Although Franklin has often been portrayed as flirtatious and even a romantic, he has rarely today been maligned as a womanizer or as hypocritical in his romantic practices. Historian Ruth Bloch rightly reminds us that Franklin's writings reveal "deeply conflicting conceptions of women" that alternate between portraying women as "wasteful" and "praising" them as "productive assistants." Overall, much of his writing is infused with typical eighteenth-century "misogynist" strains that "depict women as sexually demanding, haughty, and contentious."87 Nonetheless, there is no shortage of biographers who portray his views about women as enlightened (and ahead of their time), not exploitative. However, this is an old view. As Carla Mulford argues, by the early nineteenth century, for some, Franklin could be seen as "virtuous because he admired women.... Franklin's sexual attractions became the stuff of an affectionate and masculinized sense of national identity.... To the popular imagination, Franklin, male-dominant heterosexuality, and virtue would be registered and linked in a way that has come down to us even in today's culture."88
Take, for example, Edwin S.Gaustad's biography, which includes an image and caption that are regularly used. The caption reads, "Franklin entertained-and was entertained by-the ladies of Paris during his years there. His letters to particular women were flirtatious, amusing, and filled with memories of the many happy evenings spent in their company." Downplaying the critical role that such women and their salons played in this political world, Gaustad explains that the "ladies" were a component of "high society" who stood in addition to, rather than as part of, other elements: "The ladies loved him, and he returned their sentiments." Although he notes that Brillon's salon, for example, included Paris's "cultural and artistic leaders," the obvious connection to politics is overlooked. As for Helvetius, "grateful that she had given him so many of her days, Franklin thought it only fitting that he offer her some of his nights. That offer, so far as the historical record reveals, was never accepted."89
The 2003 Time magazine coverage of the "Adventures of Ben Franklin" uses sex to sell the issue, but it includes an essay that explains the important roles that women played in French society and thus the American Revolution via Franklin. Although it emphasizes his sex appeal in the title "Why He Was a Babe Magnet," in the blurb it asserts that masculine sex appeal need not be about physical appeal, and it argues that by listening to women and taking them seriously, "even when he was old and rotund, Ben had sex appeal. He knew the way to a woman's heart was through her head." The article at one level reduces Franklin's relationships to women as a lesson for the war of the sexes.
But such depictions of socializing with women as a political and diplomatic activity do not appeal as much as less complex accounts that present women as sex objects-nor do they highlight Franklin's all-American heterosexual desires. Indeed, to underscore the political utility of flirtation would run the risk of portraying him as a deceiver and user of women rather than a red-blooded man with appropriate romantic interests.
The controversy over his written record will be familiar to readers of this book, with the central question being whether he did consummate his relationships while in France. Summing up his relationships, Middlekauff tentatively writes, "There was sexual attraction in several of these friendships, and perhaps at times there was sexual fulfillment." Many, for example, try to correct the view of Franklin as overly sexual. Thus, Middlekauff concedes that people who consider Franklin's ill health and advanced age could probably conclude that Franklin was "all talk and no action" but that "thinking of Franklin as a lover is not an absurdity." Nonetheless, he continues, "the great love of his life was not a woman. He loved his work more, and his science, and his country.... They were the great loves that stirred him most deeply." Finally, he concludes that "most of the gossip about Franklin's sexual exploits in Paris can be safely discounted."90 Isaacson more narrowly explains, "Franklin's relationship with Madame Brillon, like so many of his others with distinguished ladies, was complex and never fully consummated."91 Finally, Lopez maintains her conclusion that most of his relation ships with Parisian women were "never consummated. In fact, Franklin was a master of what the French call amitie amoureuse, whose English translation, amorous friendship, gives only a hint of its true meaning: a delicious form of intimacy, expressed in exchanges of teasing kisses, tender embraces, intimate conversations and rhapsodic love letters, but not necessarily sexual congress."" That Americans want to know the intimate details of Franklin's sexual life with certainty highlights the importance of sex in our national identity.
