My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  I cannot help but laugh. “You have, congressman.” He helps me toward my seat, located in the shade near the podium. As I sit, he bows then turns to take his leave. “Mr. Lincoln?”

  He raises a craggy eyebrow. “Yes, madam?”

  Because I know Lincoln to believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, I’m emboldened to say, “The true test is making certain that those who died in this country’s service have not died in vain; in furthering the unfinished work our founders so nobly advanced.”

  He bows again. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Finally, the assembly settles and the crowd hushes for the oration commemorating George Washington. Eyeing the block of marble that will one day form the base of a giant obelisk monument and grasping the pendant of his hair I still wear around my neck, I remember all we owe this great man.

  But Washington isn’t the only patriot to whom a debt is owed.

  And some of them may never have a grand marble monument, no matter how much they deserve one. I’ll make my peace with that, knowing that Alexander’s accomplishments are inextricably entwined with Washington’s. A monument to George Washington, I tell myself, is a monument to Alexander, too. And even to my father, in a way.

  Both of them, I know, would be glad of this day.

  Perhaps the speaker knows it, too, because he asks, “Which of us does not realize that unseen witnesses are around us? Think ye, that the patriot soldiers or statesmen, who stood around Washington in war and peace, are absent from a scene like this? Adams and Jefferson, by whose lives and deaths this day has been doubly hallowed; Hamilton and Madison, are present, visibly present, in the venerated persons of those nearest and dearest to them in life,” he says, pausing to turn and point at Dolley and me, bidding us to stand.

  We do, hands clasped. And the crowd’s applause vibrates under my feet. I lift my eyes heavenward into the bright July sky, wondering if the orator speaks truly.

  Are you here, Alexander?

  As if in answer, at that very moment, the speaker recites a portion of the Farewell Address, calling out over the crowd: “‘Properly estimate the immense value of your National Union to your happiness and to your political safety and prosperity, watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing any who suggest it can be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon every attempt to alienate any portion of the country from the rest.’”

  Washington’s words. But Alexander’s, too.

  Even a few of mine.

  From the corner of my eye, I see Congressman Lincoln lean forward, listening intently. And warmth steals over me to realize that even beyond the grave, Alexander Hamilton still speaks to his country and his countrymen. That he’ll continue to speak to generation after generation of Americans. That he’s speaking to me, even now, as the sunlight plays warm over my cheeks.

  And I nearly laugh for the unexpected joy of our reunion.

  For nearly fifty years, I’ve searched for my husband. At the Pastures, on the river, at his gravesite, and in the empty rooms of the house we built together. In portraits and busts and the faces of his children. In letters, pamphlets, account books, newspaper clippings, and treatises. I’ve searched for Alexander, despairing that there was no part of him still in this world, and that I couldn’t be where any part of him is now.

  But Alexander is here, as warm and alive as the day we renewed our marriage and made love in the sun. He’s inside me and all around me in the country that was created in his image. For there’s not one person in the crowd who would be here without him.

  This city, this government, this nation, would not exist without his efforts.

  Washington might be first in the hearts of his countrymen.

  But this is Alexander Hamilton’s country.

  A stone monument can crumble—all eventually do. But Alexander built a monument for himself of ideas and ideals, weaving himself into the fabric of the nation such that not a thread can be pulled without destroying the whole.

  Oh, there are those who tried. And I supposed they might keep on trying. But, as the speaker says, we’ve put the great American-built locomotive “Liberty” on its course, and now people the world over examine the model of this mighty engine, and copy its construction and imitate its machinery. Alexander is everywhere people are heard calling their rulers to account. Alexander is everywhere the cry is raised for the right to vote, trial by jury, freedom of the press, written constitutions, representative systems, and republican forms.

  Which means I’ve been looking for my husband, all along, in the wrong place.

  Alexander once wrote, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

  And neither can Alexander Hamilton be.

  So, as the Marine Corp band plays “The Star-Spangled Banner,” accompanied by the voices of twenty thousand of my countrymen, I raise up my voice, too. For my perilous fight is nearly over. I believe that all we worked for and built—the benign influence of good laws under a free government—will continue on as our happy reward, forever, never perishing from this earth. Even as I marvel that our starry banner of red, white, and blue still waves.

  Note from the Authors

  ELIZABETH SCHUYLER HAMILTON’S extraordinary life spanned nearly a century. She strived, struggled, and survived the first turbulent years of our nation’s founding as the wronged wife at the center of America’s first sex scandal. But she was much more than that.

  Coming of age in the relative frontier of upstate New York, Eliza—who apparently went by the name Betsy, at least in her early years—was the daughter of one of early America’s most prominent men and ablest generals. As such, she had a front-row seat to the American Revolution. Descended from a line of physically strong and relatively independent New Netherlander matriarchs, Eliza was as well-equipped to entertain famous statesmen at her father’s table as she was to traverse the wilderness to attend Indian conventions at her father’s side.

