Alexander Hamilton (36 page)

At the time, many states were loath to transfer control over their own import duties to Congress, and Hamilton feared that the resulting economic rivalries would threaten political unity. His qualms were shared by Robert Morris, who sketched the broad contours of a program—establishing a national bank, funding the war debt, and ending inflation—that was the forerunner of Hamilton’s work as treasury secretary. To strengthen the central government, Morris decided to appoint a tax receiver in each state who would be free from dependence on local officials. On May 2, 1782, he asked Hamilton to become receiver of continental taxes for New York. As an inducement, he assured Hamilton that he could pocket one-quarter of 1 percent of any monies collected. Hamilton, feeling harried, turned him down flat. “Time is so precious to me that I could not put myself in the way of any interruptions unless for an object of consequence to the public or to myself,” he replied.
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Hamilton may have suspected that with five New York counties still in enemy hands, the job would not be that remunerative. In early June, Morris sweetened the pot by guaranteeing Hamilton a percentage of the money
owed,
not just collected. This evidently persuaded Hamilton to accept the offer, and he further volunteered to lobby the state legislature for Morris’s tax measures. Whether the self-taught Hamilton knew it or not—and one suspects that he very much did—he was now squarely positioned to succeed Robert Morris as America’s preeminent financial figure.

The few months that Hamilton spent trying to gather taxes demonstrated anew the perils of the Articles of Confederation. States regarded their payments to Congress, in effect, as voluntary and often siphoned off funds for local purposes before making any transfers. This situation, combined with a lack of independent federal revenues, had forced the patriots to finance the Revolution by either borrowing or printing paper money. On July 4, in his sixth “Continentalist” essay, Hamilton, with a nod to Morris, applauded the appointment of federal customs and tax collectors to “create in the interior of each state a mass of influence in favour of the federal government.”
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This essay makes clear that, in the Revolution’s waning days, Hamilton had to combat the utopian notion that America could dispense with taxes altogether: “It is of importance to unmask this delusion and open the eyes of the people to the truth. It is paying too great a tribute to the idol of popularity to flatter so injurious and so visionary an expectation.”
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In mid-July, while still cramming for his next bar exam, Hamilton traveled to Poughkeepsie and pleaded successfully with state legislators to form a special committee to expedite tax collection. Working with Philip Schuyler, he got the legislature to adopt a set of resolutions (likely authored by Hamilton himself) calling for more congressional taxing power and a national conference to overhaul the Articles of Confederation—the first such appeal issued by a public body. Hamilton’s determined pursuit of reform won plaudits from Morris, and in his correspondence with Hamilton, Morris let down his guard and confided his frustration at congressional ineptitude. Hamilton repaid the candor. “The more I see, the more I find reason for those who love this country to weep over its blindness,” Hamilton wrote.
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He recoiled at the cowardice and selfishness he saw rampant in the New York legislature. “The inquiry constantly is what will
please,
not what will
benefit
the people,” he told Morris. “In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.”
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Increasingly Hamilton despaired of pure democracy, of politicians simply catering to the popular will, and favored educated leaders who would enlighten the people and exercise their own judgment.

Whatever his disdain for state legislators, Hamilton made a favorable impression at Poughkeepsie. Jurist James Kent recalled that “his animated and didactic conversation, far superior to ordinary discourse in sentiment, language, and manner, and his frank and manly deportment, interested my attention.”
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The legislators were so taken with Hamilton’s presentation that he was chosen as one of five members of New York’s delegation to the Continental (or Confederation) Congress that was to convene in November. With typical dexterity, Hamilton had parlayed the technocratic job of tax collector into a congressional seat.

For Hamilton, nobody in his generation showed a more genuine love of country or more salient leadership traits than his friend John Laurens. In January 1782, at a time when the British still held Charleston and Savannah, Laurens had addressed the South Carolina legislature in a futile last bid for his star-crossed scheme to recruit black troops. That July, he wrote a warm letter to Hamilton, expressing hope that his friend would “fill only the first offices of the republic.” (Once again, a portion of Laurens’s letter is missing, perhaps sanitized by Hamilton’s family.) The note concluded, “Adieu, my dear friend. While circumstances place so great a distance between us, I entreat you not to withdraw the
consolation
of your letters. You know the unalterable sentiments of your affectionate Laurens.”
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Hamilton believed fervently that, once the war ended, he and Laurens, like figures from classical antiquity, would embark jointly on a new political crusade to lay the foundations for a solid republican union. In mid-August, he told Laurens that the state legislature had named him to Congress. Striking an uplifting note, he made a stirring appeal for his old comrade to join him there. “Quit your sword my friend, put on the
toga,
come to Congress. We know each other’s sentiments, our views are the same. We have fought side by side to make America free. Let us hand in hand struggle to make her happy.”
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We do not know whether Laurens ever set eyes on this message. In late August 1782, a British expedition from Charleston was foraging for rice near the Combahee River when the impetuous Laurens flouted orders and tried to ambush them with a small force. The enemy was tipped off and squatted in the high grass waiting for him. Once they stood up to fire, Laurens began to charge and exhorted his men to follow. He was instantly cut down by a bullet. John Laurens was one of the last casualties of the American Revolution. Many thought he had foolishly risked his life and those of his men in a trivial action against a superior force after real hostilities had ended. His death vindicated Washington’s judgment that the patriotic Laurens had only one serious fault: “intrepidity bordering on rashness.”
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He was mourned by many who thought he had had the makings of a fine leader. “Our country has lost its most promising character in a manner, however, that was worthy of the cause,” John Adams consoled Henry Laurens.
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For Hamilton, the news was crushing. “Poor Laurens, he has fallen a sacrifice to his ardor in a trifling skirmish in South Carolina,” he wrote sadly to Lafayette, the other member of their war triumvirate. “You know how truly I loved him and will judge how much I regret him.”
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The death deprived Hamilton of the political peer, the steadfast colleague, that he was to need in his tempestuous battles to consolidate the union. He would enjoy a brief collaboration with James Madison and never lacked the stalwart if often aloof patronage of George Washington. But he was more of a solitary crusader without Laurens, lacking an intimate lifelong ally such as Madison and Jefferson found in each other. On a personal level, the loss was even more harrowing. Despite a large circle of admirers, Hamilton did not form deep friendships easily and never again revealed his interior life to another man as he had to Laurens. He became ever more voluble in his public life but somehow less introspective and revelatory in private. Henceforth, his confessional remarks were reserved for Eliza or Angelica Church. After the death of John Laurens, Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it.

