Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  Aaron Burr’s supporters emerged as a group of Northern politicians agitating for secession and the end of the fragile American union. Alexander was horrified. “For God’s sake . . . cease these conversations and threatenings about a separation of the Union,” he pleaded with fellow politicians.

  In mid-February Burr’s run for office was at a fever pitch. Eliza just sighed when Alexander announced that he would be in Albany for most of the month, trying an important legal case the outcome of which would set a precedent for political speech and seditious libel. It was no secret that Alexander was fighting hard to see Aaron Burr defeated in the election, but the two men had been staunch political opponents for years already. There would have been no particular reason for Alexander to write to Eliza in any of his letters that he and her father, General Schuyler, had talked politics with some gentlemen at a private dinner party one evening. By the end of March, Alexander was back in New York City for the rest of the spring anyhow.

  During the second week of May, Eliza’s sixteen-year-old son, James, brought to the Grange a note from his father. Eliza’s heart sank when she read it. Alexander had invited sixteen people to the house for a dinner party on the following Sunday, including the brother of the emperor of France, Napoléon. That would be the end of any other plans at home for Eliza. Alexander acknowledged that it would mean a great deal of work and that their plan for her to come into the city might now be impossible. “If not prevented by the cleaning of your house,” Alexander wrote, “I hope the pleasure of seeing you tomorrow.”

  Alexander then announced additional plans to throw a ball at the Grange a month later for their eldest daughter and her cousins, with another seventy-five guests invited, and Eliza and her sisters were again thrown into a frenzy of preparation. The girls were delighted, and it was good to see their daughter Angelica in good spirits.

  One other strange event disturbed their peace that spring, but Eliza only thought more of it later. Just as the early-summer sun was coming up over Harlem, a great pounding on the door startled Eliza from her sleep beside Alexander. Eliza and Alexander exchanged looks that asked what could be the matter, and Eliza’s first thoughts were of the older children. Shrugging into a dressing jacket, Alexander went down to investigate. Eliza curled back up among the sheets and waited. The light crept across the floor now as the sun rose higher.

  When Alexander stepped back into the room and sat down on the side of the bed, he turned to Eliza, and his expression was puzzled. “Who do you think was at the door?” he asked Eliza.

  Eliza shook her head. She could not imagine who would pound on their door at such an hour.

  “Colonel Burr.”

  And before Eliza could ask why, Alexander offered, “He came to ask my assistance.”

  Broke and in a panic, Burr urgently needed ten thousand dollars to pay loans on his Richmond Hill mansion, and Alexander did help him. He turned to John Church and a few other gentlemen, and they tided Aaron Burr over.

  Later, it seemed very odd to Eliza that Aaron Burr should so cruelly return such a favor.

  All the planning and work between the dinner party in May and the ball in June meant that Eliza took no notice of a newspaper article, originally published in late April in the Albany paper and reprinted in the city in mid-June, about her father and Alexander. A gentleman named Charles Cooper, writing in response to a letter on political matters published by her father, alleged that Alexander had disparaged the reputation of Aaron Burr at a dinner party in Albany. “Gen. Hamilton, the Patroon’s brother-in-law, it is said, has come out decidedly against Burr, indeed when he was here he spoke of him as a dangerous man and ought not to be trusted,” the article asserted. “Judge [James] Kent also expressed the same sentiment,” the author continued, and “the Patroon was quite indifferent about it when he went to New York—it is thought that when he sees Gen. Hamilton and his [other] brother-in-law Mr. Church (who Burr some time ago fought a duel with, and who, of course, must bear Burr much hatred)—I say many feel persuaded that Mr. Rensselaer will be decidedly opposed to Burr.”

  When the letter was reprinted in the city papers, the editor of the New-York Evening Post couldn’t resist a bit of editorializing that appeared to question his veracity and infuriated Charles Cooper. He responded by putting Alexander squarely in the middle of a brewing squabble. He now alleged that Alexander had made other, even worse claims about Burr, which he would not repeat but which showed a “still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed,” and, with spectacularly bad timing, this article appeared in print the week Burr lost his contested election for governor. Aaron Burr, stinging from defeat and suspecting dark machinations behind it, was furious when he saw it a few weeks later.

