Washington: A Life (77 page)

Because Washington was obsessed with punctuality, it probably wasn’t coincidental that his rift with Hamilton came when his aide kept him waiting. On the night of February 15, 1781, Washington and Hamilton frantically labored till midnight, preparing paperwork for a meeting with French officers in Newport. The next day Hamilton was going downstairs in the New Windsor farmhouse when he passed Washington coming upstairs. Washington told Hamilton that he wished to see him. Hamilton figured that Washington would wait in his office, so he paused briefly to hand a letter to Tench Tilghman and conversed with Lafayette, then turned around and headed back upstairs. He found Washington glowering at the top of the stairs. “Colonel Hamilton,” Washington said testily, “you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect.” “I am not conscious of it, sir,” Hamilton retorted, “but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.” “Very well, sir,” Washington replied, “if it be your choice.”
¹⁷
Hamilton estimated that two minutes had elapsed. Under ordinary circumstances, the two men would have quickly repaired the damage, but Hamilton elected to push things past the breaking point.

While Washington could be gruff, he knew when he crossed a line and was quick to extend apologies. He hated friction with people and avoided personal confrontations whenever possible. Now he showed exemplary patience with the brashly capable Hamilton. Instead of pulling rank and waiting for the young man to make amends, Washington responded with a magnanimous gesture. An hour later he sent Tench Tilghman to offer apologies and requested “a candid conversation to heal a difference which could not have happened but in a moment of passion.”
¹⁸
Hamilton was having none of it. As he told his father-in-law, “I requested Mr. Tilghman to tell him that I had taken my resolution in a manner not to be revoked; that as a conversation could serve no other purpose than to produce explanations mutually disagreeable, though I certainly would not refuse an interview if he desired it, yet I should be happy [if] he would permit me to decline it.”
¹⁹
Doubtless shocked by his aide’s intransigence, Washington regretfully acquiesced in Hamilton’s decision to leave his staff.

Since Philip Schuyler was a friend of Washington, Hamilton knew he owed his father-in-law an explanatory letter. He conjured up a moody, irritable boss and said he had found that Washington “was neither remarkable for delicacy nor good temper.”
²⁰
He made the startling statement that he had rebuffed Washington’s attempts at social intimacy. “For three years past,” Hamilton wrote, “I have felt no friendship for him and have professed none. The truth is our own dispositions are the opposites of each other and the pride of my temper would not suffer me to profess what I did not feel. Indeed, when advances of this kind” were made, Hamilton responded in a way that showed “I wished to stand rather upon a footing of m[ilitary confidence than] of private attachment.”
²¹
Hamilton also portrayed Washington as somewhat vain and insulated from criticism, a man “to whom all the world is offering incense.”
²²
If Washington promised him better treatment and succeeded in inducing him to return to work, Hamilton predicted, “his self-love would never forgive me for what it would regard as a humiliation.”
²³
Evidently the young Alexander Hamilton intended to teach George Washington a lesson. As he boasted to James McHenry, Washington “shall, for once at least, repent his ill-humor.”
²⁴

Hamilton agreed to stay on temporarily as Washington sought a replacement. For a brief interval even Martha Washington was pressed into secretarial service, drawing up a fair copy of at least one letter for her husband. Hamilton had suggested to Washington that they keep their altercation secret for the sake of the war effort. Washington agreed and was then startled to discover that Hamilton had babbled about the episode to several friends, giving his version of events. To Lafayette, Washington expressed astonishment: “Why this injunction on me while he was communicating it himself is a little extraordinary! But I complied and religiously fulfilled it.”
²⁵
Perhaps because he spied facets of his younger self in Hamilton, Washington was forgiving toward him, even when he tested his patience. He may even have felt some secret guilt for not having rewarded Hamilton with the field command he coveted. Whatever the tensions of their relationship, Washington never shed his admiration for Hamilton’s outstanding abilities.

In April, having left Washington’s family, Hamilton began to badger his ex-boss for a field command, and Washington reacted with perplexity. “I am convinced that no officer can with justice dispute your merit and abilities,” he assured Hamilton, but he didn’t see how he could promote him without offending more senior officers.
²⁶
He feared that Hamilton would interpret his decision as belated punishment for their rift: “My principal concern arises from an apprehension that you will impute my refusal of your request to other motives than those I have expressed.”
²⁷
Once again Washington had responded to their difficulties in a classy and dignified manner.

Eventually rumors circulated about the temporary estrangement between the two men. Years later John Adams recalled the episode thus: Hamilton “quitted the army for a long time, as I have heard, in a pet and a miff with Washington.”
²⁸
On another occasion, Adams wrote, “those who trumpeted Washington in the highest strains at some times spoke of him at others in the strongest terms of contempt … Hamilton, [Timothy] Pickering, and many others have been known to indulge themselves in very contemptuous expressions, but very unjustly and ungratefully.”
²⁹
In the spring of 1783 Hamilton opened up in private to James Madison about Washington’s occasionally querulous personality. As Madison recorded in his journal, “Mr. Hamilton said that he knew General Washington intimately and perfectly. That his extreme reserve, mixed sometimes with a degree of asperity of temper, both of which were said to have increased of late, had contributed to the decline of his popularity.”
³⁰
At the same time Hamilton regarded Washington as a man of unimpeachable integrity who would “never yield to any dishonorable or disloyal plans.”
³¹

Whatever his reservations, Hamilton had hitched his fortunes to Washington’s career and refrained from public criticism of him. He knew that Washington alone had held the army together since its creation. Most important, the two men were shaped by the same wartime experiences and shared basic concerns about the country’s political structure, especially the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation and the need for a powerful central government that would bind the states into a solid union, restore American credit, and create a more permanent army. As an immigrant, Hamilton bore no loyalty to a particular state, which perhaps made it easier for him to adopt a continental perspective congenial to Washington’s. Their congruent political values lashed Washington and Hamilton together into a potent political partnership that would last until the end of Washington’s life.

Lawrence Washington. George Washington revered his older half brother, who set a pattern of military service that George faithfully followed.

Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie. Though he was an early champion of Washington during the French and Indian War, the two men clashed before the end of Dinwiddie’s tenure as colonial governor of Virginia.

Sarah “Sally” Cary Fairfax, the enchanting woman who captivated Washington’s imagination in his early adulthood and perhaps in the years beyond. This rather romanticized painting, done in the early twentieth century, is based on a photograph of an original but now vanished portrait of her.

George William Fairfax. Washington’s longtime friend chose either to accept or to overlook Washington’s fascination with his wife.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. Though never a radiant beauty, Martha Washington provided the ideal social setting and emotional support for her husband’s career.