The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

by Thomas Fleming

  At first, Hamilton tried to obtain from the senator and the two congressmen a statement that they had fully believed his explanation of the Reynolds imbroglio. Muhlenberg and Venable promptly complied. But James Monroe was not inclined to do any favors for Hamilton. He was dealing with grievous political wounds of his own. President Washington, in an attempt to better relations with France, had sent Monroe to Paris as America’s ambassador. Monroe had performed unsatisfactorily, often siding with the French against his own government. Washington had recalled him—and Monroe had no doubt that Hamilton had persuaded him to do it.

  Monroe told Hamilton he would confirm the first statement (“Our suspicions were removed.”), but he curtly declined to say he disbelieved Clingman. An enraged Hamilton accused Monroe of breaking his solemn promise and leaking the documents. Vitriolic letters flew back and forth, and the two men came close to fighting a duel. Only the intervention of Senator Aaron Burr, who said he believed Hamilton’s version, averted an exchange of gunfire.

  Still infuriated, Hamilton decided to do what he had repeatedly done with his critics during his years as secretary of the treasury: silence them with an avalanche of facts. Retreating to Philadelphia in July 1797, he began working sixteen hours a day on a refutation of Callender’s slurs. The result was a mini-book, ninety-five pages long; about a third was a detailed history of his obsession with Maria; the rest was letters and affidavits confirming the truth of what he had said and done.

  In its wild-eyed way, the pamphlet was a masterful example of Hamilton’s thrust-and-parry style. He opened his case with a crucial question: if he had been a crook, out to make a fortune, why would he choose such a penny-ante operator as James Reynolds as a confederate? He claimed the whole story was the result of a “conspiracy of vice against virtue.” The virtue was on the side of the Federalist Party, the vice on the side of the Jeffersonian Republicans, whom Hamilton called “Jacobins”—the French radicals who had guillotined twenty thousand mostly innocent people during their infamous reign of terror.

  Seldom, if ever in the history of politics had any man been pursued with such rancor and venom for so little cause, Hamilton declared. But he was sustained by his “proud consciousness of innocence.” He was, of course, referring to his financial integrity—the bulwark of his fame.21

  A genuine confession of the heart—if not the head—lay semiconcealed beneath these bellows of defiance: “This confession is not made without a blush…I can never cease to condemn myself for the pang which it may inflict in a busom eminently entitled to all my gratitude, fidelity and love.”

  These touching words went unnoticed by most people. Hamilton’s friends were almost unanimously appalled by his interminable narrative. Jefferson, Madison, and their fellow Republicans were delighted. Madison called it “a curious specimen of the ingenious folly of its author.” Jefferson maintained that the narrative “strengthened rather than weakened the suspicions that Hamilton was guilty of the speculations.” James Thomson Callender mocked the author with practiced savagery. He said Hamilton was whining that he was grossly charged with being a speculator “whereas I am only an adulterer.” He again accused Hamilton of forging the Reynolds letters, pointing out inconsistencies in Maria’s supposed misspellings and her unusual vocabulary. Some historians have been inclined to agree with him.22

  One reader of the pamphlet had a very different reaction. Within a week of its publication, a package containing a silver wine cooler arrived at the Hamilton home on Cedar Street in New York City. The gift was from George Washington. The ex-president said he was sending it “not for any intrinsic value the thing possesses, but as a token of my sincere regard and friendship for you and as a remembrance of me…I pray you to present my best wishes, in which Mrs. Washington joins me, to Mrs. Hamilton and the family, and that you would be persuaded that with every sentiment of the highest regard, I remain your sincere friend and affectionate honorable servant.”23

  These astonishing words—every one of them carefully chosen—were Washington’s way of saying that he was still a believer in Hamilton’s integrity and his patriotism. There are biblical overtones here—the American father is forgiving his prodigal son.

  VIII

  The ostensible reason for Washington’s gift was the birth of another Hamilton son. But the baby went unmentioned in the ex-president’s note—underscoring his deeper reason for the present. For Hamilton, Elizabeth’s pregnancy had been an additional complication in these months of political and emotional upheaval. In 1794, she had suffered a miscarriage when Hamilton rode off to western Pennsylvania to crush a tax rebellion that many people feared would escalate into a civil war. Hamilton was concerned that his Maria Reynolds confession might trigger another possibly fatal miscarriage. He seems to have delayed the publication of his booklet until his wife gave birth to a sturdy boy on August 4, 1797.

