My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  He will never know this America, but I am grateful that I can.

  Though my gratitude is bittersweet. Because these lands—and others like them all over our country’s western frontier—are not settled without a price. And that great cost is borne by the Indians. With the support of southerners who want ever more land for cotton and slavery, our government keeps pushing the Indians father west.

  Proof that the great project of securing human rights through our revolution remains unfinished . . .

  Upon the steamboat, the great wheel creates a constant hum and vibration to which my body becomes accustomed as the weeks pass. We steam through Cincinnati and Louisville before finally reaching the Mississippi in late May. From there, we steam northward, until we pass the quite considerable city at St. Louis, which boasts of over ten thousand inhabitants. Finally, the Mississippi carries us to Galena, Illinois, the largest steamboat hub in the north.

  And William is there waiting.

  I barely recognize him. Not simply because twenty years have passed since I’ve seen him last, but also because he’s embraced the look of a frontiersman. He wears the coarsest of trousers and a plain, threadbare shirt, clean but well used. Upon his head sits a slouched hat. Only his boots and his shave appear new, the latter of which is confirmed when a few of his fellows tease about the disappearance of his beard.

  “Hello, Mother,” he says, stiffly, helping me down off of the gangway.

  “Oh, my dear William. You look . . .” I shake my head, overcome at the sight of him. Despite the rough edges, he’s the spitting image of his father, and every bit as handsome. But I don’t say any of that. “Well, it just does my heart so good to see you.”

  We embrace, but it ends too soon, and then he greets the Hollys, offers me his arm, and guides us to a wagon hitched with two black horses.

  It’s an hour’s ride to William’s home in the neighboring Wisconsin Territory. “I should like for my town to someday be known as Wiota,” he says, casting me an appraising look, “but most insist on calling it Hamilton’s Diggings.”

  I smile with delight. “Hamilton’s Diggings? How grand! Perhaps I can now claim to have a town, too.” He peers at me quizzically, and I remind him of a story he no doubt heard and forgot long ago. “When you were small, your cousin Flip named a town upon the Genesee River for your aunt Angelica.” I’ve traveled a thousand miles to see my son, but in so easily mentioning my sister’s name, I realize how far I’ve truly come.

  Lysbet excitedly calls out, “Oh, how exciting! Do we have a river, too, then?”

  Something close to a grin stirs upon William’s face as he glances back at his sister. “We do. The Pecatonica.”

  I try these Indian words out on my tongue, liking the feel of their newness there. And in William, I can’t help but see another similarity with his father—he’s yet another Hamilton creating a new country. But I don’t tell him that either. “How extraordinary,” I say instead, surveying the lush greenery covering the mostly flat lands where blue-purple flowers dot the wild grasses as far as the eye can see.

  “I wouldn’t have encouraged you to come here, Mother,” he says, adjusting his hold on the reins. “This isn’t New York. Everything is raw. Though my mine has been in operation for nearly ten years, I only surveyed the town last year, and it is just eight buildings. We’re at the frontier.”

  “Fortunately, I remember what it’s like to live on the frontier,” I say, tightly gripping the rail along the bench seat’s edge. For the transporting of lead from the mines has rendered the roads nearly impassable. I fear the wheels will not withstand the harsh impacts, but William navigates the hazards with competence and obvious experience.

  Then he waves a hand at the land ahead of us. “My partners and I claimed over a thousand acres out here. My furnace was the first in the eastern part of the county. Now miners come in droves to try to make their fortunes.”

  A few buildings come into view, rough hewn and strewn along a river strong enough to operate a gristmill and a sawmill. The village possesses a grocery and a general store, and we pass a small schoolhouse just beyond. In the distance appears the remains of an old fort surrounded by pickets and ditch.

  William tells me it’s called Fort Hamilton, and that gives me pleasure.