  Eliza saw the chaos of war, the destruction of her family’s country home, her father’s loss of command, and the growing pains of a new nation. She also became the wife of Alexander Hamilton—one of America’s most brilliant soldiers and political minds. Whether as a participant in Hamilton’s astonishing career, helping him with his writings and publications, or as victim of his ambitions, and as an activist in her own right, she demonstrated an admirable strength of character that made her a wonderful heroine for a novel.

  And yet, very little primary source material exists about her, much less in her own hand. Most of what is gleaned about her is extrapolated from what we know about the men in her life. The internal struggles she must have faced in the aftermath of betrayal and tragedy remain frustratingly out of reach for historians, who, without all the pieces to put together a portrait of her emotional life, have not tried to paint much of a portrait at all, especially for the fifty years of her life after Alexander died. In fact, at the time of this writing, we are unaware of a single biography written about Eliza Hamilton. Even Ron Chernow’s definitive biography of Alexander pays Eliza relatively little attention and does not always delve enough into her life to offer, in our view, the most considered interpretations of her character, motivations, and contributions.

  But, thankfully, fiction can go where historians rightly fear to tread.

  And as novelists we were honored to look at the historical pieces of the puzzle and imagine the rich inner life that the historical fragments leave unspoken. We attempted to craft plausible answers to questions about Eliza’s reaction to her husband’s adultery. How she balanced her deep religious faith with disillusionment and worldly practicality. And how she might’ve come to terms with both the man—and the country—that she sacrificed for and which sometimes disappointed her.

&nbs
p; We’re now happy to explain our approach, as well as the choices we made and the creative liberties we took.

  * * *

  AS WITH MOST works of historical fiction, the most outlandish bits are the true ones. The court martials, battles, duels, and mutinies all happened. The scandals, riots, plagues, and mental illnesses, too. During her extraordinary life, Eliza Hamilton was a belle of both Revolutionary balls and military camps. She did know the doomed British spymaster John André and Hamilton’s letters indicate that Eliza may have argued on his behalf. Washington is thought by some scholars to have been unusually tolerant, by the standards of the day, regarding the sexuality of his soldiers. And the Baron von Steuben was almost certainly homosexual. Eliza’s uncle really was Washington’s physician and a pioneer in the eradication of smallpox. Her mother and her aunt were known for helping at a makeshift hospital. According to the New York State Museum, Mama Schuyler did have an extraordinarily close relationship with her husband’s commanding officer that might have troubled a husband less secure in the sanctity of his marriage. Meanwhile, a less secure Eliza Hamilton may well have put together the fact that Alexander Hamilton’s entanglement with James Reynolds began long before he took Mrs. Reynolds to bed. Eliza did, indeed, assist her husband in his political endeavors—some of his writings, including his economic treatise to Robert Morris, are in her handwriting. The historical Eliza helped to establish two orphanages, was a tireless activist in the name of charity, and made an arduous trip to the wilds of Wisconsin while in her eighties. The Hamiltons did shelter Lafayette’s son as well as the orphaned Fanny Antill. (Though we had to guess at the real reason behind Fanny’s departure from the Hamiltons’ home around the time of the Reynolds scandal, as well as whether Fanny’s later charitable work would have brought her back into Eliza’s life. We certainly hope it did.) Much of Alexander’s dialogue comes from his letters (though we often had to shorten and modernize his famously long and complicated style for readability), and though most of Eliza’s letters don’t survive, we used them where we could, and the dialogue in her confrontation with Monroe comes from a family description of the event.

  But in the interest of conciseness, we have omitted, condensed, glossed over, or hand-waved a thousand other historical details. Alexander Hamilton lived only half as long as other Founding Fathers, and yet, he managed to experience seemingly ten times as much. We could not enumerate his many accomplishments within the confines of this novel, and because this was Eliza’s story—not his—we did not attempt to. Instead we’ve conflated or simplified events for maximum dramatic punch, and the astute reader might notice subtle changes in the timeline.

  Where a shift in the chronology didn’t fundamentally change the choices faced by the people involved, we erred on the side of brevity. For example, Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler and her daughter, Margarita “Peggy” Schuyler Van Rensselaer, did both die in the month of March—but two years apart. This was a dark period in Eliza’s life that included the deaths of Peggy (1801), Philip (1801), Mama (1803), Alexander (1804), and Papa (1804). In consideration of Eliza and Alexander’s arc during this troubled time, we moved Mama’s death in order to highlight the couple’s historical struggle to emerge from their grief in the period before Alexander’s death.

  To give the reader a front-row seat, we’ve sparingly placed our protagonist and other characters where they might not have been. One example is the Loyalist attack on Schuyler Mansion, and the chop of the wooden banister, for which there is a vivid and detailed account by a family member, but the veracity of its particulars is questionable. Another example is Evacuation Day where the Hamiltons’ arrival in New York was close enough that we wished to portray it. (No one seems to know why Hamilton was not present at Washington’s subsequent farewell in Fraunces Tavern, so we had to come up with a reason.)

