My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  All New York’s best society attended. John Trumbull, the silver-haired artist of the revolution, who’d once painted a life-size portrait of Alexander that now hung in our hall. Nicholas Fish and Robert Troup, fellow Federalists with whom Alexander had served in the New York Militia at the very beginnings of their careers. Nabby Adams Smith, daughter of President Adams, and her husband. And even William Short, one-time secretary to Thomas Jefferson when he’d been the American minister to France, who had himself become a diplomat.

  We danced and imbibed until midnight, until Alexander and I were the only ones still dancing and the children had fallen asleep on a blanket at the edge of the lantern’s light. And the next morning we rode into town and attended services at Trinity Church where we gave thanks for it all—our lives, our friends, our family, and the Union itself. That evening found us out of doors again, having a family picnic under the trees in the grove. Lying in the grass surrounded by our children, my head against my husband’s side, our fingers interlocked, we stared up at the heavens until the stars shone.

  I smiled at Alexander and thought this is what peace truly feels like. To be at ease with the ones I loved. For once. We’ve earned this. We’ve fought and clawed and survived to have this.

  Drowsiness overtook me as Alexander told stories to our sons, who hung on their father’s every word, about how the gods placed constellations amongst the stars to honor the service of legendary mortals.

  “What kind of honor is that?” Johnny asked, rapt despite the question.

  “Oh, a very great honor,” Alexander said, ruffling the boy’s hair. “For they are memorialized for all time so that even here and now, I can tell you their stories.”

  And then he pressed a kiss to my temple and spoke of the heavens just for me.

  “‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’” Alexander whispered Shakespeare against my hair. “‘Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.’”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  July 11, 1804

  Harlem

  MAMA, SOMEONE’S AT the door!” Lysbet said, dancing in front of it while William sat on the floor, playing with a set of marbles.

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” I said, giving my youngest daughter a smile. She looked so much like I imagined I must have at her age. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a smile that came to life anytime we ventured outside into the gardens or the grove of trees. I pulled open the door to find a man standing hat in hand, his head bent. “Yes? May I help you?”

  “Mrs. Hamilton?” he asked, just barely meeting my eye. “Ma’am, I’ve . . . I’ve been asked to send for you. There’s been . . . well, you see . . . General Hamilton has need of you.” He gestured to the horses behind him. “I’ve brought a carriage.”

  Despite the growing warmth of the day, ice tingled down my spine. “What’s happened?” I asked, keeping my voice even for the children.

  The man couldn’t seem to meet my eyes. “The general isn’t well. He . . . has spasms.”

  “His kidneys again?” Just when I thought Alexander was over his old ailment.

  “I’ll wait in the carriage,” he said, hurrying down the steps.

  In a matter of minutes, the four children and I were on our way. I took solace in knowing that the older boys had gone into the city with Alexander two mornings before when he’d departed on his weekly trip to his office. At eighteen and sixteen, Alex and James could look after him until I arrived.

  The trip was faster than I expected, given that it was the middle of a fine Wednesday. That is, until we began to encounter small crowds of people on every street corner, abuzz over some news I couldn’t make out. And then I was distracted from that oddity when the driver turned the wrong way. “Sir! Driver! Where are you taking us?”

  “Mr. Bayard’s house,” the man called in reply.

  I didn’t have time to process that before I heard my name. From the crowd. Again and again. “Look, it’s Mrs. General Hamilton! His poor wife!”

  A dark, hazy memory assaulted me. The crowds. The crowds in front of Angelica’s house when my son was shot dead. And my heart began to hammer. Then it all but stopped when the carriage slowed in the drive before Mr. Bayard’s grand mansion on the river, where another crowd parted like the Red Sea as the driver guided us through.

  Wailing. The women were wailing. And gloom hung on every man’s face.

  We’d barely come to a halt when I sprung from the carriage unassisted, my voice shaking with certain knowing dread. “Not well,” I said to the driver when he offered his hand. “You said the general was not well.”

  I saw the truth in his eyes before he spoke. “He . . . he asked me to give you hope.”

  Bile crawled up my throat as I remembered what Alexander once said to me.

  I thought you might take easier to a thing if it was gradually broken to you, my angel.

  He was wrong then, and he was wrong now. Already moving toward the house, I rasped to Ana, “Stay here. All of you.”

  Oh, merciful God, why?

  “Alexander!” I cried, finding him amidst onlookers gathered round Mr. Bayard’s grand bed. And when my husband’s head turned to me, it nearly took me to my knees.

  I’d seen that look before—the gray pallor of blood loss, the waxy sheen of fever, the cloudy eyes of laudanum. The look of death.

  “Eliza,” Alexander wheezed. “My angel.”

  Taking his hand, I nearly collapsed onto the edge of the bed. And that’s when I saw the bloodied bandages around his waist. I knew the truth before it was even explained to me. He’d been shot. He’d been shot in a duel.

  Voices I could barely hear recounted how he’d met Aaron Burr across the Hudson upon the cliffs of Weehawken, New Jersey. How, like my son, Alexander had thrown away his fire. How his opponent had taken lethal aim anyway.

