I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  I saw the evidence of this myself. A simple visit to a draper’s shop for a length of linen for a child’s shirt could become a mathematical adventure. Should I pay in dollars, or shillings and pence, French guineas or Prussian thalers? All of those coins and bills were common currency in our city, and I’d seen them come into our house, too, by way of my husband’s fees. But which would give more value as a housewife at market? Which would garner more respect from a shopkeeper, and offer the most advantageous rate of exchange?

  Yet it wasn’t only the merchants who felt the pinch. Farmers and other small landowners were unable to pay the ever-increasing taxes, and being faced with foreclosure and ruin. Near the end of 1786, a large group of these impoverished farmers from western Massachusetts took matters into their own hands, and began shutting down courts and threatening officials.

  Well-organized and armed under the leadership of a onetime militia captain named Daniel Shays, the men soon became emboldened to attack armories and raid private shops, and threatened worse. The mob of angry men grew as it surged east toward Boston, an open rebellion if not out-and-out civil war.

  To me, this grim news was especially frightening. Most of the rebels had been soldiers during the war, men who had never been justly paid for their service, and they had much in common with the disgruntled soldiers who had threatened Congress (and my husband) in Philadelphia three years before.

  As a veteran himself, Alexander sympathized with the rebels even as he railed on to me about how such martial demonstrations needed to be swiftly suppressed before they threatened the nation as a whole. One of his less popular beliefs was a need for a national standing army to address conflicts like this, and I believe that if it had been up to him, he would have sent a full national army to Massachusetts to put down the rebellion. In public, however, he was more measured, and pointed to the disturbances as more proof of the need for a stronger national financial system.

  By the time Alexander returned to the state legislature in January, the Massachusetts rebellion had been quelled by local militia and the leaders captured, but the warning it had raised was still much in people’s minds. Or at least it was everywhere except in the small and narrow minds of Governor Clinton and his followers. Even the fact that this session of the legislature met in New York City, in the Old Royal Exchange, did not sway the governor from his insistence that the Confederation of states was perfectly adequate, and worse, that the suggested changes were to be despised, even feared.

  While other states swiftly approved the proposal for a new Constitutional Convention and chose their delegates, Governor Clinton made sure that New York dragged its feet. Alexander fought heroically, in sessions and debates and with individual assemblymen, too, and each late night when he came home and our children were abed, I’d listen as he recounted every denial and scornful aside with me, and planned his next move.

  One day he gave a speech defending a congressional proposal for an import tax that he knew would be defeated, and yet I heard from my father, in attendance as a state senator, that Alexander still spoke with passion and dedication for nearly ninety minutes, and nearly collapsed from exertion when he was done. The measure was promptly defeated, as he’d expected, but defiant and determined, he insisted that we go to the playhouse that same evening, if only to prove his resilience to the Clintonians.

  To hear Alexander tell it (and I did, many times), Governor Clinton’s pettiness knew no bounds. When at last the New York delegates were chosen to attend the Constitutional Convention, Alexander was chosen—for not even the governor could overlook a gentleman who’d helped institute the Convention—but the two other gentlemen were firm followers of Governor Clinton, and guaranteed to vote together and against Alexander.

  Still, when he left for Philadelphia on a warm, drizzling morning in the middle of May, his mood was buoyant and optimistic. His old mentor General Washington had agreed to serve as the Convention’s president. Under the general’s firm leadership, Alexander hoped the delegates would not be content with a few mends and darns to the old Confederation, but would instead, like master tailors, begin anew with a fresh bolt of cloth, cutting to measure to suit the needs of the country.

  I do not know exactly what occurred during that long summer in Philadelphia, or what was said behind the shuttered blinds and closed doors of the statehouse. Nor do I know what my impassioned husband discussed with the other delegates whilst dining at their lodgings in the Indian Queen Tavern. Because of the delicate nature of the Convention’s discussions, all delegates had been sworn to complete secrecy, and none could have taken this oath more seriously than Alexander. He would not break his oath, even for me.

  But I’d other, more sorrowful matters to occupy myself as well. My younger sister Peggy and her young husband had two charming children, a three-year-old daughter named Catherine after our mother, and a one-year-old son named Stephanus, to honor his grandfather. Our children had played together during our visits to The Pastures, and my daughter Angelica was particularly fond of her little cousin Catherine, singing her songs in her warbling voice as Catherine clapped with delight.

  Yet in the space of a single terrible week that summer, my poor sister lost both her babies to scarlet fever, as first Catherine, and then tiny Stephanus, sickened and died. I rushed to Peggy as soon as I heard the grim news, taking care to leave my own children safely behind in New York. Although I didn’t arrive until after the burials, I still was able to offer what comfort I could to Peggy. Swathed in black, my usually lighthearted sister was distraught with grief, her face so swollen from crying that I scarcely recognized her.

