Читать книгу Alexander Hamilton: Nation Builder - Nathan Schachner - Страница 5

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Boston did not detain the fifteen-year-old immigrant long. He was eager to meet his future as soon as possible. With barely a glance at the busy port he mounted the stagecoach and jolted over the old Post Road to the city on the Hudson.

New York could, however, be hardly called a city in the sense that we know it today. Even for its own time it was surpassed by Philadelphia and Boston both in number of inhabitants and volume of trade. It stretched only a short distance up the island of Manhattan from the Battery on the water front, and Canal Street, a scant mile and a half to the north, represented the dividing line where the farms began. The streets were narrow and crooked, the houses small and unpretentious, and water had to be carried by cart from a few insufficient wells. Filth lay uncollected in the streets, and cows and even pigs could occasionally be seen sauntering unconcernedly along Broadway. No wonder that epidemics made their appearance with deplorable frequency.

But to young Hamilton it was a shining metropolis, to which the towns in the West Indies were mere backwater villages. Here lay opportunity—the opportunity to mingle with learned men and make his mark in the great world of ideas.

Nicholas Cruger had given him letters to the mercantile firm of Kartwright & Company, which was to take care of the financial details of the boy's board and schooling. Here he met Hercules Mulligan, brother of one of the partners. This Irishman with the classical first name was a fantastic character. He ran a fashionable tailor shop with a strictly upper-class clientele. When the Revolution came, these customers took the Tory side and hobnobbed with the British when General Howe captured the town and Sir Henry Clinton ruled it. Mulligan, a fiery though secret patriot, bridled his sometimes too ready tongue, listened attentively to the casual conversation of his highly placed customers, and smuggled valuable information to General Washington on impending British military movements. Like everyone else who came in contact with him, Mulligan took an immediate liking to the attractive West Indian youth.

Dr. Knox's letters of introduction were addressed to prominent figures like William Livingston, the Governor of New Jersey, Elias Boudinot of the same state, and several ministers who had been his classmates during his college years at Princeton. These influential people promptly took the young stranger under their wing and helped him with advice as well as more substantial aid.

The boy was headed for college, but his formal schooling had been so sketchy that it was decided to have him first attend a good preparatory school. Such a one, presided over by Francis Barber at Elizabethtown in New Jersey, was chosen.

He spent a year at this school—an impatient year; for he seemed only to be marking time. But he applied himself to his studies with a fierce concentration, stuffing himself with knowledge at a rapid rate, anxious to get through as fast as possible. Governor Livingston and Boudinot, however, did not permit their protégé to become a mere bookworm. They invited him regularly to their homes, and readily succumbed to the charm and brilliance of the precocious youth.

At the end of the year he considered himself ready for college. His first choice naturally was Princeton, where Dr. Knox had studied. Hercules Mulligan went with him to an interview with the president of the college, Dr. Witherspoon.

That learned, if somewhat crusty, Scot put the young applicant through his paces in the simple manner of examinations in those days. He gave him a few passages in Latin to translate, asked him to read several paragraphs from the English classics, and questioned him somewhat more thoroughly on religion and morals. That was all.

"I believe, Master Hamilton," declared Dr. Witherspoon finally, "we can enroll you in the College of New Jersey."

If he expected effusive thanks from the small, erect figure before him, he was soon to be disappointed.

"Very good, sir," replied the lad with the utmost calm. "In which class do I enter?"

The president was taken aback. "Why, as a freshman, of course."

"I'm sorry, sir; that won't do. I am sufficiently ahead in my studies to attend the junior, or at least the sophomore, class. Furthermore, I do not wish to be bound by the usual regulations governing promotions. I must be advanced as rapidly as my abilities and knowledge admit."

The startled doctor peered down at this amazing youngster who thus boldly set forth his conditions for entry into his institution. "Hmm!" he said after a pause. "This is a most unusual request, Master——er——Mister Hamilton."

"I won't enter under any other conditions," declared the youth firmly.

"We've never done it before. However, I shall submit your——er——request to the trustees."

Dr. Witherspoon might have been impressed, having seen the applicant face to face; but the trustees, considering the matter at a distance, decided against any such revolutionary procedure.

"Good!" exclaimed Hercules Mulligan when the sad news arrived. "I think you'll do much better at King's College. Besides," he added affectionately, clapping the downcast lad on the shoulder, "I'll be able to see more of you."

Mulligan was correct in his prediction. The New York college, under the presidency of Dr. Myles Cooper, was willing to take the student on his own terms, and Hamilton promptly matriculated.