  “Will he live?” I asked the doctors, panic squeezing my throat and making it hard to choke out the words.

  Four doctors huddled in the room—two Americans, and two French surgeons I later learned were stationed on a frigate in the harbor who were much experienced with gunshot wounds. The French had been our saviors in the revolution; maybe their expertise could save us now. “Can you save him? Please save him!”

  “Mrs. General Hamilton.” One of the doctors finally stepped forward, wearing an expression of brutal sympathy, an expression mirrored on the other men’s faces. “I’m afraid the bullet has fractured a rib and, I suspect, ruptured the general’s liver. The bullet remains lodged in his spine . . .”

  I could hear no more. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. This couldn’t be happening again. How could it possibly be happening again? Was I, like my eldest daughter, caught in some delusion, except in my waking dream everyone I loved was to be taken from me?

  Frantic with grief, I sobbed a desperate prayer to a God who had already required so many sacrifices from me.

  Not Alexander, too. Not my dear Hamilton.

  Though his weak pulse yet gave proof of life, I already sensed his withdrawal from me. And I felt his loss in my bones, in my flesh, as if the very heart of me was being violently rent asunder. It was an unbearable agony of spirit. One loss too many, and far too soon.

  As I wept and bargained and prayed and raged, Alexander murmured, “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.”

  The first time he said it, pale and aware of his impending death, I believed he was offering me consolation, beseeching me to find comfort in my religion. Delirious with pain, he murmured it again as Angelica arrived, weeping her heart out as if joy no longer existed in the world and never could.

  And I couldn’t decide if my sister’s anguish halved or doubled mine. I fanned Alexander’s feverish face and mopped his brow and when his precious blood soaked through the bandages and the mattress to pool upon the floor beneath the bed, I begged Bishop Moore to consent to give my husband communion, despite the sin of the duel. When the bishop finally relented, Alexander declared, “I have
no ill will against Colonel Burr. I forgive all that happened.”

  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Not ever.

  But Alexander said again to me, “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.”

  I knew then that it was a plea not for my comfort, but for my forgiveness. And I nodded my head, eager to give him what he wanted and needed before the Lord took him and I could give him nothing else. But in that crucial moment, I also turned and fled the room, because I knew I’d told my dying husband a lie. After all, how can one forgive what one doesn’t understand?

  How had I not known? How had I let this happen? Why hadn’t I predicted that the long rivalry between my husband and Aaron Burr would come to this?

  After I composed myself, I returned to my husband’s side. Then, all we could do was wait and wonder if each labored breath would be the last. In the morning, though those blue eyes appeared clearer and tinged with violet in the light of dawn, my beloved lay nearly motionless. And so I did perhaps the hardest thing I’d ever before had to do as a mother—I gathered my darling babies around me and somehow uttered the words, “Your father is dying, my little loves. And we must now say farewell.”

  It was a scene of shattered innocence and grief that I still cannot allow myself to recall too closely. The way those little faces crumpled. The disbelieving despair. The younger ones who cried because the older ones did, not because they understood what was happening, or ever really would.

  I’d lived forty-six years and I would never understand, either.

  I led the children into the room and lined them up at the foot of the bed so that Alexander might be able to see them all. The fruit of our love. I lifted Little Phil, too short to be seen, to give his father a kiss, and then we waited as Alexander gave each child a final look, as if committing them to memory. Suddenly, seeing them became too much, and my husband clenched his eyes shut and pressed his lips into a tight, trembling line. Over the protests of my oldest sons, my sister took them from the room. And I was grateful for it.

  I wanted to do something, but there was nothing to be done but wait as a man who had always burned so hot grew ever colder. So I simply held Alexander’s hand—determined to hold him through every agony until the last drop of blood. I held on to him with the full knowledge that, after this day, I’d never get to do it again.

  The clock over the mantel ticked out a mournful cadence as the last of Alexander Hamilton’s life bled away. Though he couldn’t move, and had trouble breathing, he retained his beautiful mind and his warrior’s spirit until the very end.

  “If they break this Union, they will break my heart,” he said, eyes unfocused.

  Finally, the chimes on the clock struck twice. Alexander breathed no more. And the silence of his passing stole what was left of mine.

  For I knew that no breath I ever took again would be the same.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible, without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem.

  —ALEXANDER HAMILTON TO ELIZA HAMILTON

  July 14, 1804

  New York City

  THEY’D MURDERED HIM.

  First my son, then my husband.

  Because they thought they could get away with it.

  And I was sick to the depths of my soul. Sick and enraged. These furious thoughts echoed as church bells rang and flags lowered to half-mast and somber crowds gathered all along New York’s streets. And then a military procession wearing black armbands arrived to accompany my husband’s body to the church. To take him away.

  Come back to me, I silently pleaded, as I’d done all those times he’d ridden off to battle.

  But this time he would not return.

  It was not the custom for women to attend graveside services, and I couldn’t have borne so many witnesses to my grief. So with my youngest children at my knees, and my sister Angelica’s hand clasped tight in mine, all serving to hold me up, the pallbearers lifted the mahogany casket topped with my husband’s hat and sword.

