Quite as remarkable as the intensity of his application was his abnormal capacity for sustained exertion. He thought nothing of sitting over a paper ‘until the dawn dimmed his candles.’[152] Talleyrand’s comment on finding lights in his office in the early morning is famous. It was not unusual for him to ponder a problem long and earnestly until he had thought it through, then to retire to sleep regardless of the hour of the night, and after a while to arise, refresh himself with a cup of strong coffee, seat himself at his table, and work on with great rapidity for six, seven, or eight hours without rest. The resulting product of his pen was so perfect, we are assured, such was his felicity of expression, that it seldom required revision.[153]
This tenacity was one of the factors in his leadership. He was never a fair-weather fighter. Opposition only whetted his appetite for battle. Nor was he easily discouraged. Explaining to a friend who wished to carry the news to New York of the situation in the Poughkeepsie Convention, that the members stood two to one against the ratification of the Constitution, he concluded with grim emphasis: ‘Tell them the Convention shall never rise until the Constitution is adopted.’[154]
Along with this tenacity, he had an illimitable moral courage which made it easy for him to fight for a cause without counting the cost. The real Hamilton is seen in his defense of the persecuted Tories at the close of the Revolution; in his fighting his way through a mob eager for the blood of the Tory president of Columbia College to hold it at bay with his indignant eloquence; in his letter to Jay against the destruction of the notorious Rivington Press by a mob.[155] This reverence for law and the constituted authority was the mainspring of his political character, and he always had the moral courage to stand for both when cowardice would have recommended compromise.
To these qualities must be added another which gave character to his leadership—he was personally honest. Called to a station where he might easily have enriched himself, as did many of his friends, he retired to private life poorer than when he entered the public service. Small wonder that Talleyrand was astounded at such disinterestedness and restraint. There was no affectation in his letter lamenting his inability to succor some immigrants from France. ‘I wish I was a Crœsus; I might then afford solid consolation to these children of adversity, and how delightful it would be to do so. But now, sympathy, kind words, and occasionally a dinner are all that I can contribute.’ And at the time he wrote great fortunes had been built on the financial system he had created. So impeccable was he in this regard that his great political protagonist, writing an estimate of his character in the calm of his closet, recorded him as ‘disinterested, honest and honorable in all private transactions.’[156] Profound as a thinker, exhaustive as a student, moving in eloquence, powerful with the pen, logical in his reasoning, constructive in his methods, tenacious in the advancement of his plans, possessed of the courage of his convictions, personally honest in public and private action, he possessed qualities of leadership that drew high-minded men about, and to, him. But he unhappily had the weakness of his strength that was to operate disastrously upon his political fortunes. It is impossible to understand his ultimate failure as a leader without a reference to his temperamental deficiencies.
IX
As a party leader he was singularly lacking in tact, offensively opinionated,[157] impatient and often insulting to well-meaning mediocrity, and dictatorial. He did not consult—he directed. He did not conciliate—he commanded. In the Cabinet he was to offend Jefferson early because Hamilton ‘could not rid himself of the idea that he was really the prime minister.’[158] It was not diplomatic to order Adams back to his post of duty in Philadelphia in the manner of one addressing a subordinate. Nor was it considerate to write to McHenry, who adored him, and was doing the best his limited ability would permit: ‘Pray take a resolution adequate to the emergency and rescue the credit of your department.’[159] These outbursts of impatience and this intolerance of weakness were forgiven by the strong, but treasured against him by smaller and more envious minds, and the time was to come when, with his field marshals loyal, he was to have few colonels and captains, and practically no privates. He was a failure in the management of men, and only his superior genius made it possible for him to dominate so long.
There was much of egotism and some vanity behind this dictatorial disposition. This was inherent and incurable. The lowliness of his origin, the phenomenal rapidity of his rise, the homage properly paid him for the brilliancy of his youthful efforts with voice, pen, and sword, all tended to convince him of his superiority. No one knew or lamented his egotism more than men who loved him. Morris went weeping from his death-bed to write his intimate opinion in his diary that he was ‘vain and opinionated.’[160] Cabot, who clung to him like a lover, wrote him frankly: ‘I am bound to tell you that you are accused by respectable men of egotism.’[161] A descendant and biographer concedes his vanity, taking issue with Hamilton’s son who had foolishly, but naturally, denied it in his biography.[162] His self-sufficiency is evident in his letter to Laurens: ‘It is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent of the caprices of others.’[163] But were we without these confessions from his friends, we should find them in his letters. What more amazing and amusing than his letter to Schuyler explaining with gusto and some swagger his quarrel with Washington.[164] Even at the age of twenty-three and while serving in a secretarial capacity to one of the foremost figures of all time, he was placing himself on an equality at least with Washington and writing glibly of ‘what we owed to each other.’ This spirit of self-exaltation was to drive many of the minor leaders of his party from him, and to lead him, in the end, to the supreme folly of his pamphlet attack on Adams which was hopelessly to cripple, if not completely destroy, his influence.
Even more serious than his flamboyant egotism was his queer lack of judgment in the handling of men. It was an irreparable blunder to force the election of his father-in-law to the Senate from New York over Chancellor Livingston who had superior claims. It was a temporary triumph that drove one of the most powerful families in the State into the ranks of his enemies.[165] Only the most execrable taste can pardon the undignified writing of anonymous attacks on a colleague of the Cabinet.[166] His blunder in the case of the Schuyler election could be excused by his lack of political experience, but his most sympathetic biographer admits that ‘middle age instead of ripening his judgment, warped it.’[167] His was a nature of eternal youth, and in many respects the indiscretions of boyish exuberance cursed him to the end.
If these personal weaknesses were to weaken him with the leaders of the second rank, his unpopularity with the rank and file was to come from his lack of sympathy for, and understanding of, the American spirit. No one realized it more than he. In justice it must be said that he honestly tried to suppress his doubts of America; but in moments of depression he burst forth with expressions that bear the marks of long incubation. ‘Am I a fool—a romantic Quixote—or is there a constitutional defect in the American mind?’ he wrote King. ‘Were it not for yourself and a few others I would adopt the reveries of De Paux, as substantial truths, and could say with him that there is something in our climate which belittles every animal, human or brute.’[168] And toward the close of his life he wrote Morris: ‘Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me. You, friend Morris, are a native of this country, but by genius an exotic. You mistake if you fancy that you are more of a favorite than myself, or that you are in any sort upon a theatre suited to you.’[169] This touch of the exotic, of which he himself was painfully conscious, was not lost upon his political enemies. ‘Thus ignorant of the character of this nation, of Pennsylvania, and of his own city and State of New York, was Alexander Hamilton,’ wrote Adams.[170] But it was left for another to ‘discover the real secret of his confusion as to the American character—he had never known the spirit, or had the training, of the New England town meeting.[171] A marvelous genius, he thought in terms of world politics at a time when America was creating a new spirit and system of her own. It was not to weaken his work as the creator of credit, but it was to dim his vision as an American leader.