King's (now Columbia) was a small college in downtown New York. Aside from its president, the entire faculty consisted of three professors who assumed to cover the entire domain of learning.

The new—and unclassified—student threw himself into his studies with purposeful ardor. These were but the tools for the business of life, and that business beckoned to him night and day. He concentrated largely on anatomy, having some thoughts of becoming a physician; but the swift tide of events soon banished the idea.

A friendly, likable boy, he rapidly became popular with his fellow students. There were youngsters of ability and talent among them, including Ned Stevens, his cousin and childhood playmate who had preceded him to the mainland. But almost immediately they recognized the outstanding qualities of this intense young West Indian in their midst and gladly submitted to his leadership. One in particular, Robert Troup, was to become his lifelong friend and worshipful follower.

The students organized a debating club, and Hamilton, the youngest, outshone all the rest in the cogency of his arguments and the forcefulness of his speech.

The students did not have to look far for topics to debate. Ever since the ending of the French and Indian War in 1763 the colonists had been engaged in a mounting quarrel with the mother country, England. There were two chief points of dispute. First, the English considered that the colonies existed for their personal benefit; therefore, the American trade must be so regulated as to bring maximum profit to England. Second, the colonies ought to help pay the cost of the French and Indian War and contribute toward the expenses of the government of the Empire, of which they were a part.

The second item was reasonable enough. But the British also insisted that their Parliament had the right and power to levy taxes directly on the Americans to cover these costs. To this claim the Americans objected violently. They insisted in turn that only their own legislatures, elected by themselves, had the authority to levy taxes on them. To bolster their argument, they coined the famous slogan "No taxation without representation."

There had been trouble aplenty in 1765 when the British Parliament had sought to levy certain taxes on America—the most notorious of these being the stamp tax. So violent had been the resistance and so tremendous the clamor that the tax was withdrawn. Now, in 1773, Parliament gave the East India Company what the colonists considered a monopoly of the sale of tea in the colonies. This, combined with a tax on the tea, infuriated Americans. No longer content to protest, they acted. In Boston a band of men painted like Indians boarded a vessel loaded with tea, dumped the boxes into the bay, and vanished exultantly into the night.

The British government retaliated swiftly. Troops were moved into the defiant town, the port was closed to all trade and shipping, and the city was placed under severe penalties until compensation was forthcoming for the damage and the outrage. But the other colonies rallied to the defense of the people of Massachusetts and declared that they would stand or fall together. The Revolution, in effect, had begun.

The students of King's College were intensely patriotic, and none more so than the young West Indian. As a boy Hamilton had listened attentively to the complaints of the British merchants and planters of the islands against the restrictive regulations of the mother country and had shared with them an equal indignation against the stamp tax.

When Hamilton heard of the Boston Tea Party and its consequences, he reached for his pen. Once before, when nature had burst her bounds and poured destruction on the islands, he had written a composition that furnished him with his first great opportunity. Now, when it was man that was in a state of ferment, another product of his pen might well open a second path for him. He considered the mainland as his permanent home, and it was here that fame and fortune beckoned. The islands of the West Indies were forever left behind.

In the intervals between classes and studies, therefore, he composed a "Defence of the Destruction of the Tea" and sent it without signature to Holt's Journal, a patriot newspaper. When, to his joy, the article was published, he hastened to write more articles on the same theme and these, too, duly appeared in print.

The series made a deep impression on the important men of New York and the neighboring colonies, and there was much speculation as to the author. But John Jay, who was later to become governor of New York and Chief Justice of the United States, knew his identity. "I hope," he wrote warmly to a friend, "Mr. Hamilton continues busy."

It is extremely doubtful that Mr. Hamilton knew of Jay's favorable comment, but he followed the advice just the same. It was in his nature to keep eternally busy. When the news came to New York that the British had shut the port of Boston, the angry patriots called an open-air protest meeting. It was only natural that students should cut classes to attend. A number of speakers addressed the milling crowd and, it must be confessed, were a trifle dull. A disappointed student cried out to Hamilton, "Give 'em a speech, Alec. You're good at it!" The crowd took up the cry with enthusiasm and turned it into a roar. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself heaved bodily onto the platform.

At first, as he stared out upon the sea of upturned faces, his nerve failed him. His voice squeaked and his limbs trembled. Then both steadied and he swung into an extemporaneous harangue full of fire and passion, ending with a ringing peroration. "Resist this tyranny!" he cried. "Let us act together and with such determination that a mighty tidal wave will sweep from our shores clear across to the headlands of England and shatter her arrogant power and glory."