  Hand in hand, she led me at once to the now-empty nursery at Rensselaerwyck, where we were surrounded by her children’s toys and belongings, as poignant as any ghosts. With the house in deep mourning, the curtains were drawn and the air in the room was heavy and still, gloomed further with shadows and loss. Here my sister and I sat together on a bench where only a fortnight before she’d played with her sweet darlings. My poor, dear Peggy was mute with grieving, and could do nothing but weep the heaviest tears of a despairing mother as I held her close and wept too over her unimaginable loss. It was all I could do, and all that could be done, beyond praying for the little souls now free of their suffering.

  Peggy’s sorrow remained with me on my journey back home to New York, and I wept anew as I held my own children close, determined to cherish them even more. What sadder reminder was there of how fragile life could be for those who were most dear to us?

  * * *

  Although the Constitutional Convention lasted well into August, Alexander didn’t remain in Philadelphia the entire time. He frequently came home to New York City and to me and the children, and to attend to his practice. This wasn’t unusual among the delegates, most of whom returned home at some point or departed for good to tend to their affairs. But where nearly all the other delegates were gentlemen with property and incomes, our little family depended on what Alexander himself earned from the law. I did my part as the frugal housewife, closely watching our expenditures. I welcomed the gifts of cheeses, flour, and fruits that my parents sent down from their farms down the river to us, and I anticipated the day when my husband would be able to devote all his energies to his practice.

  I also interpreted his trips home as signs that the Convention had not gone as he’d wished, and though I couldn’t know the reasons why, I tried to cheer him as best I could. Our children did that as well, lightening his humor with their chatter and play. He wasn’t a somber, distant father, but threw himself into their games with cheerful abandon. With them he could be entirely his own man, with no worries of how he’d be judged, and he loved them all the more for it.

  On his last visit, however, our house was quiet, and our family subdued. Living in such a sizable city, I took every safeguard I could to preserve our children’s health. This included inoculations against the smallpox. Dr. Bard followed the latest practices of the day by inoculating our children before the
ir second birthdays. The procedure itself was simple enough: a small nick in the skin of the left arm to introduce the infectious matter was all that was required.

  But young children did not understand either the procedure, or the fever that came a week later, or the jalap purges that followed, and the necessity to lie abed quietly. Alexander, who at fifteen months was the perfect age for the procedure, had developed the proper desired fever and only a handful of pustules, but he was so fretful and unhappy that I’d taken him from his bed and into the parlor. I opened the windows to admit the evening’s cooler breezes, and then sat on the sofa with my feverish child in my arms. Gently I rocked back and forth to ease him, and when that didn’t help, I put him to my breast for comfort.

  That was how Alexander found us, sitting by the light of a single candlestick.

  “How is my Alex faring?” he asked softly with concern. Gently he brushed aside his little son’s dark curls, damp with fever, and cupped his palm over the child’s forehead. He was half-asleep, poor baby, his eyes nearly closed.

  “Better, I think,” I said. “I didn’t want him to wake Philip or Angelica.”

  “No,” he said, bending to kiss me over our son’s head before he, too, sat on the sofa. “He’s still very warm. I know it’s all part of the inoculation, but I don’t like fevers, especially not in the children.”

  I didn’t like them, either, but having been born in the Caribbean, my husband had a special dread of feverish ailments. A fever had killed his mother, and he’d nearly died himself more than once.

  “Alex will be fine now,” I said. “Dr. Bard says so.”

  “Then I suppose we must trust,” Alexander said, though his expression betrayed far more worry. “I thought you’d written me that he’d been weaned.”

  “Almost,” I admitted, protectively holding the child a little closer to my breast. Alex was old for suckling now, and in truth I was more reluctant to end it than was he. “Most times he’d rather drink from a cup now. But tonight he wanted the comfort, and I couldn’t deny him.”

  Alexander nodded, agreeing, or at least leaving the decision to me. Of course, there was more that neither of us was saying, but we each understood. As soon as I’d weaned both Philip and Angelica, I’d become pregnant again almost at once with our next child. I believed in my heart that children were God’s blessing on a marriage, and Alexander and I had always wanted a large family. The children we had were impossibly dear to us, but the thought of adding yet another while our lives—and the country—were so unsettled was a sobering one.

  “Poor little man,” Alexander said, watching his son. “I hope he’s better before I must leave on Thursday.”

  “Is it possible for you to stay another day or two?” I asked with more hope in my voice than I probably should have ventured.

  “No, I must return,” he said, and the deep sigh that followed spoke volumes.

  “Is it as bad as that?” I asked carefully.

  “Has the Convention proceded as I’d hoped? No.” He shrugged, and shook his head with resignation. “I’ve been called a monarchist and a traitor, and I’ve had my opinions twisted about and thrown back at me. The Constitution that is being wrought is not what it could have been, and yet, I will support it, for the good of the country.”

  I didn’t need to ask more. In the last months, he’d once again turned to writing letters to the New York newspapers attacking how Governor Clinton sought to block the new Constitution, and his supporters had been quick to attack Alexander, focusing not on his political beliefs, but with personal slanders and name-calling. It had been very public, shameful, and ugly, and had wounded Alexander—who remained acutely aware of his parentage and past—more deeply than I’d expected. If the Convention had had any of the same elements, then I understood why he wasn’t eager to return, and why our family was his sanctuary.

