Even Alexander will admit, however, that the essays might not have had the effect on the citizens that he’d hoped. More important in swaying voters were the dramatic arguments he delivered in person to the convention in Poughkeepsie. Yet while Governor Clinton’s influence still held firm, and while New York was one of the last states to finally ratify the Constitution—and by the most slender of margins, too—in the end it finally did so. The Anti-Federalist factions in the north of the state blamed Alexander, and likely cursed him as well.
But in New York City, the stronghold of the Federalists, my husband was a veritable hero. When news of the impending ratification reached the city, the celebration among the people was even more glorious than when the last British ship had sailed from the harbor three years before.
Alas, my husband was still in Poughkeepsie and could not witness it for himself, for surely he would have been endlessly gratified to see such heartfelt appreciation for all his labors. I was shortly to travel north with our children to Albany and The Pastures for the summer, but fortuitously we were still in the city for the celebrations.
A parade was planned down Broadway, and with my five little ones (including Fanny Antill and my own newest son, James Alexander, born in April) in tow, I went to a friend’s house on that street to watch the festivities from her open windows. The day was overcast with a light drizzle early in the day, but nothing could dampen the high spirits of those who marched and the cheering crowds that gathered to watch.
I heard that more than five thousand men participated in the parade, a sizable group for a city of thirty thousand souls. There were brigades representing every kind of tradesman, shopkeeper, artisan, and merchant, all carrying emblems of their employment to show their support for the new Constitution. A military-style band played stirring music, with thumping drums and squealing fifes that thrilled Philip and Angelica, but frightened the younger children. Colorful displays were mounted upon flat wagons and drawn through the streets to represent more trades. Marchers tried to outdo one another in their gaudy costumes, and every horse in the parade was likewise decked with ribbons and cockades. One banner even featured a portrait of my beloved husband, surrounded by a wreath of laurels.
But the most spectacular display came near the end. Drawn by ten dray horses came a miniature frigate nearly thirty feet in length, her masts towering as high as the rooftops, and canvas waves to support her as she sailed down Broadway. Painted in gold across the stern was this brave vessel’s name: the Federal Ship Hamilton. As the ship slowed to a stop before Bayard’s Tavern, not far from where we were watching, it changed pilots to demonstrate the shift from the Articles of Confederation to the new Constitution, while guns fired in noisy celebration.
Explaining how all this was in honor of their father, I bade the children to clap and cheer, not that they required my encouragement; the painted ship was a sight they would all long remember. It was all a splendid, heartening show, so grand that tears stung my eyes to see my husband so venerated.
My only regret was that Alexander was not with us. Not only would he have delighted in the spectacle, but the glorious memory of the parade and the enthusiastic support it represented would have brought him much consolation through the darker days ahead.
CHAPTER 16
New York City, New York
March 1789
“There,” said Alexander, pointing out across the Battery and out toward the open sea. “The largest ship, bearing down upon us. That’s hers.”
Beside him, I stared out onto the horizon, striving to see which particular ship he meant among the many sails that dotted the waters around New York. The midday sun was bright and I squinted a bit, even with my face shielded by the sweeping brim of my hat and a green silk parasol as well, and the breeze from the sea was brisk and salty in my face. Yet I would never complain, but be grateful instead. With every little gust, these same breezes were carrying one of the dearest people in Creation closer to me: my sister Angelica.
“You know there could still be hours before your sister will be able to disembark,” Alexander cautioned. “I don’t even know if the pilot has gone aboard yet to bring them into the harbor. As much as Angelica might desire it, even she cannot come skipping across the water to us.”
“I wish she could,” I declared.
Alexander smiled, doubtless imagining my sister doing exactly that, her petticoats daintily lifted above the waves.
We hadn’t seen my sister in nearly four years, and while I’d missed her beyond words, I think Alexander had missed her nearly as much. Ever since Mr. Church had at last agreed to spare her for a visit with us, her family in America, both Alexander and I had been in a fever of anticipation. Each night I’d added extra prayers for her safe journey, while Alexander had checked daily with the ship’s owner for any news of her progress across the Atlantic.