  “Welcome to Hamilton’s Diggings,” he says, calling the team to a halt in front of two sturdy log cabins and watching me for a reaction. I make sure not to give him one, even as I wonder how he can possibly live in this place. For his cabin has no glass upon the window openings, and the door stands partly ajar.

  He jumps down from the wagon, then comes round to assist me.

  Entering the little hovel, I find naught but a rude bedstead with some dingy quilts and buffalo robes, an oaken table, a pair of wooden stools, and a few shelves of books. All is as tidy as can be with the wind blowing through the windows and door, which has only a string latch upon it. I step closer to the books, smiling to find the works of Voltaire, in French.

  At forty, William has never married. This cabin makes it clear that he has no intention of doing so. And I worry that he’s going to spend the rest of his life alone.

  Come home with me, I want to say. We’ll make things right.

  But when I turn, I find my son observing us taking in his space, and I can’t say a word. His smile is slow in coming, as if he thinks I won’t approve of his living conditions, and perhaps I don’t, but finally his grin is there illuminated by blue eyes so like Alexander’s.

  But otherwise, he’s different from Alexander in every way. As if by design. And that brings me to why I’ve come. I give Lysbet a look that fortunately she understands. “Let’s go explore the fort,” she says to her husband.

  And when they depart, I turn to my son. “I wish to say something, William, and I need you to hear me.” There’s a hesitancy in his gaze when he nods, as if he’s been anticipating this. “I know what you suspect about your father disappoints you, but he wasn’t a perfect man.”

  “Mother—”

  “Please,” I say, needing him to hear me. “The truth is, William, no union is perfect. We stumble. We fall. We hurt the ones we love.” I think back on Lafayette’s wisdom and draw strength from it. “But the measure of a man, of a life, of a union of man and wife or even country is not in the falling. It’s in the rising back up again to repair what’s broken, to put right what’s wrong. Your father and I did that. We always did that. He never stopped trying until the day he died. And neither will I.”

  William’s gaze is uncertain, and then he blinks and looks away. Swallowing hard, he says, “I’m glad you were able to find your peace with him.” When he looks back at me, his blue eyes are blazing with that achingly familiar illusion of violet. “But I’ve been shaken in my conviction of who I thought he was. Or hoped he was. And there’s no way to repair that, for me. No way to make it right between a father and a son. Not with him gone.”

  The pain in his expression threatens to break my heart, because I’ve felt that pain. I’ve worked the same equation. I’ve tried the same case. But unlike my son, I’ve been able to reach a conclusion, and I share this with him now.

  “Oh, William,” I say, taking his hand. “No man should be judged only for his best act or his worst. By only his greatness or his flaws.” And no woman either, I think. For if my sister did betray me, did it obliterate all the ways in which she’d been my first and most constant friend?

  No, it did not. And I swallow as the thought heals another broken piece inside me.

  “It seems, to me,” I continue, “that the only just way to judge a person is by the sum of their deeds, good and bad. And in the balance, your father did far more good than harm. That’s all any of us can aim to do with our lives.”

  William’s throat bobs. “I was so small when he died that I can’t remember him well. And yet, I . . . I miss him,” he says, as if both admissions pain him.

  Reaching up, I take his face into my trembling hand. The same hand upon whic
h I wear a gold wedding ring inscribed with my name and Alexander’s; a ring that I will never again remove. “I miss him, too. You must know, William. He loved you. And love is a kind of faith. A blessing to everyone it touches. Your father earned my love a thousand times over and I earned his in return. So I ask you to find your peace with your father.”

  William looks at me a long moment, and finally, his expression goes soft. “My love for you allows me to do no other than accede to your wishes, Mother.”

  Then come home with me, I think. But I decide to savor this victory and put that battle off for later. When I know him a little better. Because the years have made him a stranger, I devote every moment of the time I have in getting to know my son.

