[Morristown, NJ]

Scores of private homes, taverns, and forts served as Washington’s headquarters from 1776-1783. Here in Morristown, NJ, Alexander Hamilton spent a long, wintry interim from late 1780 until the next summer.

It was, for him, a time of emotional ups and downs.

By this point in the war, the most intense fighting had shifted to the American South. But Washington remained in the north, watching and waiting for any chance to re-take New York City—and keeping close enough to Philadelphia to protect the city so it would not be captured again.

Hamilton was feeling far removed from the action, disgusted with the impoverished state of the army (thanks to neglect from Congress), and anxious that he may never play a more glorious role in the war than what he had already performed. He longed to be reassigned to South Carolina and join up with his friend John Laurens. But Washington would not, could not spare him. And it was here that the two men had their much-noted falling out.

Although Morristown’s Ford Mansion (pictured) was a solid and commodious stronghold to protect one against the cold of winter, Washington’s writings at this time are full of hand-wringing over the near starvation and nakedness of his men. And he, Hamilton, and the others had to share the large house with the family of its late owner—a woman who took the mansion’s kitchen as living quarters for some of her relatives and left Washington’s servants with almost nowhere to prepare his food.

In spite of the horrendous cold of a winter that even the long memories of the local elderly folks could find no equal, things were livened up (for the officers anyway) by “dancing assemblies.” And so it was here at Morristown that Hamilton was reintroduced to Elizabeth Schuyler and her sisters.