There was also another pressing reason for us to remain in New York City. I wasn’t sure we could afford to live in the larger and more expensive city of Philadelphia. As soon as Alexander had accepted his appointment as secretary, he’d given over his entire law practice to his old friend Mr. Troup, not wanting there to be any hint of a conflict between his new position and his old profession.
This was admirable and honorable, yes, but it placed our little household in the same predicament that we’d before encountered when Alexander had served in the Congress of the Confederation, and later in the Constitutional Convention. We simply hadn’t the funds to afford it. As perhaps the most prominent attorney in the state, Alexander had earned an excellent living, and we’d all grown accustomed to the little luxuries that his toil had made possible: the fine wines, his tailor and my mantua-maker, the small but growing collection of French and Italian prints on the walls of our parlor, the schools for our children, and the elegant furnishings in our house.
As secretary of finance, however, Alexander’s income had plummeted to a mere $3,500 a year. For President Washington and the other members of his cabinet, all of whom were wealthy, older gentlemen with plantations, land, and investments that earned them substantial incomes, their government salary was inconsequential, but for us, it was all we had, and with a houseful of young children to support as well.
Yet Alexander still wished us to live with the same outward grandeur as the others, and though I felt I constantly scrambled to balance our expenses as best I could, he assured me over and over that we would be fine, and that any setbacks we suffered would be temporary. Because he claimed it was essential to his position in the cabinet, we continued to dress fashionably, attend the theater and the assembly, and entertain our friends and his associates with costly dinners and wines at our house. It remained our secret irony that the secretary of finance teetered on the edge of insolvency, but that was the uncomfortable truth of our situation, and the possibility of moving to Philadelphia kept me awake at night wondering how we’d possibly manage.
But whilst this brave new government prided itself on being a true republic, we all were learning that some things must still be accomplished in the older style of politics, with private meetings between prominent statesmen held late at night behind closed doors. One warm night late in June, I was awakened by Alexander entering our darkened bedchamber, attempting to be silent but making a poor show of it.
“What time is it, my love?” I asked sleepily, pushing myself upright against the pillows.
“Half past midnight,” he said, his figure shadowy in the dark room. “But such things we’ve accomplished tonight, Betsey!”
“Then light a candle and tell me,” I said, instantly awake, “and stop fumbling about in the dark like a clumsy thief.”
“I didn’t wish to wake you,” he said contritely, striking a flint for a spark to light one of the candlesticks. He was still fully dressed for evening in the clothes he’d worn to dine at Mr. Jefferson’s lodgings in Maiden Lane, and from the slight slur and giddiness to his voice I suspected the company—all male, and all involved in the government—had drunk a good deal of wine to ease their discussion.
“So what exactly did you accomplish tonight while good Christians were asleep?” I asked, looping my arms around my bent knees as he shed his coat and his waistcoat. “Who was in the company?”
“Jefferson, of course,” he said, dropping into a chair to unbuckle his shoes and pull them off. “And Madison. Those are the ones who mattered. But listen to what we agreed, Betsey. You know how Madison and his followers refused to support assumption.”
“I couldn’t live in this city and not know that,” I said. “But the question is done, isn’t it?”
He grinned, tugging at the knot in his neck cloth to work it free. “It’s done, my love, but not in the manner you’re thinking. Madison has finally agreed to sway his block of nay-saying representatives to vote for a new bill with assumption at its heart. It is a wonderful compromise, Betsey. A lovely, beautiful compromise!”
He might have been half in his cups, but I was not. “Beautiful or otherwise, Alexander, a compromise implies that if Mr. Madison agreed to change his mind in this, then you must have offered something to him in turn, too.”
“It does,” he admitted, pulling the tails of his shirt free from his breeches before he drew it over his head in a billowing cloud of wrinkled linen. “But the sacrifice will be well worth it in the end.”
“It had better be,” I said. “You’ll have to tell the rest of the world in the morning. You might as well tell me now.”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing beneath each of his arms with the bundled shirt. “In return for Madison’s votes, I agreed to urge that the permanent capital shall be built on the Potomac, and the temporary one shall be Philadelphia.”
“Oh, Alexander, you didn’t!” I cried, shocked beyond measure. “You abandoned New York? You, who consider yourself a New Yorker, tossed this city’s future prospects away for the sake of a bill that has already been defeated once?”
He nodded, still holding that wretched shirt in his hands.
“There are times, Betsey,” he began, “when personal preference must be put aside for the good of the nation, and—”
“No,” I said flatly as the magnitude of what he’d done swept over me. “This isn’t a preference, Alexander. This is our home, or it was, and now I do not know how we shall be able to hold our heads up when we walk down the street.”
But my thoughts were nothing compared to what my father said when he heard the news. He came directly to speak with Alexander, who, fortunately for him, was not at home, leaving me alone to receive the full brunt of Papa’s ire.