Now with equal reluctance we decided to retreat to a nearby coffeehouse for refreshment, and to wait until the ship was closer. Neither of us suggested returning home until we had Angelica with us.
My sister was arriving at the perfect time, too, for New York was an exciting place to be in 1789. After putting aside the old Articles of Confederation under which the country had been run since the war (and which to me had seemed to have taken a trudging eternity to accomplish) the business of forming a new kind of government felt as if it were racing along at a breakneck pace, with some fresh occurrence happening most every day.
The newly elected Congress, consisting of both a Senate and a House of Representatives, had met for the first time in March, in Federal Hall. General Washington had been easily elected as the country’s first president, and was even now making his way to New York from his country seat at Mount Vernon to be sworn into office in an elaborate ceremony. There would, of course, be balls. In anticipation of these events, visitors streamed into the city from every part of our country, and from the countries of Europe, too, and I never knew when I’d be introduced to a lady from Georgia in a milliner’s shop, or be seated next to a Prussian nobleman at a supper.
But as far as I was concerned, the best part of having New York City as the country’s new capital was that there was no further need for my husband to travel in the service of his country. He had resigned his place in the state Assembly, and had every expectation of a position in the new federal government here in New York once President Washington was inaugurated.
In the time since we’d first moved to Wall Street, I do not believe that Alexander and I had passed an entire month together without him having to make a journey away from home for one purpose or another. Now he slept in his own bed beside me every night, and we both were much the happier for it. The last time I’d seen Alexander this exhilarated had been before he’d departed for Yorktown, and the final battle of the war, though how relieved I was to think that there’d be no such further bloodshed and mayhem in his life.
We waited not two hours for Angelica’s ship, but nearly four, yet those long hours were swiftly forgotten when I was at last able to embrace my dearest sister. We both wept with joy, and she clung to me laughing because her legs were so unsteady on land after the long voyage. Then it was Alexander’s turn, and fresh joy and tears and laughter combined. I kept touching her arm, her shoulder, her hair, reassuring myself that she was truly with me. Even after weeks aboard ship, she was beautifully and expensively dressed, with an enormous plumed hat that must have been anchored with countless pins to keep from blowing away with the harbor’s breeze. But I thought with concern that she looked tired, doubtless from traveling, and older, too. I reminded myself that she’d lost a child; that would be reason enough to have caused the new web of fine lines about her eyes.
Because she had traveled with only her lady’s maid, we insisted that she stay with us. I feared our house might seem unbearably humble after Down Place, their estate near Windsor, as well as their sizable house in London, but she declared our home to be delightful and snug, and made herself instantly at ease. Of h
er niece and nephews, only Philip remembered her, yet she quickly won over the others, including Fanny, with dolls and toys from the best shops in London. For Philip, she’d brought a set of specially painted lead soldiers.
“Do you see his blue and buff uniform?” she asked, leaning close to Philip as she stood one of the soldiers on her open palm. “He’s dressed in the same uniform as your father and his men wore at Yorktown.”
Philip’s eyes shone bright with awe, and so did Alexander’s, too, and I knew our son would not be the only one playing with the soldiers.
But my sister had brought gifts for us as well, a set of French histories, luxuriously bound in gold-trim leather for Alexander, and a gold necklace set with honey-colored citrines for me. I gasped when I opened the case, and glanced swiftly at Alexander. He had always declined my father’s generosity, and I worried that Angelica’s costly offerings would vex him as well. But I suppose because they’d come from Angelica, he only nodded, and urged me to put the necklace around my throat now. I did, with Angelica fastening the clasp for me.
“Most handsome, Betsey,” Alexander said while my sister beamed. “You must wear that to the ball.”
“Oh, yes, Eliza, you must,” exclaimed Angelica. “The color favors your coloring to perfection.”