  Another complication in Hamilton’s life was the presence of Angelica Schuyler Church. Angelica had persuaded her husband to return to America with her. Church was immensely wealthy by now. They bought a magnificent house in New York and began entertaining with royal panache. Angelica’s stylish gowns and dripping diamonds reminded more than one New York Jeffersonian Republican of British arrogance. When the Reynolds confession exploded, Angelica was fiercely loyal to Hamilton.

  Once the baby was born, Hamilton told Betsey about the forthcoming confession. She decided to retreat with the infant to her parents’ home in Albany. This was a graphic statement of how deeply Hamilton had wounded her. Angelica, perhaps sensing that she was partly responsible for the affair with Maria, did her utmost to repair the damage. She wrote her sister a long letter, describing how depressed Hamilton was when he returned from escorting Betsey to the Hudson River sloop to Albany. “You were the subject of his conversation the rest of the evening,” she wrote. She begged Eliza (the name that gradually replaced the youthful “Betsey”) to “tranquilize your kind and good heart” and accept her ordeal as almost inevitable for a woman married to a man who achieved fame. If she had married less “near the sun [her italics],” Eliza would never have experienced “the pride, the pleasure, the nameless satisfactions.”24

  In her girlhood home, Elizabeth tried to ignore the shrieks of the Republican press when the confession appeared. In the Aurora, Benjamin Franklin Bache cried: “He acknowledges…that he violated the sacred sanctuary of his own house, by taking an unprincipled woman…to his bed.” New York editor James Cheetham expressed shock that Hamilton had “rambled for 18 months in this scene of pollution and squandered about $1,200 to conceal the intrigue from his loving spouse.” Another Republican paper found humor in Mrs. Reynolds’s “violent attack” on “the virtue of the immaculate secretary…in Mr. Hamilton’s own house.”25

  On her knees, Eliza Hamilton sought the sort of help that was beyond the reach of her worldly older sister. She struggled to forgive her sinner husband, as Jesus had forgiven the woman taken in adultery. It was not easy. Only a few weeks earlier, in July 1797, Eliza had come across a copy of the Aurora in which Bache had mockingly asked how she could tolerate Maria Reynolds as her husband’s mistress. Eliza had handed the newspaper to John Barker Church with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal. Church had told Hamilton that the accusation “made not the least impression on her.” She assumed the story was concocted by a conspiracy of scoundrels. Now she had to somehow accept the harsh truth.26

  Hamilton did his utmost to testify to his continuing love for her by becoming extraordinarily attentive to their children. He hoped Eliza would see this as a kind of penance—as well as a way of saying that their wounded love still shared this form of devotion. About a month after the Reynolds pamphlet was published, their oldest son, fifteen-year-old Philip, contracted typhoid fever. Hamilton left him in the care of a physician he did not know well, Dr. David Hosack, and departed to argue a legal case in Hartford, Connecticut.

  Philip grew alarmingly ill, and Hosack sent a messenger galloping to Hartford urging Hamilton to re
turn immediately. As Philip’s pulse fluttered and his eyes grew vacant with impending death, his mother was so violently upset that Hosack decided on extreme measures. He immersed the dying boy in a tub of hot water full of Peruvian bark and literally restored him to life. Hamilton arrived later in the crisis-thick night and thanked Hosack with tears streaming down his cheeks.

  For the next several days, Hamilton became Philip’s nurse. Dr. Hosack later wrote that he administered “every dose of medicine or cup of nourishment that was required.”27 But this attempt to make amends would soon be overshadowed by a new opportunity to pursue that irresistible prize, fame.

