Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

  The two-story Federal house that McComb and Weeks completed by the summer of 1802 occupied a spot near the corner of present-day West 143rd Street and Convent Avenue. (It was later moved south for preservation purposes.) The neat, handsome structure had a yellow-and-ivory frame exterior, topped by classical balusters. With six rooms upstairs and eight fireplaces to warm the family in winter, it was clearly designed with Hamilton’s brood of seven children in mind. As elegantly meticulous as Hamilton himself, the house was small for a man of his fame, though marked with mementos of his past power. Visitors entering the doorway under a delicate fanlight glimpsed a Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington, a gift from Washington himself. Ironically, the Anglophile Hamilton furnished the parlor with a Louis XVI sofa and chairs. The centerpiece of the house was two octagonal rooms that stood side by side, one serving as parlor, the other as dining room. When the doors were thrown open, they created a single, continuous space in which to entertain guests. The mirrored doors that covered three sides of the parlor reflected the leafy landscape seen through the high French windows. Further blending the living room with the sylvan setting, the windows opened onto a balcony with panoramic river views. Incapable of total relaxation—Hamilton had probably never experienced an indolent day in his life—he commandeered for his study a tiny room to the right of the entryway and fitted it out with a beautiful rolltop desk that he called “my secretary at home.”6 This compulsive bibliophile packed the Grange with up to one thousand volumes.

  Perhaps the aspect of this hideaway that most captivated Hamilton was landscaping it and growing fruit and vegetable gardens. As a newcomer to the bucolic life, he humbly sought assistance from friends and country neighbors. “In this new situation, for which I am as little fitted as Jefferson [is] to guide the helm of the U[nited] States, I come to you as an adept in rural science for instruction,” he wrote to Richard Peters, an agricultural expert.7 He also drew on the expertise of his friend and physician, David Hosack, who also served as a renowned botany professor at Columbia College. Hosack had just established a botanical garden with greenhouses and tropical plants where Rockefeller Center stands today. En route to or from the Grange, Hamilton surveyed Hosack’s flowers and frequently rode off with cuttings, bulbs, and seeds. He even communicated a political message through his gardening. Among the many shade trees that he dispersed around the grounds, he planted to the right of the front door a row of thirteen sweet gum trees meant to symbolize the union of the original thirteen states.

  We know about Hamilton’s supervision of the grounds because he was often away on business and left detailed instructions for Eliza, who oversaw much of the day-to-day development. Hamilton was enchanted by an ornamental bed of tulips, lilies, and hyacinths that Hosack had devised, and he sent a drawing of it to Eliza. With his usual exactitude, he told her, “The space should be a circle of which the diameter is eighteen feet and there should be nine of each sort of flowers....They may be arranged thus: wild roses around the outside of the flower garden with laurel at foot....A few dogwood trees, not large, scattered along the margin of the grove would be very pleasant.”8 Hamilton also planted strawberries, cabbages, and asparagus and constructed an icehouse covered with cedar shingles.

  Eliza kept close tabs on outlays for the Grange, which proved an extravagance for a couple with seven children. Always a tightwad compared to Jefferson, Hamilton began to spend with an open hand and lavished about twenty-five thousand dollars, or twice his annual income, on the house and grounds. Since the property itself cost fifty-five thousand, the cumulative expense dragged Hamilton into debt. He was aware that his liberal spending was outstripping his wealth but anticipated that his growing legal practice would defray future bills. In the past, Hamilton had been somewhat cavalier about collecting legal fees, but he now demanded payment from clients in arrears. When he asked one client to pay for a will drawn up many years earlier, he explained, “As I am building, I am endeavouring to collect my outstanding claims.”9

  For Alexander and Eliza Hamilton, the country house ushered in a new stage of their lives with a mellow, autumnal tone. The Grange did double duty as both rustic refuge and posh venue for dinner parties. The Hamiltons functioned as a complete, stable family as they seldom had before. Both Alexander and Eliza had been upset that his career had so often separated them and caused the children to be split up between them. Her life’s greatest sacrifice, Eliza once said, was “that of being one half the week absent from him [Hamilton] to take care of the younger while he took care of the elder children.”10 For someone with Hamilton’s early family history, these separations must have carried an extra burden of anxiety and frustration.