  “Before I leave, I’ve something else to ask of you, my love,” Alexander said. “Do you recall Colonel Antill?”

  “I recall attending his poor wife’s funeral with you several years ago,” I said. It had been a heartrending sight that would always remain with me: the grieving widower and their six young children, one a mere babe in arms, sobbing and lost, as they stood over the yawning grave of their wife and mother. Alexander had served alongside Colonel Antill in the war, and had attended King’s College with him, too, and when in desperation the colonel had appealed to my husband for assistance, Alexander had of course given it to him. “Is he faring any better with his law practice since then?”

  “He’s taken to farming now,” Alexander said, “and done as poorly at that as he did with the law, and appears to be a man broken in spirit and body. He has come to me to beg an extraordinary favor. He wants us to take his youngest daughter Fanny into our care.”

  I remembered that tiny, wide-eyed baby who’d never known her mother. I thought of how desperate Colonel Antill must be to ask such a thing. In that instant I forgot all my uncertainties about adding another child to our family, and the next day, Fanny came to live with us, as completely and as loved as if she’d been another daughter of our own blood.

  * * *

  As imperfect as Alexander judged the new Constitution to be and as painful as the process had been, he was still among the thirty-nine delegates who signed the document in September 1787. His was also the only signature to represent New York, the other two delegates having left early in protest, and in union with Governor Clinton.

  I rejoiced to have my husband home once again, and the children—our three plus Fanny Antill—couldn’t have been happier to have their father back. I waited until we were alone in our bed with the curtains drawn tight, to tell him my own news.

  “I’m with child again,” I said softly as I lay beside him, his arm curled around my waist.

  He rolled over to face me, propping his head on his arm.

  “A springtime baby,” I added.

  He smiled slowly, letting the happiness spread across his face, and gently placed his hand over my belly.

  I smiled, too, and with relief as well. “You are pleased?”

  “I am as pleased as a husband could be, my love,” he said, and drew me close to kiss.

  It was a blissful homecoming, but by the next morning, the loving husband had vanished, and he was as grim-faced and determined as if once again going to battle.

  In a way, that was exactly what lay ahead. The Constitution still had to be approved and ratified by a majority of nine states. The debates and approvals would be made directly by citizens in state conventions, not by the various states’ legislatures and their politicians.

  The arguments raged in every state and likely every tavern, too, with some men seeing the proposed new government as absolutely essential, while others deplored it as an abomination based so closely upon British models as to be a return to the same tyranny of colonial times. As can be imagined, New York was one of the most contentious states, with Alexander as the voice for the Federalists (as supporters of the Constitution had become known) and Governor Clinton as the leader of the Anti-Federalists. The passions of both groups ran high, and debates of the state convention were angry and heated, and filled with ungentlemanly invectives.

  But in the fall of 1787, Alexander turned to his favorite weapon, the written word. He imagined a series of essays in the form of letters, to be published in the three largest New York newspapers for all to read.

  On account of his public services and his law practice, however, he was prodigiously busy, and no matter how much coffee he drank, even he required a modicum of sleep. He wasn’t able to find time to compose his thoughts with clarity until October, when together we sailed north by way of a sloop on the Hudson to Albany. He was presenting a case before the state court there, and I accompanied him so that I might see my parents.

  Because of the uncertainty of the winds and currents, such a journey upriver was more like a short voyage, and could take as long as a week. But on board the sloop Alexander had no distr
actions, nor could further work be brought to his attention. In this relative peace, he could write as intensely as he pleased on his battered portable desk, the hinged mahogany box that accompanied him everywhere. In this fashion, his thoughts were interrupted only when he invited me to join him on the deck to discuss some particularly thorny question while he paced back and forth, dodging sailors and other passengers and ignoring the changing colors of autumn on either bank of the river.

  The epistolary essays as he conceived them were intended not only to persuade, but to explain the need for the new Constitution with clear examples of how the old Confederation had failed, and of how the new plan would correct these errors and weaknesses in the future. He enlisted his fellow delegates John Jay and James Madison to write essays as well, with each gentleman concentrating on topics of his own expertise. The essays were addressed to the citizens of the state of New York, and to protect the authors’ identities, they would be published under the name of Publius, in honor of Publius Valerius, one of the founders of the ancient Roman republic.

  The first of the essays was published at the end of October, and the last in August 1788. There were eighty-five in all; Mr. Jay wrote five, Mr. Madison twenty-nine, and Alexander fifty-one. Together they were known as The Federalist.

  I will not attempt to paraphrase The Federalist here, for I would surely fail. But I recommend the essays (which were compiled almost immediately and published as a book) to anyone who wishes not only to understand the tenets of our government, but also to glimpse my husband’s true and lasting brilliance. They are remarkable documents on their own, but to me, who witnessed their furious creation as he toiled at his desk late in the night and early in the morning, they were nothing short of a miracle. He was, I think, more proud of this written accomplishment than any other, and I was in turn proud of him.