“I know he is your husband, Eliza,” he thundered, standing in the front hall with the door to the street still wide open behind him and my footman cowering beside it. “Until this day I have also regarded him as another son, but this—this makes me question every favorable thought that I have had of the man.”
He struck his walking stick sharply on the floor with every word, no doubt imagining he was doing the same to my husband.
“Papa, please,” I began, trying to take him by the arm. “It’s not wise for you to upset yourself in this way.”
He shook me off. “Don’t coddle me, Eliza,” he ordered. “You know as well as I that what your Hamilton has done to New York is nothing short of a complete betrayal to those who have supported him from the moment he washed up on the shores of our harbor.”
He was far from alone in his opinion. When the House approved the Residence Act in July, officially naming both Philadelphia as the current capital and the Potomac site as the future one, New Yorkers united in their anger, and their anguish, and Alexander’s part in it brought comments wherever we went. Of course, I defended him as best I could; as unhappy as I’d been (and still was) with his decision, he was my husband. And, to be honest, to those in Philadelphia and the southern states, his part in the decision was lauded.
But what was perhaps most surprising of the whole affair was Mr. Jefferson’s part in it. Before the act had even been signed, he began to tell about town a curious version of that infamous dinner.
First of all, he painted a picture of having discovered Alexander walking in a disheveled and witless state in the street—which anyone who knew my fastidious husband realized would never be the case—babbling that he would soon be forced to resign. Then, Mr. Jefferson, having invited him to dine from purest pity and inviting Mr. Madison besides, next portrayed Alexander as scheming and duplicitous as he arranged the compromise. In his telling, Mr. Jefferson made himself out to be a complete innocent, a polite host without any notion of the political wickedness that he claimed rose up over his dining table.
His tale was utterly self-serving and entirely false, save for the fact that the three men had dined together at his lodgings. It changed my initial good opinion of Mr. Jefferson for the worse, as it did for Alexander, too. Beh
ind a pleasant façade of agreeable manners and taste, the secretary of state had revealed himself to be a conniving man, not to be trusted, as well as a man jealous of my husband’s greater power, accomplishment, and good favor with the president.
Despite the ultimate success of the Residence Act and the acceptance of assumption, Alexander now had not a new friend in the cabinet, but an envious rival. And although I hadn’t the grasp of history that my husband possessed, even I knew that without caution and care, a rival could all too easily turn to an enemy.
* * *
Congress met for the last time in Federal Hall in New York City in August 1790, and even before then, Alexander had already leased new offices for his department in Philadelphia, and made arrangements for his staff to remove there as well. Although the Residence Act did not require the government to relocate to Philadelphia until December, he saw no reason to linger, and before long he had his department running at its usual energetic yet efficient pace that matched his own.
To avoid the unhealthy heat of late summer, I closed up our house on Wall Street and retreated with our children to Albany while Alexander arranged his new offices and lived in temporary lodgings in an inn. As can be imagined with the entire capital removing to Philadelphia, houses for rent were at a premium, and Alexander was unable to find one suitable for us and for our means until October, when at last we joined him there.
“Will it suit?” he asked after we’d walked through the still-empty rooms of the new house. The children had already run ahead out into the walled backyard, and Alexander and I stood together in the front hall, the first time we’d been alone since I’d arrived with the children earlier in the day.
“I know it’s not our old house,” he continued, “but will it do well enough for now?”
“It will suit us admirably,” I said firmly, wanting to reassure him. The house wasn’t perfect: there were sooty places above the fireplaces that made me suspect the chimneys might smoke, the stairs were steep, and the windows were smaller and the rooms darker than I liked. But on the whole, the square brick house was sturdy and solid and large enough for our five children and servants, and a good cleaning from the attic to the cellar would cure a great many of its ills. “The best part is that we’ll be here together.”
He smiled with relief. He glanced past me and through the open back door to see where the children were, then circled his arms around my waist and kissed me: not the dutiful kiss with which he’d greeted me when our coach had arrived, but a lasting lover’s kiss to remind me of how much he’d missed me. Left breathless, I smiled up at him, and slipped my hands familiarly inside his coat and around his waist, the way I always did.
“You were away too long,” he whispered. “I was a lonely man without you.”
I chuckled softly, and wondered how I’d forgotten exactly how fine a man he was. He did look tired, though, with new lines of overwork around his eyes and a leanness to his waist that he could ill afford. But just as I’d soon refurbish the house to my liking, I intended to look after my husband as well, to compensate for all the late nights at his desk and too many meals that he’d eaten in a tavern while we’d been apart.
“You won’t be lonely now,” I teased, glancing back at the children. “I’ve brought you plenty of company.”
“They’ve all grown since I’ve seen you last,” he said wistfully, following my glance. “Philip in particular. He’ll be taller than I before long.”
I smiled with pride. Philip was almost nine now, so handsome a boy with his father’s strong jaw and my dark hair and eyes that strangers paused to remark upon him. He might well have inherited his grandfather’s height—he likely would be taller than Alexander before he was done growing—but there was already no doubt that he’d a good share of his father’s brilliance, and excelled at his lessons.
