Jefferson and Hamilton (14 page)

Not that the fighting in 1776 was over. With winter approaching, Washington divided his army. One third was sent to prepare defenses in the highlands along the Hudson, another third was posted east of White Plains to guard against a British invasion of New England, and Washington took the remainder—some three thousand men—across the Hudson to defend New Jersey. Hamilton’s company was assigned to Washington’s division. Choosing to go after Washington, Howe sent General Charles Cornwallis with some ten thousand men to carry out the assignment.

Cornwallis began his pursuit on November 20. Heavily outnumbered, Washington retreated southward, a flight that ended twelve days later when the bedraggled Americans crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
Cornwallis might have caught the fleeing rebels, but he was delayed by bad roads and bad weather, and by the sheer size of his army, which daily foraged for tons of food, water, and firewood. Washington also did what he could to slow the enemy, destroying bridges and deploying his artillery at strategic points to lay down barrages on the advancing redcoats. The British answered with artillery salvos. Men on both sides perished. Hamilton was in the thick of things—firing, being fired at, making hurried retreats to rejoin the main army. Washington said in his reports that the British on occasion entered a town at the same “time our Rear”—the artillery in many instances—“got out.”
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One soldier remembered seeing Captain Hamilton during the dispiriting retreat. The trooper was surprised that the company was “a model of discipline,” especially as its “diminutive” commander was such “a boy [that] I wondered at his youth.”
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Another Continental who observed Hamilton thought him “a youth, a mere stripling, small, slender, almost delicate in frame, marching … with a cocked hat pulled down over his eyes, apparently lost in thought, with his hand resting on a cannon, and every now and then patting it as [if] it were a favorite horse or a pet plaything.”
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All the men in Washington’s force suffered during those dire days. It was cold and rained frequently. Food was scarce. No one had a tent. Even coats and blankets were in short supply. The men were ragged and unkempt. Washington said that “many of ’em” were “entirely naked & most so thinly clad as to be unfit for service.” The attrition rate was heavy, though the army survived the retreat to fight another day. According to Washington, the rebel force escaped on more than one occasion because of the “smart cannonade” laid down by his artillerymen.
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Within a few days of crossing the Delaware, Washington’s army, reinforced by militiamen and redeployed Continentals, had nearly doubled. Something of a gambler, he opted to roll the dice on Christmas night. He planned a surprise attack on the 1,500-man Hessian garrison across the river in Trenton. Washington split his army of some 5,000 men into three divisions. Each was to re-cross the Delaware and approach Trenton, one from the east, one from the south, and one from the northwest. Washington led the men who advanced from the northwest. Hamilton’s company was assigned to that sector. Indeed, Washington brought along eighteen field pieces, eight heavy guns for every thousand infantrymen, a significantly larger ratio of artillery to muskets than was customary in armies of that day. Washington had learned during the fighting in New York that artillery used as a shock weapon could destroy the discipline ingrained in the enemy’s professional soldiers, while at the same time emboldening his callow men.

Just as the men were about to set out, a fierce winter storm blew in. A keening
wind howled. Rain, then sleet, then snow fell. The men, soaked to the skin, slogged forward for nine miles. In addition, they made a hazardous crossing of the swiftly flowing Delaware, and on both sides of the river they dragged cumbersome and heavy cannon, sometimes along uphill grades. The heaviest cannon weighed nearly a ton, as did the ammunition and trail boxes for each field piece.
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Washington frequently rode from one end of the line to the other throughout the long, cold, difficult march. He calmly exhorted his men to keep moving and to listen to their officers. Hamilton also must have kept a close watch on the men in his company, from time to time calmly encouraging them to persevere in the face of the lashing wind and sleet, and their arduous struggles with the weapons. When his force reached the town in the final still minutes before dawn, Washington divided his men yet again. One division approached from the north, the other from the south. The rebel artillery batteries were posted in front of the division that was to advance on the tiny village from the north.

Snow was still falling from the ebony sky as the men took up their positions. Most faced an interminable wait in anxious silence until all was ready and the agreed-on time of attack at last arrived. The soldiers did what soldiers always do on the eve of battle. Some thought of their assignment. Some thought of loved ones at home. Some prayed. Not a few thought of death. Nearly every man wondered uneasily how he would perform under fire. All wanted to get on with it.

In the first pale gray light of dawn, Washington barked the order to attack. The infantrymen struck. As the surprised Germans hurried outdoors from their barracks to take up positions, the American artillery opened fire. As Colonel Henry Knox, the rebel artillery commander, later put it, “in the twinkling of an eye” the rebel cannonade “cleared the streets.”
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The Hessians tried to regroup, but they were disorganized, outnumbered, and their cannon had been captured in the first moments of the engagement. Pressed on all sides, and with artillery shells bursting among them, the Germans soon raised the white flag. The Americans had killed or captured 1,050 enemy soldiers. Washington lost only about a dozen of his men, some from exhaustion and exposure. It was the first American victory since independence had been declared.

