Eliza Hamilton
Page 34
Eliza’s favorite cousin, Kitty Livingston, was both older and richer: Susan E. Klepp, Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760–1820 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 28.
“Stephen’s precipitate marriage has been to me a source of surprise and indeed of regret”: Humphreys, Catherine Schuyler, 195.
George Washington, who dreamed of a horseback tour through the Hudson River and Mohawk country: John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745–1799, vol. 27, 1783–1784 (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938), 106.
Philip Schuyler, Abraham Ten Broeck, and Peggy’s new husband, Stephen Van Rensselaer, joined the touring party: “Washington’s Mohawk Valley Tour,” Three Rivers, http://threerivershms.com/washington.htm.
increasingly exasperated with his mother-in-law: Alexander Hamilton to Robert R. Livingston, [13 August 1783], Founders Online, National Archives.
On July 27, John, Angelica, and their children set sail: Philip Schuyler to Alexander Hamilton, 5 February 1781, Founders Online, National Archives.
upwards of a modern equivalent of $46 million: MeasuringWorth, labor-value calculation.
Banks of fog and a persistent haze blanketed harbors: Greg Neale, “How an Icelandic Volcano Helped Spark the French Revolution,” Guardian, April 15, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/15/iceland-volcano-weather-french-revolution.
“Mr Carter has found all his friends and relatives well”: Naulin, “A Genteel Family,” 14.
“I intended to have called my little girl Eliza after Mr. Church’s mother”: Angelica Church to Elizabeth Hamilton, 27 January 1784, quoted in McLane Hamilton, Intimate Life, 107.
controversial fraternity, the Society of the Cincinnati: “The Society and Its Critics, 1784–1800,” The Society of the Cincinnati, accessed April 1, 2018, www.societyofthecincinnati.org/about/history/critics; “History,” The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut, accessed April 1, 2018, http://theconnecticutsociety.org/history/.
the inveterate gambler and wheeler-dealer William Duer: On the Cincinnati in general and William Duer’s association, see, for example, Embry Clark, “The Society of Cincinnati,” Bauman Rare Books, accessed January 15, 2018, www.baumanrarebooks.com/blog/society-cincinnati/; Martha Joanna Lamb and Burton Harrison, History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1880), 2:445; “Fraunces Tavern, New York City, Jan. 11, 1785–Apr. 30, 1788,” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State, https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/buildings/section11; “Honorary Members,” New York State Society of the Cincinnati, accessed April 1, 2018, www.nycincinnati.org/HonoraryMembers.htm; James Grant Wilson, ed., The Memorial History of the City of New York, from Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, vol. 3 (New York: New York History Company, 1893).
CHAPTER 9
“You have I fear taken a final leave of America and of those that love you here”: Alexander Hamilton to Angelica Church, [3 August 1785], Founders Online, National Archives.
Eliza said a less tragic goodbye, too, to her favorite, little Harriet Antill: On the Antill family, see Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 42–48. See also “Descendants of Antill Progenitor-422090: Eighth Generation,” Merchants Network, accessed April 1, 2018, www.merchantnetworks.com.au/genealogy/web/antill/pafg08.htm; Harriet Antill married first Charles Blake, a British army surgeon and businessman, in 1804; after his death she married Bernard Panet, of Quebec, in 1814.
“fade before the generous and benevolent action of My Sister in taking the orphan Antle”: Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton, 2 October 1780, Founders Online, National Archives.
Abraham Lott was locked away as debtor: Abraham Lott to George Washington, 7 August 1789, Founders Online, National Archives.
Criminal inmates were fed and clothed by their jailers, however abjectly: Peter J. Coleman, Debtors and Creditors in America: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607–1900 (Washington, DC: Beard Books, 1999), 116.
