“In a curious way, she’s protecting Hamilton,” Monroe told his fuming fellow investigator, “even as she gives us information to discomfort him. I can only presume Mrs. Reynolds’s motive is also to protect her husband. She may be feigning her irritation with his sudden departure. Perhaps she considers loyalty to be the greatest virtue.”
The Speaker said he could hardly believe what they had found. “We have evidence that the Secretary of the Treasury has been colluding for months with a confessed speculator. Think of it! And this morning he obstructs a Congressional inquiry by freeing and sending away a material witness. Monroe, finish the letter you began last night to President Washington. We must take it to him right away.”
Monroe shook his head. “That was my own first impulse, and you were right to restrain me, Mr. Speaker. Hamilton has been tracking us as we have been tracking him. I think he expects us to come and confront him.” The Treasury Secretary was a formidable public figure, personally fearless, certain to present a vigorous defense. Monroe rather looked forward to Hamilton’s explanation of his dealings with Reynolds, and to the report he would write of their confrontation to Jefferson, and then to the President. “I propose we do just that tomorrow morning. Then we can take both the accusation and his explanation to President Washington.”
Muhlenberg saw the wisdom in knowing Hamilton’s explanation before going to the Chief Magistrate. “We’ll need copies made of everything—Hamilton’s notes, his letters, our reports of each interview, the draft of our letter to Washington, Clingman’s affidavit.”
“Get your man Beckley to do that tonight, if he has to work all night.” John Beckley was Clerk of the House. Monroe said “your man” as if to defer to the Speaker of that body, but he wanted Beckley, an intensely loyal Jefferson partizan, in charge of the copying. Those documents might—in good time, perhaps in a few years, before the next Presidential election—bring disgrace down on Hamilton’s Federalists. Muhlenberg hesitated; apparently wondering whether it was wise to trust the journeyman Beckley. Then the Speaker nodded assent and gathered all their notes.
December 19, 1792
Alexander Hamilton waited in his Treasury office for his accusers. It was a workmanlike office in a two-story building. The adjacent State Department building of three stories had more spacious offices, but pomp had no attraction for him. Nor was the acquisition of wealth his primary concern. He would leave the Treasury a poorer man than when he went in, and his closest friends told him they would probably have to bury him at their own expense. That was what made this investigation so galling: more important to Hamilton than money or even power was fair renown. The reward he sought in public service was reputation, and the high regard of his countrymen, earned on battlefield and in convention hall, was being stolen from him by backbiters and miscreants.
He was determined not to be diverted from his main pursuit by cavils or trifles. For two days, Hamilton had closely followed the progress of the Congressional investigators. From the reports of the bumpkin Clingman and the blackguard Reynolds, he had been able to ascertain much of what the investigators knew and which incriminating documents they had obtained. He had arranged for the disappearance of the central witness against him. As an experienced trial attorney preparing a vigorous and most unconventional defense, Hamilton now needed to know his accusers’ preliminary conclusions and whether they planned to make them public or take them privately to the President.
He motioned them to a couch in the sitting area of his office. The heavyset Speaker sunk deep into the cushions; the ascetic Monroe demurred, choosing a hard wooden chair.
Muhlenberg’s evident agitation did not surprise Hamilton. The Pennsylvanian was understandably upset by the disappearance of Reynolds after he was let out of jail, but that investigator’s displeasure was the penalty Hamilton had to pay for removing a most damaging witness from the scene. Hamilton was more concerned about the judgments of the Congressman’s austere companion; Reynolds, on the morning that Hamilton sent him out of town, had identified the second man as James Monroe.
