Cat Wrangling For Christmas

Mozart’s Wife Intimate Mozart

aka Mozart's Wife

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I'm writing about our primary Christmas present, Tony from Long Island, because this little devil is just about a full time project at the moment. Tony is the new kitty kid in our household, bringing our total to three. His evolving relationships with our older felines is about all that's doing around at our house this past few weeks.

Here's little Tony when he first came, sitting on my knee.

Tony arrived in early December. The agreement between my husband and me was that if I took him from friends who already had one too many cats, he would represent our major "house" gift. He came


When Tony arrived--a long day's round trip for his tender-hearted rescuers from Bayshore--he was still small. However, like the monster in 20 Million Miles to Earth, he's grown by leaps and bounds.

Tony has been assisted in this astonishing growth spurt by lots of Purina Kitten Chow(c) and the testicular rocket-fuel contained in two cute gray and white fuzzy balls placed tidily beneath his ringed smoke-gray tail. The presence of these feline superchargers adds another element of uncertainty to our cat integration story. Our elder cats (both 9 years, one with muscular-skeletal issues and the other with PTSD) can scent that this young tom is in super-hero mode, all strength, activity and wacky, climbing the walls cat-a-tude.

Tony at Doctor Mimnaugh's office for his first check-up

His energy level is a bit much for his humans, too, as we are not getting any younger ourselves. He and Willy-Yum had fun playing for a couple of days, but then, I have come to believe, Willy-Yum over-exerted himself and hurt his already weak and injured back. This left him limping and hissing and most definitely not wanting to be jumped upon. This abrupt rejection, in turn, hurt the kitten's feelings.

With those afore-mentioned super-chargers attached, Tony decided to chase and wrestle with the one who had first been fun to romp with and who now, inexplicably, was refusing. That rough play led to Willy-Yum hiding under the bed and not eating. And that led to his kitty parents, who'd only seen the play part of the new relationship, pushing the panic button and taking Willy to the vet for a blood panel.  After we got the bill, I knew that the "Christmas present" agreement was a realistic one, at least as far as keeping our budget under some semblance of control went.

Willy after an impressive leap onto the dryer

We have learned that Willy was not as strong (or maybe even as young) as we'd thought, and that he did indeed have some lurking physical problems we had not known about before. When you take an elder cat from a Kill Shelter as we had done with him, you're most likely getting a pig in a poke. While Willy is a great lap cat, he'd also been frisky and playful. We'd never expected that the addition of a kitten would be so physically hard on him.

Fortunately, I'd been smart enough to get  new laser for red dot games and a new feather toy, so that I can give Tony some of the exercise he desperately longs for. Years ago, in another age, we might have let this rambunctious boy outside, but this has begun to feel owner irresponsibility. First off, this sweet and absolutely NOT streetwise boy could instantly get himself killed or lost--as in "curiosity killed the ... ".  Besides, who knows what feats of ill-advised daring those testicles might urge him to undertake in the exciting out of doors?

So, until we get those fractious appendages are removed--we are counting down the days to the surgery date--I'm doing a lot of cat wrangling. This means supplying litter boxes all over the house, as well as beds and dishes of food and water in various rooms, and these must be washed and refreshed daily. Sometimes Willy-Yum and I are in my bed room for some private time; sometimes Tony is in his bedroom for a time out; sometimes Kimi has to be carried out of the cellar, is her default PTSD retreat. Afterward, she must be placed gently on the couch, combed and brushed a little and protected until Tony's interest goes elsewhere.

Kimi, our anxious girl

We are making use of the elusive antics of the red dot and the tease toys, too. In short, Kitty Mom and Dad are kept pretty busy, while, at the same time, trying not to be "helicopter parents," and allow the cats to work out things for themselves. It's much like adopting a kid in many ways, this delicate business of integrating another sensitive being into our home.  We're doing our best to be responsible, thoughtful caretakers of all of our animal companions.

