I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  I caught my breath, shocked, for I realized what a monumental sacrifice this would be. For the last seven years that he had been the secretary of the treasury, he had defined the post, and he had in turn let it define him so closely that I wasn’t sure he could tell any longer where the secretary left off and the man—my husband—began. I would never have dared ask him to resign, nor would I even have thought to do so. This grandly generous decision that he was making had to be his, not mine, for I didn’t want to be blamed if he later thought better of it.

  “You would do that, Alexander?” I asked slowly. “You would make so large a sacrifice for me?”

  “I would,” he said. “I will. I have given more than I should to the government, and it’s time for me to step back and instead tend to those whom I love most of all.”

  I wanted so much to believe him, and I tucked my hands around my body, hugging myself.

  “Once you resign, it will be done,” I warned. “You won’t be able to return.”

  He nodded decisively, without hesitation. He was standing before the window and the pale winter sunlight washed over his shoulders, and I realized there were tears in his eyes as well.

  He took a single step toward me. “My dearest wife,” he said. “I love you more now than I ever have.”

  At last I silently held my arms open to him, and he came to me, and together we grieved for what we’d lost, and hoped for what was still to come.

  * * *

  To my joy, Alexander did exactly what he’d pledged, and resigned that afternoon, effective when the new congressional session began in January. No one in Philadelphia had expected it, the least of all President Washington. The president tried to persuade him to stay for the last year of his own term, but Alexander held firm.

  I still marveled that he did, for in many ways he had been at the height of his powers in Philadelphia. The rebellion had been quelled in the best way possible, with measured authority and a minimal loss of life. Everything that he had created or put into effect during his tenure was running effectively, and the country was at ease and at peace.

  Needless to say, the Democratic-Republicans believed otherwise, harping on the perceived indignities of the Whiskey Rebellion and other old slanders dredged from the past. As Alexander’s last proposals were combined into a bill before Congress, Senator Aaron Burr tried to introduce a number of Democratic-Republican-approved amendments to the bill, amendments that Alexander thought undermined his proposals for no reason except to be contrary. Fortunately, the bill passed without the amendments, and at last Alexander was free.

  We turned the key to the door of the Third Street house for the last time in February 1795. I’ll admit that while I was thankful to be done with the politics of government, I’d also made many friends in the city, and I was sorry to be leaving them behind. I’d borne one child while I was here, and lost another, and yet overall, Alexander and I had been happy. But I was eager to return to New York City, the city that still felt most like our home.

  We spent the rest of the winter and the spring at The Pastures, the first break that Alexander had permitted himself from work in years. He did little but read, ride, and a little writing, and played a great deal with the children, which they adored. As a boy in the Caribbean, he’d never ridden a sled, and he took to it now with ferocious delight, racing down the long hill before our house with the boys. He took turns taking our younger sons, James and John, down the hill with him, tucking them securely between his knees while they shrieked with delight, and I watched with the trepidation that all mothers do. Each night before supper, I played my old pianoforte in the parlor, and Alexander and our daughter, Angelica, would sing ballads together, their voices in the most pleasing harmony imaginable.

  The best part of the day for me was the end, when he and I would retire to bed together, without any talk of politics crowded in between us. By the end of the first fortnight, he was smiling and laughing again as he hadn’t in years; by the end of a month, he looked like a new man.

  And yet as idyllic as this all might seem, the reality of our lives was never far away. He insisted on reading the New York newspapers that my father had brought up the river each day, and after supper they often shared their outrage at this or that, while Mamma and I had no choice but to listen.

  One evening as we all sat together in the front parlor, however, I learned far more than I’d expected. One of the more outrageous New York Democratic-Republicans (and a friend of Mr. Burr as well), Commodore James Nicholson, had accused Alexander of having profited so handsomely from his position in the Treasury and from British bribes that he could retire with ease, having an account with over one hundred thousand pounds sterling in a London bank.

  “I cannot believe that even Nicholson would present such a statement,” Papa said indignantly. He sat in his customary chair close to the fire, where the heat of the coals might warm his knees. “The man is a rascal, Hamilton, but for him to imply that you have accepted so much as a single penny, let alone a sum of that amount, is preposterous and supremely insulting.”

  I sighed, only half listening as I darned one of the boys’ stockings. Seated across from me, my mother knitted a new scarf for James, who’d become her unabashed favorite from the time he’d spent here with her when he’d been so ill. She and I had already tried to steer the conversation away from politics to the snowman the children had built in the yard earlier in the day, but Alexander and Papa had been unable to resist returning to their favorite topic once again, and now Mamma and I were resigned to another evening of listening to it.

  “Clearly, Nicholson has no knowledge of my private affairs, or my banking accounts, either,” Alexander said, standing before him with one arm resting against the mantel. “If he did, he’d realize how laughable such a charge is. I have left office far more poor than when I assumed it. Why, my entire fortune in the world cannot be above five hundred dollars.”

  My father laughed, considering this an exaggeration for effect, but Alexander sounded to be in earnest. I looked up sharply from my work, unsure of what exactly he was claiming.