Franklin's transformation from ribald author worthy of Victorian censorship to "foxy grandpa" illustrates the dramatic changes that have occurred in the way that the private lives of the Founders have been depicted. As we have seen in previous chapters, sex has long figured in the public assessment of the political Founders of the nation. In the twentieth century, the stereotyped view of Puritanical early America bolstered the depiction of Franklin as unusually liberated and at ease with human sexual desire. So, too, did the negative reaction of Victorian and early-twentieth-century writers to his more ribald writings, as it reinforced the assumption that he was espousing a radical message-one that late-twentieth-century Americans would appreciate as ahead of its time.
Historian Wood has rightly noted that it is puzzling that we view Franklin as the ultimate or "first American," as he spent nearly a quarter century of his life in Europe and embraced a European lifestyle more so than any other of the Founders. It is equally surprising that we should find him to be the quintessential middle-class sexually liberated forerunner that so many think he was. We recognize that, although elite, he fooled us with his fur cap and performed the middle-class American, but he also fooled us into thinking he was somehow not fettered by the sexual morality of his day. Perhaps that is why he is today viewed as a harmless, endearing "foxy grandpa."
Figure 5.1 (above). Portrait of Hamilton. (Portrait ofAlexander Hamilton. John Trumbull. Oil on canvas, 1806.)
N A TWIST OF LOGIC, Alexander Hamilton (Figure 5.1) has been remembered as an "outsider" among insiders in the pantheon of Founders. In 2007, the well-regarded American Experience series produced an awardwinning documentary entitled Alexander Hamilton. Based on the book by journalist and popular biographer Ronald Chernow, it crystalizes the view of Hamilton that had emerged in the new millennium.' In the film, a narrator explains that "Alexander Hamilton was unique among the Founding Fathers" and links this quality to his birth status: "He was an outsiderborn in 1755, not in the American colonies but on Nevis, a tiny tropical island in the Caribbean. He came into this world at the very bottom of the social order. He was a bastard-illegitimate, because his mother, as a divorced woman, was not legally married to his father. As a bastard, Hamilton was prohibited from attending a Christian school, and had no rights of inheritance."2 Echoing a core theme of his book, Chernow explained to the audience, "I think that the illegitimacy had the most profound effect, psychologically, on Hamilton. It was considered the most dishonored state, and I think that it produced in Hamilton a lifelong obsession with honor."
Although his reputation soared in the late nineteenth century, today Alexander Hamilton does not hold the same larger-than-life standing as other Founders. Some might recall him as the man who was shot and killed in a duel with then-Vice President Aaron Burr. But most Americans unknowingly encounter him only through the ten dollar bill and would struggle to tell you anything about his accomplishments. No grand memorials cement his presence in the American imagination.
As this chapter shows, Hamilton's bastard status might be well-known by those familiar with John Adams's famous slur, but he has also been labeled, at various times, a homosexual, an adulterer, and a lothario. Unlike Thomas Jefferson's biographers, who seek to bolster his manhood by making mountains out of every romantic molehill that they can find, those who memorialize Hamilton downplay his nonmarital romances. Why? He publicly acknowledged an extramarital affair. In his own lifetime, his political enemies trie
d to tar him with the brush of his birth status and the even more serious public scandal that emerged when he confessed to the affair. His biographers, however, have long employed various explanations to counterbalance both components of his life, portraying him as a man of impeccable public integrity and personal masculine honor.
In His Lifetime
As his biographers point out, Hamilton's contributions to the country undoubtedly make him one of the most important of the political leaders of the Revolution and early Republic. Hamilton was a military hero of the American Revolution. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and one of the primary authors of the influential Federalist Papers that proved to be so instrumental in the ratification of the U.S.Constitution. Under George Washington, Hamilton served as the first secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton helped found the U.S.Mint and the first national bank. Given his strong views on the importance of a powerful centralized government and a strong nationalized economic system and his vision of the United States as a major world economic and military power, Hamilton has been called the Founder who made possible the "American century." Franklin may be called the first modern American but it is Hamilton, as a recent exhibit at the New York Historical Society noted, who is "the man who made modern America."4
Hamilton's remarkable public achievements are all the more impressive given his humble origins. Hamilton was born in 1755 or 1757 on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies. At the time of his birth, Hamilton's father, James, and mother, Rachel Lavien, were not married, because James could not release himself from his previous marriage. When Alexander was ten, his father abandoned the family. When he was thirteen, his mother died, leaving him an orphan. After serving as a clerk, Hamilton went to the mainland colonies, eventually studying law at King's College (now Columbia) in New York City. In 1775, he joined the militia, ultimately rising to the rank of captain and high-level aide-de-camp to Washington. In 1780, he married Elizabeth Schuyler, a wealthy woman from a powerful New York family. Together they had eight children. After a much publicized extramarital affair, Hamilton's public reputation suffered, although he continued to be politically active. In 1804, he was killed in a duel with Vice President Burr, and amid great national mourning, he was laid to rest.
