Washington [271]
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