Jefferson and Hamilton (21 page)

For leaders, wars are filled with guesses. Inevitably, many are incorrect. Some wrong choices are forgivable. Jefferson’s response in this crisis was un-pardonable. Jefferson was informed at eight A.M. on Sunday, December 31,
that a large fleet was sailing northward in the Chesapeake. It was already close to the mouth of the James River. The sentinel system had worked and, in light of Washington’s recent warning, Jefferson should have responded with haste. Yet throughout that long Sunday, and Monday as well, Jefferson did nothing. He did not call out the militia, nor did he notify the Council of State of the possibility of an imminent threat. He did not act until he had absolute confirmation of the presence of the enemy’s naval squadron. In mid-morning on Tuesday, exactly fifty hours after first learning of the potential threat, Jefferson finally summoned the militia. He later claimed that he was slow to act because he did not know whether the fleet was friend or foe.
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It was not a persuasive explanation. When bold, decisive leadership was essential, Jefferson had failed.

He was not the only important official to hesitate in the face of peril. Washington had often acted slowly and indecisively, at times with unfortunate results. But Washington was almost always spared public criticism. That was not the case with Jefferson.

The fleet that bore down on Virginia in the closing hours of 1780 carried a force of 1,600 men commanded by Benedict Arnold. After he had turned his coat, the British rewarded him with the rank of brigadier general and gave him an army of regulars, Hessians, and American Loyalists. Arnold’s objectives, like Leslie’s before him, were to sow terror, wreak destruction, deflate morale, fortify the Elizabeth River, and garrison Portsmouth, from which the British could close the supply lines to General Greene.

The first of Arnold’s green-clad soldiers landed in Newport News and Hampton on New Year’s Eve. Before sunset the following day, the invaders had seized four vessels and their cargoes. By early January 2, the day that Jefferson at last called to arms some 4,600 militia, Arnold’s force was already within five miles of Williamsburg. Two days later Jefferson was awakened before dawn and notified that Arnold’s fleet was about fifty miles up the James River, roughly halfway between Portsmouth and Richmond. Jefferson summoned the “whole militia from adjacent counties” and ordered the removal of government papers from the capital. He also commanded the destruction of all arms and munitions that could not be taken from the city. For five hours, Jefferson rode about the town on horseback directing operations. Just before noon, he took Martha and his three small daughters a few miles up the James River to Tuckahoe, the estate where his mother had been raised and he had first been schooled.

On Friday afternoon, January 5, Arnold reached Richmond with some nine hundred infantry and cavalry. They marched in nearly unopposed. The militia that Jefferson had summoned the day before had not reached the
capital, and those who had been called to duty earlier in the week were scattered and unable to keep pace with the raiders, who were transported by sailing vessels that glided swiftly, thanks to what Washington once called their “canvass wings.” Only two hundred militiamen were in the capital when Arnold’s men landed. Some bravely offered resistance, but they were heavily outnumbered.

Jefferson had returned from Tuckahoe to a safe location across the river from the beleaguered capital. Climbing a small knoll and using a spyglass, he was able to watch the marauders as they carried away their booty and set fires. Soon, a black, choking smoke hung like a blanket over the town. Arnold’s men—sometimes supervised, sometimes not—acted quickly. Within twenty-four hours, the raiders destroyed two warehouses, hundreds of hogs-head of liquor, a foundry, mills, stores of food, a score of carriages, twenty-six artillery pieces, several residences, stores, and a church or two. In addition, they confiscated crafts large and small, more than two thousand muskets, and large stockpiles of grain. One residence that was plundered was the home of the governor.