His oratory stirred the huge assemblage and they shouted approval as he stepped down, flushed and triumphant. "Who is he?" they demanded. "A college boy," came the answer. "A young fellow from the West Indies, name of Hamilton."

By nightfall everyone in New York was talking about him; within several days Boston was buzzing with his name. At one bound Alexander Hamilton had become famous.

But the boy refused to have his head turned. He went quietly back to his books, lost himself in the mysteries of mathematics, and read diligently in history, politics, government, economics, and oratory. As he read, he took careful, precise notes, excerpting appropriate quotations from the authors for use in the controversial pamphlets that continued to issue from his pen.

Meanwhile, events were marching with giant strides toward the final breach with England and the outburst of armed rebellion. At this time, however, and in fact for a considerable period to come, few Americans thought in terms of independence or even of actual revolt. All they wished was to compel the British government to see things their way—that is, to remove the restrictions on trade and to permit the colonial legislatures to handle their domestic affairs, particularly in the realm of taxation.

The First Continental Congress, attended by delegates from the thirteen colonies, met in Philadelphia to consider ways and means for obtaining these concessions from England. The quickest and surest way, they finally agreed, was to aim directly at the pocketbook of the mother country. Boycott her goods, they argued, and the loss of our trade and money will quickly bring her to her senses.

But there were many Americans who shrank from a boycott as treasonable and tending toward eventual rebellion. These were the Loyalists—or Tories, as the patriots derisively named them—who wished to cling to England, come what may. One of them was Dr. Samuel Seabury, a prominent minister. To counteract the patriot propaganda, he wrote two pamphlets and signed them "A Westchester Farmer." Written in plain, simple language, they were calculated to appeal to the common sense and pockets of farmers everywhere, pointing out to them how they would stand to lose in dollars and cents by the proposed boycott. So effective were these pamphlets that the alarmed patriots searched desperately for someone who could answer his arguments.

But while they sought seemingly in vain, the job had already been done. On December 15, 1774, a long pamphlet with a formidable title came out in print. It was called "A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress from the Calumnies of Their Enemies, in Answer to a Letter under the Signature of a Westchester Farmer." No name was signed to it, and only a small group of friends knew that Alexander Hamilton was its author.

If Seabury's initial pamphlet was powerfully written, this was even more so. Hamilton's pen dripped biting sarcasms, convincing arguments, and appeals to historical precedents as well as the passions of men. His sentences marched in serried ranks and whipped up the emotions. No one, with the exception of Tom Paine, wielded a readier or more effective pen. Americans knew that a mighty champion had arisen to take their part.

Stung by this invisible wasp, Seabury sought to retort with his second article, and Hamilton rushed another flaming denunciation into print.

"The sacred rights of mankind," he thundered, "are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

Again the colonies buzzed with admiration. Who was this anonymous pamphleteer? John Jay? "I am not the man," Jay modestly replied. "I wish I were."

When it leaked out finally that it was Hamilton, the student who had created such a sensation with his speech at the protest meeting, admiration turned to amazement. No one was more dumfounded than Dr. Myles Cooper, president of the college. "I refuse to believe it," he cried. "I know young Hamilton. He is a mere stripling." Cooper was a staunch Tory, an adherent of England, and he could not conceive that any student of his would have either the inclination to become a rebel or the ability to write such prose.

But Hamilton was not through. When England sought to lure the provinces of Canada to the British side by granting the majority Catholics equal rights with the Protestants and by offering them special privileges in the vast unsettled territory north of the Ohio River, the youthful pamphleteer sprang to the attack with another long and vehement argument. Unfortunately, one of his chief points was an appeal to the prevailing prejudice against Catholics.

It was now becoming obvious that words would not be enough; it might be necessary to defend their rights with arms. Little groups of men began to drill and to gather stores of guns and ammunition. Among these were the students of King's College, with Hamilton as their leader. They went in for grand effects. They called themselves the "Corsicans," and wore short green coats and rakish hats that bore the slogan "Liberty or Death." They pinned red tin hearts on their jackets, inscribed "God and our Right." It was all very theatrical, and very patriotic.

But the romantic element was shortly to be submerged in the deadly serious. In distant Lexington and Concord shots were fired. The Revolution had begun.

When the news reached New York by express riders, the populace rose in furious demonstrations against the British power and the native Tories in their midst. Particularly was their wrath directed against Dr. Cooper, who had minced no words in displaying his contempt for what he called "the rabble."

On the night of May 10, 1775, Hamilton lay asleep in the room he shared with his fellow student Robert Troup. A great clamor of voices, the rush of many feet, a blaze of light, and the smell of smoke brought him bolt upright. He sprang out of bed, rushed to the window.