  Two black servants in turbans followed with a dappled gray horse bearing my husband’s empty boots and spurs in the stirrups.

  Empty boots, empty saddle, empty hat, empty world.

  The sad staccato of drums brought a keening sound from my poor children, all of whom lurched for the casket, as if to tear it open and lay eyes upon their father one last time. But I had the absurd thought that the casket, too, was empty.

  That Alexander Hamilton wasn’t there.

  Not in the mahogany coffin I chose for him. Not in the empty hat and boots and bed he left behind. Not in the city he loved. There was no part of him still here in this world. And I couldn’t be where any part of him was now.

  Clutching the letter he left—which purported to explain everything, but explained nothing—I could not shake from my mind his conviction that he must die this way or be rendered unworthy of my esteem.

  My God, had I driven him to this?

  He’d been content to putter about our flower garden. To learn about the fattening of our chickens. To go duck hunting with our boys.

  But I had not, like my mother before me, told him that all I needed for my happiness was his presence. Instead, I insisted he take up that court case, making himself a greater thorn in President Jefferson’s side. And I’d gloried in seeing the leonine spark return to his eye as he battled to keep Burr from the governorship.

  My God, my God, I did drive him to it.

  Before we married, Alexander asked again and again if I could happily live with him were he to lay down his sword to plant turnips. I’d promised that I could. But when it came to it, I’d wanted my soldier. I wanted the glory of Alexander Hamilton. I’d encouraged him to fight.

  And now he was dead . . .

  How long had he known about the duel, and how many times must he have wished to broach it with me? Was he thinking it even as he planned the ball he promised—had that been his final parting gift to me? Had he believed he’d return, or had he longed to go to Philip? I’d thought he’d been happy, that we’d been happy, but again, I’d missed all the signs. And I let him face it alone.

  But I was not the only one to blame.

  Four years earlier, Alexander had said he didn’t expect to have a head still on his shoulders unless he was at the head of a victorious army. And in a way, he’d been right. Later—much later—I would succumb to anger at Alexander for taking part in an immoral ritual that had already robbed me of a son and now condemned the rest of our children to a life without their father’s love. But then? Consumed in grief, the only respite I allowed myself in self-recrimination was in blaming Aaron Burr.

  Our family now lay shattered by the man my husband always warned me was dangerous. Dangerous and despicable.

  While the papers speculated about which insult or offense had precipitated this final, fatal confrontation, I knew the duel was merely the fruition of the conspiracy Alexander had long suspected. The same conspiracy that had dogged my husband’s heels from the moment he rose to prominence in opposition to the Virginians. I knew, as deeply as I knew anything, that Burr would not, without encouragement or inducement from the Jacobins, have murdered my husband in cold blood.

  After all, Burr did nothing unless there was something in it for him.

  No. I was certain that he’d made me a widow to win back the good graces of Jefferson—a man who may not have brought the guillotine to our shores, but who had the uncanny good luck to have his most formidable enemies meet strange fatalities. It had been many years since I’d seen Jefferson last, but I could never recount him without a chill. Never forget the way he’d haunted my life, like a patient thief in the night, waiting to steal my happiness away. And now he and his minions had done it.

  The bullet that obliterated my world was an assassin’s shot. Alexander had thrown away his fire, then stood there vulnerable and
without defense. Burr had shot him anyway. And now that Alexander’s lifeblood was drained away, spent in the service of an ungrateful nation, would that be enough for these hounds of hell?

  They won’t be satisfied until there is nothing left of him, I thought. Until his memory is obliterated and they have filled the giant empty void of his life, and our nation, with lies.

  But I wouldn’t let them.

  That night I received mourners at the Church home, where ambitious young Federalist politicians strode about with smartly upturned collars, businessmen with pipes sent up a dizzying wreath of smoke, and ladies crowned in masses of coiffed curls bit their quivering lips while offering me words of comfort.

  All the while, I nodded, forcing bland niceties. How kind of you to say. I appreciate hearing it. What a consolation it is to know he was so esteemed.

  “Gracious God, my dear sister,” Angelica said, weeping into her kerchief. “Here I am, coming all apart, while you bear this affliction with saintlike fortitude.”

  Soldierly fortitude, I thought. Because there wasn’t time for tears. I would shed them later. Right now, I didn’t want to mourn my husband.

  I was no saint. I was Alexander’s angel. And I wanted to avenge him.

  I remembered “Captain Molly” and Two Kettles Together, two women forced to fight when their husbands could not. And I wanted to do the same.

  At some point, I looked up from a glass of lemonade that my sister had pressed into my hand to find Reverend Mason hovering over my chair. “Hamilton was the greatest statesman in the western world, perhaps the greatest man of the age. He has left none like him—no second, no third.” And I was nodding, quietly simmering, when he added, “To shoot such a man in cold blood, the vice president’s heart must be filled with cinders raked from the fires of hell.”

  “But is he to be prosecuted for it?” I asked.

  Then I stood, abruptly, raising my voice to repeat the question.