The raiders departed after one day, carrying off “all kinds of merchandise” in forty-two vessels of assorted sizes. Arnold got just about everything he was after, though he came away empty-handed with regard to Governor Jefferson, whom he longed to apprehend. A couple of days earlier, Arnold’s men had done extensive damage to Berkeley plantation, the home of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Through scuttlebutt in the Continental army, in which Arnold had been a general officer for four years after July 1776, he may have known that Jefferson was the document’s principal author. Even if he did not know that, capturing the governor of Virginia would have been a great prize.
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Arnold’s raiding expedition came to a rapid end. He had sown considerable destruction in Richmond and at plantations along the James, and he had liberated scores of slaves. However, a week after arriving in Virginia, his army went into winter quarters in Portsmouth, which he had been ordered to fortify. Arnold’s plan was await reinforcements and better weather, then to strike again.
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Virginia had been roughed up. The damage to Jefferson had just begun. Jefferson had made mistakes, his plodding response when warned of Arnold’s approach the most egregious of all. Yet, given the debilities of his office and the military challenges that Virginia faced, failure likely would have stalked any who served as the Virginia’s chief executive at this juncture of the war. Nevertheless, Arnold’s calamitous raid had occurred on Jefferson’s watch, opening him to blistering criticism, sometimes even from old friends.
One censured him as “obstinate, lethargic,” while another railed at his “neglect and supineness.”
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Jefferson was also accused of indecisiveness and incompetence. John Page ranted that the entrance to the James River had been left unfortified and the militia ill-equipped. Edmund Pendleton complained to Washington that the governor had not been “sufficiently attentive” to intelligence and did not respond to the threat until “it was too late.” General Steuben intimated to Washington that a stronger, more assertive governor would have done more to prepare the state for the crisis. Jefferson did not know of all the attacks on him, or who assailed him in private, but he knew that much of the blame for the debacle was being assigned to him. He responded with the claim that poor intelligence had been to blame. Few were convinced.
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Angry and humiliated, Jefferson sought to get his hands on the man who had brought the troubles down on him. He approved a scheme to rig a ship with explosives and crash it into Arnold’s vessel, killing or capturing him when he tried to escape the blazing craft. The plan never materialized, but Jefferson soon turned to the notion of raising a party of militiamen who were to be paid five thousand guineas apiece if they succeeded in bringing Arnold to him, dead or alive. If Arnold was brought to him alive, Jefferson pledged, he would first make a “public spectacle” of “this greatest of all traitors,” then he would have him executed.
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Chapter 5
“Our Affairs seem to be approaching fast to a happy period”

Glory for Hamilton, Misery for Jefferson

Several moments might qualify as the nadir of the Revolutionary War. The best known might be Washington’s seemingly hopeless retreat across New Jersey in 1776 and the dreadful Valley Forge winter in 1778. But for contemporaries, the mood may never have been blacker than at the outset of 1781. In earlier crises there had been the promise of rescue by France, but by 1781 rumors were buzzing that France wanted out of the war. Even worse, the year began with mutinies of Continental soldiers. “[W]e are bankrupt with a mutinous army,” declared a Massachusetts congressman.
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At Washington’s headquarters and in war-torn Virginia that year, the feeling was palpable that the tide had to turn or America might be compelled to return to the British Empire. In such an event, Americans might have greater autonomy than before the war, but they would not be independent and there would be no United States. No one summed up the mood better than Hamilton. The “people have lost all confidence in our public councils,” he said, adding that “our friends in Europe are in the same disposition.” Like others, he wondered whether “we shall after all fail in our Independence.”
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Hamilton and Jefferson were filled with despair, and not just for America’s future. Hamilton’s lust for glory seemed unlikely to be fulfilled. Jefferson’s public career seemed on the brink of ruin.

