Jefferson and Hamilton (25 page)

By the time Hamilton completed the four essays, he had finally received his field command. Thereafter, he turned his attention to readying his battalion for the looming campaign, wherever it might be. In May, Washington and Rochambeau had agreed on an attempt to retake New York. Six weeks later—one week after Jefferson fled from Monticello and while Hamilton vacationed in Albany—Rochambeau divulged to the American commander that de Grasse had consented to bring his fleet northward. Where, Rochambeau asked again, did Washington wish it to sail? Aware by then that Cornwallis was in Virginia with a large army, Washington was more flexible. He told his French counterpart that the Chesapeake perhaps offered the best opportunity for a decisive allied victory. Once again, Rochambeau pleaded with de Grasse to sail for the Chesapeake, not New York. But in mid-July, two weeks before Hamilton was given an independent command, Washington changed his mind. New York, he told Rochambeau, should be “our primary Object.” At month’s end, the indecisive American commander changed course yet again. The allies’ best bet lay “to the Southward,” he said.”
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No one was sure where the fight would be, or if it would even occur. Everything hinged on where, or whether, de Grasse arrived. Any number of things might prevent, or delay, his coming. Hamilton was not confident that there
would be an action, but when he took charge of his battalion, he likely guessed that if a campaign materialized, it would be to retake New York.

The sweltering days of July passed. The heavy, heat-filled days of August set in. A week passed, then another. Suddenly, on August 14, came the long-awaited word. De Grasse had sailed from Haiti eleven days earlier with a squadron of twenty-nine ships of the line. His destination: Virginia. The allied armies did not linger. Within five days French soldiers and their American brethren—7,300 strong—were on the march. Meanwhile, Washington ordered Lafayette, together with the Virginia militia, to keep Cornwallis from escaping back into North Carolina. If Lafayette succeeded, the fight would be in Virginia. In that event, the only question would be whether the allies would have to cope with only the redcoats already in Virginia, or whether Sir Henry Clinton would take his army in New York southward to rendezvous with Cornwallis. In a very short time, the allied commanders had their answer. Clinton opted to remain in New York, convinced that de Grasse lacked the naval superiority to prevent Cornwallis’s withdrawal by sea. Washington and Rochambeau thought otherwise. The feeling that something very big was occurring had set in by the time the armies made the now familiar crossing of the Delaware River. By September 2, when the allied armies staged a grand parade through Philadelphia’s dusty streets, Washington sensed that an epic event was playing out, for he had learned that beyond question de Grasse’s fleet would be considerably larger than anything the Royal Navy could muster. Within two or three days of departing Philadelphia, Washington was beside himself with joy. He knew that Lafayette had succeeded. Cornwallis was bottled up on the peninsula below Richmond in the little village of Yorktown.
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As the armies marched south, past lines of curious spectators, Hamilton wrote to Betsey that his health was “perfect.” His ecstasy at the prospect of battle was tempered only by his separation from her. “I am unhappy because I am so remote from you…. I am wretched at the idea of flying so far from you,” he told her. When the armies stepped off, Hamilton thought the odds of finding Cornwallis still in Virginia were about ten to one. As the days passed, however, Hamilton, like Washington, came to think that a decisive action loomed. At Annapolis, he boarded a vessel for the voyage to the Virginia peninsula. By then, Hamilton knew there would be a siege operation in Yorktown. Not to worry, he told Betsey. Sieges are “so conducted, as to economize the lives of men.” He arrived in Williamsburg late in September and was reunited with Lafayette and John Laurens. A couple of days later he was in the allied siege lines in Yorktown, from which he wrote with considerable accuracy that “our affairs seem to be approaching fast to a happy period.” He
predicted on October 12 that in five more days, ten at the most, Cornwallis would have to surrender.
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Nearly every plan, by either side, in this long war had gone awry. At Yorktown, however, everything seemed to fall effortlessly into place. With his overarching numerical superiority, de Grasse frustrated the Royal Navy’s attempts to rescue Cornwallis. In the meantime, Cornwallis’s men dug entrenchments while French and Continental sappers gouged the first parallel out of Virginia’s sunbaked earth. It was two miles long. Once they completed their work, other soldiers dragged heavy artillery into the gun emplacements that had been burrowed. The allies, as Hamilton had tried to tell Betsey, held all the cards. De Grasse promised to stay through October. Cornwallis did not have sufficient provisions to sustain his army for such a long period. The allies had more than 19,000 men against some 8,500 men under Cornwallis. The allies possessed one-third more cannon than their adversary. As the French engineers planned the siege operation, Rochambeau assured Washington that it was “all reduced to calculation.” An American general exalted that the allies had “the most glorious certainty of victory.” On October 9 the thunderous allied bombardment began. A hundred field guns banged away. It continued day and night. Some 3,600 shells exploded in the tiny village of Yorktown every twenty-four hours. Cornwallis took refuge in an underground bunker. His men huddled in trenches and wet, debris-filled basements. By October 16 digging began on a second parallel closer to the tiny village, and only 150 yards from the nearest British lines.

