red it in his treatment of the
Tories, but not until Alexander Hamilton became an advocate of amnesty
and oblivion, did Clinton recognise the centre and future leader of
the opposing forces. Hamilton did not appear among those interested in
the election of governor in 1777. His youth shut him out of Assembly
and Congress, out of committees and conventions, but it did not shut
him out of the army; and while Governor Clinton was wrestling with new
problems of government in the formation of a new State, Hamilton was
acting as secretary, aide, companion, and confidant of Washington,
accepting suggestions as commands, and acquiescing in his chief's
judgment with a fidelity born of love and admiration. In the history
of war nothing is more beautiful than the friendship existing between
the acknowledged leader of his country and this brave young officer,
spirited and impulsive, brilliant and able, yet frank and candid,
without ostentation and without egotism. It recalls a later-day
relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and John A. Rawlins, his chief
of staff.

In July, 1781, Hamilton, in command of a corps, accompanied Washington
in the forced march of the American army from New York to Yorktown.
This afforded him the opportunity, so long and eagerly sought, of
handling an independent command at a supreme moment of danger, and
before the sun went down on the 14th of October, he had led his troops
with fixed bayonets, under a heavy and constant fire, over abatis,
ditch, and palisades; then, mounting the parapet, he leaped into the
redoubt. Washington saw the impetuosity of the attack in the face of
the murderous fire, the daring leap to the parapet with three of his
soldiers, and the almost fatal spring into the redoubt. "Few cases,"
he says, "have exhibited greater proofs of intrepidity, coolness, and
firmness." Three days later Cornwallis surrendered.

In the summer of 1782 Hamilton was admitted to the bar in Albany, but
soon afterward settled in New York City, where he seems to have come
into practice and into fame by defending the rights of Tories. For
four years after the war ended, the treatment of British sympathisers
was the dominant political issue in New York. Governor Clinton
advocated disfranchisement and banishment, and the Legislature enacted
into law what he advised; so that when the British troops, under the
peace treaty, evacuated New York, in November, 1783, loyalists who had
thus far escaped the wrath of th