While this may all sound a bit over the top, as the little old woman next door used to say about her pets, "They are a whole lotta company." and so they are! And if I'd wanted a "new toy" to entertain me, I've certainly got one in Tony. We've never had a cat who watched T.V. before--I mean ALL television--not just birds and small mammals--Tony watches everything, from cop shows to football games. We have to keep the squirt gun handy in order to prevent him hurling himself into the screen.

He's going to be a great cat, our little Tony the Tiger! We think he's pretty great Christmas present, despite all the work involved. 

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~~Juliet Waldron

All my books, from historical fantasy to real, old-fashioned historical novels:

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The Burr-Hamilton Duel ~ A few thoughts.

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We're approaching July 11, the anniversary date of the Burr-Hamilton duel. During the Revolution, these two men were much alike, young, brilliant, ambitious brothers in arms. It didn’t take long after 1792 for them to move to opposite sides of the playing field.

Aaron Burr was born into a leading Connecticut family. He was a descendant of Aaron Burr, Senior, a Presbyterian minister and second president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton). His mother, Esther Edwards, was the daughter of the famous theologian Jonathan Edwards. he like Hamilton was an orphan, but the young Burr was rigorously educated by his stern Connecticut relatives. He did not enter the College of New Jersey when he was 11, but passed the examination at the ripe old age of 13. 

Hamilton had a far more difficult time growing up. This “bastard brat of a Scot’s tinker” as John Adams would have it, was always jealous of his hard-won “honor” and of his status as "gentleman." Thin-skinned doesn’t begin to describe Alexander Hamilton. At eleven--the same age as young Aaron was applying for Princeton--he spent his days in a St. Croix warehouse, perched upon a high stool writing letters and balancing his master's accounts. He earned his daily bread and board in the sweat of his brow. 

About five o'clock Wednesday morning, July 11^th, 1804, Hamilton left town, probably from the area which is now Horatio Street in the Village and was rowed to the dueling ground. Weehawken is on the west bank of the Hudson directly across the river from the west end of what is now Forty-Second Street in Manhattan.  The passage across was near 3 miles. With a light breeze, and they arrived about 7. Burr and his second Van Ness were already on the ground and had cleared away some brush and branches to make “a fair opening.”  This was on the extreme southern point of the Palisades, 20 feet above the water, about 22 paces long and only 10 feet wide.

 On the way across the river, Hamilton told his second, Pendleton, that “he had made up his mind not to fire at Colonel Burr the first time, but to receive his fire and then fire into the air.” Pendleton argued with him, but Hamilton said “it is the effect of a religious scruple, and does not admit of reasoning. It is useless to say more on the subject, as my purpose is definitely fixed.”

The accounts of the seconds were at odds as to which man fired first. This is because the seconds had their backs to the duelists, in order to provide a certain level of deniability. Dueling was by this time illegal in both New York and New Jersey. If Hamilton threw away his shot by firing wide--as he'd proposed to do--he may have fired first. Logically, this would show Burr that he meant no harm, but, of course, it would also leave him at Burr's mercy. How Burr reacted would then be up to him. 

If Burr shot first, as Pendleton later declared, his shot would have hit Hamilton and caused him to spin about, clutch at his weapon, and discharge it harmlessly into a tree. The passage of a .54 caliber ball is not easily overlooked. Whoever shot first, we know the outcome.

“General Hamilton was this morning wounded by that wretch Burr, but we have every reason to hope he will recover.” Angelica Schuyler Church wrote to her brother, Phillip, In Albany.  It would be his duty to notify their father, the Old General Philip Schuyler, who was in failing health. Angelica went on to say:  “My sister bears with saintlike fortitude this affliction. The town is in consternation, and there exists only the expression of grief and indignation.”

Angelica Church with her eldest, Phillip

Oliver Wolcott, Jr., a close friend who attended  Hamilton's death bed at Bayard’s Mansion on the Hudson, also wrote to his own wife. "Hamilton suffers great pain – which he endures like a Hero.” He “has, of late years experienced his conviction of the truths of the Christian Religion and has desired to receive the Sacrament—but no one of the Clergy who have yet been consulted with administer it.” 

