them
were cordial and even affectionate. The young officers faced their
hardships cheerily and gave meager dinners to which no one might go if
he was so well off as to have trousers without holes. They talked and
sang and jested about their privations. By this time many of the bad
officers, of whom Washington complained earlier, had been weeded out and
he was served by a body of devoted men. There was much good comradeship.
Partnership in suffering tends to draw men together. In the company
which gathered about Washington, two men, mere youths at the time, have
a world-wide fame. The young Alexander Hamilton, barely twenty-one years
of age, and widely known already for his political writings, had the
rank of lieutenant colonel gained for his services in the fighting about
New York. He was now Washington's confidential secretary, a position
in which he soon grew restless. His ambition was to be one of the great
military leaders of the Revolution. Before the end of the war he had
gone back to fighting and he distinguished himself in the last battle
of the war at Yorktown. The other youthful figure was the Marquis de La
Fayette. It is not without significance that a noble square bears his
name in the capital named after Washington. The two men loved each
other. The young French aristocrat, with both a great name and great
possessions, was fired in 1776, when only nineteen, with zeal for the
American cause. "With the welfare of America," he wrote to his wife,
"is closely linked the welfare of mankind." Idealists in France believed
that America was leading in the remaking of the world. When it was known
that La Fayette intended to go to fight in America, the King of France
forbade it, since France had as yet no quarrel with England. The
youth, however, chartered a ship, landed in South Carolina, hurried to
Philadelphia, and was a major general in the American army when he was
twenty years of age.

La Fayette rendered no serious military service to the American cause.
He arrived in time to fight in the battle of the Brandywine. Washington
praised him for his bravery and military ardor and wrote to Congress
that he was sensible, discreet, and able to speak English freely. It was
with an eye to the influence in France of the name of the young noble
that Congress advanced him so rapidly. La Fayette was sincere and
generous in spirit. He had, however, little military capacity. Later
when he might have directed the course of the