  Historians have long speculated about what Alexander might have said, but he may have made some remark or another about one of Burr’s “perversions.” Aaron Burr was famously louche and horny. At the height of the election, the admittedly partisan American Citizen newspaper alleged that it could name “upward of twenty women of ill fame” that Aaron Burr had bedded. But prostitutes were not even the worst of it. The editor followed up those claims with the shocking assertion that Aaron Burr was seen cavorting with a well-endowed black woman at a “ball” thrown by his slaves. More recently, there has been some evidence that Burr, like Thomas Jefferson, had mixed-race illegitimate children, including a son and a daughter born in the late 1780s and early 1790s to a woman from India who worked as a family servant. Whether or not there was any truth in these scurrilous assertions hardly mattered in the bruising world of early nineteenth-century American politics. Another theory is that Alexander may have remarked upon Burr’s spendthrift ways and reckless way with money, a sensitive topic. Or perhaps it was simply that Alexander believed that Burr—raised in the extended family of Benedict Arnold’s wife and already caught up in what Burr’s enemies claimed was a nefarious plot to betray the Americans in the West and which would lead to his trial for treason—was more than usually dangerous to the union of the republic.

  When Aaron Burr saw the article, fresh on the heels of his defeat, in an election that he had hoped would mark his comeback, visited by spies, pressed by creditors, and—as he must have felt—pursued doggedly by Alexander Hamilton, years of anger hardened into hatred. The tensions in their relationship went back decades, to the earliest days when the young upstart Alexander had been given the run of General Schuyler’s law library as a son, and Aaron had had to make a supplicant’s application. And the anger was as recent as the governorship election. All the world could read that Alexander behind his back mocked him—Alexander, the self-confessed adulterer—and Burr was desperate to defend his honor. He promptly challenged Alexander to a duel.

  Letters flew back and forth. Alexander quibbled over words, and, rather than simply disavow the insult, he dissected the logic of the challenge like a lawyer. When Alexander began spinning out elaborate rhetorical arguments, it was generally a sign that he was guilty of something, and it’s more likely than not that whatever Alexander had said was indeed offensive. Burr, backed further into a corner and infuriated at the lawyerly evasions, grew increasingly obstinate and was determined to be offended. The stubbornness of both men and the complex partisan politics that fueled their personal animosity meant that none of their friends was able to resolve the matter. The duel was on. Alexander made sure that Eliza had no knowledge of it.

  Alexander delayed until after Angelica’s ball at the Grange at the end of June, where lanterns lit the nighttime garden, and their children later remembered Alexander as relaxed and vivacious. There was another small delay so the two men could wind up some business matters, and they agreed to meet with their seconds on the field of honor in New Jersey at dawn on Wednesday, July 11.

  Alexander borrowed dueling pistols from John Church, drew up a schedule of his debts and assets, and, as a precaution, wrote a last letter to Eliza.

  Aaron Burr began target practice.

  The outcome
of the duel is famously known.

  Eliza would remember always that last, idyllic weekend. On Saturday night, they laughed with old friends around the dinner table at the Grange, and on Sunday morning Alexander asked Eliza to come for a walk with him in the gardens. They strolled for a long while, in companionable silence, with Eliza’s arm tucked under Alexander’s elbow, and looked out over orchards and toward the distant river. All day, Alexander stayed at home, under Eliza’s feet, and she smiled to wonder what had gotten into her normally busy husband. As the evening came on, Alexander called to the children, even the older ones, and urged them out into the garden. There, sprawled among the limbs and tousled hair of his children, Alexander “laid with them upon the grass,” one of the smaller boys, eleven-year-old John, later remembered, “until the stars shone down from the heavens.” Six-year-old William wriggled, four-year-old Betsey snuggled close to her father, and the older children teased their mother to come join them with the baby. Little Phil was two that summer, and it was hard not to think of his namesake and brother there under the starlight.