After the duel, Burr’s barge landed him and his second Van Ness at Canal Street, where, according to some sources, he simply went on to his law office as if nothing had happened. Others say he went instead to his home at Richmond Hill. This might have been wiser, because of the fame of both men, and because of the illegality of the morning's activities.

Richmond Hill

The Church’s dueling pistols—like many of the best in those days, contained hair-trigger mechanisms. Articles on the pistols have called these mechanisms “hidden” and “newly discovered,” although that speaks only to 20^th Century lack of understanding of the 18^th Century Code Duello and of the specialized weapons involved.   

In fact, Burr may have used these very pistols some years earlier in a duel with John Church, so he was more familiar with them than was Hamilton. On the narrow ledge at Weehawken, it would have been impossible to change a setting—the guns were always set up by the seconds “inspecting, setting triggers and loading”—without anyone noticing. Pendleton, Hamilton’s second, in fact, reports that he had asked whether Hamilton wished to have the hair trigger set. His friend had plainly answered “Not this time.”

The "hidden" hair trigger was made to seem like a big new discovery in a New York Magazine article, whose author insinuated that Hamilton had intended to secretly make use of it.  I will let Robert A. Hendrickson, one of Hamilton’s most passionate biographers (Author of The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton) speak for his hero:

 

“Disenchanted as he was with himself, never able to rid himself of his sense of public accountability, if Hamilton had wished to survive (the duel) at all—a question ultimately unanswerable—the unlikeliest way he could have found to do so was by a secret trick that four men and all their friends, whatever their other differences, would agree was dishonorable. Worse than dishonorable.  Despicable. (And) "Honor was the subject of the morning’s exercise.”

Some years later, when questioned on the subject, Burr was quoted as saying that had his vision not been impaired by the morning mist, he would have "shot Hamilton in the heart." According to the account of the noted English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who met with Burr in England in 1808 (four years after the duel) Burr claimed to have been certain of his ability to kill Hamilton. Bentham concluded that Burr was "little better than a murderer."

But Burr had his reasons for rage. His career had been blighted by Hamilton, who had denounced Burr repeatedly, calling him an “embryo-Caesar” and “unprincipled both as a public and private man.”  

In the winter of 1800-01, during the disputed election between Jefferson and Burr, the Electors had deadlocked, throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Thirty House votes would be logged before this impasse was resolved. Hamilton worked tirelessly to block Burr from assuming the presidency by writing to his federalist friends in the House, saying that Burr “is bankrupt beyond redemption, except by the plunder of his country.  His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement.” 

 As we know, Jefferson was finally elected, after a group of Federalists elected to abstain from voting, sending in blank ballots. For Alexander Hamilton and many others, the choice between Jefferson and Burr must have been like choosing between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Thomas Jefferson

Of course, there is always acrimonious rhetoric—the self-interest games that all politicians-- both the principled and the unprincipled—play. Politicians have to do "whatever it takes to stay in the game." But unlike today’s short-sighted hacks-in-office, Hamilton wasn’t just thinking of the here and now. He had always had a vision of a mighty future for his adopted country. A top-notch administrator, he'd seen Burr party jumping and now fanning Secessionist fires in New England which he knew must be doused--by any means possible. "Indivisible" was the keystone of his dream of American greatness, and under no circumstances would he let it go.

Because Hamilton fancied himself a rationalist above all, the letters he left to be read in the event of his death show that he understood all implications of the upcoming duel. In the end, despite the claims on his heart of his wife and of his adored children and despite the creditors to whom he had become obligated while building his new home,  he would risk everything and hazard his life in order to destroy Burr and thus preserve the Union. 

That morning by the river at Weehawken, Alexander Hamilton threw his shot away and left himself at the mercy of his enemy. I'll have to quote Trelane, the super-being in the original Star Trek Squire of Gothos episode and end it here: "...your heroic Alexander Hamilton."