  “I am perfectly serious, sir,” he continued, addressing Papa. “I own neither house nor property, and there has never been enough to spare for investments. Beyond our household furnishing and the clothes that Eliza and I possess, we are as good as paupers. We’re charming and amiable paupers, to be sure, but paupers nonetheless.”

  “Please, Alexander,” I said uneasily. “Do not make jests like that.”

  He smiled, and indeed he was both charming and amiable.

  “It’s not a jest, dearest,” he said. “Surely you were aware of that.”

  “How could I be aware when this is the first you have said of it to me?” I didn’t dare look at either of my parents.

  “You knew the meagerness of my salary,” he said. “Living to the expectations of the office on what I was paid would have been impossible, and it has exhausted all my resources.”

  I flushed. He wasn’t faulting me—to his credit, he never did that—but he was making it sound as if our apparent poverty had been unavoidable. I thought of all the times I’d tried to be cautious in our spending, and how he in turn had assured me that it wasn’t necessary. I thought of the large house and stable on Third Street and the carriage and horses that we’d kept, the boarding school for the older boys and the various private teachers of French, music, dance, and needlework for the girls, the costly clothes—oh, the clothes!—that we’d both bought for the entertainments and ceremonies of life in the capital. And because of it all, it now appeared we had nothing.

  “You’re not serious, Hamilton,” my father said, clearly uncomfortable with what he’d just heard. “You can’t be.”

  “I am,” Alexander said, and when he answered, he looked to me, not Papa. “I gave away these last years of my life to the country, and now I must make good on it. I calculate it shall take me five or six years of steady work to clear my debts and be ahead. But for the sake of Eliza an
d the children, it will be done.”

  “Hah.” My father looked down at the table, lost for words. “That’s not what I ever expected to hear from you, Hamilton.”

  It wasn’t what I’d expected, either, even when I pressed my husband later when we were alone together in our bedchamber.

  “I have always been an honest man, Betsey,” he said, jabbing the poker at the coals in our fireplace for more warmth, “and I’ve been honest now. At present we are in debt, but in time, we won’t be.”

  “You were hardly honest when I asked you before,” I said, standing beside him as he fussed with the fire. “I’ve seen our household account books and reckonings. Our rents and tradespersons’ bills are always paid, and we’ve been able to give to those less fortunate as well. Has it all been done with borrowed funds? Are you in danger of landing in the gaol for debt?”

  “Oh, not at all,” he said, too blithely for my tastes. “I have been compelled to borrow sums from close friends familiar with our circumstances. They understand that they will be repaid in time.”

  “Which friends?” I asked, though I could guess. He’d many wealthy acquaintances in New York, men who’d worked and invested and prospered along with the city since the war while Alexander had chosen to work for the government. The irony of his position was that the man who had single-handedly created the financial system of the country and the first national bank with it had been left unable to balance his own accounts.

  He set the poker back into its stand. “Our most generous friend has been John Church.”

  I pressed my hand to my mouth. Yet I wasn’t really shocked: there was already considerable trust between Alexander and Mr. Church, who was likely the wealthiest gentleman of our acquaintance. Even as I wondered if Angelica knew of such a loan, I suspected that she might have been behind it. At least I could be a bit more at ease with the debt, confident that they would never demand repayment from Alexander in court.

  “Still and all, Alexander,” I said. “If we are paupers, as you say, then we must economize, and spend less.”

  “I’m confident that we shall manage, my love,” he said, taking me by the hand. “It’s simply my responsibility to earn more, and now that I’m again a private citizen, I intend to do so. I don’t want you ever to worry on account of funds or anything else, and I’m determined to see that you don’t.”

  But I soon learned that I’d every reason to worry. Because we hadn’t yet found a house to rent in New York (I now suspected because we could not yet afford one), the children and I remained for the summer in Albany with my parents, while Alexander leased a small space for himself for lodgings and for an office. Upon his return to the city, he’d almost instantly again become the top attorney in the state with more clients than he could reasonably handle, and I believed he’d be so busy that he’d little time for politics.

  I was mistaken. Despite filling his days with legal work and court appearances, he now found time to write and publish even more letters and essays for publication defending the Federalists and attacking the Democratic-Republicans.

  The most contentious topic in this last year of President Washington’s second term was the treaty that John Jay, a Federalist, had negotiated with Great Britain. According to Alexander, the purpose of the treaty was simple enough: to keep America from becoming entangled in the current war between Britain and France, to outline a trade agreement between America and Britain, and to resolve several remaining issues that persisted from the peace that had ended the Revolution. The points of the treaty all seemed both simple and necessary, and it had the full backing of President Washington, who hoped it would soon be approved by Congress.

  But the Democratic-Republicans had attacked the treaty on every point, claiming that it conceded too much to Britain and earned nothing for America. Further, as dictated by Mr. Jefferson from his lofty Olympus at Monticello, the Democratic-Republicans believed that America should ally itself with France in the war, and pursue the madness of fighting Britain.