The Treasury Secretary knew that the Virginian was closer to Thomas Jefferson than any other member of the Senate. Monroe in the Senate was as attuned to Jefferson’s machinations as James Madison was in the House, but was more subtly combative and far more politically astute. Months before, Hamilton had been informed that Jefferson had gone to President Washington with unsubstantiated charges that Hamilton had been guilty of “dealing out Treasury secrets among his friends.” He considered that a vicious half-truth. Perhaps he had been indiscreet in dinner-table discussions with longtime associates in the political wars, and perhaps his somewhat greedy friend William Duer had profited from the information, but Hamilton never intended to “deal out secrets” for anyone’s personal gain. In this more specific matter involving Reynolds, Hamilton was aware that whatever Monroe learned, Jefferson would soon know; and whatever the underhanded Secretary of State wanted done, his henchman Monroe would do.
His fellow Federalist Muhlenberg, however, was the one who made the accusation directly: “We have discovered a very improper connection between you and James Reynolds, the speculator and perjurer.”
Hamilton rose from his chair and motioned his accuser to be silent. “I resent that, sir. You do not have the facts to substantiate such a wild and vicious charge.” He calibrated a rise in his indignation, using a voice capable of conveying intimacy in a bedroom or ringing out in a courtroom: “I am aware that you have been marching all over Philadelphia asking questions of criminals and spreading rumors that I am no better than a common thief. I fought long and hard for this country’s independence, gentlemen, and I did not risk my life for its freedom to join in some tawdry scheme to undermine its financial integrity.”
“You misapprehend us, Hamilton,” Monroe came in smoothly. “We do not intend to take as established fact the information we have been given suggesting an improper pecuniary connection between you and Mr. Reynolds.” His voice was calm, his demeanor judicial. “Some documents of a suspicious complexion came to us, unsought. We have the duty to pursue the truth.”
Hamilton focused his glare on Muhlenberg, who backed off as well. “Our agency in the matter is influenced solely by a sense of public duty,” the Speaker said formally, “and by no motive of personal ill will.” As Hamilton resumed his seat, seemingly mollified, the Congressman added, “We had contemplated putting this matter directly before the President, but before we do, we thought you should have the opportunity of an explanation.”
“I appreciate that.” He was prepared to do his utmost to keep this from Washington’s eyes. “And I think you will find that the course you chose in coming to me first was the wise one.”
“This unsigned note,” said Muhlenberg, laying down a letter as if it were a card in a high-stakes game. “Do you know who may have written it?”
Hamilton responded to their gambit by sacrificing a pawn. To deny authorship would add to their suspicions, but to assert it freely would begin to disarm them. “I wrote that. I tried to disguise my handwriting, but the note is from me.”
“Why did you try to—”
Hamilton held up a hand. “The affair among us is now on a different footing,” he said as if his initial indignation had been assuaged. “I always stand ready to meet fair inquiry with frank communication.” He looked directly at Monroe. “As it happens, I have it in my power—with written documents—to remove all doubt as to the real nature of this business. I will be able fully to convince you that absolutely no impropriety of the kind imputed to me did in fact exist.” He rose confidently. “You will not be forced to embarrass yourselves by making an accusation to the President that would be quickly shown to be false. Allow me to assemble some papers. Tonight at my house you will have the explanation that will lay this to rest.”
“After dinner, then,” said the icily correct Monroe, who Hamilton was convinced was keeping Jefferson fully informed of evidence that might lead to the removal of his Cabin
et adversary. “We’ll be there.”
Oliver Wolcott, Comptroller of the Currency, the son and grandson of Governors of Connecticut, was the trusted subordinate Hamilton invited to be his witness and supporter at the meeting with the inquisitors. Wolcott had stumbled onto Reynolds’s wrongdoing and then demonstrated his loyalty to Hamilton by finding a suitable excuse for not prosecuting the case. This action did not trouble his conscience because Reynolds had not only made restitution, but had revealed the name of the Treasury clerk who provided him illicit information, whom Wolcott promptly fired. In the more serious case of Hamilton’s friend William Duer, who had misappropriated official Treasury warrants and used them as collateral for private loans, Wolcott had no choice but to refer the case to Richard Harison, United States Attorney in New York. Harison was a Hamilton appointee who investigated dutifully the complaints of hundreds of investors who lost money with Duer, but who let the case lapse without indictment.
