Alexander Hamilton (25 page)

Washington had survived the Conway Cabal only to have his authority challenged by General Charles Lee, an experienced officer who had been captured by the British in a tavern in late 1776 and had only recently been released after a fifteen-month captivity. Lee was a thin, quarrelsome, eccentric bachelor who spoke four foreign languages, had lost two fingers in an Italian duel, and traveled everywhere with his pack of dogs at his heels. He had briefly married an Indian woman, leading the Mohawks to nickname him, with good reason, Boiling Water. He was a talented but impossibly temperamental man who believed devoutly in his own military genius. Arrogant and indiscreet, he told Elias Boudinot that “General Washington was not fit to command a sergeant’s guard.”
²⁵
He also ridiculed efforts made by Steuben and Hamilton to bring professional order to the army.

On June 24, 1778, Washington convened a council of war to debate whether to pounce on the retreating British Army. Hamilton took minutes. The opinionated Lee immediately poured scorn on Washington’s plan, saying the Americans would be trounced by the superior Europeans and that it was foolhardy to court trouble when the French were soon to arrive. Hamilton—who dismissed Lee as “a driveler in the business of soldiership or something much worse”—writhed quietly.
²⁶
To his astonishment, the officers agreed with Lee’s views and in a manner, scoffed Hamilton, that “would have done honor to the most honorable society of midwives.”
²⁷
Washington preferred to operate by consensus, but he decided to override this vote and give orders to strike at the enemy “if fair opportunity offered.”
²⁸
Lee refused to serve as second in command for what he deemed a misguided maneuver. Only after Washington called his bluff and assigned the position to Lafayette did Lee back down and consent to ride out and take command of the advancing forces.

For the next few days, Hamilton, as a liaison officer to Lafayette, was constantly in motion, riding through muggy nights to reconnoiter enemy lines and convey intelligence among the officers. By the night of June 27, the British were encamped near Monmouth Court House in Freehold, New Jersey, with Lee and his soldiers lying only six miles away. Washington ordered Lee to attack in the early morning “unless there should be very powerful reasons to the contrary.”
²⁹
Washington, three miles farther back, would then bring up the rear with the army’s main contingent. Hamilton drafted Washington’s directive to Lee that night, telling the latter to “skirmish with [the enemy] so as to produce some delay and give time for the rest of the troops to come up.”
³⁰

June 28, 1778, was to be an unforgettable day because of, among other things, the stifling heat. The thermometer reached the high nineties, and some soldiers rode naked from the waist up. During this day, horses and riders alike expired from heat prostration. The battle was supposed to start with Lee taking on the British rear guard. After hearing small-arms fire that morning, Hamilton was sent ahead by Washington to scout Lee’s movements, and he was stunned by the tumult he found: far from engaging the enemy, as directed, Lee’s men were in a full-blown retreat. Not a word of this had been communicated to Washington. Hamilton rode up to Lee and shouted, “I will stay here with you, my dear general, and die with you! Let us all die rather than retreat!”
³¹
Once again the young aide did not hesitate to talk to a general as a peer. Hamilton also spotted a threatening movement by a British cavalry unit and prevailed upon Lee to order Lafayette to charge them.

When Washington got wind of the chaotic flight of his troops, he galloped up to Lee, glowered at him, and demanded, “What is the meaning of this, sir? I desire to know the meaning of this disorder and confusion!”

Lee took umbrage at the peremptory tone. “The American troops would not stand the British bayonets,” he replied.