The Grange - and the elegant dining room 

~~Juliet Waldron

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Sources:

 Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Penguin, 2005 

The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 21 volumes, Harold C. Syrett, Ed., Columbia University, 

1987 

Founding Brothers by Joseph L. Ellis, ISBN: 9780375405440, Knopf, 2000 

The Rise & Fall of Alexander Hamilton, Vols. 1&2, by Robert A. Hendrickson, 9780884051398, Mason/Charter 1976 

The Founding Fathers, a biography of Alexander Hamilton in his own words, Vol. 1&2, ed. by Mary Jo Kline, Newsweek Publishers, 1973 

 Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, a Study in Character by Roger G. Kennedy, ISBN: 9780195140552, 2000 

Alexander Hamilton, Writings, ed. Joanne Freeman, ISBN: 9781931082044, Library of America 

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, by R. Kent Newmyer, ISBN: 978-1-107-60661-6. Cambridge University Press, 2012 

ANOTHER WIFE'S STORY

 Schuyler Mansion Historic Site

Alexander Hamilton has been my hero since I was a ten year old, which means I’ve been imagining him for a long time. When I decided to finally write “his” book, I’d just finished a novel about Wolfgang A. Mozart, as told by his wife. It would be a familiar approach, I thought, to tell the Hamilton story from the same womanly angle.  Or, so I thought—until I realized I didn’t know much about Alexander’s wife, Betsy.

Was she just another Colonial Dame? Well, Not exactly. The big house in Albany where Elizabeth Schuyler had been brought up was “American with a difference.” 

Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton by Ralph Earle

Historical fiction readers are familiar with the customs of the Scots, Irish and English immigrants. But New York school children—me among them—also learned about the Dutch, who had given place names all along the Hudson and founded NYC,  as well as inspiring Washington Irving to write his winking ghost story: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Although Betsy’s father, Major General Philip Schuyler, successfully “English-ified” himself, she probably learned Dutch at her Daddy’s knee. (During the Revolution, she and Baron von Steuben would find it their common language.) Hamilton’s wife, my novel’s heroine, had been born and raised folkways which retained some notable differences from those of her downstate predominantly English neighbors. 

Miss Schuyler’s female Dutch ancestors enjoyed rights greater than those of any other European women. They were full legal persons, a position American women would not enjoy again until the early 20^th century. They could own property and conduct business, enter into contracts and buy and sell for their own profit. Some of the richest families in old New York could trace their fortune back to the business savvy of one of these “She Merchants.” In Holland, and, briefly, in later New Amsterdam (now NYC) a woman could chose a unique form of marriage which kept her financial dealings and property separate from her husband’s.  Although these exceptional rights withered after the English took over the colony in 1664, there remained a certain independence and self-reliance in these Dutch women.

Even the wealthiest ladies were inclined to hands-on. They were taught how to cook and garden, how to spin, to keep fowl, to weave and sew—as well as keep household accounts.  An old family friend, James McHenry, wrote tellingly to Hamilton: “Your wife…has as much merit as your Treasurer as you have as Treasurer of the wealth of the United States.” It was no secret who kept afloat the daily affairs of this often-preoccupied Founding Father.

Dutch women were also not so quick to hand their babies—messy, inconvenient creatures—off to servants or slaves for nursing and day care. Despite the then commonly fatal water-borne and childhood diseases, Mrs. Hamilton bore eight children and raised every one of them to adulthood, something of a feat in those times.

The more I learned about her, the more she impressed me, this quiet, domestic woman behind the man. Betsy lived to be 97. Almost to her last breath, she performed her duties as co-founder of the first New York City orphanage, a cause dear to her heart.

She  also remained determined that ‘Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton.’” In this aim, she never wavered, preserving his papers and facing down important men who had been Hamilton’s political enemies with calm dignity.  