In the narrow street below he saw men running. Some brandished sputtering torches; others carried buckets of bubbling tar and bags of feathers.

"What's up?" he cried.

A running man, face sooty and excited, swung his bucket and yelled up, "We're after that blasted Tory, Myles Cooper. We're gonna give him a taste o' tar and feathers." Then with a screech, he raced after his fellows.

Aghast, the young student rushed back to the bed and shook his sleeping friend. "Quick, Bob!" he whispered. "We've got to head those fools off. If anything happens to Dr. Cooper, we'll never live it down."

Within seconds they were in their clothes and out into the by now deserted street. "There's a short cut down the back lane," said Hamilton. "It's our only chance."

Down the dark, winding path sped the young men, panting up the porch steps of the president's house just as the mob surged toward it from the main street.

"Stop!" commanded Hamilton in a loud voice, arm out-thrust. The rioters slowed their forward rush, came to an indecisive halt. They recognized the slight, slim figure who blocked their way. This was the student who had roused them to patriotic fervor down in the fields, who had written those stirring pamphlets.

Hamilton quickly availed himself of the respite. "Think of the shame of what you meant to do," he shouted. "Think of the disgrace you will bring by your conduct on the patriot cause, and on the cause of liberty you claim to hold so dear."

The mob stirred under the tongue-lashing. A mutter ran through their ranks, rose in volume. They were in no mood to be balked of their prey. A few of the bolder spirits began to edge forward.

Overhead, a window was thrust open. Dr. Cooper, clad only in nightcap and shirt, peered out. He saw the torches, the inflamed upturned countenances—and young Hamilton gesticulating on his doorstep. "Aha!" he muttered. "That rebellious young rascal is rousing the populace to do me harm."

Trembling with fear, he shrieked, "Don't listen to him, men. He is crazy, crazy!" Down slammed the window. Pulling a cloak over his nightshirt, the elderly president rushed down the backstairs for flight.

Outside, a roar of laughter burst from the mob at his mistake. While they shouted with glee, Hamilton slipped around the house, caught up with the terror-stricken man, and hurriedly explained the situation.

"If you'll come with me, Dr. Cooper," he ended, "I'll guide you to safety."

The old Tory was only too happy to commit himself to the hands of his rescuer. Together they hurried by side roads down to the water front, where next morning Cooper found protection on board a British man-of-war. Eventually he went to England, never to return. There, in gratitude to his young protector, he wrote some verses about his terrifying experience. It is not a good poem, but a magazine published it.

Meanwhile, along the sounding shore, Where Hudson's waves incessant roar, I take my weary way; And skirt the windings of the tide, My faithful pupil by my side Nor wish the approach of day.

Several months after Cooper's melodramatic escape, a rumor spread that sailors from the British warships in the harbor intended to seize some cannons on the shore. The alarm bells rang out, the drums beat, and the militia hastened to the Battery to save the threatened guns. Hamilton, musket on shoulder, was in the forefront. The ships fired on the swarming men as they toiled feverishly to haul the great guns away. Hamilton, with the greatest unconcern, tugged at one of the ropes.

The cannons were being dragged up Broadway and out of range when he suddenly uttered an exclamation.

"What's wrong, Alec?" inquired Troup.

"My musket! I left it down at the Battery. I'm going back."

"You can't," Troup protested. "They're shooting like mad down there."

But Hamilton was already gone. The shells fell all around him, but he scooped up the musket and, waving it in triumph, ran back to join his company.

With Dr. Cooper's flight, King's College closed its doors. Hamilton was free now to join the army that was rapidly being formed. He was nineteen, and his exploits had made him a public figure. With that supreme self-confidence which he exhibited all through life he demanded—and received—a commission as captain of artillery from the New York authorities.

But he was a captain without a company. The guns he had helped rescue were available, but there was no one to man them. Men refused to enlist unless they received a substantial bonus and an assurance of regular pay. And the Provincial Congress of New York, newly formed, had no funds.

The fledgling captain did not hesitate. He used the last of his private funds from the West Indies to enroll and equip recruits, and was able to bring an initial installment of thirty volunteers to his banner. They were willing enough, but they knew nothing of guns or of soldiering.

It was not for nothing that Hamilton had employed every spare moment in studying the manual of arms and the lives and tactics of the great captains of the past. He drilled them himself, rigorously and remorselessly. He sternly punished every breach of regulations, and when the men rebelled, he crushed incipient mutiny and pursued deserters with the utmost severity.