Work on the second parallel was impeded by the existence of two British redoubts. Redoubt No. 9 was on the French side of the allied siege lines. Redoubt No. 10, a square-shaped installation defended by forty-five enemy soldiers, was on the right, or the American side, of the siege lines. Both redoubts housed a battery of mortars—which the British called “royals”—capable of lobbing shells directly into the allied parallels. Neither men nor artillery were safe so long as the redoubts functioned. Their presence was dragging out the siege. De Grasse would have to leave in a couple of weeks, and there was no time to waste.

Clearly, each redoubt would have to be taken by direct assault. The fighting would be hand-to-hand. The allied commanders decided that the French would carry out the attack on No. 9 and the Americans would conduct the strike on No. 10. Washington permitted Lafayette to select an officer to lead the American assault, and he chose his aide, Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat. Lafayette’s choice meant that French officers would be leading both assaults.

Hamilton stepped up. He knew that the attack on the redoubt was likely to be nearly the last act of the siege. Almost certainly, too, Yorktown would be his last venture in the war. He had told his wife that he would leave the army
when this campaign concluded. “Every day confirms me in the intention of renouncing public life…. Let others waste their time and their tranquility in a vain pursuit of power and glory,” he had told her.
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Despite his pretense of mocking those who chased after acclaim, Hamilton was desperate to close his days of soldiering with a shot at glory. In numerous earlier engagements, he had been eager to be part of a hazardous operation. It was the price one had to pay in the quest for splendid recognition and honor. As an adolescent, he had dreamed of becoming a military hero. He had never stopped dreaming the dream. Now was his final chance.

Hamilton appealed to Lafayette to permit him to command the assault. Pleading that Washington had already approved his choice of Gimat, Lafayette refused. Hamilton went directly to Washington. One can only guess what Hamilton said, though he surely must have pointed out that he had seniority over Gimat. He likely argued, too, that it was essential for the new nation that America share the credit with the French for the pending victory at Yorktown, and he may have reminded Washington, as he had in his April letter requesting a field command, that he had loyally served his commander at a desk while others were given opportunities to be “useful to the United States” in combat roles.
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Whatever he said, he succeeded. Washington intervened and put Hamilton in charge of the operation. Washington never said why he made the decision, but, as it would become clear on many occasions in the future, Hamilton understood the commander perfectly and was aware of how to bring Washington around to his way of thinking.

The attacks were set for the night of October 14. Hamilton would have three infantry battalions, one under Laurens. The officers would wield swords. Some men were armed with axes to clear the abatis—a tangle of logs and branches, some with sharpened ends capable of impaling a charging soldier—that ringed the breastworks. All others carried unloaded muskets. Their bayonets would be their only weapon. Hamilton’s force outnumbered the enemy by nearly ten to one, but not all of his men could descend into the redoubt. For those who did, the odds would be more equal, and the fight would be desperate and infinitely dangerous.