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~Learn more about Elizabeth’s life and the “odd destiny” of her beloved Alexander--orphan, immigrant, genius, and nation builder, in A Master Passion~~

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Sources:

Jean Zimmerman’s The Women of the House, Mariner Books, 2007

David Fischer Hackett’s Albion’s Seed, Oxford University Press, 1989

Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York, GP Putnam & Sons, 1894

Mary Elizabeth Springer, Elizabeth Schuyler, A Story of Old New York, 1903

NEVIS, A 1957 Visit

It was 1957 when Mom and I traveled to Nevis.  It was January, which is the best tourist weather in the Caribbean, with lots of sun. We flew up from Barbados to Antigua and then on to mountainous St. Kitts on the old British West Indian Airways in a DC 3. We boomed along slowly, carefully skirting majestic cumulus clouds.  Flying was a less exact process in those days, and deep in the innards of those big clouds rough weather could be hiding.

I was pretty excited, because we were going to see the place where my hero, Alexander Hamilton, had been born.  Mom said there probably wouldn’t be much to see but the island itself, however, she too was curious about this (then) rarely visited speck in the West Indian sea. Honoring Hamilton, I knew, was a kind of family tradition. My Grandfather Liddle always spoke highly of his great achievements as a Founding Father. So, after a foray into the musty interior of a used book store, my usually critical mother had been approving when I’d arrived at the cash register with Gertrude Atherton’s 1902 “dramatic biography” of Hamilton in hand.    

Mrs. Atherton had studied her subject with care. She, being an adventurous woman (and probably well-heeled), had traveled in the 1890’s to both Nevis and St. Croix, another island where Hamilton spent part of his youth, to do research.  All her skillful, ardent Edwardian prose went straight to my head. By the time I finished her book, I was convinced that Alexander Hamilton was the most romantic--as well as the smartest, hardest working man--among that crew of geniuses who’d shaped our early republic.

Mom and I stayed overnight in St. Kitts.  I remember that as one of the coldest I ever spent in the West Indies. There were shutters, and although we closed them tightly, the wind whistled through our room all night. Our plane was supposed to leave in the afternoon for Nevis—there were two ways to get there—on a ferry or in a small plane—but I was famously sea-sick. The plane would be small, completely full with four passengers and the pilot.  

We arrived at the airport –which was just a tin-sided, palm-frond-roofed shelter—and then waited and waited. The little plane (probably a modified Super Cub) was in parts in a shed next to the runway, because “somethin’ was not right”. My mother and I both grew anxious, as you might imagine. I sat on a wooden bench cradling Mrs. Atherton’s book.  I was by now well on the way to memorizing it.

Finally, we took off, even though the sun was going down. The adults, used to the vagaries of West Indies travel, made graveyard jokes, but falling out of the sky into the ocean didn’t really seem possible to me, not when I was on the verge of my Hamilton epiphany.  Half an hour later, we arrived—landing on an island which is little more than a mountain whose cloudy head juts from the sea. 

The runway was a grass field. Men holding poles with flaming, kerosene-soaked rags wrapped about their tops illuminated our landing area.  A couple of bounces later, we were down. Then another wait, until a couple of taxis appeared to take us all into Charlestown.  

At the guest house, lit by kerosene lanterns, the gray-haired proprietress, looking as if she’d stepped out of the 1920’s in her dowager’s ankle-length dress, took one look at me and said she didn’t allow children—“especially not American children” in her house. Looking around the room, with lots of antimacassar-backed chairs and delicate-legged side tables, every surface of which was covered with china figurines, I had a notion of what she was worried about.  Mom put on her most glacial demeanor and said that I was a perfectly well-behaved only child who spent all her time reading and who would certainly never enter the good parlor unless invited to do so.  “And besides,” she added, “I have brought her all this way from New York State to see where her hero, Alexander Hamilton, was born. Show her your book, Judy.”

I held out the beloved book for the old woman’s inspection.

“Ah,” she said, examining the cover. “Why, it’s Mrs. Atherton! Do you really like it?”

“Very much,” I said. “I can’t stop reading it. Hamilton goes with me everywhere.”

For the first time, the lady smiled. She extended her hand and said, “Come with me, my dear, and I’ll show you my very own copy of that book.” 

And sure enough she had one, the only other copy I’ve ever seen “in person.” Who could have predicted that this would be the thing that would convince her to let us stay?. Our hostess then explained the kerosene lamps.

“It’s after six o’clock now. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. we have electricity, after that we use these. It makes for early nights.”