To which Washington retorted, “You damned poltroon, you never tried them!”
³²
Washington did not ordinarily use profanities, but, faced with Lee’s insubordination that morning, he swore “till the leaves shook on the trees,” said one general.
³³

America’s idolatry of George Washington may have truly begun at the battle of Monmouth. One of America’s most accomplished horsemen, Washington at first rode a white charger, given to him by William Livingston, now governor of New Jersey, in honor of his recrossing of the Delaware. This beautiful horse dropped dead from the heat, and Washington instantly switched to a chestnut mare. By sheer force of will, he stopped the retreating soldiers, rallied them, then reversed them. “Stand fast,
my boys,
and receive your enemy,” he shouted. “The southern troops are advancing to support you.”
³⁴
Washington’s steady presence had a sedative effect on the flying men. He summarily ordered Lee to the rear and goaded the troops into driving the British from the field. As he watched this legendary performance, Lafayette thought to himself, “Never had I beheld so
superb a man.
”
³⁵

Hamilton, not prone to hero worship, was awed by Washington’s unflinching courage and incomparable self-command. “I never saw the general to so much advantage,” he told Elias Boudinot. “His coolness and firmness were admirable. He instantly took maneuvers for checking the enemy’s advance and giving time for the army, which was very near, to form and make a proper disposition…. By his own good sense and fortitude he turned the fate of the day…. [H]e directed the whole with the skill of a master workman.”
³⁶

Hamilton’s bravery likewise left an enduring image. Famished for combat, he was in “a sort of frenzy of valor,” Lee contended.
³⁷
He seemed ubiquitous on the battlefield. When Hamilton found one brigade in retreat and feared the loss of its artillery, he ordered them to line up along a fence and then charge with fixed bayonets. Riding hatless in the sunny field, Hamilton was exhausted from the heat by the time his horse was shot out from under him. He toppled over, badly injured, and had to retire from the field. Aaron Burr and John Laurens also had horses shot from under them that day. So severe was Burr’s sunstroke that it rendered him effectively unfit for further combat duty in the Revolution. Suffering from violent headaches, nausea, and exhaustion and probably irked by his lack of promotion under Washington, Burr took a temporary leave of absence in October.

Many people were struck by Hamilton’s behavior at Monmouth, which showed more than mere courage. There was an element of ecstatic defiance, an indifference toward danger, that reflected his youthful fantasies of an illustrious death in battle. One aide said that Hamilton had shown “singular proofs of bravery” and appeared “to court death under our doubtful circumstances and triumphed over it.”
³⁸
John Adams later said that General Henry Knox told him stories of Hamilton’s “heat and effervescence” at Monmouth.
³⁹
At moments of supreme stress, Hamilton could screw himself up to an emotional pitch that was nearly feverish in intensity.

The battle of Monmouth was not an outright victory for the patriots, and the British Army escaped intact the next day. Most observers termed it a draw. Still, the ragtag continentals had killed or wounded more than one thousand troops—four times the number of American casualties—proving to naysayers that they could perform admirably against tip-top European soldiers. “Our troops, after the first impulse from mismanagement, behaved with more spirit and moved with greater order than the British troops,” Hamilton rejoiced. “I assure you I never was pleased with them before this day.”
⁴⁰
Enraged that Lee had fumbled a tremendous opportunity, Hamilton applauded Washington when he arrested Lee for disobeying orders and making a shameful retreat. Hamilton was an eager witness against Lee during a court-martial that took place at New Brunswick in July under Lord Stirling’s supervision. “Whatever a court-martial may decide,” Hamilton warned Elias Boudinot, “I shall continue to believe and say his conduct was monstrous and unpardonable.”
⁴¹
Among Charles Lee’s sympathizers was Aaron Burr, who missed no chance to belittle Washington’s military talents.

On July 4 and 13, Hamilton gave damaging testimony at the court-martial, recalling that Lee had taken no measures to stop the enemy’s advance, even after being told to do so by Washington. He told of troops fleeing in wild disorder and of Lee’s failure to notify Washington of this retreat. In a dramatic finale, Lee cross-examined Hamilton and accused him of having expressed in the field a contrary opinion of his conduct. “I did not,” rejoined Hamilton. “I said something to you in the field expressive of an opinion that there appeared in you no want of that degree of self-possession, which proceeds from a want of personal intrepidity.” Hamilton further informed the general that there had appeared in him “a certain hurry of spirits, which may proceed from a temper not so calm and steady as is necessary to support a man in such critical circumstances.”
⁴²
It was a curious clash indeed: the youthful aide pontificating to a veteran general on the ideal mental state of a field commander.