  LOVE’S SECRET TRIUMPH

  Over the next year, the Hamiltons struggled to restore their damaged marriage. The Jeffersonian Republican press was no help. Robert Troup told a mutual friend, “For this twelvemonth past this poor man…has been violently and infamously abused by the democratical party. His ill-judged pamphlet has done him incomparable injury.”1

  For a while he remained a power behind the scenes thanks to his influence over President Adams’s cabinet. But Hamilton repeatedly told Eliza that he had lost his enthusiasm for public life. “In proportion as I discover the worthlessness of other pursuits, the value of my Eliza and of domestic happiness rises in my estimation,” he told her. When Elizabeth made another visit to Albany, her absence made him realize “how necessary you are to me.” He looked in vain for “that satisfaction which you alone can bestow.” When one of New York’s senators resigned and Federalist governor John Jay offered to appoint Hamilton in his place, he ostentatiously declined.

  In 1798, George Washington offered Hamilton command of the army that Congress had created to confront the threat of a French attack. Hamilton accepted instantly. It was a temptation he could not resist. It turned Washington’s forgiveness for the Maria Reynolds affair into a public political redemption. Hamilton again became a contender for the loftiest ranks of fame.

  The appointment soon became the most time-consuming and controversial public office Hamilton ever held. Eliza Hamilton must have wondered about her husband’s apostrophes to the joys of domestic happiness while he traveled continually to Philadelphia and other cities to confer with fellow generals and stimulate recruiting. Meanwhile, President John Adams’s hatred and the opposition of the Jeffersonian Republicans transformed what seemed the realization of a lifelong dream into a nightmare. Adams avoided a war with France and soon dissolved General Hamilton’s army. Hamilton retaliated with his savage attack on Adams, virtually guaranteeing Thomas Jefferson’s election as president. Almost simultaneously, George Washington died, leaving Hamilton without the huge advantage of his support. In a single stunning year, Hamilton went from being the commander of the American Army and the leader of the ruling Federalist Party into an ex-general and a defeated, discredited politician.

  Throughout this roller-coaster ride on fame’s treacherous trajectory, Hamilton remained conscious that he was a man with a marital debt to pay, even though he seemed to be in danger of defaulting on it. His letters to Eliza were a mixture of affection and apology for the hours he was spending away from her and the children. He frequently reiterated his devotion. “Indeed, my dear Eliza…your virtues more and more endear you to me and experience more and more convinces me that true happiness is only to be found in the bosom of one’s own family.” He wrote these words in 1801, when the Hamiltons had been married twenty years. In this perspective, the words acquire a somewhat artificial quality. Hamilton is virtually confessing that for most of these twenty years, Eliza’s virtues had not endeared her to him. Worse, it carelessly repeats the same sentiments he had written in the immediate aftermath of the Reynolds confession. The letter underscores the sad truth that Eliza was never Hamilton’s dearest friend at the level of sharing achieved by the Washingtons or John and Abigail Adams.

  That same year, 1801, the year of Jefferson’s elevation to the presidency, brought excruciating personal grief. Hamilton’s oldest son, Philip, now nineteen, got into a nasty quarrel with one of Thomas Jefferson’s triumphant supporters, a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer named George Eacker. Philip took exception to a Fourth of July speech Eacker had made, in which he portrayed President Jefferson as the rescuer of the Constitution against a coup d’etat by power-hungry General Hamilton. Philip and a friend named Richard Price climbed into Eacker’s box at the Park Theater and called him some extremely unpleasant names. Both intruders were probably drunk; around this time, Robert Troup, still one of Hamilton’s close friends, referred to Philip as a “sad rake.”2

  The confrontation led Eacker to call the two intruders “damned rascals.” This was a term no would-be gentleman of the era could tolerate. Philip and his friend Price promptly challenged Eacker to a duel. The lawyer exchanged four shots with Price, without spilling a drop of blood. Then it was Philip’s turn. Hamilton advised his son to fire in the air, a tactic called a delope. This alternative would enable Philip to escape the odium of killing Eacker. The delope was also a show of superior courage and often a statement of contempt for an opponent. Hamilton did not think he was putting his son in mortal danger. Only about one man in five was killed in a duel—and Eacker had already demonstrated he was a poor shot.