“Philip couldn’t have grown that much,” I said. “Not since July.”
“Still, we must think of sending him to a proper boys’ school soon,” Alexander said. “One that will prepare him for college.”
“He’s only eight,” I protested, unwilling yet to see my firstborn sent away to board. “There’s time enough.”
“There’s never enough time for everything,” he said almost mournfully, and looked back to me. “Consider how I’ve become old and weary—”
“Thirty-five is scarcely old!”
“There are days when I feel as ancient as Methuselah himself,” he said. “But you, however, never change, but remain the same black-eyed girl who scolded me and stole my heart.”
“And you’re the same undersized, earnest aide-de-camp who stole mine, too,” I said softly, swaying closer to him. “At least in all the ways that matter most.”
Behind us came the clatter of children’s footsteps on the bare floorboards.
“Oh, no, Fanny,” said Angelica with open disgust. “We can’t go in here, because Mamma and Papa are kissing.”
We laughed, and stepped apart, though Alexander continued to keep his hand at my waist as if fearing to let me go.
“I told you, Betsey, there’s never enough time for everything,” he said ruefully. “Never enough time at all.”
CHAPTER 18
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
January 1791
One of the advantages of the house on Third Street was its close proximity to Alexander’s offices at the Treasury. It was but a short walk for him from one to the other, and as a result I could often coax him to put aside his labors, however briefly, and come home to dine with us at midday. But the nearness of the office also meant that the siren song of his work was even more difficult to resist.
I know there are many who believe my husband was driven by ambition, greed, and a lust for power, but I believe that the strongest attraction for him was the desire to create and build, and to integrate immense projects and ideas so that they prospered for the good of the whole. That was the real satisfaction for him, solving the puzzle of the government’s creation, and there were days and long nights where he could no more resist solving one more problem or writing one more plan than a hardened drunkard could resist that next drink.
While I had dared to hope otherwise, the capital’s move to Philadelphia made no alteration in Alexander’s zeal for his office. If anything, after his initial successes in his first year, his determination seemed only to increase. He continued to develop a coastal guard to protect the revenue that came from import customs, and a post office to increase communications between the states. He proposed an excise tax on all distilled liquor (whiskey being the most popular in America at that time), instead of a tax on individuals or property that might excite memories of the loathsome British taxes of the 1760s.
But the project that most occupied him was a plan for a Bank of the United States to secure and stabilize the national economy. To his satisfaction, the bill proposing the bank’s establishment found little resistance or debate in Congress, and passed easily through the Senate. Mr. Madison, now firmly an opponent of Alexander’s, attempted to block the bill on grounds that it favored the north with it merchants and manufacturers over the south—his south—that relied upon slave-run plantations as well as smaller farmers. Finally the bill was passed by the Senate, and it remained only for President Washington to sign into law, a near certainty given that the president, too, realized its necessity.
But when Alexander came home in the middle of a January afternoon—never a fortuitous sign—I knew from the grimness of his expression that matters must not be going as he’d expected.
“Come walk with me, Betsey,” he said with no further greeting, and I hurried to get my cloak and fur muff and told the servants to mind the children. Most often when he’d a difficult problem, he paced his library, but if the problem were more sizable, he required the length of a city street, and chose to walk outdoors. For the most challenging problems, he’d ask me to join him. It had been a long time since we’d walked together like this, and I’d no idea what to expect.
/> I learned before we’d taken ten steps beyond our front door.
“Jefferson is trying to convince the president to veto the banking bill,” he said, his voice surprisingly even.
For once I was the indignant one.
“The dog!” I exclaimed, so loudly that he shushed me. The day was cold and gray, a weakling sort of afternoon, with dirty patches of snow still gathered in the streets, and few other people abroad, let alone in hearing. Still, he was wise to be cautious.
“I am sorry, Alexander,” I said, lowering my voice. “But for Mr. Jefferson to wait until now to attempt to undermine you!”
“It’s completely in Jefferson’s character to do so,” he said. “The man keeps his thoughts to himself behind a pretense of not caring, waits, and then strikes at the last moment.”
“The dog,” I repeated vehemently, a slight against canines, I know, but I couldn’t help myself. “That great, lying, spotted dog.”
At least that made my husband smile. “He is at that.”
“Do you know his argument?” I asked. “On what grounds does he protest?”
“It’s the usual one with the Virginians, although carried further,” he said, beginning to walk more quickly. “He believes I am a despot in the making, traitorously in sympathy with the British, and with designs on creating an American aristocracy.”
I shook my head in furious denial. “Why must they always say that of you?”
“Because a despot is an easy villain, one his Virginian voters will understand,” he said. “But he also claims that the banks of Europe are the seat of all decadence and corruption, and that a single American bank would only destroy the values for which the Revolution was fought.”
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