  Hamilton made more and more time for his children. On one occasion, when Eliza went to Albany, he wrote to her from the Grange, “I am here, my beloved Betsey, with my two little boys, John and William, who will be my bedfellows tonight.... The remainder of the children were well yesterday. Eliza pouts and plays and displays more and more her ample stock of caprice.”11 He liked to sing with the family and gather them in the gardens on Sunday mornings to read the Bible aloud. Hamilton’s children tended to remember their father at the Grange, partly because they were older then and partly because it was there that they had the full attention of a man whose life had been hectic and distracted by controversy.

  The new squire was no passive spectator of the national scene and followed avidly the fortunes of Aaron Burr. Once Jefferson entered the White House, Burr was no longer just expendable to the president: he was an outright hindrance. After betraying Jefferson’s trust during the electoral tie, Burr knew he would probably be dropped as vice president when Jefferson sought reelection, and in the meantime he was pointedly excluded from the president’s counsels. “We are told and we believe that Jefferson and [Burr] hate each other and Hamilton thinks that Jefferson is too cunning to be outwitted by him,” Robert Troup reported to Rufus King.12 As Burr became a pariah in Washington, he realized that he had to shore up his political base at home.

  By coincidence, an acrimonious race for New York governor followed the electoral stalemate in Washington. That old Republican warhorse George Clinton decided to seek yet another term as governor. When John Jay declined to run for reelection, the Federalists turned to thirty-six-year-old Stephen Van Rensselaer, the incumbent lieutenant governor and Hamilton’s brother-in-law. That Hamilton would get involved was further assured when Burr began to meddle on behalf of Clinton. For Hamilton, this exposed the shameless deceit behind Burr’s flirtation with the Federalists during the tie election. He said in sarcastic tones to Eliza, “Mr. Burr, as a proof of his conversion to Federalism, has within a fortnight taken a very active and officious part against [Van] Rensselaer in favour of Clinton.”13

  Hamilton had a compelling personal motive for entering the fray. Eliza’s younger sister Peggy was married to Stephen Van Rensselaer (Hamilton crowned her with the comic nickname “Mrs. Patroon”) and had been gravely ill for two years. For a time, doctors plied her with oxygen that helped to revive her. Then, in early March 1801, while Hamilton was waylaid in Albany on legal business, Peggy’s health deteriorated. Hamilton visited her bedside often and kept Eliza posted on developments. When Hamilton finished his court work, Peggy asked him to stay for a few days, and he complied with her wishes. In mid-March, Hamilton had to send Eliza a somber note: “On Saturday, my dear Eliza, your sister took leave of her sufferings and friends, I trust, to find repose and happiness in a better country....I long to come to console and comfort you, my darling Betsey. Adieu my sweet angel. Remember the duty of Christian resignation.”14 Peggy’s funeral at the Patroon’s manor house was attended by all of his many tenants, marching in mourning.

  So aside from wanting to thwart Burr and Clinton, Hamilton must have felt compelled to assist young Stephen Van Rensselaer, who had been widowed at the advent of his gubernatorial race. In a blizzard of articles and speeches, Hamilton credited the Federalists with producing peace and prosperity. He also t
ried to convert the election into a referendum on the Republican infatuation with France, evoking the “hideous despotism” of Napoleon that was “defended by the bayonets of more than five hundred thousand men in disciplined array.”15 After Jefferson’s victory, the New York Federalists were desperate to resuscitate their party. As he campaigned with verve, Hamilton felt the full fury of vengeful Republicans, who were giddy with their recent triumph. “At one of the polls, General Hamilton, with impunity by the populace, was repeatedly called a thief and at another poll, with the same impunity, he was called a rascal, villain, and everything else that is infamous in society!” Robert Troup reported. “What a commentary is this on republican virtue?”16