  On Monday, Alexander went back into the city as usual, taking with him eleven-year-old John and sixteen-year-old James, who went to school during the week in the city. On Tuesday night, Alexander sat up writing some letters, and sometime after ten o’clock he turned off the lantern. The younger of the boys was up late studying his Latin, and Alexander went to stand behind him and put his hand on John’s head. The boy’s hair was so soft and warm, like when he had been just a baby. Do you want to sleep with Papa? Alexander asked John, and the drowsy boy nodded. When Eliza had been away in Albany in the summers, visiting her parents, this had been Alexander’s tradition with his middle sons, and they had listened rapt under the bedcovers or at his feet in the armchair as their father told stories of Roman senators and warriors. “With what emphasis and fervor did he read of battles,” the boys remembered; “it would seem as though Caesar were present.” Other times, it was stories of the great heroes of the American Revolution and how the patriots he had known beat back the British.

  That night, though, Alexander didn’t tell any stories. He took his son’s hand and intertwined his own hand with the boy’s small fingers. They said the Lord’s Prayer together. Thy will be done. Those words echoed for Alexander, who lay very still until he heard the quiet breath of his child sleeping.

  In the morning, Alexander was gone. He set off not long after dawn from New York City with Dr. Hosack and his second, Nathaniel Pendleton. Their destination was the marshland of Weehawken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from what is today Midtown West and Hell’s Kitchen, and the dueling grounds on a grassy, hidden ledge not far above the tidewater. The bargemen pulled against the currents and toward the sea cliffs, startling gulls, as the morning sun climbed over the Atlantic. Alexander surely thought in that moment of his son, shot on the bluff ahead of him. He had already decided to throw away his shot, just as he had advised Philip to do.

  By seven o’clock, the barge was grating at the shoreline, and Alexander and Nathaniel climbed the rocky path to the dueling grounds, where Aaron Burr was already waiting. After the ritual exchange and squaring off at ten paces, the men turned toward each other, and moments later in the exchange of fire a hot bullet tore through Alexander’s abdomen, shattering his rib cage. Alexander fell to the ground. Burr took a few paces forward and then, urged by his second, fled for the waiting boat. Dueling was illegal, and in the eyes of the law was simply murder. Burr must have realized in a moment what an outcry there would be. Perhaps it dawned on him now, for the first time, that his life, as he had known it, would also end if Alexander perished. And the shot was clearly fatal.

  Dr. Hosack was waiting below with the bargemen—he could not be prosecuted for what he did not witness—but raced up the path at the first cries from Burr’s second. He arrived to find Nathaniel holding Alexander, who looked for a moment into the doctor’s eye, whispered the words “This is a mortal wound,” and sank unconscious. The bargemen rushed to carry Alexander to the boat, and fifty yards from shore smelling salts and the sea air brought him around. “He asked me once or twice how I found his pulse,” the doctor remembered later, “and he informed me that his lower extremities had lost all feeling, manifesting to me that he entertained no hopes that he should long survive.”

  By the time they landed on the river docks of Manhattan, the pain was tremendous. Alexander felt it course through him as he was carried toward the city mansion of his weeping friend, William Bayard. All he could think was: Eliza. “Let Mrs. Hamilton be immediately sent for,” Alexander whispered; “let the event be gradually broken to her; but give her hopes.” Alexander knew that it would take hours for Eliza to travel from Harlem to the West Village, where the barge landed. Grief would come soon enough. For the moment, Alexander asked them to spare her. “My beloved wife and children,” Alexander kept repeating.

  The news spread across the city in a fury. Eliza’s cousin Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker heard within hours. A duel had been fought between General Hamilton and Colonel Burr, and General Hamilton had received a mortal wound in the side, she recorded in her journal that evening. In the pubs and on the wharves, it was the talk of all the citizenry, as the shocked city waited.