Wolcott saw the political wisdom in that. Had Harison in New York allowed the Duer case to go forward, or had Wolcott allowed Reynolds to drag Hamilton’s name through the mud, the scandals would be a burden to a Hamilton campaign for the Presidency in 1796, should the aging Washington decide to retire. Under a President Hamilton, Oliver Wolcott expected to serve as Treasury Secretary; Federalism would triumph over the disunionist agrarian faction; the nation’s westward expansion would be properly financed, and the Jefferson republicans and other apologists for the bloody French Jacobins would be routed once and for all.
“The charge against me,” Hamilton began, “is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation. The truth is that I have been wholly indifferent to the acquisition of property and am poorer today than when I entered public office. I have not more than two thousand dollars in the world.”
“There are these letters,” said Muhlenberg, “some in a disguised hand, which was in itself evidence of a need to conceal the truth, and which you admit now to be your own writing—”
“I will show you many more letters attesting to a connection between Reynolds and me. The fact of the connection is not in dispute. But the purpose of the connection is not what you suspect.”
This was all news to Wolcott. He had never dared ask what hold this criminal Reynolds had on his superior.
“My real crime,” Hamilton went on, “is a loose connection—an amorous connection, I should say—with his wife. More shocking than that, gentlemen, this amour was pursued for a considerable time with his privity and connivance.”
That revelation was met with silence. Wolcott could imagine Hamilton’s dalliance with Maria Reynolds—an undeniably beautiful and mysterious woman, with aristocratic features not unlike Hamilton’s—but the notion of conspiring with her husband to seduce and entrap the Treasury Secretary stretched credulity. Could it be that the husband was the pimp and his wife the whore? And Hamilton was doing business with them? Wolcott made an effort not to appear profoundly shaken.
“That much I can prove with these documents here.” Hamilton laid a sheaf of letters on the table. “These letters to me covering a period of eighteen months are from Reynolds and his wife. As you shall see, they show a combination with the design to extort money from me.”
Since the investigators from the Congress were too dumbstruck to say anything, Wolcott put in, “Which you paid?”
“I paid and paid and paid. This confession,” Hamilton said, “is not made without a blush. I condemn myself because if this were ever to become public, it would inflict a pain upon my wife, who is eminently entitled to all my gratitude, fidelity and love.”
“When did the extortion begin?” Monroe asked, ignoring Hamilton’s expressions of sentiment about his wife.
“Sometime in the summer of last year a woman called at my house here in Philadelphia and asked to speak to me in private. . . .”
June 17, 1791
PHILADELPHIA
As Hamilton chose to remember it, the slender young woman standing in the sunlight of a summer Sunday afternoon, her face shadowed by a fashionable hat, appeared to be distraught. She was well dressed, obviously not a mendicant.
“Colonel Hamilton, could I have a few moments of your time?”
Hamilton asked if whatever was troubling her could not be better attended to at his Treasury office the next day. She seemed on the verge of tears and in a choked voice replied that it was a personal matter; she did not think it proper to disturb him at the Treasury Department.
“My family is in the drawing room,” he said, motioning her in, “so let me attend you in my study over here.”
After declining a glass of sherry, she folded her hands in her lap and introduced herself. “I am the daughter of Edgar Lewis of New York, and sister to Gilbert Livingston, whose family I believe you know.”
Hamilton nodded his recognition of this distinguished lineage; one Livingston was Governor of New Jersey, another a political and financial ally of his in New York. By “sister,” she undoubtedly meant “sister-in-law.” She also identified a brother as a longtime sheriff of Dutchess County. He felt a fleeting urge to tell the wellborn young lady that, in contrast, he was an immigrant at seventeen from the Leeward Islands, the bastard son of a freethinking mother and a deserting father, and had spent the past twenty years in America as revolutionary warrior and creative banker living down his shameful family background. He let it pass; in her fragile emotional state, his statuesque visitor with the near-violet eyes was too appealing to interrupt.