On the very next day, we contemplated a heap of stones by the harbor which were said to be the remains of the Hamilton house. We did a lot of one-of-a-kind things there. We bathed in the hot springs in our swim suits, everything very informal. You just paid the man who hung around there, and he walked along with you to the hollows where the water steamed, warning you first about which pools that would scald you. These gravel-bottomed pools were shaded by a grove of towering palm trees. The tall ferns and delicate flowers clustered about the “baths” were the lushest and most beautiful I’d ever seen.

Another day, we traveled up the mountain to see the ruins of sugar mills. We particularly admired one that had been turned into a hotel where we met the owners and enjoyed lunch. There were always clouds gathering around the top of that mountain every afternoon. We were up so high that day that these gray clouds enveloped us, eventually bathing everything with a surprisingly cool tropical rain.

On other, more ordinary days, we swam from a beach of brown sugar sand, but it was often cloudy,  more so than the other islands we’d visited. We weren't keen to swim too far out into that mysterious gray-blue water, either, as there was often not another soul around for as far as the eye could see.  

It's been a good many years since that visit, but Alexander and his beloved Betsy are still with me, as well as so many treasured memories of that lovely, mysterious, cloudy-headed island. It was hard to let go of a story I've been writing off and on and for ever so long, but here, at last, Books We Love has published it.  

~~ Juliet Waldron

A Master Passion, a novel of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler

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~~~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE MAN ON THE TEN DOLLAR BILL

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I used to occasionally ask the clerk, when I handed them a ten, if they knew whose picture that was. Mostly, the answer was “some president.”  If there was no one waiting, I’d give a short history lesson by saying, “No, this is Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of the Treasury. If he hadn’t done his job, by figuring out how to pay off the Revolutionary War debt and balance the budget, there wouldn’t be a United States today.” While this is a gloss of all his myriad accomplishments during the few short years he held the Secretary’s office, I’d hope it would make an impression. Now, because Hamilton is about to be removed from the $10 by a less illustrious successor at Treasury, the people who know their American History—and their Hamilton--are surprised and saddened

Timothy Geithner as well as other veterans and current occupants of high office have come to Hamilton’s defense. Ben Bernanke said of Hamilton "…without doubt, the best and most foresighted economic policymaker in U.S. history." Editorial writers for the New York Times, US Today, WSJ, and noted historians, like Ron Chernow, whose biography of Hamilton is now considered the definitive work on his high-powered subject, have also registered their thoughts upon the matter.

But I’m a mere fiction writer, and to me there’s always been more to Hamilton than sterling service to his adopted country. Wanting to connect fully with his personal life, I discovered a wealth of primary source in the form of letters.  Fortunately, Elizabeth, his devoted wife, pursued and collected these in her long years of life after her husband's death. In these private communications, I was allowed a glimpse of the man behind the myth, his masks, his follies, instances of teasing and tenderness. Letters allow us, all these years later, to form an idea of what he was like. 

 I’ll start my examples with a political slur—on Hamilton and the American army—which was published in Rivington’s Tory Gazette in 1779, when he was George Washington’s most effective aide de camp. It evokes a picture of a bold, cheeky young man:

“Mrs. Washington has a mottled orange tom cat (which she calls in a complimentary way, ‘Hamilton’) with thirteen stripes around the tail and its flaunting suggested to congress the thirteen stripes for the flag.”

In his youth, among his male friends, Hamilton plays the worldly rake. Here are excerpts from a letter sent to a fellow ADC and dear friend, John Laurens, during the Revolution, a joking discussion of his requirements for a wife:  

“She must be young, handsome (I lay most stress upon a good shape), sensible ( a little learning will do)…of some good nature…as to religion, a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in God and hate a saint. But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better…though I run no risk of going to purgatory for my avarice, yet as money is an essential ingredient to happiness in this world…it must needs be that my wife, if I get one, bring at least sufficency to administer to her own extravagancies…You will hear of many competitors for most of the qualifications required who will be glad to become candidates for such a prize as I am…(and) mind you do justice to the length of my nose…”