  This time the Republican supporters weren’t far away on the frontier, but in the cities as well, and their members gathered in the streets to spew their false, destructive rhetoric and burn copies of the treaty. In Congress, Mr. Madison echoed Mr. Jefferson’s whispering voice, his attacks spreading beyond the treaty to the Constitution itself. Even worse, he and other Democratic-Republicans began to attack that most venerable of gentlemen, President Washington himself, saying he was so far in his dotage that he’d been ripe for manipulation by my conniving husband. They accused both the president and Alexander of being monarchists, which could not have been further from the truth.

  It was a gauntlet that Alexander found impossible to ignore. Not only did he leap to the treaty’s defense in a series of published essays under the name Camillus, yet another ancient Roman general, but he also wrote a second series of letters as Philo Camillus, praising the work of the first series.

  But far worse than any letters were the reports I heard through others that he’d impulsively attended a Democratic-Republican meeting in Wall Street not far from where our first house had stood. He’d attempted to address them, and been struck in the forehead with a thrown rock. Shouting and streaming blood, he’d first dared challenge Commodore Nicholson (the very man who’d accused him of having a secret bank account) to a duel, and then done the same with yet another Democratic-Republican, Maturin Livingstone.

  Fortunately, both quarrels were resolved by their seconds before I ever learned of it. But I could scarcely believe that he’d behave so rashly, so foolishly, and so dangerously, after he’d promised me otherwise. How far removed this sordid scene along Broadway was from the parade of only a handful of years before, when crowds had cheered the float of the Federal Ship Hamilton!

  When next my husband came to Albany, I saw him riding slowly up the hill, and hurried to meet him outdoors before anyone else.

  “Now, this is a fine surprise,” he said as he climbed stiffly down from the saddle. “Good day to you, my love.”

  I kissed him in greeting. “You’re here earlier than we expected.”

  “For a change, the roads were good,” he said as one of my father’s servants came running from the stable to lead the horse away. Before Alexander handed him the reins, he reached deep into his saddlebag and withdrew a smaller cloth bag.

  “For you,” he said wryly. “Other men might bring their wives jewels or gold, but I know what pleases my Betsey more.”

  The bag was heavy and lumpy in my hands, and I guessed its contents before I’d even opened it.

  “Lemons,” I said with happy satisfaction. “You remembered.”

  “I did,” he said. “Those just came into port yesterday. Now you’ve no excuse not to bake me my favorite lemon cake.”

  He took off his hat and wiped his sleeve across his forehead, and as he bared his forehead, I recalled why I’d hurried out here to speak with him.

  “I know what happened here,” I said, reaching up to touch the healing cut, surrounded by a yellowing bruise, that crowned his right temple. “I heard that when you tried to address the crowd, they threw stones at you. You’re fortunate you weren’t killed.”

  He jerked his head back from my hand. “Who told you of that?”

  “I read it in the newspapers,” I said, cradling the bag of lemons against my hip as if it were a clumsy, weighty baby. “Word also came back to Papa that on the same night you demanded satisfaction from two other men. Thank God in Heaven that your seconds talked you from such a rash course.”

  “There was no real danger,” he said. “Livingstone and Nicholson each knew they were in the wrong, and offered their apologies. Shall we go inside? I’ve candy for the children.”

  “In a moment,” I said, placing my hand on his sleeve to hold him back to me. “I wish to speak with you first, Alexander. You’re not some wild young buck, and you cannot keep behaving as if you are. You’re forty years old, with a law practice, a wife, and six children dependent upon you,
and you cannot keep putting your life so foolishly in jeopardy like this.”

  He sighed, and sat heavily on the stone steps of the house, resting his arms on his bent knees. I sat beside him, the bag of lemons beside me. I tucked my skirts around my ankles to keep them from catching the breeze, and waited for his answer. I was willing to wait all day if I had to.

  “It made sense at the time,” he said at last. “A great deal of sense. If the crowds had come to hear the Democratic-Republicans’ lies regarding the Jay Treaty, then they also deserved to hear the correct views. I gave them that opportunity.”

  “But clearly, they didn’t want to listen to it,” I said, raising my gaze to dwell upon his battered forehead. “It’s one thing to present your views through the newspapers. It’s another entirely to put yourself in the path of dangerous men who’d like nothing better than to wound or even murder you.”

  He grunted, no real answer, and so I continued.

  “Your sons are old enough to watch what you do, Alexander,” I said softly, placing my hand on top of his. “Do you wish them to learn from you in this? Do you wish them to resort to fisticuffs in a dark street with anyone who holds a different opinion, or demand satisfaction for every slight and grievance?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But when I see how these infernal Democratic-Republicans have no regard for Jay’s Treaty, but worship the Jacobins as if they were gods, ready to tear down everything that’s been so carefully built for their benefit—I can’t stand by and do nothing, Betsey.”

  “I’m not asking you to be idle,” I said. “I’m only asking that you demonstrate some of your considerable wisdom before you act. You’ve risked your life often enough for this country, and if you don’t take care, sooner or later your luck will abandon you. And I love you too much to see that.”