But when he was through with them, they no longer were a band of slouching civilians. They looked and acted like disciplined soldiers. Officers of the regular Continental Army came to watch admiringly the formations of the little company under the brisk commands of its captain.

No one believed it would be an easy task to beat England, but few realized the long years of hardship and suffering that lay ahead. New York had a taste of things to come almost immediately. A British fleet blockaded the harbor, a British army under General Howe landed on Staten Island. George Washington, the new American Commander in Chief, hurried down from Boston to meet the formidable threat. But his men were few, ill-clad, ill-armed, and inexperienced. It looked as if the rebellion would be crushed before it got fully under way.

In an attempt to defend both Long Island and the City of New York, Washington divided his all too scanty troops. Hamilton thought this a mistake, and did not hesitate to tell the general so. Indeed, when his company of artillery was ferried across the East River to Brooklyn Heights, he sent a note to Washington advising that all the troops be returned to the city. It was fortunate that he did not sign his name to the note; the military career of the brash young captain might have ended then and there.

Washington did not take the anonymous advice, though events soon proved it to have been correct. A battle was fought on Long Island in which the Americans suffered a disastrous defeat and were saved from destruction only by Howe's sluggishness in pursuit.

That night the battered little army sought to retreat across the river. It was dark and stormy, and the rain fell in torrents. Boats capsized, and men and equipment were thrown into the churning waters. Only through superhuman exertions was Hamilton able to get his precious guns across.

Barely had he set them up on a fortified hill just outside the town when disaster struck again. Howe, recovered from his strange lethargy, had quietly landed an army farther up the river, and threatened the capture or destruction of all troops below him on the island.

Once again the signal for retreat was sounded. Hamilton's company managed to slip through the encompassing lines to rejoin the main army entrenched on Harlem Heights, but not without loss. One gun had to be left behind, and with it Hamilton's personal baggage.

From there on, the campaign resolved itself into a hunt of fox by hounds. For a while the wearied Americans held off a frontal assault on the Heights, then retreated with the British in hot pursuit. At White Plains the process was repeated. Each time that the British caught up with their elusive prey, Washington fought a delaying battle and slipped away again.

For days Hamilton and his men, now augmented to a company of a hundred, fought, marched, and fought again. The days were dark, and the nights gloomy. It was a time, as Paine immortally put it, to try men's souls; and the summer patriots and the sunshine soldiers fell by the wayside, convinced that all was lost.

But those who remained—and young Hamilton never had any thought of quitting—were turning into hardened veterans who knew how to fight and how to retreat, when necessary, in good order.

The young captain fought bravely at Harlem Heights, poured deadly shot into the assaulting Hessians at White Plains, and held a bridge over the Raritan River in New Jersey until the main army could make good its escape. Then he marched his sadly depleted company after it into Princeton.

That company, however, stood out among the bedraggled Continentals for the precision with which it marched. Its captain, with his cocked hat pulled deep over his brow, evoked favorable comments from the spectators as he walked at its head beside one of the precious cannon, stroking it as though it were a fine horse.

Nor had his exploit at the bridge been overlooked. Washington, hastening his battered troops to safety, nevertheless found time to send an aide galloping back to discover the name of the gallant officer who was standing off the entire British force.

The youthful officer, face begrimed and sweaty, barely paused in his rapid-fire orders to his gunners. Without looking up, he replied, "Captain Alexander Hamilton."

The aide saluted. "His Excellency, General Washington, asks that you report to him at our first halt."

It was to be some time, however, before Hamilton had a chance to report. There was work to be done first at Trenton and Princeton. Everyone knows of the brilliant exploit that frozen Christmas Eve at Trenton, when the first faint ray of light illumined a hitherto uniform succession of defeats. Not so many know of the equally spectacular exploit at Princeton.

The British, caught unawares, had sought refuge in the college buildings. Hamilton unlimbered his guns, cupped his hands and shouted a demand for surrender. A derisive cheer was his only answer. His hand went up. "Fire!" he ordered. The gunners thrust flaming tinder to the touchholes; the guns recoiled under the thunder of the shot. A solid ball smashed in direct hit through the outer chapel wall, hurtled through the intervening interior to crush a portrait of George II on the farther wall to smithereens.

That was enough. The British came tumbling out on the green, hands high in surrender.

Winter now descended on the opposing armies. In those days, troops rarely fought when the weather grew cold and snow blanketed the ground. They went into winter quarters instead. Washington's little army took up a position at Morristown, New Jersey. With it went Hamilton's men. But only some twenty-five remained of the hundred that had constituted its full strength.