Alexander Hamilton (106 page)

Monroe was enraged by Hamilton’s truculence. He told Hamilton that if he wanted to convert this dispute into a personal affair—in other words, a duel—he was fully prepared to oblige him. He took refuge behind a hairsplitting distinction. He said that while he had recorded Clingman’s statement without comment, he had not endorsed it. In a stinging rejoinder, Hamilton pointed out that for Monroe to have “recorded and preserved in secret” this accusatory statement was scarcely a friendly action. At this juncture in late July, Hamilton was weighing whether or not to publish his pamphlet. Monroe’s obstinacy apparently pushed him over the edge. “The public explanation to which I am driven must decide, as far as public opinion is concerned, between us,” Hamilton told him. “Painful as the appeal will be in one respect, I know that in the principal point it must completely answer my purpose.”
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In early August, the feud between Hamilton and Monroe took on the formality of an affair of honor. Both men denied wanting to duel but stood ready if necessary. What are we to make of all this blowing and bluster? In their endless exchange of letters that summer, Monroe could have let Hamilton off the hook by stating that the veracity of the Clingman memo rested on Clingman’s credibility alone. But Monroe was still smarting over his ignominious recall from Paris and did not wish to make life easy for Hamilton. On the other hand, it is equally noteworthy that Hamilton was intransigent and made it hard for Monroe to compromise without losing face.

On August 6, Monroe sent Aaron Burr a copy of his correspondence with Hamilton and tried to enlist his aid to avert a duel. Obviously, he thought Burr was friendly enough with Hamilton to act as a mediator. Monroe made it plain that while he would not shrink from a duel, he would gladly avoid one if done “with propriety.”
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Just as Hamilton thought Monroe was motivated by partisan purposes, so Monroe thought Hamilton goaded on by “party friends.” “In truth I have no desire to persecute this man,” Monroe told Burr, “though he justly merits it.... I had no hand in the publication, was sorry for it, and think he has acted, by drawing the public attention to it and making it an aff[ai]r of more consequence than it was in itself, very indiscreetly.”
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Monroe did not understand just how upset the illegitimate Hamilton was about anything that affected his reputation. In a letter delivered by Burr, Monroe told Hamilton that he had no intention of challenging him to a duel. At this, Hamilton temporarily backed down, saying that any further action on his own part would be improper.

The most fair-minded advice in the dispute came from Aaron Burr, who seemed devoid of the petty, vindictive spirit that actuated the chief adversaries. Unlike the Jeffersonians, he did not doubt Hamilton’s integrity. That August, he told Monroe that he hoped his correspondence with Hamilton would be burned. “If you and Muhlenberg really believe, as I do and think you must, that H[amilton] is innocent of the charge of any concern in speculation with Reynolds, it is my opinion that it will be an act of magnanimity and justice to say so in a joint certificate....Resentment is more dignified when justice is rendered to its object.”
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Had he already hated Hamilton, Burr could have egged on Monroe and engineered a duel in which Hamilton might have died. Instead, he had the grace and decency to plead for fairness toward Hamilton. He was the one upright actor in the whole affair.

In late August, the appearance of Hamilton’s
Observations
pamphlet revived the feud with Monroe, which sputtered on for months. After poring over the pamphlet, Madison reassured Monroe that it did not threaten his honor. Monroe would not listen. In early December, he reactivated the dormant feud by sending a provocative letter to Hamilton. “In my judgment,” he told Hamilton, “you ought either to have been satisfied with the explanations I gave you or to have invited me to the field [of honor].”
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Burr was authorized to act as a second in any duel but let the matter quietly lapse. Among other things, Burr did not think that Hamilton would actually fight, a misperception that may have influenced his later decisions in his own encounter with Hamilton. In fact, Hamilton drafted a letter to Monroe in January 1798, accepting a duel if necessary. Fortunately, the confrontation petered out, and Hamilton never sent the note. As a result of this and other dealings with him, Burr came away with a lower opinion of Monroe. When Monroe’s name later surfaced as a possible presidential candidate, Burr jotted down this scathing assessment of him:

