Hamilton is commander-in-chief of the Senate, of the House of
Representatives, of the heads of departments, of General
Washington, and last, and least, if you will, of the President of
the United States!
But the President's advisers were free to seek advice without the Cabinet if they chose, and Washington had encouraged them to go to Hamilton. Hamilton was at liberty to give it, and Adams could find no evidence that he had counselled rebellion against himself; nor that he had used his great influence for any purpose but the honour of the country.
And never had the country needed his services more. When Adams, grim and obstinate, stepped forward as head of the Nation, he found himself confronted with the menace of France. In retaliation for Genet's disgrace, the Revolutionists had demanded the recall of Gouverneur Morris, whose barely disguised contempt, and protection of more than one royalist, had brought him perilously near to the guillotine. Burr had desired the vacant mission, and his pretensions were urged by Monroe and Madison. Washington recognized this as a device of the Opposition to embarrass him, and he had the lowest opinion of Burr's rectitude and integrity. Pressure and wrath produced no effect, but he offered to appoint Monroe. It might be wise to send a Jacobin, and the President hoped that ambition would preserve this one from compromising the country. He made the mistake of not weighing Monroe's mental capacity more studiously. The least said of the wild gallop into diplomacy of our fifth President the better. He was recalled, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney sent in his place. The French, who had found Monroe entirely to their taste, refused to receive the distinguished lawyer and soldier. To escape indignity he was forced to retire to Holland. The new Republic violated her treaties with increasing insolence, and Bonaparte was thundering on his triumphant course. France was mocking the world, and in no humour to listen to the indignant protests of a young and distant nation. To dismember her by fanning the spirit of Jacobinism, and, at the ripe moment,—when internal warfare had sufficiently weakened her,—reduce her to a French colony, was a plot of which Hamilton, Rufus King, then minister to England, and other astute statesmen more than suspected her. But although Hamilton abhorred France and was outraged at her attitude, the spirit of moderation which had regulated all his acts in public life suffered no fluctuation, and he immediately counselled the sending of a commission to make a final attempt before recourse to arms. War, if inevitable, but peace with honour if possible; it was not fair to disturb the prosperity of the young country except as a last resort. For once he and Adams were agreed. Hamilton suggested Jefferson or Madison as a sop to the Revolutionists, with two Federalists to keep him in order. But the President would have his own commissioners or none. He despatched Marshall and Gerry and ordered C.C. Pinckney to join them. Talleyrand refused them official reception, and sent to them, in secret, nameless minions—known officially, later on, as X.Y.Z.—who made shameful proposals, largely consisting of inordinate demand for tribute. Marshall and Pinckney threw up the commission in disgust. The Opposition in Congress demanded the correspondence; and Adams, with his grimmest smile, sent it to the Senate. It was a terrible blow to the Jacobins, not only the manner in which France had prejudiced her interests in this country; some of the disclosures were extremely painful to ponder upon. "Perhaps," one of the backstairs ambassadors had remarked, "you believe that, in returning and exposing to your countrymen the unreasonableness of the demands of this Government, you will unite them in resistance to those demands. You are mistaken. You ought to know that the diplomatic skill of France, and the means she possesses in your country, are sufficient to enable her, with the French party in America, to throw the blame, which will attend the rupture, on the Federalists, as you term yourselves, but the British party, as France terms you; and you may assure yourselves this will be done." Jefferson retired to weep alone. Several of the faction resigned from Congress. Hamilton published his pamphlets, "The Stand," "France," and "The Answer," and the whole country burst into a roar of vengeance, echoing Pinckney's parting shot: "Millions for defence, not a cent for tribute!" "Hail Columbia" was composed, and inflamed the popular excitement. Federalist clubs paraded, wearing a black cockade, and one street riot followed another. Brockholst Livingston had his nose pulled, and killed his man. With the exception of the extreme Jacobins, who never swerved from their devotion to France and the principles she had promulgated with the guillotine, the country was for war to a man, and the President inundated with letters and memorials of encouragement. The immediate result was the augmentation of the Federalist party, and the decline of Jacobinism.
For a long while past, Hamilton had been urging naval and military preparations. A bold front, he thought, would be more effective than diplomacy; and the sequel proved his wisdom. When the crisis came a bill for a Provisional Army was passed at once, another for the increase of the Navy, and liberal appropriations were made. The proposed alliance with Great Britain, Hamilton effectually opposed, for he was almost as exasperated with England as with France; in her fear that the French party in the United States would triumph and declare war upon her, she had renewed her depredations upon our commerce.