In late November 1782, Alexander Hamilton, after trotting on horseback all the way from Albany, arrived in Philadelphia to take up his place in the Confederation Congress. The city of forty thousand people that he encountered was larger and more affluent than New York or Boston. Having grown up in seaside towns, he must have found something pleasingly familiar about this seaport with its tall-masted ships and extensive wharves. Compared to the raucous commercial chaos of New York, Philadelphia was a more orderly place, abounding in elegant homes tucked tidily behind garden walls. On sunny days, fashionable ladies strolled with parasols. Many tree-shaded streets had brick sidewalks swept clean by a sanitation department and illuminated nightly by whale-oil lamps. Though Presbyterians and Baptists now outnumbered Quakers, a trace of their old austerity lingered. By 11:00
P.M.
, one young English visitor grumbled, “there is no city in the world, perhaps, so quiet. At that hour, you may walk over half the town without seeing the face of a human being, except the watchman.”
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Hamilton had left Eliza and baby Philip behind but was still the starry-eyed newlywed and did not wander the streets in search of nocturnal adventure. He assured his wife several weeks after arriving that “there never was a husband who could vie with yours in fidelity and affection.”
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At first, he tolerated Eliza’s absence well and did not yearn for her presence until early January, when he began arranging her trip to Philadelphia—then he could not wait to see her. “Every hour in the day I feel a severe pang on this account and half my nights are sleepless,” he told her. “Come my charmer and relieve me. Bring my darling boy to my bosom.”
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In Philadelphia, Hamilton found himself part of a Congress whose inadequacy he had long ridiculed. The whole jerry-built structure—the endless ad hoc committees, the voting rules that encouraged states to veto vital measures, the term limits that restricted congressmen to three one-year terms in a six-year period—guaranteed paralysis. As Hamilton complained, the undemocratic voting rules put it in the power “of a small combination to retard and even to frustrate the most necessary measures.”
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For someone with his reverence for efficiency, it was an exasperating situation. The problems only worsened after November 30, 1782, when American peace commissioners signed a provisional peace treaty with Great Britain, sapping incentives for further unity. Local leaders such as Sam Adams in Massachusetts and Patrick Henry in Virginia eloquently asserted the sovereignty of the states. So magnetic was the allure of state governments that many members of Congress stayed home, making it difficult to muster quorums. The caliber of delegates suffered accordingly, and their jealous discords infuriated Hamilton.

He was saved from despondency by a like-minded delegate who also foresaw a mighty nation and had a richly furnished mind to match his own: James Madison. They shared a continental perspective, enjoyed a congruent sense of missions, and served together on numerous committees. Having been thrown on his own resources at an early age, Hamilton, twenty-seven, was far more worldly than Madison, thirty-one, who had led a cosseted life. On the other hand, Madison, laboring in Congress since 1780, was already a seasoned legislator. He was so conscientious that he set a congressional endurance record by scarcely missing a day during three years of service. The French minister rated Madison “the man of soundest judgment in Congress…. He speaks nearly always with fairness and wins the approval of his colleagues.”
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In many ways, Madison was a pivotal figure in Hamilton’s career, their early collaboration and later falling-out demarcating distinct stages in Hamilton’s life. People tended either to embrace Hamilton or to abhor him; Madison stands out for having alternated between the usual extremes. Small and shy, James Madison had a formidable mind, but he was unprepossessing in manner and appearance. He usually dressed in black, had the bookish pallor of a scholar, and cut a somber figure. Seldom did he smile in public, and the wife of one Virginia politician chided him for being “a gloomy stiff creature.”
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Another female observer found Madison entertaining in private but “mute, cold, and repulsive” in company.
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He did not court publicity and lacked the charismatic sparkle that made the brashly confident Hamilton a natural leader. If Hamilton seemed born to rule, then Madison seemed born to reflect. Still, Madison’s diffidence could be deceptive, and his indomitable force showed when he opened his mouth. He was a queer mixture of intellectual assurance, bordering on conceit, and social timidity and awkwardness. Lacking Hamilton’s social ease and fluency, he could also be funny and a superb raconteur among warm companions, even telling the occasional bawdy tale. At the time they met, Madison was a priggish bachelor and tight-lipped about his private affairs. No personal gossip ever smudged the severe rectitude of James Madison’s image.

Madison came from a family that had lived comfortably in Virginia’s Piedmont region for a century and was related to many local landowners. Madison’s grandfather owned 29 slaves, and his father boosted that number to 118, making him the largest slaveholder in Orange County, Virginia. The family also owned up to ten thousand acres in the county. Until age fifty, Madison, the oldest of ten children, lived in economic dependence on his father and even in Congress fell back on income from the family plantation. Like Jefferson, he could not escape his dependence on slavery, whatever his private qualms, and told his father during his last year in Congress that unless the delegates got a pay raise, “I shall be under the necessity of selling a Negro.”
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