Of the 1,162 debtors in New York City prisons that year: Steve Fraser, “The Politics of Debt in America: From Debtor’s Prison to Debtor Nation,” Common Dreams, January 29, 2013, www.commondreams.org/views/2013/01/29/politics-debt-america-debtors-prison-debtor-nation; MeasuringWorth, real price-commodity value.
The incarcerated artist, Ralph Earl: Bruce Mann, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); “Ralph Earl,” National Gallery of Art, accessed April 1, 2018, www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/artist-info.1261.html; “Ralph Earl,” Worcester Art Museum, accessed April 1, 2018, www.worcesterart.org/collection/Early_American/Artists/earl_r/biography/index.html?PHPSESSID=b7b9aa9e2ce5c0b4f48b0cbeacb41ead.
Methodism, with its holy-roller enthusiasm, and Catholicism: Our Excellent Women of the United Methodist Church in England and America (New York: J. C. Buttre, 1878), 149.
“Unfortunately neither of the children had the pleasure of receiving an honorable wound”: Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, diary, Mss. 318, Archives & Manuscripts, New York Public Library, http://archives.nypl.org/mss/318.
“rather a stupid visit”: Bleecker, diary.
On weekends, the entire family went to church services: Kyle Bulthuis, Four Steeples over the City Streets: Religion and Society in New York’s Early Republic Congregations (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 215.
“But whither, my pen, are you hurrying me?”: John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay, Selected Letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay: Correspondence by or to the First Chief Justice of the United States and His Wife, ed. Landa Freeman (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2005), 74.
“head is full of politics, he is so desirous of making one in the British House”: Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton, 2 October 1787, quoted in “John Church,” R. G. Thorne, The History of Parliament, 5:441.
“indulge me in returning to my family and my country”: Angelica Church to Elizabeth Hamilton, 1 February 1787, private collection, Sotheby’s.
“a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off”: John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 11 November 1806, Founders Online, National Archives.
“He is just what I should like for a military parson except that he does not whore or drink”: Alexander Hamilton to Brigadier General Anthony Wayne, [6 July 1780], Founders Online, National Archives.
CHAPTER 10
Thomas Jefferson, whose dalliance in Paris with Sally Hemings: On the critical consensus surrounding Thomas Jefferson’s long-term sexual relationship and children with Sally Hemings, see, for example, Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Andrew Bernstein, Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire and Monticello (New York: Basic Books, 2006); and the report of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, “Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings,” www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/report-research-committee-thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings; for Angelica Church’s presumed role in communicating this information to Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous political pamphlets on this rumor, see Chernow, Hamilton, 316–18, 406, passim.
“Mrs Carter, a handsome woman”: Humphreys, Catherine Schuyler, 191.
“because she [was] engaged at cards with her children”: Howard Swiggett, The Extraordinary Mr. Morris (New York: Doubleday, 1952), 145.
“young enough and handsome enough”: Swiggett, Mr. Morris, 178.
Peggy—still thought of as “a young wild flirt from Albany, full of glee & apparently desirous of matrimony”: Harrison Gray Otis, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848, ed. Samuel Eliot Morrison (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 142.
At the inaugural ball in early May, all eyes were on Eliza: Keller, Dance and Its Music in America, 515.
“I had
little of private life”: Chernow, Hamilton, 335.
“I mingled . . . in the gaieties of the day”: Chernow, 335.
“I am glad to hear that my Brother is likely to be so well established”: Angelica Church to Catherine Schuyler, 8 March 1787, private collection, Sotheby’s.
“I love him very much and if you were as generous as the Old Romans”: Cassandra A. Good, “The Flirtatious Friendship of Alexander Hamilton and Angelica Church Hits Broadway,” Oxford University Press (blog), November 17, 2015, https://blog.oup.com/2015/11/friendship-alexander-hamilton-angelica-church-broadway/. See also Linda K. Kerber, “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment: An American Perspective,” in Toward an Intellectual History of Women (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 43.