Naturally dull and stupid; extremely illiterate; indecisive to a degree that would be incredible to one who did not know him; pusillanimous and, of course, hypocritical; has no opinion on any subject and will be always under the government of the worst men; pretends, as I am told, to some knowledge of military matters, but never commanded a platoon nor was ever fit to command one....As a lawyer, Monroe was far below mediocrity.
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The first advertisement for Hamilton’s pamphlet appeared in the
Gazette of the United States
on July 31, yet it was not actually published until August 25. Why this curious hiatus after Hamilton had rushed to complete his defense? Some time may have elapsed as Hamilton rounded up affidavits, but the paramount reason was probably simpler: Eliza was pregnant with their sixth child. Because of her earlier miscarriage, it would be their first child in five years. Hamilton must have dreaded that exposure of his actions might provoke another miscarriage, as had occurred when he rode off to the Whiskey Rebellion three years earlier. Hamilton’s delay in issuing his pamphlet gave Eliza the necessary reprieve. On August 4, 1797, she gave birth to a healthy baby, William Stephen Hamilton, who was baptized by the Reverend Benjamin Moore at Trinity Church. “Mrs. Hamilton has lately added another boy to our stock,” Hamilton told Washington in late August, after receiving the wine cooler. “She and the child are both well.”
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The name may have celebrated Hamilton’s new rapport with his Scottish uncle and paid tribute to his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Governor Stephen Van Rensselaer, then grieving over the death of his eldest daughter.

The Republican press made the Reynolds exposé as hellish as possible for Eliza. “Art thou a wife?” the
Aurora
asked her. “See him, whom thou has chosen for the partner of this life, lolling in the lap of a harlot!!”
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Eliza never commented publicly on the Reynolds scandal, but we can deduce her general reaction from several snippets of information. On July 13, while Hamilton was in Philadelphia, John Barker Church sent him a letter that described Eliza’s response to the open letter just published by Callender: “Eliza is well. She put into my hand the newspaper with James Thomson Callender’s letter to you, but it makes not the least impression on her, only that she considers the whole knot of those opposed to you to be [scoundrels].”
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This drives home several points: that Eliza was outraged at Hamilton’s critics; that she agreed that a conspiracy was afoot; and that her faith in her husband’s integrity was unshaken. Of course, at this point Hamilton had not yet published his own pamphlet, spilling out lurid details of his adultery. The
Aurora
later screamed, “He acknowledges... that he violated the sacred sanctuary of his own house, by taking an unprincipled woman during the absence of his wife and family to his bed.”
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But already Eliza showed flashes of the militant loyalty to her husband that was to distinguish her widowhood. Church also mentioned to Hamilton that Angelica was sick: “My Angelica is not very well. She complains that her throat is a little sore. I hope it will not be of long duration.”
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While Hamilton was pouring out his confessions in Philadelphia, he showed a special solicitude for Eliza. He knew that his pamphlet, at least temporarily, would shatter her heroic image of him, and he must have trembled with apprehension. He wrote to Eliza that he eagerly looked forward “to her embrace and to the company of our beloved Angelica. I am very anxious about you both—you for an obvious reason and her because Mr. Church mentioned in a letter to me that she complained of
a sore throat.
Let me charge you and her to be well and happy, for you comprise all my felicity. Adieu angel.”
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Two days later, Hamilton wrote again and said he would return to New York the next day. “Love to Angelica & Church,” he wrote. “I shall return full freighted with it for my dear brunettes.”
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Eliza decided to have the baby in Albany. A guilt-ridden Hamilton escorted her to the sloop that transported her up the Hudson, but he did not join her. Probably his presence was then too distressing. Angelica saw Hamilton right after he returned from the boat, and she sent Eliza a consoling note. Angelica always wrote to her as the worldly, protective older sister, often calling her “my dear child.” She knew Eliza was pure hearted and easily wounded. On the other hand, Angelica was willing to make allowances for her brother-in-law.

