkable figure even then. In the parlance of the time, he was a “pretty fellow.” With his waif-like build, thin shoulders and rosy cheeks, he was often mistaken for a child. When he wanted to, he could be charming, but if his intelligence was insulted, his response could be unsettling. In his day, a subtle, insightful witticism was the preferred method of retort, but Hamilton’s insults could only be likened to shotgun blasts. His inability to moderate himself in the face of a personal attack was a lifelong weakness.
Hamilton knew his stipend would not sustain him for long, so he sought out ways to stretch his income. He moved in with a friend and considered an expedited course of study—hoping to save on tuition by condensing all four years of schooling into two—at Princeton. Princeton denied his request, but when his same proposal was accepted by King’s College—later known as Columbia University—he devoured the curriculum, completing his studies in just two and a half years. And he still found time to get involved in the city’s political scene and to organize a campus military drill company. It was his success at training and equipping this small band of followers that led to his commission as an artillery officer. Given his energy, intelligence and resourcefulness, it was only a matter of time before he came to the attention of the commander in chief.
For Washington, conversing face-to-face with the young Hamilton for the first time must have been a memorable experience. His eyes were bluish-purple, his hair was the rusty color of autumn leaves, and the sharp line of his nose and the close set of his eyes gave his face a feline quality. His mannerisms were feminine and masculine at the same time—delicate, but deliberate. Washington would have been struck by Hamilton’s intensity and his bristling intellect. It is not hard to imagine Hamilton as a fast-talking youth, moving from topic to topic with the agility of a trapeze artist. Washington would have been impressed by Hamilton’s understanding of military strategy, his grasp of economic theory and his deep reading of political philosophy.
Though it was not the custom of the day in polite or professional conversation, had Washington and Hamilton discussed each other’s past, they might have shared how they both lost their fathers when they were still boys and how their fortunes had been greatly dependent on the support of older men. They would have discovered how it was their mothers, not their fathers, who were the driving influence in their youth, and they would have seen how they both saw the military as their only real means of ascent in life. They would have seen that they were both huge risk-takers, and they might have recognized how useful they could be to each other. At the time, Washington needed Hamilton more than Hamilton needed him. Washington was leading a war on two fronts—one against the British and the other against Congress over the resources he needed to sustain the army. Washington needed powerful, persuasive writers who could help him win the support of Congress and the backing of the press. Hamilton’s decision to join Washington’s staff would have monumental consequences for the lives of both men.
As Hamilton and Washington worked together, the huge differences in their temperaments became apparent. Washington learned how impulsive Hamilton could be, and Hamilton saw how paralyzingly cautious Washington was.11 Hamilton was often reckless. In later life, in a legendary incident involving a sexual liaison with a married woman, Hamilton hastily published a pamphlet admitting his adultery in an attempt to dispel an unrelated rumor that he was speculating with the public’s money.12 Had he been more reserved, Hamilton could have addressed the speculation issue alone without raising the issue of the affair. The unnecessary and unexpected admission effectively ended any chance he might have had of becoming president.
Despite his mercurial nature, Hamilton became invaluable to Washington for the way he inspired him. The fledgling United States was especially dependent upon men like Hamilton who could envision a path through the swirling uncertainty that characterized the nation’s earliest days and who possessed the commitment and ability to translate vision into reality. Washington recognized Hamilton’s brilliance and potential for greatness early in their relationship, and he had the wisdom—and, perhaps more importantly, the self-possession—to defer to Hamilton’s leadership and advice at key times when other officials failed him. The Jay Treaty, in 1794, was one such moment.
By 1794, the Revolution had been over for more than a decade, but residual political and economic issues threatened to push the United States and Great Britain toward a resumption of hostilities. Many Americans were angry that the British had yet to pay reparations for carrying off American slaves during the war, and trappers, hoping to get rich in the vast forests out West, resented Britain for being deliberately slow to pull out of the territories after the war.
Across the Atlantic, the British were angry that Crown loyalists in America had yet to be compensated by the American government for the seizure of their property during the war and that debts owed to British merchants went unpaid because the American government refused to enforce British collection orders. These issues, although annoying, fell short of inspiring thoughts of a declaration of war in the minds of most Americans—that is, until they learned that the Royal Navy was capturing and imprisoning American sailors in the West Indies.
No one knew better than President Washington and Treasury Secretary Hamilton that the US was not prepared to fight another war with the British. They understood how lucky American forces were to have defeated the British in the first place, and they personally knew how many times the Continental Army had come close to total defeat. The country was still in its infancy, and war at such a vulnerable time in its development could end the American experiment before it had time to fully take root. The conflict was growing into the most serious crisis of Washington’s presidency, and it arrived at a time when he was probably least prepared to deal with it.
In 1794, George Washington was getting old. Twenty years in the country’s service had left him greatly diminished. The virile, imposing figure most Americans remembered fondly from the Revolution had aged into a slow-moving, slow-talking, dried-up old man. A friend visiting the president could not help but notice how thin he had grown, his face “cadaverous” and his voice “whispy and distant.”13 Washington had wanted to step down the year before, but the fledgling republic would never have survived his departure. So, he soldiered on, surrounded by a team of advisers who themselves wanted nothing more than to beat him to the exit.
At the same time, Hamilton was signaling his own departure from government, but as the crisis with the British grew, he felt increasing pressure to stay on. Though this was an international matter, the treasury secretary felt a need to help Washington since the immensely capable Thomas Jefferson was no longer secretary of state and his replacement, Edmund Randolph, was still learning the job.
Randolph had not been Washington’s first choice to replace Jefferson as head of the State Department. Washington trusted Randolph enough to appoint him US attorney general, and would have liked to retain him in that post, but could find no one else willing to succeed Jefferson. Rand
olph was not a natural in the role, either. On one occasion, Randolph was a little too free while speaking to the French ambassador, Jean Fauchet, and made the mistake of giving the ambassador the impression that he was willing to take a bribe. Unfortunately for Randolph, Fauchet chose to include the secretary of state’s poorly chosen words in a diplomatic note home. The message was intercepted by the British navy, which was only too happy to share the information with one of Washington’s friends.
During a tense exchange over dinner, Washington took Randolph aside and showed him Fauchet’s intercepted letter. Washington had known Randolph for years, and he doubted that he would betray his nation in such a way. But he had to know for sure.
The president closely studied Randolph’s face as he read the letter. At first, Randolph showed no reaction, which must have made Washington suspicious, because he pressed him further. Suddenly Randolph exploded. He was insulted that Washington would even accuse him of such a thing. He insisted that he be given a chance to respond in writing once he had had time to gather the necessary materials in his defense—a request that only increased Washington’s suspicions. The president agreed, but his mind was already made up.
Even before Randolph had become embroiled in the scandal that would eventually lead to his resignation, Hamilton was deeply involved in the work of the fledgling secretary of state. Washington asked for the help of his full cabinet as he considered how to respond to the crisis with Great Britain, and Hamilton was only too happy to put his hand in.
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