In the end, Charles Lee was found guilty on all counts but given a relatively lenient sentence: suspension from the army for one year. In October, the disgraced general assured Burr that he planned “to resign my commission, retire to Virginia, and learn to hoe tobacco.”
⁴³
But he did not let matters drop there, and he and his minions continued to vilify Washington and even Hamilton for having testified in the court-martial. In late November, Hamilton encountered Major John Skey Eustace, a worshipful young aide-de-camp to Lee and almost his adopted son. Hamilton tried to approach him in a conciliatory manner, even though Eustace was telling people that Hamilton had perjured himself in the court-martial. Eustace later described to General Lee his encounter with Hamilton:

[Hamilton] advanced towards me, on my entering the room, with presented hand—I took no notice of his polite intention, but sat down without bowing to him…. He then asked me if I was come from camp—I said,
shortly, no,
without the usual application of Sir, rose from my chair—left
the room
and
him standing before the chair.
I could not treat him much more rudely—I’ve reported my
suspicions
of his
veracity on the trial
so often that I expect the son of a bitch will challenge me when he comes.
⁴⁴

In early December, Lee heaped further abuse upon Washington in print, and John Laurens urged Hamilton to rebut it. “The pen of Junius is in your hand and I think you will, without difficulty, expose…such a tissue of falsehood and inconsistency as will satisfy the world and put him forever to silence.”
⁴⁵
Perhaps because he was a party to the dispute, Hamilton, in a rare act of reticence, declined to lift his pen. Instead, Laurens challenged Lee to a duel to avenge the slurs against Washington. Hamilton agreed to serve as his second, the first of many such “affairs of honor” in which he participated.

Dueling was so prevalent in the Continental Army that one French visitor declared, “The rage for dueling here has reached an incredible and scandalous point.”
⁴⁶
It was a way that gentlemen could defend their sense of honor: instead of resorting to courts if insulted, they repaired to the dueling ground. This anachronistic practice expressed a craving for rank and distinction that lurked beneath the egalitarian rhetoric of the American Revolution. Always insecure about his status in the world, Hamilton was a natural adherent to dueling, with its patrician overtones. Lacking a fortune or family connections, he guarded his reputation jealously throughout his life, and affairs of honor were often his preferred method for doing so. The man born without honor placed a premium on maintaining his.

Late in the wintry afternoon of December 23, 1778, Hamilton accompanied John Laurens to the duel in a wood outside Philadelphia. Lee chose for his second Major Evan Edwards. By prearranged rules, Laurens and Lee strode toward each other and fired their pistols when they stood five or six paces apart. After Laurens shot Lee in the right side, Laurens, Hamilton, and Edwards rushed toward the general, who waved them away and requested a second round of fire. Neither Hamilton nor Edwards wanted Lee to continue, as they made clear in a joint account they issued the next day. “Col. Hamilton observed that unless the General was influenced by motives of personal enmity, he did not think the affair ought to be pursued any further. But as General Lee seemed to persist in desiring it, he was too tender of his friend’s honor to persist in opposing it.”
⁴⁷
But no second round ensued. The duel ended with Lee declaring that he “esteemed General Washington” as a man and had never spoken of him in the abusive manner alleged.
⁴⁸
For Laurens, this made sufficient amends, and the four men quit the woods. In their summary, Hamilton and Edwards praised the conduct of the two principals as “strongly marked with all the politeness, generosity, coolness, and firmness that ought to characterize a transaction of this nature.”
⁴⁹

How was Hamilton affected by his first duel? He saw two gentlemen who had exhibited exemplary behavior and fought for ideals rather than just personal animosity. The object had not been to kill the other person so much as to resolve honorably a lingering dispute. Both Laurens and Lee walked away with their dignity more or less intact. Dueling may well have struck the young Hamilton less as a barbaric relic of a feudal age than as a noble affirmation of high honor. It was the last act of Charles Lee’s military career. He withdrew from the scene and lived in seclusion with his beloved dogs, first in Virginia and then in Philadelphia, where he died of tuberculosis in October 1782.