Daily life was far different before the advent of phones and rapid travel. Letters illuminate the hardships and stresses that might devolve upon an 18^th Century family. Hamilton was often away from home, either riding the circuit as a lawyer, or while serving in some distant public body. Sometimes, his wife and children were in Albany with her Schuyler parents to escape the oppressive, fever-ridden city summers of Philadelphia and New York. Often, as a result of his indefatigable public life, (in the example below, during a term in the Continental Congress,) the family was separated. Here's a particularly anxious letter from a young husband to his wife:

“…I have borne your absence with patience ‘till about a week since, but the period we fixed for our reunion being come I can no longer reconcile myself. Every hour in the day I feel a severe pang on this account and half my nights are sleepless. Come my charmer and relieve me. Bring my darling boy to my bosom. Adieu Heaven bless you and speedily restore you to your fond husband…”

“I wrote to you my beloved Betsy by the last post…I count upon setting out to see you in four days; but I shall not be without apprehensions of being detained ‘till I have begun my journey…at this time, (attendance in) the House is thin…I give you joy my angel of the happy conclusion of the important work in which your country has been engaged. Now in a very short time I hope we shall be happily settled in New York.”

Many letters show concern about the ill health of their children. Originally, Hamilton had come to America to study medicine, and a continuing interest in the subject is evident throughout his life.

“The Secretary of the Treasury presents his respects to the president. The state of health of his little son and the situation of Mrs. Hamilton in consequence of it oblige him to request the present to excuse him from attending the interview with the Indians today and also to ask the President’s permission to make an excursion into the country for a few days to try the effect of exercise and change of air upon the child…”  To George Washington, July 11, 1794

Here, Hamilton, recently returned to the Capitol, writes to Elizabeth, absent in Albany with her younger children, one seriously ill, on Aug. 17, 1794:

“My Beloved Eliza… I am happy to inform you that the precious little ones we left behind are well… My heart trembles whenever I open a letter from you.” (Their youngest, John Church, had several strange "cures” tried upon his little body that summer, some suggested by his anxious father and others by attending physicians.) “The experiment of the pink root alarms, but I continue to place my hope in heaven…Alas, my beloved Johnny--what shall I hear of you! This question makes my heart sink….” 

“…If his fever should appear likely to prove obstinate, urge the Physician to consider well the propriety of trying the cold bath…”

And this last, a recollection by this same "Johnny," written down many years later: 

"...In the morning, early, he awakened me. Taking my hands in his palms, all four hands extended , he told me to repeat the Lord's Prayer. Seventy years have passed over my head, and I have forgotten many things, but not that tender expression when he stood looking at me...nor the prayer we made together the morning just before the duel..."

Whatever his other failings, Hamilton was a man who loved his family. As a writer particularly interested in the "little domestic world," as experienced in the past, this made him particularly fascinating to me.

~Juliet Waldron

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Alexander Hamilton Returns

 

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It’s no mistake that people are discovering Hamilton again, that least known, most difficult to appreciate, and perhaps the most personally conflicted, of America’s Founding Fathers. Less a politician than a matchless administrator, Hamilton was a leader who actually seems to have believed the things he said, a man who did not use his time in government to feather his own nest.  He was self-made, without family or fortune, but with a unique, nuts and bolts understanding the new science of economics and the realities of international trade, of money and banking. The men Hamilton worked beside, men like Washington and Jefferson, were American aristocrats, slave owners, whose power base lay in land. Jefferson, particularly, took an almost feudal view of the future, imagining a new nation comprised of large landowners ruling over laboring classes of sharecroppers and slaves.