  He brims with passion as he shows me his smelting furnace and explains the process of removing impurities from the crude lead dug from the ground. As he discusses his work, I hear the echo of Alexander’s zeal in discussing policy and politics. And, like his father, William has found success. Everywhere we go, the people all know William—Wisconsin’s Hamilton, they call him—and respect what he’s built and the man he’s become.

  And, despite my reason for coming here, I do, too.

  When William mentions a place he describes as the great natural wonder of the north, the Falls of St. Anthony, I naturally insist on seeing it. Getting to the falls requires a steamboat ride and an eight-mile climb on horseback over winding trails, and I feel like the girl I once was, exploring the beauty of nature.

  I hear the falls before I see them. God in heaven, the sight is majestic. Multiple falls curve and twist, the surging streams descending from forty or fifty feet onto water and rock below. Spray rises up in great clouds that tickle my face in the breeze, filling me with a newfound vigor.

  William calls over the roar of the water, “The Dakota call the Mississippi hahawakpa, or ‘river of the falls.’ They believe spirits live beneath them.” I can understand the belief, for seeing such miraculous evidence of God’s power imbues me with the feeling of being in the presence of something sacred.

  I am still moved when, later that afternoon, we return to Fort Snelling to find Colonel Campbell and his officers waiting at the entrance in full dress uniforms. For me, as if I was now the Guest of the Nation.

  The colonel offers me his arm and conducts me inside the four-sided fort, where a very fine band plays and an armchair waits upon a carpet. He bids me sit, and then, when the music stops, he speaks to his assembled troops. “We have with us today Mrs. General Hamilton, wife of the hero of Yorktown!” A cheer rises up from the soldiers, and then, with weapons upon their shoulders, the troops march in formation, demonstrating a series of maneuvers. The display goes on for some time, and when it ends, I rise shakily to my feet, too moved to speak. For most of these men hadn’t even been born while Alexander Hamilton still lived, yet have honored me this way.

  And in front of Alexander’s son, who most needed to see it.

  When September brings cooler air and fields covered in lavender aster, my visit with dear William is near its end. Winter will soon choke the rivers with ice, making travel impossible.

  I have to go home. I’ve intended, all along, to ask William to come, but now I realize that I can’t. I can’t ask him to come home with me . . . because William is home. I see that now. It would be wrong to deny him his place here, where new possibility hangs in the air. And yet, the realization is bittersweet, because I know I shall never return. I shall never see him again.

  And I think he knows it, too.

  “Mother,” he says gravely, planting a kiss atop my head. “I shall always be at your side, even as I make my own path here.” His voice is tight with emotion, and all I can do is clutch at his strong, calloused hands.

  He’s happy here. And how can I want anything more for my children than to have the liberty to pursue their happiness? It’s what their father lived and died for.

  And it is enough.

  * * *

  This aged petitioner, now numbering nearly fourscore and ten years, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, and the daughter of Philip Schuyler, still cherishing an ardent attachment for the husband of her youth, wishes, before she, too, passes away, to see his publications spread before the American people. Hamilton must be classed among the men who have best known the vital principles and the fundamental conditions of a government. There is not in the constitution of the United States an element to which Hamilton has not powerfully contributed.

  —CONGRESSIONAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE LIBRARY ON ELIZABETH HAMILTON’S PETITION

  Washington City

  July 4, 1848

  “Do you think they’ve patched up their quarrel?” I ask Mrs. Madison, who sits beside me in a carriage as it slowly rolls through streets lined with thousands of onlookers waving American flags.

  We’re riding together to the ceremony celebrating both the Fourth of July and the laying of the cornerstone to the new monument to the memory of George Washington. We’re accorded positions of prominence in the celebration because we’re the only remaining icons of the founding age. The only dignitaries left who personally knew the Father of His Country.

  Dolley and I are both turned out as elegantly as two aged widows can be. Me in my fanciest bonnet. The former first lady in a silk taffeta gown, black like my own.

  I live in Washington City now. So does Dolley. And she’s still keen for gossip, leaning close enough that the white feather in her turban tickles my cheek. “Has who patched up which quarrel?”