By early June, their runaway younger brother and his bride had made peace with Eliza’s parents: On the complex movements of the Schuyler–Hamilton–Church families in New York this summer and on the Schuyler family finances, see Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, [28 May 1789], Founders Online, National Archives; Philip Schuyler to Catherine Schuyler, 13 May 1789, Mss. 23867, Schuyler-Malcom Family Papers, Archives & Manuscripts, New York Public Library, http://archives.nypl.org/mss/23867; Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton, 11 June 1789, private collection, Sotheby’s.
“If papa requires money I hope that he will draw on Col. Hamilton who will supply him”: Angelica Church to Catherine Schuyler, 23 July 1789, private collection, Sotheby’s.
“an eligible situation, and if my Brother [Hamilton] should be appointed to the finance”: Angelica Church to Catherine Schuyler, 23 July 1789.
“On the first floor there are two rooms”: On the rental house in New York City, see Philip Schuyler to Catherine Schuyler, 29 July 1789, Schuyler-Malcom Family Papers; Philip Schuyler to Catherine Schuyler, 9 August 1789, Schuyler-Malcom Family Papers.
“I am completely at sea”: Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton, [5–7 November 1789], Founders Online, National Archives.
“After taking leave of you on board of the Packet”: Alexander Hamilton to Angelica Church, 8 November 1789, Founders Online, National Archives.
“went to church from the bed of the wife of his friend”: Roger Kennedy, Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), 79.
“If you ever get to the East Indies . . . you will see little Hamilton”: Kennedy, Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson, 79.
“size, make, quality of mind and body . . . do justice to the length of my nose”: Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, April 1779, Founders Online, National Archives.
“intercourse . . . with my friend”: Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, April 1779.
CHAPTER 11
“So many people concerned in the business may really make the fools fight”: William Maclay, Journal of William Maclay: United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789–1791 (New York: D. A. Appleton, 1890), 418.
“He made your government. . . . He made your bank”: Chernow, Hamilton, 353.
“one of the largest dealers in public papers”: Charles Austin Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (Clark, NJ: Law Book Exchange, 2011), 109.
“the most abandoned system of speculation ever broached in our country”: Maclay, Journal, 418.
Alexander—whose concerns for their personal finances were acute: Alexander Hamilton, cash book, March 1, 1782–1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
“I believe it would be best to part with them”: Susan Winchell-Sweeney et. al., “Mapping the Archaeology of Slavery in the Hudson River Valley,” New York State Museum, www.academia.edu/24741582/Mapping_the_Archaeology_of_Slavery_in_the_Hudson_River_Valley; Don R. Gerlach, “Schuyler the Man,” chap. 9 in Philip Schuyler and the Growth of New York, 1733–1804 (Albany, NY: Office of State History, 1968), http://threerivershms.com/schuylerman.htm. On other details see also Philip Gilje and Howard Rock, Keepers of the Revolution: New Yorkers at Work in the Early Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 21; and Cuyler Reynolds, Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs: A Record of Achievements of the People of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys in New York State, Included Within the Present Counties of Albany, Rensselaer, Washington, Saratoga, Montgomery, Fulton, Schenectady, Columbia and Greene (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1911), 1:14–16.
“Little as the prospect is that I should find My Dear Child Alive:” Philip Schuyler to Catherine Schuyler, 18 August 1795, Schuyler-Malcom Family Papers.
“The accounts we have of the prevalence of the Yellow fever at N York”: Philip Schuyler to Elizabeth Hamilton, 31 August 1790, private collection, Sotheby’s.
“I leave the matter to yourself”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, [11 September 1790], Founders Online, National Archives; Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 15 September 1790, Founders Online, National Archives.
Home now was a three-story redbrick row house: Alexander Hamilton to Walter Stewart, [5 August 1790], Founders Online, National Archives.
William Seton, went searching at Eliza’s request for yards of imported French upholstery: Alexander Hamilton to William Seton, [3 December 1790], Founders Online, National Archives.