Washington’s blood was up after his victory. He easily persuaded himself that if he crossed again into New Jersey, he might inflict heavy blows on the German units that had been posted at Burlington and Bordentown. Another sensational victory might even induce Howe to abandon all of New Jersey. The last of the rebel soldiers crossed back into the lion’s den on the final day of the year. But the operation took longer than anticipated, ruining Washington’s
plan. Not only were the Germans long gone, but Washington also learned that Cornwallis was coming after him with a considerably larger force. Abandoning his Fabian strategy, Washington decided to stand and fight. He posted his army on sloping terrain above the Assunpink Creek just outside Trenton. The Delaware River was at the soldiery’s back. Retreat was seemingly impossible. Knox believed the American position was “strong, but hazardous.” Some of the gray-faced soldiers, expecting the worst, described their situation as “a most awful crisis.”
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One reason that Washington wanted to fight was that he had brought his entire complement of artillery across the river, some thirty pieces from the seven batteries raised by five states. Washington positioned his infantry in three rows on the knoll, one behind the other. Knox arranged the artillery so that it was interlocked and would fire according to a prearranged pattern. To succeed in what would become known as the Second Battle of Trenton, Cornwallis’s men would have to survive the greatest massed artillery fire that the Americans had mounted to this point in the war.
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Cornwallis did not succeed. He ordered one assault after another by shock troops who tried to cross the Assunpink. American riflemen, infantrymen, and artillery pounded away at them. It was a bloodbath. By day’s end, Cornwallis had lost 8 percent of his army. American losses were a quarter of those of their adversary—about one hundred men.

Cornwallis thought he could finish off Washington the next morning, but the American commander did not give him the opportunity. Once the cold, inky night set in, the rebel army slipped away to the southeast, then turned north toward Princeton, taking a country road that today is named Hamilton Street in South Trenton. It was heavy going. The men had to trudge over partially frozen roads filled with ruts and tree stumps, and many also had to wrestle with field guns or artillery horses that slipped and slid on the treacherous ice. Some men had no shoes, and veterans later recalled that the snow was “literally marked with the blood of soldiers feet.”
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After a trek of about twelve miles, the army reached Princeton. The sun was just rising in a cloudless sky. It was going to be a glorious day. In fact, it was only then, in the first pink glint of the sun, that Cornwallis, back on the Assunpink, realized that his adversary was gone.

Washington acted on intelligence reports that Cornwallis had left only a small force to guard Princeton. With superior numbers on his side for a change, Washington wasted no time. He divided his army into two wings, each directed to advance on the college town; it is not clear where Hamilton was posted. Washington gave each division some field pieces, but he probably
deployed most of his artillery at Worth’s Mill, where the main Princeton-Trenton road crossed a small brook. They were to defend the army’s rear should Cornwallis show up. Subsequently, the legend blossomed that Hamilton’s company fought on the campus of the college that had denied him admission and that he personally fired a cannonball through the chapel, destroying the portrait of George II. It was a good story, but likely untrue. What was true was that with nearly a six-to-one majority, the rebels drove the British away, temporarily liberating Princeton. Few American military commanders have ever conducted a more risky or daring campaign than did Washington in this ten-day span. He had twice caught the British by surprise. At Princeton, he made some 450 British soldiers the victims of his Fabian strategy, now in operation once again. Altogether, the British had lost more than 2,000 men in ten days, ten times their enemy’s losses.

Washington did not linger in Princeton. Learning that Cornwallis was marching north, the rebel army retreated to the west, its first step toward taking up winter quarters in Morristown, a rugged, hilly New Jersey enclave a few miles west of Manhattan. A month earlier Washington’s army had been chased across the Delaware, seemingly ending a disastrous ninety-day campaign that had begun in August on Long Island. Instead, the campaign ended with the British suffering heavy losses and being forced from much of New Jersey. These stunning victories revived flagging spirits throughout America.
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Ambrose Serle, a secretary at British headquarters, referred to the rebel soldiery as “Raggamuffins.” It was a fitting description for the tattered and exhausted men who entered Morristown. Washington told Congress that his soldiers were “bear foot & ill clad,” with little food.
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Not surprisingly, illness swept Morristown. Hamilton was among those taken sick. Spare to begin with, and exhausted by weeks of hard campaigning, he was felled with what he described as “a long and severe fit of sickness.” He was fortunate to have made it this far. Only twenty-five of the sixty-eight men in his company survived their one-year enlistment.
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Two weeks after the army entered its winter quarters at Morristown, Washington wrote to Hamilton requesting his services as an aide-de-camp.
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It is not clear how Washington learned that Hamilton might be good for the job. Generals Stirling and McDougall, who were acquainted with Hamilton, were with the army in Morristown, but it was more likely that Colonel Knox recommended his young gunner. As there were only about thirty officers in his artillery corps, and as Hamilton had served under Knox for nearly nine months, the two must have been in one another’s presence on numerous
occasions. At every crucial juncture of his life, Hamilton had stood out and been noticed by men of importance. He doubtless sought to make a favorable impression on Knox, and he must have succeeded.

Nearly six weeks passed before Hamilton accepted the commander’s tender. He was ill during some of that time, though he was also uncertain about the wisdom of taking a post as an aide. Hamilton lusted after glory, which he knew was not to be had in a desk job, and that had already led him to spurn a similar offer from General Stirling. What is more, everyone knew that French assistance was on the way, including shipments of weaponry. Hamilton expected that additional regiments of artillery soon would be created. He longed to be named a regimental commander, which, as he remarked subsequently, would “in all probability … have led further.” In other words, he might ultimately command a brigade.
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Neither Hamilton nor anyone else at that juncture could have imagined the stature that Washington would achieve. With the exception of Trenton-Princeton, Washington’s performance in 1776 had invited criticism.
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There was a chance that he might not remain in command of the army throughout a long war. On the other hand, if he survived as commander, and if America won the war, Washington could achieve iconic status, wielding considerable power and influence in the postwar years. For a man whose ascent at every turn had been facilitated by patrons, Hamilton had to have felt a strong pull to hitch his wagon to Washington’s star. He accepted the offer, and his appointment was announced by Washington on March 1.
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The appointment was automatically accompanied by a promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He had just turned twenty-two. Only four years earlier, Hamilton had expected to spend his life working in obscurity as a clerk in the West Indies.