Winston Groom - The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America

N ONFICTION

Conversations with the Enemy (1982, with Duncan Spencer)

Shrouds of Glory (1995)

The Crimson Tide (2002)

A Storm in Flanders (2002)

1942 (2004)

Patriotic Fire (2006)

Vicksburg, 1863 (2009)

Kearnys March (2011)

Shiloh, 1862 (2012)

The Aviators (2013)

The Generals (2015)

The Allies (2018)

F ICTION

Better Times Than These (1978)

As Summers Die (1980)

Only (1984)

Forrest Gump (1986)

Gone the Sun (1988)

Gump and Co. (1995)

Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl (1998)

El Paso (2016)

Published by National Geographic Partners, LLC

1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036

Copyright 2020 Winston Groom. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and Yellow Border Design are trademarks of the National Geographic Society, used under license.

ISBN: 978-1-4262-2150-7

Since 1888, the National Geographic Society has funded more than 13,000 research, exploration, and preservation projects around the world. National Geographic Partners distributes a portion of the funds it receives from your purchase to National Geographic Society to support programs including the conservation of animals and their habitats.

Get closer to National Geographic explorers and photographers, and connect with our global community. Join us today at nationalgeographic.com/join

For rights or permissions inquiries, please contact National Geographic Books Subsidiary Rights: bookrights@natgeo.com

Interior design: Nicole Miller

20/MP-CG/1

To Susan, without whose help, love, and constant consideration I could not have written this book.

A mericas Founding Fathers were never quite sure that democracy would work, especially during their revolution. The British, for their part, were absolutely convinced that it wouldnt; their very Englishness had instilled in them a heightened sense of the rightness and superiority of their monarchical ways, and had provoked a fear and hatred of such outlandish notions as democracy and republics.

The British redcoat was the epitome of the professional soldier: highly trained, impressively outfitted, well-armed, and merciless. There was never any doubt, at least in the early days of the war, that they would defeat the rebellious colonists. But history is strewn with stern and often peculiar endings. At the eleventh hour the British army was defeated by an army of ragged American soldiers and their allies.

From that revolutionary moment of history three men emerged, as unalike one another as it was possible to be. Alexander Hamilton was the illegitimate son of a mother from the West Indies and a wayward, penniless father from the Scottish nobility. Hamilton grew up working as a shipping clerk on the island of St. Croix and came to America as a student just before the Revolutionary War began. Thomas Jefferson was, first, a farmera slaveholding planter (who hated slavery), a Virginia aristocrat, polymath, Renaissance man, and Enlightenment thinker. John Adams was an eccentric, Harvard-educated lawyer from Massachusetts, who became deeply involved with the early revolutionaries in Boston. Both he and Jefferson would become presidents of the United States, and Hamilton would become the nations first secretary of the treasury. As such, he saved the fledgling country from bankruptcy and gave it the foundations of the financial system that has existed for more than two centuries.

Despite their mutual concerns during the Revolution, as the new country took form these three developed an abiding hatred of each other so intense that at times it threatened to bring down the fragile young republic. Yet each reached the very pinnacle of his own power and genius in the formative years of the nation, and each had a consuming patriotism. These three founders loved their embryonic country and were ready to lay down their lives for it. They were present at the creation of Americas critical founding documents, and their high-minded ideals and policies have resonated for nearly 250 years.

Those 250 years have not always been easy. In his famous farewell address at the end of his presidency, George Washington warned against foreign entanglements and the growth of political factions, which he saw as malignantly divisive forces that could tear the nation apart. His fears were prescient but his warning went unheeded.

As the newly minted United States attempted to create a viable federal system, the country began to split politically into two main factions. The Federalists, led by Hamilton (by then a New Yorker), argued for a strong central government modeled loosely on the British system. The other faction, the Republicans, led by Jefferson the Virginian, demanded a much weaker central government, emphasized states rights, and generally favored the French over the British model.

As the tempest brewed, the press entered the fray. Newspapers not only informed but deliberately inflamed political opinion, inspiring fistfights and duels and sometimes tearing family and friends apart. Personal attacks were the order of the day, with stories written on the flimsiest of evidence.

Into this toxic climate the three founders plunged themselves, each believing that the political notions of the others would lead the country into dangerous chaos and ruin. They were, after all, floundering in the unknown: nothing like the American experiment had ever been tried on such a scale and with such a diverse population, both ethnically and regionally.

If Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams were intemperate in their political passions, it was most likely out of fear of squandering the exquisite main chance they had acquired with the revolutionary victory. None of the three wished to dispel it; they wanted to see America prosper and live on through history as an enlightened model of self-government among men. It is a sad irony of history that at one time they were on such friendly termsparticularly Jefferson and Adamsand that their divergence in political thought led first to discomfort, then distrust, then mistrust, and at last hatred.

The arguments they engaged in have not ended, and Americans continue to enjoy the liberty to indulge in sometimes fractious disagreements. If the revolutionary victory was something of a miracle, it remains a wonder that the democracy it spawned has survived at all. That it does so is a twist of fate for which all Americans should be eternally grateful.

A man of striking intelligence, remarkable presence, and driving ambition, Alexander Hamilton tried to outrun his unpropitious beginnings most of his life. His birthplace, the tiny West Indian island of Nevis, was an unlikely setting for a man who would change the course of history: no more than a volcanic cone protruding from the Caribbean, its peak eternally covered in clouds. Hamiltons mother, Rachel Faucette, was half British and half French Huguenot, the daughter of a prosperous Caribbean planter. Alexanders father, James Hamilton, was the fourth son of a Scottish laird. When Alexander was born on January 11, 1755, the two were not marriedand never would be.