Anne Bingham, whose husband, William, was, like Alexander, involved in government: Abigail Adams to Abigail Adams Smith, 26 December 1790, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 9, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/publications/apde2/view?id=ADMS-04-09-02-0088.
pressed his flattery on one of the Chew daughters: William Cunningham to John Adams, 18 April 1811, Founders Online, National Archives.
“Do you live as pleasantly at Philadelphia as you did at New York?”: Angelica Church to Elizabeth Hamilton, after October 1790, McLane Hamilton, Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton, 106.
Philadelphia was the second-largest city in the nation: For information on late eighteenth-century Philadelphia, see Edward M. Riley, “Philadelphia, the Nation’s Capital, 1790–1800,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 20, no. 4 (October 1953): 357–79; Billy Smith, ed., Life in Early Philadelphia: Documents from the Revolutionary and Early National Periods (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2010), 79; Thomas H. Keels, Wicked Philadelphia: Sin in the City of Brotherly Love (Mt. Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010).
The chancellor, passed over for lucrative appointments: Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, 1763–1797 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 164.
“There is so much Rottenness”: William Duer to Alexander Hamilton, [19 January 1791], Founders Online, National Archives.
“The Chancellor [Robert Livingston] hates, & would destroy you”: James Tillary to Alexander Hamilton, [January 1791], Founders Online, National Archives.
In January, a heat wave unexpectedly hit the city: Anthony Watts, “In 1790, Philly ‘Had a Fever,’ Today Not So Much,” WUWT, February 3, 2010, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/03/in-1790-philly-had-a-fever-today-not-so-much/.
“I fear,” Philip Schuyler wrote of Eliza to Alexander, “that if she remains where she is”: Philip Schuyler to Alexander Hamilton, 15 May 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
planning to see their friends Rufus and Mary King: Alexander Hamilton to Rufus King, 8 July 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
“the hot City of Philadelphia; but in good health”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 2 August 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
“I have been to see your new house”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 2 August 1791.
“barley water with a dash of brandy”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 2 August 1791.
“I am myself in good health but I cannot be happy without you”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 9 August 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
“Dear Betsey—beloved Betsey—Take care of yourself”: Alexa
nder Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, [4 September 1791], Founders Online, National Archives.
“my extreme anxiety for the restoration of your health will reconcile me to your staying longer”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, [21 August 1791], Founders Online, National Archives.
CHAPTER 12
“once, on a reception evening, when the drawing-room in [the president’s] house”: Lewis Tappan, The Life of Arthur Tappan (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1871), 262.
“We have just taken house in Markett Street nearly opposet the President”: Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton to Angelica Church, 2 October 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
Eliza’s father liquidated $67,000 worth of securities: Beard, Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 108.
But the nail in the coffin was William Duer: On William Duer and his role in this affair, see Robert Francis Jones, The King of the Alley: William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator, 1768–1799 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992), 133; and Bob Schoone-Jongen, “William Duer: America’s First Wall Street Villain,” Historical Horizons, Department of History, Calvin College, May 15, 2015, https://historicalhorizons.org/2015/05/15/william-duer-americas-first-wall-street-villain/.
“Betsey has lately given me stronger proof than she ever did before of her attachment”: Alexander Hamilton to Angelica Church, November 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
Eliza busied herself with hunting down Latin textbooks: Alexander Hamilton to Philip A. Hamilton, 5 December 1791, Founders Online, National Archives.
“suspicion is ever eagle-eyed. And the most innocent things may be misinterpreted”: Works of Alexander Hamilton, 5:447.
William Duer “will speculate on you”: Quoted in David Dill Jr., “Portrait of an Opportunist: The Life of Alexander Macomb,” Watertown Daily Times, September 9, 1990, http://mlloyd.org/gen/macomb/text/amsr/wt.htm. See also Bryan Taylor, “The Panic of 1792,” Global Financial Data, accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.globalfinancialdata.com/gfdblog/?p=3462.