I smiled, and touched my fingers lightly to the necklace. In truth the necklace was much more to my sister’s taste than my own, and the large stones were weighty and chill against my skin. I would rather have worn the strand of garnet beads (much like those worn by Lady Washington) that Alexander had given me to the ball as I’d planned, but now, to please them both, I knew I’d no choice but to wear my sister’s gift.
Later, when the children were finally asleep, the three of us settled into the parlor, and of course the talk turned at once to politics. Falling back into the patterns of our girlhood, I preferred most often to listen while my sister conversed with my husband, and content myself with stitching a new dress for my daughter while their quick, clever words darted back and forth around me.
“There was never any doubt that His Excellency would become president, was there?” Angelica asked. After dinner she had changed into a loose-fitting sultana of shimmering pale blue silk, and now she sat comfortably curled on the sofa with her feet tucked beneath her. “But Mr. Adams as vice president! How being second—even second to His Excellency—must gall that insufferable man.”
“If Adams believed he’d win the presidency, then he was likely the only one in the country who did,” Alexander said. He, too, had changed into more comfortable dress as he often did in the evenings, replacing his coat and waistcoat with a banyan over his shirt and breeches, and his favorite and thoroughly disreputable slippers on his feet. “I suppose you must have crossed paths, if not swords, with Adams in London to have conceived such an ill opinion of him.”
Angelica sighed dramatically. “Mr. Church and I knew him in Boston, and we knew him in Paris, and then there he appeared again in London, and now you tell me I must know him here in New York. Will the man give me no peace?”
I glanced up from my needle. “Mr. Adams may well say the same of you, Angelica.”
At once Angelica puffed out her cheeks and squeezed her brows together, the very picture of Mr. Adams.
“Preserve me!” she said in a querulous voice. “It’s that odious creature Mrs. Church, traipsing after me clear across the ocean and back!”
We all laughed, for it could well be true. The dour and fussy John Adams was perhaps the one American abroad who’d find nothing to recommend in my endlessly agreeable sister.
“I cannot have you ridiculing the man in my hearing, Angelica,” Alexander protested, even as he still was laughing. “He seems a good enough man, and I must find a way to work beside him.”
“You will, my dear,” I said, soothing. “Mr. Adams is another attorney, and you attorneys always manage to find a way to cooperate with one another.”
“You won’t win him through his wife, Hamilton, the way you usually do,” my sister warned. “Have you met the lady? She is shrewd, in the way of Boston ladies. She will be suspicious of you on pure principle, and refuse to be charmed.”
“Is that a wager, ma chère soeur?” Alexander said, addressing her fondly in French. “That I cannot charm Mrs. Adams?”
“No, it is not a wager,” Angelica said sternly. “To offer such a wager would be no better than picking your pocket. Mrs. Adams shall judge you to be a coxcomb, Hamilton, and compared to her husband, she’ll be correct.”
Alexander feigned incredulity, even as he laughed. “A coxcomb?” he repeated. “That’s a bit strong.”
“It’s the truth,” insisted my sister, and I couldn’t disagree. With his French tailor and his love of bright silks, my handsome husband always stood out amongst a crowd of more soberly dressed gentlemen, particularly the ones like Mr. Adams and Mr. Madison who dressed all in black like stout crows. Still, I could sense my sister preparing to skewer poor Mr. and Mrs. Adams further, and thought it best to divert her.
“Tell us more of Mr. Church, Angelica,” I said. “Is it true that he intends to stand for Parliament?”
“Oh, my, yes,” she replied, but without much of a show of enthusiasm. “That is why he purchased the property at Wendover, so he could pretend a connection to the borough. To serve his nation in Parliament has always been his greatest desire, you know.”
“If he’d remained in this country,” Alexander said, “he could have served in our Congress, and we’d all have been grateful for his wisdom, too.”