  When a message reached Eliza at the Grange, ahead of her was a ride of a dozen miles, and at first she was told only of an illness. Slowly, as bits of the story were meted out to her, the dawning realization came to her that some unnamed tragedy was unfolding. As she entered Greenwich Village, people stopped on the streets and stood quietly. Tears shone in the eyes even of the men, and Eliza felt panic rising. What was happening? Was it one of her sons? Her husband? Where, she asked, her voice breaking, was Alexander? Why would no one answer? Dr. Hosack standing at the door, with a grave look, told her in that instant everything.

  Alexander lay on a large bed upstairs, and Eliza could scarcely breathe for crying. Alexander opened his heavy eyes and squeezed her hand gently. He said, “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.” His eyes said, Be Roman.

  All that afternoon, Eliza sat with him into the darkness. She sat with Alexander through the night as well, and he could still at moments talk to her.

  In the quiet of the night, who knows what words passed between them. They are words unlikely to have been very different from the words that Alexander had written already to Eliza in his very last love letter. “If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview,” he wrote to her,

  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. I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel. Nor could I dwell on the topic lest it should unman me.

  In his last words, he harkened back as well to the orations of Valerius Maximus and wrote of his love and praise for Eliza in what he suspected would be his funeral oration. He urged Eliza to embrace religion and the hope of meeting once more. “Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted,” he wrote. “With my last idea; I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world.” Then he thanked her for her stoicism, sacrifice, and always her devotion, when state enemies accosted them, in words with rich, private meaning, words at the heart of their twenty-three-year marriage. “Adieu best of wives and best of Women. Embrace all my darling Children for me.”

  When dawn broke on Thursday, Alexander was still alive, but a cold paralysis had spread over his limbs. Dr. Hosack felt for a pulse. Alexander’s heart was only weakly beating. Eliza ushered in their seven children now to say farewell to their father. Alexander could not speak, but at the sight of them closed his eyes, tears falling. Eliza took his hand and resumed her quiet vigil. At two o’clock in the afternoon, his breath stopped at last, and then the bells across the city of New York began tolling.

  Their old friend Gouverneur Morris, so moved by the scene, fled to the garde
n to try to compose himself. Angelica lay curled on a sofa next door, “weeping her heart out.”

  As for Eliza, “the poor woman was almost distracted,” those who watched her anguished remembered later. When she saw Gouverneur Morrris, Alexander’s closest friend, she begged him, between sobs, “to join her in prayers for her own death, and then to be a father for her children.” Soon, Gouverneur Morris was also crying.

  All day Friday, the church bells in New York City rang from “dawn to dusk” in honor of Alexander. Businesses shut their doors, closed for a city in mourning, and Eliza’s friend Elizabeth Seton, the wife of William Seton, recorded privately in her journal that his death was “a melancholy event—the circumstances of which are really too bad to think of.”

  Eliza dressed that morning for the first time in the black widow’s weeds that she would wear until her death more than fifty years later. Although Eliza could not know it, she had more than half her life still ahead of her. When Alexander died, she was not yet forty-seven. There was a ritual of death, and Eliza mustered all her reserves. She set off to do her duty. “Mrs and Miss Hamilton”—Eliza and her daughter Angelica—visited at noontime her kinswoman Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker in one of their first social calls of mourning.

  Alexander was buried on Sunday, July 14, with military honors. A slow procession, led by a riderless horse draped in black crape, Alexander’s boots turned backward in the stirrups, wound solemnly for miles through a tearful city toward Trinity Church. Soldiers on the streets who remembered Alexander Hamilton’s wartime gallantry stepped in to join the march. In New York City harbor, naval officers lit cannons to salute the fallen general. At the side of Alexander’s grave, the eloquent Gouverneur Morris gave an emotional eulogy, his voice cracking.

  Eliza did not attend the funeral. She sat instead inside a darkened parlor, holding her two-year-old little boy to her. She knew that she would collapse in grief long before she ever reached the churchyard. It took all her emotional reserves to take the older children in the evening to Trinity Church to hear the bishop preach their father’s funeral sermon. Sitting in the family pew, she could feel everyone’s eyes on her. She wished she could disappear and fly to Alexander. In the decades ahead, she would never stop wishing.