  Our focus, as biographical historical novelists, of course, is on character. And that is where we were forced to do the most speculation. For example, historical paintings give proof that Eliza Hamilton was a petite and attractive woman. In fact, Talleyrand thought Eliza’s beauty was underappreciated. Eliza’s admirer Tench Tilghman not only praised her as the finest tempered girl in the world, but also portrayed her athleticism in his diary. Even well into her old age, we are told, Eliza insisted on taking very long walks, traversing fields and climbing over fences. As for her personality, her contemporaries describe her as impulsive and vivacious. She herself copied out a prayer to envision herself as an instrument of God’s will. And, within the realm of what was appropriate for women at the time, she was a relentless crusader, having, as one friend claimed, a “rare sense of justice.”

  These were all important details that we took into account in crafting Eliza’s persona.

  But our approach to biographical historical fiction has always been to find the character-defining moment in a person’s life and build a story around it.

  For Hamilton-centric historians, the defining moment of Eliza’s life seems to be that she stood by her man and forgave her husband’s infidelity. For us, her character-defining moment was the dramatic documented encounter she had with an aging James Monroe.

  Just as in the novel, in the twilight of his life, the real President James Monroe wished to reconcile. But an uncompromising and stalwart Eliza wouldn’t have it. What she wanted was an apology, which Monroe would not give. Again, what strikes Hamilton-centric historians about the much ballyhooed meeting was Eliza’s loyalty to her husband.

  But what struck us about this visit was that Monroe made it at all.

  What would compel the so-called Last Founding Father to seek out Eliza Hamilton? Though Monroe made it a principle of politics to engender his Era of Good Feelings, by the time he paid call to Eliza he’d retired from the presidency and politics. Nor does Monroe appear to have been motivated by guilt because he didn’t offer an apology when Eliza all but demanded one. So why go to the trouble? Especially since this inconvenient visitation almost assuredly took place at Eliza’s home in New York, and not Washington, D.C., as is often posited. (Eliza didn’t move to Washington until the 1840s, at least a decade after Monroe’s death.)

  The answer doesn’t seem to have been Monroe’s nostalgia for his old friendship with Alexander Hamilton. In the sparse sketch of their encounter from Allan McLane Hamilton, Monroe doesn’t even mention his old friend and comrade-at-arms. Instead, the former president framed the speech he made to Eliza in terms of how long it had been since they met, and that their past differences could be forgiven and forgotten.

  This raised tantalizing questions. Just how long had it been since James Monroe met Eliza Hamilton? What was the nature of their meeting? What sort of relationship did they share that might motivate such an unprecedented visit—and such a hostile reception? And what sort of power did she hold as a historical figure in her own right that he would prize a reconciliation with her?

  It’s most probable that Eliza met James Monroe when he came to New York City to serve in Congress in 1785. Possibly sooner, but we ruled out a family account published in a missionary pamphlet that places Eliza Schuyler at Valley Forge, because if she’d met Monroe there, she’d have met Hamilton as well. Yet, we noticed that after Monroe’s heroics at Trenton, he became aide to Lord Stirling, who served in the Hudson Highlands during 1777.

  In that, we saw an opportunity.

  Because Lord Stirling tried to guide Lafayette successfully to Albany, where he conferred with Eliza’s father, Philip Schuyler, we invented the notion that Lord Stirling sent Monroe to help, and that Monroe dined thereafter at Schuyler Mansion, where Eliza took a shine to him. Whether or not Eliza Hamilton would later have any cause to speak to Monroe either on the night he came to Hamilton’s house to investigate the Reynolds matter or shortly before the publication of the Reynolds Pamphlet is not known. And as for any romantic feelings between them, we only know that Monroe was coy and secretive about his fondness for Dutch girls, one of whom turned him down when he asked for her hand a
fter the war because she was already pledged. And of course, though Eliza assuredly was acquainted with Elizabeth Kortright before she married Monroe, the notion that Eliza introduced them is our fabrication.

  We have no historical evidence that Eliza was present with Lafayette at the Six Nations convention at Johnstown where the Oneida formally allied with the nascent United States. There is even some question as to whether or not Philip Schuyler personally attended that meeting. However, Eliza accompanied her father to at least one other Indian convention and was adopted by the Iroquois—something important enough to her that she mentioned it to an interviewer near the end of her life. Moreover, an Iroquois assembly with Schuyler took place just prior to Lafayette’s visit in the woods near Eliza’s family home in November of 1777, so we rolled the experiences together so the reader might get a better view of the milieu in which Eliza became an adult and so that we could demonstrate the revolution’s impact on Native Americans.

  We thought it was important to do this because the American Revolution is too often seen as a struggle between white marbled men in powdered wigs spouting fine sentiments about liberty; the truth was more complicated and the participants far more diverse. The Iroquois nations were drawn into both sides of the conflict.

  So were black people, both free and enslaved. And because Eliza’s father was a plantation-owning slaveholder, she had opportunities to witness and, ultimately, empathize with their struggles. Our readers might recall that in America’s First Daughter, the story of Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, we had the unique opportunity to portray the enslaved families at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello because quite a bit is known about the people who lived there. Unfortunately, not as much is known about the approximately thirty enslaved human beings on Philip Schuyler’s property. Consequently, in this novel, we hesitated to put too many words into their mouths or feelings in their hearts, but tried to honor them by using some of their names and vocations.