Hamilton’s political enemies, busy calling his patriotism into question, conveniently overlooked the fact that a large part of his character was almost Quixotic. Far from being a man obsessed with self-interest, he often behaved like a knight strayed in from some earlier age. At the start of the Revolution, he gave his hard-won college money to outfit a rebel artillery company. He crossed the Delaware with the remains of George Washington's army as a foot-sore captain, freezing and hungry beside his men. During the war, he was the kind of officer who led from the front, and also the kind who intervened when his soldiers, still hot from battle, wanted to summarily execute their prisoners.  As an aide-de-camp, he served his boss George Washington selflessly and tirelessly, becoming the perfect secretary/assistant to a beleaguered general with no other such brilliant props upon which to lean. After the war, in his new incarnation as attorney, he was not afraid to defend ex-loyalists whose property had been illegally seized by vengeful neighbors. Hamilton also advocated for ordinary men, one a humble ferry owner, whipped and bullied by a local landlord. Law, Hamilton said, should be dealt alike to all citizens, whether rich or poor.

For a brief time, he even may have dreamed, during the heady first years after America’s founding, that we could have a “pure” government, one without party, because servants of this new republic would be genuinely ‘public-spirited’. After all, if a person wished only the common good—as opposed to only ‘good’ for ones’ friends-- by use of the ancient tools of common law, common sense and ordered debate--pragmatic, mutually agreeable solutions must, naturally, emerge. ‘The People’ (as then defined) could govern themselves, not only without the aid of a king or dictator, but without special interest groups, too. 

But Hamilton was also an outsider, an immigrant, a “come here,” a fact his enemies never forgot or forgave. Worse, he was born illegitimate. An orphan, he arrived on these shores as a charity child. He was called, slightingly, a “Creole,” or, with franker hostility, by John Adams, “the bastard brat of a Scots peddler.”  Interestingly, this is the trope which has moved Hamilton back into public consciousness. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a multi-talented first generation American, is making a big splash with a hip-hop opera at The Public Theater in NYC.  I learned about this exciting theater piece around the time I’d begun re-editing a decade old “in-the-drawer” book—The Master Passion—but this unforeseen enthusiasm, and its success, truly delighted me. After all, someone young, gifted and vocal also wanted to make some art out of the life of this colorful, fascinating genius. 

Hamilton has been in my life since I was ten. I’d early learned that he’d worked against slavery, and that, like the wandering lost prince of all the fairy tales, he’d come to the ‘Kingdom’ with nothing but the brilliant head on his shoulders. As a teen, he'd fought for freedom. He’d won the respect of a legendary commanding general and won the hand of a local 'princess'. He’d spent the rest of his life devising ways to help his adopted country become well-governed, rich and happy. He'd fought like a tiger to get his brilliant—but far-less well-informed and/or insightful 'founding brothers'—to understand and assist his plans.

I won't go into Funding & Assumption or his many other financial plans here. The simplest way to explain Hamilton's importance to America is that if he hadn’t created a system to unite those thirteen bickering colonies by getting them to pay the debts incurred to fighting men—and to the businessmen who’d backed the war of independence—there would be no United States today.  Then as now, nation or family, paying the bills is essential to safety and security, the firm base from which all creative endeavor and industry flows.

Unavoidably, Hamilton was also a man of his time, one scarred by a childhood full of violence, poverty and humiliation. He was a true genius and as result could be vain, brash and impatient with slower minds. He injured and embarrassed his family and friends with a sordid love-affair. His insecurities and his anger toward the enemies who dragged him through the mud caused the political missteps which destroyed his own Federalist party. The duel in which Hamilton died might have been avoided by a more circumspect man, one more assured of his status as a 'gentleman'.

Beyond all, he remains--to me and to others--a true tragic hero, a great man destroyed by fatal flaws. If Alexander Hamilton hadn’t come here, hadn’t fought in the Revolution, or practiced law and set still important precedents, hadn't been one of those critical first creative, hard-working public servants,  there probably would be no United States today.

A few good books on a large subject:

 

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Penguin, 2005

The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 21 volumes, Harold C. Syrett, Ed., Columbia University, 1987

Founding Brothers by Joseph L. Ellis, ISBN: 9780375405440, Knopf, 2000

Hamilton by Forrest McDonald, ISBN: 9780393300482, W.W. Norton, 1988

Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution, by Clinton L. Rossiter, Harcourt, Brace, ISBN: 9780151042159, 1964
 

~~Juliet Waldron

 

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