Few believed that Washington would serve again, and the Nation turned naturally to Hamilton as its General-in-chief. He had manifestly been born to extricate them from difficulties. Even the Presidential faction put their pride in their pockets, and agreed that he was the one man in the country of matchless resource and military genius; they passed over the veterans of the war without controversy. But there was one man who never put his pride in his pocket, and that was John Adams. Rather than present to Alexander Hamilton another opportunity for distinction and power, he would himself cull fresh laurels for George Washington; the supply of his old rival was now so abundant that new ones would add nothing. Hamilton already had written to Washington as peremptorily as only he dared, urging that he must come forth once more and without hesitation. Washington replied that he would as cheerfully go to the tombs of his ancestors, but admitted the obligation, and asked Hamilton would he serve with him? Hamilton answered that he would on condition that he be second in command to himself; he would make no further sacrifice for an inconsiderable reward. When Washington, therefore, received Adams's invitation, he made his acceptance conditional upon being given the power to appoint his generals next in rank. Adams, meanwhile, without waiting for his answer, had sent his name to the Senate, and it had been confirmed as a matter of course. Washington was irritated, but persisted in his condition, and sent in the names of Alexander Hamilton for Inspector-General, with the rank of Major-General, C.C. Pinckney and Knox for Major-Generals, and a list of Brigadiers and Adjutant-Generals. Adams, fuming, sent the names to the Senate, and they were confirmed in the order in which Washington had written them; but when they came back, jealousy and temper mastered him, and he committed the intemperate act which tolled the death-knell of the Federalist party: he ordered the commissions made out with Hamilton's name third on the list. Knox and Pinckney, he declared, were entitled to precedence; and so the order should stand or not at all. He had not anticipated an outcry, and when it arose, angry and determined, he was startled but unshaken. The leading men in Congress waited upon him; he received a new deluge of letters, and the most pointed of them was from John Jay. Hamilton alone held his peace. He saw the terrible mistake Adams had made, and dreaded the result. He wrote to Washington that he should be governed entirely by his wishes, that he should not embarrass him in any manner, and that it never should be said of himself that his ambition or interest had stood in the way of the public welfare. But when Adams stood with his head down, like an angry bull, and it was plain to be seen that his astonishing attitude was prompted by personal hatred alone, when the Cabinet and all the eminent men in the Nation, with the exception of the Republican leaders, faced him with an equally determined front, there was nothing for Hamilton to do but to stand his ground; and he stood it. Washington put an end to the unfortunate controversy. He gave Adams his choice between submission or the selection of another General-in-chief. Adams submitted, but Hamilton had in him an enemy no less malignant than Thomas Jefferson himself. Adams had roused the deep implacability of Hamilton's nature. All hope of even an armed truce for party advantage between the two great Federalists was over. Hamilton had one cause for resentment which alone would have made him ardently desire retaliation: General Knox, who had loved him devotedly for twenty years, was bitterly alienated, and the breach was never healed.
Hamilton made his headquarters in New York, where he could, after a fashion, attend to his law practice,—he was now the leading counsel at the bar,—but he entered upon his new duties with all his old spirit and passionate energy. Although France might be discomfited by the readiness and resource of the United States, the imposing front erected by a universal indignation, there were reasons which made the reverse possible; and Hamilton thrilled with all the military ardours of his youth at the prospect of realizing those half-forgotten ambitions. He had, in those days, sacrificed his burning desire for action and glory to a sense of duty which had ruled him through life like a tyrannical deity. Was he to reap the reward at this late hour? finish his life, perhaps, as he had planned to begin it? Once more he felt a boundless gratitude for the best friend a mortal ever made. Washington passed Hamilton over the heads of those superior in military rank, because he knew that he alone was equal to the great task for which himself was too old and infirm; but Hamilton never doubted that he did it with a deep sense of satisfied justice and of gratitude.
Never had Hamilton's conspicuous talent for detail, unlimited capacity for work, genius for creating something out of nothing, marshalled for more active service than now. He withheld his personal supervision from nothing; planning forts, preparing codes of tactics, organizing a commissariat department, drafting bills for Congress, advising M'Henry upon every point which puzzled that unfinished statesman, were but a few of the exercises demanded of the organizer of an army from raw material. The legislation upon one of his bills finally matured a pet project of many years, the Military Academy at West Point. Philip Church, the oldest son of Angelica Schuyler, was his aide; John Church, after a brilliant career as a member of Parliament, having returned to American citizenship, his wife to as powerful a position as she had held in London.
It is hardly necessary to inform any one who has followed the fortunes of Hamilton as far as this that he purposed to command an army of aggression as well as defence. A war with France unrolled infinite possibilities. Louisiana and the Floridas should be seized as soon as war was declared, and he lent a kindly ear to Miranda, who was for overthrowing the inhuman rule of Spain in South America. "To arrest the progress of the revolutionary doctrines France was then propagating in those regions, and to unite the American hemisphere in one great society of common interests and common principles against the corruption, the vices, the new theories of Europe," was an alluring prospect to a man who had given the broadest possible interpretation to the Constitution, and whose every conception had borne the stamp of an imperialistic boldness and amplitude.
But these last of his dreams ended in national humiliation. This time he had sacrificed his private interests, his vital forces, for worse than nothing. One enemy worked his own ruin, and Louisiana was to add to the laurels of Jefferson.
Talleyrand, astonished and irritated by these warlike preparations and the enthusiasm of the infant country, wisely determined to withdraw with grace while there was yet time. He sent a circuitous hint to President Adams that an envoy from the United States would be received with proper respect. For months Adams had been tormented with the vision of Hamilton borne on the shoulders of a triumphant army straight to the Presidential chair. His Cabinet were bitterly and uncompromisingly for war; Hamilton had with difficulty restrained them in the past. Adams, without giving them an inkling of his intention, sent to the Senate the name of William Vans Murray, minister resident at The Hague, to confirm as envoy extraordinary to France.