Hamilton differs from other Founders in that he publicly acknowledged his sexual transgression. His case is unlike that of Washington or Jefferson, both of whom left very little documentation, giving writers more room for imagination with their personal lives. Washington's emphasis on his stepchildren and kin enhanced his image as the family man, and Jefferson's refusal to remarry abetted those who would portray him as the chaste widower-but Hamilton in his own lifetime acknowledged his birth status and confessed his extramarital affair.
In 1791, Hamilton conducted an eight-month affair with a married woman, Maria Reynolds. The affair began when Reynolds showed up one day asking for Hamilton at his house. As a fellow New Yorker, her story went, she had sought him out for assistance-she needed money because her abusive husband had recently abandoned her in Philadelphia with nothing for her support. Hamilton requested that he be permitted to bring her some money at her house that evening. Once the affair began, he received letters from both Reynolds and her husband explaining that he was aware of the affair and required $1,000 to forget Hamilton's transgression. But this was not the end. A month later, this time allegedly with Mr. Reynolds's permission, the affair resumed. In 1792, several men approached James Monroe with the information that Hamilton had used public moneys for personal gain. When Monroe and two other congressmen confronted Hamilton at his office, he asked them to meet with him and the comptroller at his home that evening. At that meeting, he explained that he had never used public money illegally and had found himself instead in the position of paying off a blackmailer to conceal his extramarital affair with the man's wife. Monroe and the committee viewed the matter as private and considered the matter closed. But some years later, one of them spoke with reporter James Callender, and mention of it appeared in print when Callender published the allegation in his History of the United States for 17965
In 1797, Hamilton tried to clear his name by publishing Observations on Certain Documents... In Which the Charge of Speculation Against Alexander Hamilton, Late Secretary of the Treasury, is Fully Refuted. Written by Himself. The lengthy pamphlet details the affair and explains that he had been ensnared and blackmailed by Reynolds and her husband. He denies misusing public funds and admits that his "real crime is an amorous connection" with Reynolds. Hamilton writes that he was something of a victim of her scheming with her husband-"brought on... by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me."6 "Mrs Reynolds," he charges, "employed every effort to keep up my attention and visits." The public financial allegations were never proven to be true, and Hamilton was very forthcoming with both his public and private records in an effort to clear his name.
Modern Americans surprised to learn of Hamilton's affair may be reacting to national rhetoric that memorializes the Founding Fathers as men of unusual virtue and morality-paragons in public and private affairs. In part, this view relies on stereotyped notions of early America as a place of monogamy and morality and associations that link sexual expression and nontraditional modes of sexuality with modernity. Conservative commentators also stoke this idealized image by calling on Americans to remember and return to the morality of the Founding generation.
Hamilton's affair might seem striking and jarring to us now, but it should not be seen as radical or extraordinary for early America. Although adultery had long been illegal in early America-perhaps most dramatically outlawed under penalty of death by Puritans when they established the colony of Massachusetts-adultery also constituted the primary reason for justifying the dissolution of marriage in many regions. By the 1790s, especially in such places as New York and Philadelphia, the dominant ideal of monogamy was just that-an ideal. In the words of one historian, a sexual "revolution" of sorts had occurred in social mores and behaviors by the end of the eighteenth century.?