In the final hours before the attack, before the soot-black night deepened, Hamilton wrote what could have been his last letter. Seated in a parallel redolent with the rancid scent of smoke, gunpowder, and freshly turned earth, Hamilton told Betsey how he longed to hold his child, which was due in a few weeks. “In imagination I embrace the mother and embrace the child a thousand times. I can scarce refrain from shedding tears of joy.” He added that in a few days Cornwallis would have to surrender, “and then I fly to you. Prepare to receive me in your bosom. Prepare to receive me in all your beauty, fondness and goodness.”
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October 14 was a dark, moonless night. As Hamilton’s men had to race nearly five hundred yards to reach the redoubt, the sable evening was a welcome ally. When all was ready, Hamilton gave the signal to charge. The men emerged from the parallel and sped toward their target, with Hamilton in the lead. It was impossible for hundreds of men to pound noiselessly across the terrain. Some, in fact, fell with a clatter into undetected shell holes. Alerted that they were under attack, the British defenders opened fire. Men all around Hamilton were hit. But the attackers kept charging, and in an instant, the first to reach the redoubt surged inside and went after their adversaries. Hamilton must have been among the first to penetrate the abatis. The fight was brief but wild, blind, and bloody, as determined, bold, frightened, and daring men struggled at close quarters, lunging with bayonets, wielding muskets as if they were clubs, pummeling and choking other men, desperately seeking to prevail, and to stay alive. “We carried it in an instant,” Hamilton said later, and in fact the fighting ended ten minutes after it began.
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He also said subsequently that all enemy soldiers who surrendered were spared. Forty of Hamilton’s men were dead or wounded. Eight of the enemy were killed and several more were casualties. Gimat was wounded, as were four other officers, two of whom were bayoneted as they scrambled into the redoubt. Hamilton escaped unscathed. Washington, in his official report, lauded the “bravery” of Hamilton and his men, adding that there had been “Few cases” during the war in which his soldiers had “exhibited stronger proofs of Intrepidity, coolness and firmness.”
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By dawn, the second parallel had been completed. It stretched to the blood-soaked Redoubt No. 10. The allied artillery now blasted away at point-blank range. Cornwallis made his men endure the merciless bombardment for thirty-six hours, hoping against hope for a miracle. But nothing could save him and his beleaguered army. At last, having already lost 556 men in the three-week siege, the British commander signaled a willingness to talk. The negotiations were brief. The end came on October 19, six years and six months to the day since the war had begun at Lexington and Concord. On that lovely, bright, historic autumn day, while Hamilton stood watching the proceedings, the British surrendered what remained of the army that had first splashed ashore along the lower James River on New Year’s Eve. In all, more than eight thousand men who had tried to crush the American rebellion in Virginia laid down their arms and went into captivity.

A few weeks after Cornwallis’s surrender, Jefferson arrived in Richmond for the December meeting of the legislature. Nursing a broken wrist suffered in a recent fall from his horse, he nonetheless made the long, painful ride from
Monticello. He was driven by a bitter loathing and he also wished to defend himself in the scheduled probe into his conduct as governor. Some men would have challenged their tormentors to a duel, but Jefferson was not given to violence and he kept a tight rein on his emotions. (What is more, he, together with the “valuable part of society,” condemned dueling as “knighterrantry” in defense of “imaginary honour.”)
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There was no inquiry. “I came … [but] found neither accuser nor accusation,” Jefferson raged.
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On the day set for the hearing, George Nicholas “withdrew from the house” and Henry sat mute. Neither they nor the assembly any longer had an ardor for going after a former official who had long served the colony and state, and the American Revolution, and who presumably would never again seek high office. Besides, after Yorktown, an investigation seemed pointless, and with America’s victory the corrosive bitterness of early summer vanished like snow under a bright, warm sun.

The lack of a hearing did not assuage Jefferson. Vexed and indignant, he wanted to clear his name. He obtained the floor and “did it myself,” he later said, in what must have been a tension-laced chamber. Standing erect, and mustering all the vocal force and strength he could bring to bear, Jefferson read each charge that Nicholas had presented against him the previous summer. He answered each allegation. When he was done, the legislature by a unanimous vote thanked Jefferson “in the strongest manner” for his service as governor, lauded his “impartial, upright, and attentive administration of the
powers of the Executive
,” and removed from the record “all
former
unmerited Censure.”
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