Hamilton had long wanted an independent command. By becoming Washington’s aide and gaining his respect, he had believed he would eventually be assigned his own brigade. Then, as a field officer, he would see action and have a shot at achieving distinction. But Washington found him too useful at headquarters to let him go. Year after year, Hamilton had remained tied to a desk, and now he suspected that the war was nearly over. Hamilton
anguished that at war’s end he would be just another obscure soldier. He had gained notoriety among powerful figures in New York, but despite six long years of soldiering, he had failed to become an heroic figure revered for his dauntless exploits. “The stars fight against [me],” he said. “I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself,” he declared, sinking into despondency.
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If the war was lost, Hamilton believed that history would blame the defeat on the absurd political and constitutional system that left Congress with insufficient “powers … for calling forth the resources of the country.” The stubborn shortsightedness of the states, he thought, was robbing America of a victory it should long since have won. Yet, while Hamilton thought that America’s economic woes had prolonged the war, he was also convinced that a myriad of factors had brought the United States to the brink of the abyss. Among the failures, in his judgment, were a surfeit of mediocre army officers, the refusal of too many men of talent to serve at the national level, and a fatal overreliance on the militia.
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Then there was the matter of General Washington. Hamilton never criticized Washington’s generalship, and in fact he thought him superior to his “competitors.” He never said that he thought Washington was the best man for the job, but he never said the contrary either. However, Hamilton, like quite a few others, appears to have believed that Washington shared some of the blame for the war having gone on for so long. Washington had been reluctant to send his men to the Southern Department, and he had refused to support the enlistment of African Americans, steps that might have prevented the string of defeats in Georgia and the Carolinas, and which might have brought Great Britain to the peace table. In 1779, and again in 1780, Washington had resisted Congress’s pleas to invade Canada, a step that at the very least might have compelled London to withdraw its army from the South. In fact, during the thirty months since Monmouth, Washington had remained largely inactive.

Hamilton had to be guarded in expressing his views, but it was apparent that he did not like Washington. “I have felt no friendship for him and have professed none,” he said, adding: “I discovered he was neither remarkable for delicacy nor good temper.” Hamilton’s ingrained cynicism, together with his resentment at the general’s aloofness and denial of his wished-for field command, colored his opinion of Washington. Nevertheless, Hamilton had seen the unguarded and unvarnished Washington, the “ill-humor[ed]” man who was carefully hidden from public view. Like a handful of others who saw the commander up close, Hamilton came to view Washington as hard and coarse, and sometimes petty, vain, ill-tempered, inconsiderate, insecure, inelegant, and unoriginal in his thinking. Like nearly everyone else, Hamilton
found Washington to be distant and cold. Although “all the world is offering incense” to Washington, Hamilton wanted no part of it. Yet for all that he disdained in Washington, Hamilton not only acknowledged that the commander was honest and honorable but he also thought it “essential to the safety of America” that the public see Washington in mythically heroic hues. What Hamilton was saying was that the cause required a fabricated Washington, one that the American people could believe in and rally round in order to sustain morale and maintain national cohesion.
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Hamilton once said that he had “always disliked” serving as an aide, in part because he detested “having … a kind of personal dependence” on any individual, whether Washington or someone else. All of his frustrations, contempt, and simmering resentments surfaced in a flash on February 15. Summoned by Washington, Hamilton was slow in getting to the commander’s office. Washington, whose nerves were already stretched to the breaking point by the recent mutinies and countless other difficulties, upbraided Hamilton “in a very angry tone,” telling him, “you … treat me with disrespect.” Hamilton resigned on the spot. An hour later, Washington, who truckled to no man, sent Hamilton an apology and asked him to reconsider. Hamilton refused, though as weeks or months might be needed to find a suitable replacement, he agreed to remain on the commander’s staff until his position was filled, and in fact he continued as an unofficial aide for another six months. He stayed on in part from his commitment to the cause, but also as it afforded the best prospect of fulfilling his ambition for a field command. Hamilton hoped to rejoin the artillery when a position opened or to find a post with the army in either the Carolinas or Virginia.
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In particular, the worsening situation in Virginia caught Hamilton’s eye. He knew that Washington, in the wake of Arnold’s raid on Richmond, had dispatched 1,200 men to the state under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette. In March, Sir Henry Clinton countered by sending 1,600 men under General William Phillips—who, while a prisoner of war in Albemarle County in 1779, had dined with Jefferson—to reinforce Arnold. Hamilton anticipated plenty of action in Virginia, and he wanted to be part of it.