The young aide flushed scarlet and replied: “I am not conscious of it, sir; but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.”
“Very well, sir, if it be your choice,” said Washington.
With face still aflame, Hamilton turned and left the commander-in-chief. Within an hour the general was sorry he had been so severe with “my boy” as he called his aide, and sent for him, asking that their too hasty words might be forgotten. But even then Hamilton could not quite forgive his chief for reproving him. So Alexander Hamilton was placed in command of a detachment in the south, where “Light-Horse Harry” and Lafayette were officers also. At Yorktown, the last battle in the War for Independence, Colonel Hamilton was the first man of the American army to mount the wall before the town, where he was quickly followed by his devoted men. Within a very few minutes the American flag was floating over Yorktown.
After the war, Hamilton returned to New York City to practise law. He had married the daughter of General Schuyler, one of the richest men in that state. Attorney Hamilton soon became successful and prosperous. When the time came to frame the Constitution which was to bind the thirteen states into one Union and make them true to their name, the United States, Alexander Hamilton was one of the leaders in that great undertaking.
After that, his former chief was elected the first President. One of the first acts of President Washington was to send for Alexander Hamilton to be the first Secretary of the Treasury. The young Secretary had to create success for the new nation, like making “bricks without straw.” There was no national treasury. Continental money was without value, so that when anything was considered worthless it was said to be—“not worth a continental.”
Rival states had been jealous of one another, and as there was no head, nothing was owned in common by the whole country—but debts. Money had been borrowed of other nations, and of patriotic people in America, to carry on the War for Independence. Many good people thought it would be impossible for the new government, just starting, to pay its debts, besides building up a new government and meeting the running expenses. But Alexander Hamilton, still a young man, saw that a country in debt could never be independent, and that if the government of the United States did not pay all it owed, it could not go on, any more than a bankrupt business which could not pay its bills. The only way to secure credit was to pay every dollar it owed.
Hamilton devised ways and means to do all this with such success that, in the street parades which the people arranged in different cities to celebrate the new Constitution, wherever a float represented the Constitution, the only man’s name on the ship of state was “Hamilton.” The plans of the young Secretary of the Treasury worked like magic, and the new government was soon on a solid foundation.
Daniel Webster, the greatest orator who ever lived in America, in speaking of Hamilton’s work, compared it to two miracles told of in the Bible; one, that of Moses when he drew water from a rock for the thirsty Israelites in the wilderness; the other, the raising of a dead man to life by Elijah. These are Webster’s words:
“Hamilton smote the rock of the national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it sprang upon its feet.”
Alexander Hamilton continued to act as the first President’s private secretary. It is generally believed that it was he who wrote out Washington’s immortal “Farewell Address.” When he gave up the office of Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton returned to the practise of law. He had gladly given up a large income and served his country for about one-third the amount of money he had been receiving from his law business.