Washington [200]
Debilitated by never-ending bags of mail, Washington said he needed someone who could “comprehend at one view the diversity of matter which comes before me.”33 On March 1, 1777, that person appeared in the shape of Alexander Hamilton, the twenty-two-year-old boy wonder and artillery captain whose pyrotechnics at White Plains and the Raritan River had so impressed Washington. In the short, slim, and ingenious Hamilton, Washington encountered an ambition that could well have reminded him of his younger self.
Unlike the often affluent aides in Washington’s family, Hamilton was an illegitimate young man who had been born on Nevis and spent his adolescence on St. Croix. Five years earlier he had been an impoverished clerk in a Caribbean trading house. Thanks to a subscription taken up by wealthy local merchants who spotted his potential, he was sent to school in North America. Starting in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and then at King’s College in New York, he displayed the same knack as the young Washington for capturing the confidence of influential older men. Possessed of an aristocratic savoir faire that belied his background, Hamilton turned himself, with uncommon speed, from an outcast of the islands into a Revolutionary insider. His perfectionist nature rivaled Washington’s own. He toted about a sack of books, including Plutarch’s Lives, to improve himself and made extensive notations in the empty pages of a pay book. Still, noticeable differences between the two men introduced tensions. Hamilton was more cerebral than Washington and less tolerant of human foibles, racing through life at a frenetic pace. Where Washington could usually subdue his strong emotions, Hamilton was often impetuous, with highly fallible judgment. For all his charm, he was much too proud and headstrong to be a surrogate son to George Washington or anyone else.
Hamilton rapidly became Washington’s most gifted scribe and his “principal and most confidential aide,” often attending war councils and enjoying a comprehensive view of the conflict.34 One officer claimed that Hamilton “thought as well as wrote for Washington.”35 Hamilton revered Washington’s courage, patriotism, and integrity and never doubted that he was the indispensable figure in the war effort. Nevertheless, no man is a hero to his valet, and Hamilton left some candidly critical views of Washington. He regarded Washington as a general of only modest ability and quickly sensed the powerful emotions bottled up inside his overwrought boss, whom he often found snappish and difficult.36
By this point in the war, Washington’s leadership style was crystal clear. He never insulated himself from contrary opinions, having told Joseph Reed early in the war to keep him posted on even unfriendly scuttlebutt. “I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors,” he wrote. “The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults or remove the prejudices which are imbib[e]d against him.”37 Washington made excellent use of war councils to weigh all sides of an issue. Never a man of lightning-fast intuitions or sudden epiphanies, he usually groped his way to firm and accurate conclusions. Equipped with keen powers of judgment rather than originality, he was at his best when reacting to options presented by others. Once he made up his mind, it was difficult to dislodge him from his opinion, so thoroughly had he plumbed