When [Hamilton] returned from the sloop, he was very much out of spirits and you were the subject of his conversation the rest of the evening. Catherine [Angelica’s daughter] played at the harpsichord for him and at 10 o’clock he went home. Tranquillize your kind and good heart, my dear Eliza, for I have the most positive assurance from Mr. Church that the dirty fellow who has caused us all some uneasiness and wounded your feelings, my dear love, is effectually silenced. Merit, virtue, and talents must have enemies and [are] always exposed to envy so that, my Eliza, you see the penalties attending the position of so amiable a man. All this you would not have suffered if you had married into a family less
near the sun.
But then [you would have missed?] the pride, the pleasure, the nameless satisfactions.
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Angelica signed the note, “With all my heart and redoubled tenderness.”
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Eliza did not buckle under the strain. One imagines that she had tolerated some discreet philandering from Hamilton before but not such open scandal. Did she see life with Hamilton the way Angelica did—that marriage to such an exceptional man entailed a large quota of pain and suffering that was abundantly compensated by his love, intelligence, and charm? The rest of her life suggests that this was indeed the case. The publication of Hamilton’s pamphlet must have been inexpressibly mortifying to Eliza when she discovered how vulgar and uneducated Maria Reynolds was and how breezily Hamilton had deceived her during the affair, urging her to stay in Albany for her health. Whatever pain she suffered, however, Eliza never surrendered her conviction that her husband was a noble patriot who deserved the veneration of his countrymen and had been crucified by a nefarious band. Her later work for orphans, the decades spent compiling her husband’s papers and supervising his biography, her constant delight in talking about him, her pride in Washington’s wine cooler, her fight to stake Hamilton’s claim to authorship of the farewell address— these and many, many other things testify to unflinching love for her husband. And the most convincing proof of all was the undying hatred that she bore for James Monroe.

Just a couple of weeks after Hamilton published the Reynolds pamphlet, he experienced a medical scare with his eldest son, Philip, that may have seemed like heavenly retribution for his wayward conduct. The fifteen-year-old Philip, an uncommonly handsome and intelligent boy, was the most promising of the children. In early September, he “was attacked with a severe, bilious fever, which soon assumed a typhus character,” said Dr. David Hosack, a professor of medicine and botany at Columbia College, who was summoned to attend the boy.
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Hamilton had to leave for Hartford, Connecticut, to represent New York State in a case in federal court. As soon as he reached Rye, thirty miles north of New York City, he wrote to his wife in a state of distress: “I am arrived here, my dear Eliza, in good health, but very anxious about my dear Philip. I pray heaven to restore him and in every event to support you.” He recommended a cold-bath treatment not unlike the one used by Edward Stevens to cure him of yellow fever: “Also, my Betsey, how much do I regret to be separated from you at such a juncture. When will the time come that I shall be exempt from the necessity of leaving my dear family? God bless my beloved and all my dear children. AH.”
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As Philip’s condition worsened, Hosack began to despair of his survival. Eliza grew so distraught that the good doctor banished her to another room so “that she might not witness the last struggles of her son.”
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He sent an express courier to fetch Hamilton from Hartford so he would arrive before the boy died. Meanwhile, Philip grew delirious, lost his pulse, and became comatose. Hosack managed to revive him by immersing him in hot baths of Peruvian bark and rum, then wrapping him in warm, dry blankets. Hosack later described Hamilton’s return as one of his most gratifying moments as a physician:

In the course of the night, General Hamilton arrived at his home under the full expectation that his son was no more. But to his great joy he still lived. When the father knew what had been done and the means that had been employed . . . he immediately came to my room where I was sleeping, and although I was then personally unknown to him, awakened me and taking me by the hand, his eyes suffused with tears of joy, he observed, “My dear Sir, I could not remain in my own house without first tendering to you my grateful acknowledgment for the valuable services you have rendered my family in the preservation of my child.”
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Hosack paid tribute to the “tender feeling” and “exquisite sensibility” that Hamilton showed as he assumed the role of maternal care. In tending his son, Hamilton was both nurse and physician, leaving the doctor amazed by both his medical knowledge and his tenderness toward his children.
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Hosack recalled, “From that moment, he devoted himself most assiduously to the care of his son, administering with his own hand every dose of medicine or cup of nourishment that was required. I may add that this was his custom in every important case of sickness that occurred in his family.”
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This was not a family that Hamilton was prepared to abandon, and whether from penance for the Reynolds affair or from his usual paternal dedication, he was very attentive to Eliza and the children in the coming years.
THIRTY-ONE