His very
temperament was martial, the energy and impetuosity of his nature were
in their element on the battlefield, and he would rather have been a
great general than the elder Pitt. But although there is no reason to
doubt that he would have become a great general, had circumstance
favoured his pet ambition, yet Washington was a better judge of the
usefulness of his several abilities than he was himself. Not only had
that reader of men made up his mind that a brain like his favourite's
should not be wasted on the battlefield,--left there, perhaps, while
dolts escaped, for Hamilton had no appreciation of fear or danger,--but
he saw in him the future statesman, fertile, creative, executive,
commanding; and he could have no better training than at a desk in his
office. Phenomenally precocious, even mature, as Hamilton's brain had
been when they met that morning on the Heights of Harlem, these four
years had given it a structural growth which it would not have acquired
in camp life, and to which few men of forty were entitled. Of this fact
Hamilton was appreciative, and he was too philosophical to harbour
regrets; but that period was over now, and he wanted to fight.
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