  The two young men met in Paulus Hook, on the New Jersey shore of the Hudson River. Though dueling had been outlawed in New York, it was still legal in the Garden State. Philip, obedient to his father’s advice, waited for Eacker to fire. But Eacker also waited, obviously hoping that the quarrel could be settled with an apology. Finally, to draw Eacker’s fire, Philip leveled his pistol but did not fire. Eacker’s bullet ripped through Philip’s body and lodged in his arm. The young man died in agony twenty-four hours later. Beside him on the deathbed lay his weeping father and mother, frantically clutching him in their arms.

  At the funeral, General Hamilton could barely stand erect. “Never did I see a man so completely overwhelmed with grief,” said Robert Troup. Not long after the funeral, Philip’s beautiful younger sister, Angelica, had a mental breakdown. She sank into a miasma of fear and confusion that made her incapable of a normal life. On the harp and piano, she played over and over again songs that Philip had loved.

  Watching Eliza struggling for the strength to accept this double tragedy and continue to be a mother to their seven surviving children, Hamilton began to wish he still retained his youthful religious faith. It would give him a bond with his wife that was deeper than the dutiful love that seems to have been the best he could offer her.

  II

  Angelica Church was still very much in the picture, tempting Hamilton to reach for the consolation of the ecstatic eros that had led him into Maria Reynolds’s arms. Angelica’s admiration and devotion remained intense in spite of Hamilton’s fall from power. She made no secret of her hope that he could and would somehow transform his present humiliation into an even more spectacular return to fame’s summit.

  In 1804, a worried Robert Troup began telling friends that Hamilton and Angelica had resumed their once torrid affair. Conclusive evidence has never been found, but Hamilton was obviously spending a great deal of time with her. Since 1798, Hamilton saw Elizabeth and the children only on weekends. They were living at The Grange, a handsome mansion he had built on Harlem Heights. He spent his weeknights at their New York City home on Cedar Street. Angelica was living only a few blocks away in the Church mansion, ignored by her dour husband, who spent almost all his nights gambling for high stakes at various card games.

  Angelica—and Hamilton—listened to their mutual friend, Gouverneur Morris, who had accepted the appointment to the U.S. Senate that Hamilton had rejected. Morris’s loathing for Jefferson and his low-or-no-tax minimal style of government was pervasive. The disgusted senator repeatedly predicted the country’s imminent collapse. Not a few of Hamilton’s Federalist friends in New England were saying similar things. They feared that President Jefferson’s 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France was going to give the Virginian the power
to create more states that would owe their allegiance to him. Rather than tolerate becoming a minority, the Yankees were proposing to secede from the union.

  In 1804, the American political scene underwent a dramatic upheaval. President Jefferson and his vice president, Aaron Burr, quarreled, and Burr tried to launch a third political party, composed of moderates from both sides. He called it “a union of honest men.” As a first step, Burr announced he would run for the governorship of New York. He intimated that if he won, he would not be averse to joining the New England secession movement.

  Hamilton detested and feared Burr even more than he loathed Jefferson. He considered Burr a demagogue and thought his third party was a sham. He was especially troubled by Burr’s tacit support of the secession movement, which Hamilton deplored. Hamilton tried to rally New York’s Federalists behind another gubernatorial candidate. They ignored him, underscoring how totally political power had slipped from his grasp. Hamilton was so disgusted by this rejection, he announced in the New York Evening Post that he would never again accept public office in either the state or federal governments. But he added a very significant exception: he would be willing to serve “in a civil or foreign war.”

  President Jefferson urged his followers in New York, led by Hamilton’s old enemy Governor George Clinton, to destroy Aaron Burr. In one of the most viciously partisan campaigns on record, they smeared Burr as an embezzler of his legal clients, a womanizer who had destroyed dozens of marriages, and an abuser of the men he commanded during the Revolution. Burr lost badly, leaving him as powerless as Hamilton.

  Deeply depressed, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel for the harsh things he had said during his attempt to rally Federalists against the vice president. Hovering over the challenge was the knowledge both men possessed of New England’s plan to secede. If the Yankees acted on it, there would be a civil war. From it would emerge a victorious general who would restore the union by force of arms. If that man possessed political wisdom as well as military skills, he would achieve transcendent fame as the rescuer of the republic.