  To restore some civility, Hamilton suggested at one Federalist rally that both candidates appoint supporters to conduct a calm, reasoned debate on the issues. Republican papers turned on him harshly and accused him of “haranguing the citizens of New York in different wards in his usual style of imprecation and abuse against the character of the venerable Clinton.” The same paper suggested that Hamilton should be “obscure and inactive,” since he had been “detected in his illicit amours with his lovely Maria, on whose supposed chastity rested the happiness of her husband and family.”17 Burr watched amusedly as Hamilton squirmed. “Hamilton works day and night with the most intemperate and outrageous zeal,” he told his son-in-law, “but I think wholly without effect.”18 Indeed, in an especially ominous sign for Hamilton, Clinton regained the governorship by a landslide.

  But Clinton’s return augured poorly for Burr as well. As Hamilton had predicted, President Jefferson gloried in the exercise of power and now moved to sweep Federalist officeholders from New York posts. The president blatantly snubbed Burr and showered most New York appointments on the Livingstons and Clintons. In trying to prop up his base in New York, Burr saw that he would indeed have to cobble together a new coalition of disaffected Republicans and free-floating Federalists. Such a strategy also threatened any comeback meditated by Hamilton and promised sharp future clashes between the two men.

  Jefferson had not captured the presidency by a wide margin over Adams, but he was an agile politician with a sure sense of populist symbolism.19 A handsome man of sometimes unkempt appearance, Jefferson eliminated the regal trappings of the Washington and Adams administrations and brilliantly crafted an image of himself as a plain, unadorned American. The various Jeffersons served up by Hamilton in his essays—the epicurean Jefferson, the spendthrift Jefferson, the patrician Jefferson, the indebted Jefferson, the slave-owning, lovemaking Jefferson—were blotted out by one of history’s most impressive image makers. For two weeks after his inauguration, Jefferson stayed at his boardinghouse near the Capitol and supped at the common table. Once in the White House, the folksy president (who had been a fashion plate in Paris) galloped through Washington on horseback, dispensed with wigs and powdered hair, shuffled around in slippers, fed his pet mockingbird, and answered the doorbell himself. (When William Plumer first visited the executive mansion, he mistook the president for a servant.) Only Jefferson could have turned frumpy clothing into a resonant political statement.

  Jefferson endowed his election with cosmic significance, later saying that “the revolution of 1800 was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form,” and the Republican press cheered his victory as a liberation from British tyranny.20 In fact, Jefferson proved a more moderate president than either he or Hamilton cared to admit. The Virginian no longer had the luxury of being in opposition and could not denounce every assertion of executive power as a rank betrayal of the Revolution. A group of purists calling themselves Old Republicans protested that the turncoat Jefferson had violated his former principles by refusing to dismantle Hamilton’s system, including the national bank. Jefferson intended to cut taxes and public debt, contract the navy, and shrink the central government—a swollen bureaucracy of 130 employees!—to “a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants,” but many changes were less than revolutionary.21 He made the mistake of scuttling much of the navy, which was to leave the country appallingly vulnerable during the War of 1812. In the end, however, Jefferson often devised variants of Hamilton programs, stressing household manufactures over factories for instance. On the other hand, he overturned some bad Federalist policies and allowed the Alien and Sedition Acts to lapse.

  Jefferson’s more extreme impulses were restrained by his treasury secretary, the balding, Geneva-born Albert Gallatin, who broke the shocking news to him that it was too soon to abolish all internal taxes. He educated Jefferson that the national bank and Customs Service did help reduce the national debt. “It mortifies me to be strengthening principles which I deem radically vicious,” the president replied, but he agreed that Gallatin was probably right “that we can never completely get rid of [Hamilton’s] financial system.” Indeed, Hamilton had deliberately shaped his policies so as to make it difficult to extirpate them.