  “Why, our husbands in heaven, of course,” I reply.

  She laughs and grasps my hand. “Oh, my friend. I’m sure they have.” Dolley pauses a moment before adding, “Mr. Madison never forgot that the Constitution owed much of its existence to yours. And he once confided in me that no one but Hamilton could match him, nor force him to work so hard to make an argument. It’s my belief that our husbands had no peers even amongst the other great men of their time.”

  The truth of the sentiment lodges a knot of emotion in my throat. Indeed, it is their friendship that has brought us—and our country—to this day. For though the idea to build a monument to Washington was as old as the nation, and attempts to raise sufficient funds for the cause were nearly two decades old, it was not until the society behind the monument’s erection invited us to take up the mantle of memory that those efforts finally bore fruit.

  Working alongside Dolley, I organized dinners, teas, fairs, and every manner of entertainment. Adopting the same martial spirit that I’d once used to raise funds for widows, I’d cajoled contributions from passersby and merchants on my daily two-mile walk about the city. And at my annual New Year’s Day open house—now one of the most anticipated and attended gaieties of the holiday season in Washington—I even required a donation to drink wine from the silver cooler General Washington gifted to us, raising a not insignificant sum for the honor!

  I’ve used my newfound celebrity as a relic of the revolution to achieve a different end, too. Over teas with Washington’s ladies and in salons in my parlor and even at a dinner with President and Mrs. Polk at the White House, I won support for a petition I submitted to Congress requesting that its library purchase my husband’s papers and take over the task of preserving his legacy. I won from them, too, the long overdue acknowledgment that my husband was amongst this nation’s fathers.

  I hope this victory means Alexander will be remembered when I am gone.

  And so it is that we, all of us, have arrived at this great moment. Cannon fire echoes against the bright blue sky, part of a series of salutes that has been ringing out all morning, and church bells chime from every quarter of the city.

  Amidst what appear to be tens of thousands of spectators, carriages deliver to the designated site representatives of America—from the president and cabinet, to military units decorated in their proud, bright uniforms, to fire companies and civic organizations with their colorful banners, to delegations of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and other tribes w
earing silver medals depicting Washington. So as to command a view of all the public buildings, the monument is to be built upon a hill overlooking both the Potomac River and the White House.

  But all I can see, all I can hear, is the great crowd of my fellow countrymen. Singing, clapping, and chanting Washington’s name as our carriage comes to a halt.

  Dolley is assisted down first by some notable, and then an exceedingly tall gentleman in a top hat comes forth to escort me toward the striped awning where we are meant to sit. He holds out his hand, and I grasp it, peering into dark intelligent eyes.

  “Thank you, Congressman Lincoln,” I say.

  “It is my honor, Mrs. General Hamilton,” he replies.

  We make a comical sight walking together, as I’ve become so bent in my old age that he’s forced to stoop to speak to me. “I wished to mention, madam, that in recently rereading The Federalist, I am struck again, as one cannot help but be, by your late husband’s devotion to the national good. Though I fear that he possessed a prescience which too few of our contemporaries share.”

  “Oh?” I ask, wishing to make him elaborate.

  And he does, intoning Alexander’s words, “‘If these states should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown—”

  “—would have frequent and violent contest with each other,” I finish, for I know the words by heart. “Federalist Number Six.”

  A smile brightens Lincoln’s rugged countenance. “Indeed. And ‘every man who loves liberty ought to cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America.’”

  “That was Mr. Madison,” I say, unable to suppress a smirk. “Federalist Number Forty-One. But I’ll give you another chance. What do you say of Federalist Number Nine?”

  “Are you testing me, Mrs. Hamilton?” he asks with a twinkle in his eye.

  “I am,” I admit.

  “‘A firm union will be of the utmost importance to the peace and liberty of the states,’” he quotes, then leans in closer. “Have I passed?”