For a moment I was sure I glimpsed sadness in her eyes, but she rallied again to sound gay. I recalled our conversation years before at The Pastures, of how we’d both wed not only our husbands, but our husbands’ aspirations and fortunes as well.
“Parliament is his greatest desire,” she repeated, as if striving to convince herself. “Such company we keep in London and at Down Place because of it, too. Consider this, Eliza, if you will: your dearest sister, a humble daughter of liberty, has entertained His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in her drawing room.”
“Prince or not, I’m sure he’s become one more conquest for you,” said Alexander. “I’m sure your powers are every bit as potent in London as they are in New York.”
“You are too generous, Hamilton, too generous by half,” she said, smiling winsomely. “But what of your own ambitions? Papa wrote me that your efforts to unseat the vile Clinton failed to proceed as you’d hoped.”
Instantly Alexander’s expression clouded, and I dreaded what he’d say. As involved as he was in the new federal government, he’d been unable to keep himself away from the election for the governor of New York, and his deep dislike of Governor Clinton had instead induced him to promote another candidate, Judge Robert Yates. Alexander had recruited his city friends to join the fray, including fellow lawyer Aaron Burr, who, though an Anti-Federalist, was a good friend to Judge Yates. Alexander had also indulged in his now-customary attacks on Clinton’s record and motives through letters in the newspaper, a tactic which I pleaded with him not to choose.
I was sadly right, too, for the replies from the Clintonian factions came swiftly as more scurrilous personal attacks on my husband’s character, honor, and parentage. Alexander’s love of truth and his tendency to speak his thoughts on impulse made it easy for his foes to predict how best to wound him. There was even an accusation that he’d broken his vows to me, a slander that shocked and—I shall admit it—hurt me, too, even though I knew it to be false.
“Yates lost,” he said bluntly. “Clinton won. I suspect betrayals in certain quarters.”
“Please, Alexander,” I cautioned, knowing too well what was about to follow, but he plunged ahead.
“You recall Colonel Burr, Angelica, do you not?”
My sister’s brows rose with interest. “A handsome fellow, with black hair and brows. I recall him being at The Pastures to make use of Papa’s books.”
“After the election, Clin
ton offered Burr the position of state’s attorney general.” He paused, the kind of lingering, dramatic pause he’d perfected in the courtroom, but seldom used at home. “Burr accepted.”
“Did you wish the position for yourself, then?” Angelica asked curiously.
“Not at all,” he said with ripe indignation. “Nor would I ever deign to accept so much as a dry crumb offered by Clinton. But the fact remains, however, that Burr did, and turned his back on his friend Yates, and ignored his promise to me to combat Clinton. He demonstrated no loyalty to his friend, no conviction in his own proclaimed beliefs.”
As was so often the case with my husband, that brief summation only hinted at his true feelings. For all his many virtues, and as a man who lived so much in the public eye, Alexander could on oc-cassion be too quick to see slights or insults. In this case, he’d been stung by what he perceived as Colonel Burr’s betrayal to the Federalist cause, and from the moment he’d learned the other attorney had accepted the position as state attorney general, what had been a congenial rivalry between Alexander and the colonel degenerated into an active suspicion and dislike that served neither gentlemen well.
“Perhaps Colonel Burr did not behave as a gentleman of honor should,” Angelica admitted, running her fingers absently along the lace edging on her cuff. “But if you truly wished to have defeated Governor Clinton, Hamilton, you should have run for the office yourself.”
I gasped with dismay. For some months now, Alexander had been serving as a trusted advisor to the incoming President Washington with the expectation that he would receive an appointment in the new government, and in the meantime he’d been continuing his law practice as well. The very last thing he needed to be considering was running for governor. The governorship of New York after George Clinton finally left it would be one of the most difficult and thankless offices imaginable. I would sooner want my beloved husband to thrust his uncovered hand into a writhing nest of vipers than to become governor, but Angelica had always encouraged Alexander’s ambitions, often with more enthusiasm than practical sense.
I, Eliza Hamilton Page 33