As the treasury secretary had already postponed his retirement for eighteen months, Washington made no attempt to dissuade Hamilton, though the president acknowledged that he had always wished to prevent his leaving. Thereafter, in a nearly identical letter to the one he had written when Jefferson departed, Washington thanked Hamilton for his steadfast service and loyalty.1Skepticism greeted newspaper accounts that Hamilton was forced to return to private life by his “poverty,” but it was true.2 He was in debt. Unlike a host of today’s public figures, Hamilton had not grown rich from public service. But he estimated that within five or six years of reopening his law practice, he would be on his feet again.3Friends understood his plight, though even they doubted Hamilton when he said that he never planned to return to public life.4 He was only forty, three years younger than Washington had been when he had taken command of the Continental army and the same age as Jefferson when the war ended.