  The new president relished the chance to rifle through Treasury files and corroborate his suspicions of Hamilton. He asked Gallatin to browse through the archives and uncover “the blunders and frauds of Hamilton.” Having tangled with Hamilton over the years, Gallatin undertook the task “with a very good appetite,” he admitted, but he failed to excavate the findings Jefferson wanted. Years later, he related the president’s crestfallen reaction: “ ‘Well Gallatin, what have you found?’ [Jefferson asked]. I answered: ‘I have found the most perfect system ever formed. Any change that should be made in it would injure it. Hamilton made no blunders, committed no frauds. He did nothing wrong.’ I think Mr. Jefferson was disappointed.”22 Gallatin complimented Hamilton by saying that he had done such an outstanding job as the first treasury secretary that he had turned the post into a sinecure for all future occupants. As for the First Bank of the United States, once denounced by Jeffersonians as a diabolical lair, Gallatin proclaimed that it had “been wisely and skillfully managed.”23 Republicans still found it hard to accept the need for the central bank. As president, James Madison allowed the bank’s charter to expire, and American finances suffered as a result during the War of 1812. When a chastened Madison then sponsored the Second Bank of the United States, critics inveighed that he “out-Hamiltons Alexander Hamilton.”24

  Hamilton still feared that Jefferson would weaken presidential power, since he had long contended that a strong executive branch would revert to monarchical methods. “A preponderance of the executive over the legislative branch cannot be maintained but by immense patronage, by multiplying offices, making them very lucrative, by armies, navies, which may enlist on the side of the patron all those whom he can interest and all their families and connections,” Jefferson had written.25 Hamilton should have trusted his election prediction that Jefferson in office would discover the joys of presidential power. Jefferson resolved his ideological dilemma by showing outward deference to Congress while subtly steering congressional leaders at private dinners that he held three times per week at the presidential residence.

  One area where Hamilton perceived a legitimate threat to the Federalist legacy was the judiciary, the last redoubt of party power. Right before Adams left office, Congress had enacted the Judiciary Act, which created new courts and twenty-three new federal judgeships so as to spare Supreme Court justices the onerous task of riding the circuit. The high court’s justices had spent more time negotiating muddy roads than deciding cases in Philadelphia. At the end of his term, President Adams rushed through appointments for these judges, offending Republicans who thought he should have allowed the new president to choose. Worse, Adams made baldly partisan selections for a judiciary already packed with Federalists. His appointment of the so-called midnight judges rubbed old Republican wounds. “The Federalists have retired into the judiciary as a stronghold and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be beaten down and erased,” Jefferson declared.26 William Branch Giles agreed with Jefferson that “the revolution is incomplete s
o long as the judiciary” was possessed by the enemy.27 Thus the battle was joined between triumphant Republicans and defeated Federalists over Republican efforts to repeal the Judiciary Act. Hamilton and other High Federalists feared that Republicans would thereby destroy judicial independence.

  Republican ire about the Federalist dominance of the judiciary became especially strident after Adams nominated John Marshall as chief justice of the Supreme Court in late January 1801. Marshall, forty-five, was a tall, genial man with penetrating eyes and a shock of unruly hair. He now rivaled, perhaps even superseded, Hamilton as the leading Federalist and had contempt for his distant cousin, Jefferson, whom he mocked as “the great lama of the mountain.”28 Historian Henry Adams said of Marshall, “This excellent and amiable man clung to one rooted prejudice: he detested Thomas Jefferson.”29 Jefferson reciprocated the animosity, especially since the new chief justice revered Hamilton, having once observed that next to the former treasury secretary he felt like a mere candle “beside the sun at noonday.”30 After reading through George Washington’s papers, Marshall pronounced Hamilton “the greatest man (or one of the greatest men) that had ever appeared in the United States.”31 Marshall considered Hamilton and Washington the two indispensable founders, and it therefore came as no surprise that Jefferson looked askance at the chief justice as “the Federalist serpent in the democratic Eden of our administration.”32