“I was married seven years ago, Colonel Hamilton, to James Reynolds.” She was now hardly more than twenty, he estimated, and might have been forced by necessity of pregnancy to marry that young. Few women of her class were as courageously amoral as Hamilton’s mother, willing to bear and rear a child out of wedlock. “His father was in the Commissary Department during the war with Great Britain, in which you so valiantly fought.”
“The name Reynolds is familiar.” It was a common name, and he did not recall the man, but she evidently felt the need for further familial endorsement.
“My husband is a cruel and dishonest man. He has abandoned me, and my daughter, to live with another woman.” She searched for a handkerchief in her purse, avoiding his eyes. “He has left us destitute.”
His surge of sympathy for her distress was genuine. The man who abandoned a woman of such breeding and carriage, not to mention good looks, was not just a rogue but a fool. “How may I help?”
She looked up with hope. “I desire to leave Philadelphia to return to my friends and family in New York. The cost of such a move is at present beyond my means, and I cannot take a position in commerce because my young daughter requires my care.” She took a deep breath. “Because I know you are a foremost citizen of New York, I have taken the liberty to apply to your humanity for assistance.”
As Hamilton was to recount it, he sensed something odd in the application; a New York background in common was more excuse than good reason for soliciting his help. Yet the simplicity and modesty in her manner of relating the story impressed him with its truth, and her beauty was undeniably affecting. Hamilton was eager to comply. He had thirty dollars in the house, the kind of substantial sum that would take her home to her relatives in New York, but he did not want to dismiss her so quickly. And his family was in a nearby room. “The moment is not convenient to me, but if you will tell me the place of your residence, I will bring or send a small supply of money tonight.”
“I live at 154 South Fourth Street.” That was a short walk away from Hamilton’s home at Walnut and South Third. “Not five minutes from here. You are so kind.”
After dinner with his wife and children, Hamilton announced he had an appointment at the George, a nearby tavern, and put a $30 bank bill in his pocket. He envisioned the day when banknotes would be issued throughout the nation by the United States Bank, backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal government, and not issued pell-mell by local banks that were all too ofte
n on the brink of insolvency.
Keeping his mind on his banking, Hamilton recalled how Congress had passed his bank bill over the objections of James Madison and the Jeffersonians, who argued that its powers could not be found in the Constitution. These believers in a rural society of yeomen and farmers had almost persuaded Washington to veto the banking legislation designed to finance an empire based on urban manufactures, but the President asked Hamilton to present the reasons for the validity and propriety of the law. Writing a memorial day and night for a week, Hamilton devised a new theory: he persuaded the President that the Constitution contained “implied powers” to carry out functions not expressly forbidden, and that Madison’s strict construction of the document would strangle the infant nation in its crib. Washington signed the bill and, perhaps without fully realizing the strength he was gathering to the Executive, laid the foundation for financing a continental empire. That was a good week’s work.
He walked quickly down Walnut Street, slapping his thigh nervously with one hand, fingering the bank bill in his pocket with the other, focusing his mind on his victory over Madison about implied powers to keep his expectations down about his meeting with the young woman from New York. Was he hoping too hard for an assignation? Did he overstep in suggesting he come to her house? Her assent was so quick—was he stepping into a trap of some sort? If her brother-in-law was Gilbert Livingston, and her half-brother was a former sheriff of Dutchess County, why hadn’t she written to them for a small loan? Would he be played the fool?
Hamilton stopped in his tracks and composed himself. He was a Good Samaritan doing a good deed for a lovely woman in distress. If his fellow New Yorker responded to his gift with a cup of tea and a handshake of gratitude, he would wish her well and return home with dignity intact.
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 3