Hamilton's own actions (and the reactions of those around him) reveal something of the standards of the day-he chose to discuss the affair, in print, publicly, and in the greatest of documented detail to save his public honor. He was not divorced. His wife did not denounce him. Washington publicly supported him, as did others. He went on to hold high office after the scandal, becoming commander of the army-perhaps the highest office of his career. Recall too that when the affair first came to light, he confessed it to a congressional committee that was investigating the payments Hamilton made to his lover's husband to keep silent-and none of the men saw fit to make the situation public. They considered it a private matter.
Contemporary Americans may also be surprised to learn that Hamilton's affair became so publicly known. Scholars interpret the public nature of the affair as a product of the political times. As Jacob Katz Cogan argues, the scandal came to light at a period when politics were being rewritten. The "colonial edifice of political and social deference" had collapsed, and in the Revolutionary and early Republic eras, politics and political relationships shifted from a sense of prioritization of "social status" to one based on "virtue" and "individual character."8 The affair is often used to illustrate party conflicts in the contentious 1790s and the emerging divisions between the Federalist and Republican political parties.
In his lifetime, his opposition made use of cultural tropes that depicted him as a violator of the masculine ethos of marriage (via his adultery) and protection of wife and family (through his public revelation of the affair). They also compounded this with a particular emphasis on the status of his lover. The earliest depictions of the affair, which appeared almost immediately after publication of the pamphlet, portray Hamilton as immoral and Maria as a "forlorn middle-class woman."" Although the infidelity remains unchanged in various tellings, by deploying certain class and gender stereotypes and by positioning Hamilton as something of a victim-no
t only of his own weakness but also of the schemes of another-writers could change the shape of Hamilton's affair. Thus, when some of his detractors learned that Maria was not middle-class or reputable, they changed their tune. In 1802, one writer explains, "I have represented that woman as an amiable and virtuous wife, seduced from the affections of her husband by artifice and intrigue." But upon learning that she was "destitute of every regard for virtue or honor" and like women who "lay their snares to entrap the feeling heart and benevolent mind," he decides to publicly vindicate Hamilton as victim not perpetrator." Some political enemies in his lifetime and after his death sought to unman him, but, despite their best efforts, he was memorialized as one of the most virtuous of the Founders.
Tension over Romantic Connections
Unlike Washington's and Jefferson's biographers, most of Hamilton's chroniclers make little of his possible early romantic connections-indeed, his past served no purpose for those biographers seeking to characterize his extra marital affair as a "lapse" and not a typical action. By removing these aspects of his biography, most accounts are more easily able to portray the adulterous affair as a one-time event, an aberration for a man meriting the label of Founding Father through his unblemished character.
Yet we glean from a few other accounts that Hamilton may have also deserved a reputation as a lothario. "Charges of the same kind," Hamilton's grandson explains, "spattered many of the leading men of the times."" Writing in the 1930s, as Hamilton's reputation began to sharply decline, one biographer mobilizes what for many would seem to be damning evidence of a highly sexualized individual. Perhaps responding to the public reassessment of Hamilton as not being a man of the people-a problematic view as the Great Depression took hold-Johan Smertenko declares, "Hamilton from his college days bore the reputation of a ladies' man." The author finds Hamilton to have had many affairs-indeed, with "a score of nameless women." And he continues, "His erotic adventures were as necessary to him as his political activity. Psychically both served the same purpose; both were assertions of the legitimacy of his position in the world despite the illegitimacy of his birth." Finally, the author argues that Hamilton had an affair with his sister-in-law Angelica Church and concludes that the relationship was consummated.'] To further underscore Hamilton's broad sexuality, the author includes one of the racier letters that Hamilton sent to his friend John Laurens to request assistance in finding a wife, in which Hamilton writes, "`You will be pleased to recollect in your negotiations that I have no invincible antipathy to the maidenly beauties, and that I am willing to take the trouble of them on myself."' He also notes the suggestive tone Hamilton takes when asking Laurens to talk him up to women: "`To excite their emulations it will be necessary for you to give an account of the lover-his size, make, qualities of mind and body, achievements, expectations, fortune, etc. In drawing my picture you will no doubt be civil to your friend, mind you do justice to the length of my nose, and don't forget that I-."14 Hamilton's abrupt ending is itself titillating and evocative.
Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies) Page 16