Here in America, some called that justice. And I couldn’t help but shudder, because I wore round my neck a pendant with a trinket of George Washington’s hair—a man who’d just been unanimously reelected to the presidency and sworn in for his second term but was now derided as a tyrant in the making. Perhaps even by these very gentlemen standing beside me on the street corner who I wanted to trust would never serve us up to a slavering public.
What a high-minded thing revolution had seemed when it started; but now I wondered if, in trying to bring about liberty, we’d instead opened the gates of endless war, bloodshed, and immorality.
* * *
“THEY’RE THROWING A ball for the French ambassador, Citizen Genêt,” Lucy Knox huffed, perusing the lemon cake on Martha Washington’s table before returning to her knitting. We Federalist ladies were always knitting, though I worried how easily it could all unravel.
A country. A reputation. A marriage . . .
We were discussing the French ambassador, who was recruiting troops to fight for France in defiance of President Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality. And radical Francophiles in our country encouraged it!
“Surely you’re mistaken, Mrs. General Knox,” Abigail Adams replied, peering over the length of her sharp nose. “These democrats wouldn’t host a ball. A ball is too aristocratic. It’s to be an elegant civic repast that just happens to be held in the city’s largest ballroom where they’re going to hand out liberty caps and sing ‘La Marseillaise.’”
The ladies laughed, except for Lady Washington and me. Because all I could think was that if French revolutionaries could kill a king and his ministers, Americans could kill a president and his treasury secretary . . .
Shrewdly eyeing the way my hands had stopped working my knitting needles, Abigail said, “Mr. Adams tells me we have our own Robespierres, but fortunately for us, they cannot persuade the people to follow them.”
Thin-lipped, Lady Washington replied, “I’d never have guessed Vice President Adams to be such an optimist.”
This did make me sputter with a laugh. A bitter one. Because the people seemed entirely persuadable, especially as so-called Democratic Clubs sprang up around Philadelphia based on the French Jacobin model. And I began to think nearly treasonous thoughts about this experiment with self-government. My husband couldn’t even govern himself. Not when passion took him. What hope did the common citizenry have of making wise decisions for themselves?
My fears seemed justified when, a few weeks later, ten thousand people were in the streets of Philadelphia threatening to drag Washington from his house and force us to join France’s war against England. Outside our door men shouted, “Down with Washington!”
They seemed to believe that by keeping America out of a costly foreign war, we were betraying our sister republic in France; that President Washington had turned his back on the values of the revolution. And I dared not go out, not even for church. Not when, clutching broadsheets depicting our president being sent to the guillotine, the mob screamed, “Enemies of equality: Reform or Tremble!”
Instead, I kept the curtains closed and read the Bible to the children upstairs where we’d gathered them, afraid and trembling, into our bed. Nearly nine years old, our daughter Ana was close to hysterical. Fanny, only a few months younger, sucked her thumb, as was her wont when she’d been a babe. While I rocked the littlest ones in my arms amongst a mountain of blankets Alexander had made for the boys, Ana cried, “Will they behead the president?”
“I will never let such a thing happen,” Alexander reassured us, very gravely. “Not while I draw breath.”
I knew that was true. But so, too, did anyone who wished to drag George Washington to the scaffold.
Which was why they would come for my husband first.
Having finally coaxed the children to sleep in our bed with their favorite Dutch stories of elves and river Nixie, Alexander and I retreated to the divan in the back parlor, where a few candles still sputtered in the braziers on the wall. The protesters would return at dawn, but now, in the blessed quiet, I asked, “Are you not weary of all this?”
“More than you can know. Truly this trade of a statesman is a sorry thing. But I cannot quit it. Otherwise, what’s to become of our fame and glory?” He gave a wry grin, one of his most appealing. “How will the world go on without me? I am sometimes told very gravely that it could not.”
He wanted me to laugh with him. But I didn’t. It’d been his habit for months now to crawl into bed with one of the boys at night, claiming that their sleep was troubled or that he didn’t want to wake me. This was the fiction—the polite lie—that allowed us to go on as if all was well. There was no intimacy between us now, and so I wanted no more lies, either.
“All you do is fight,” I whispered. “You fight Jefferson, you fight Madison, and Burr. You fight the Jacobins, the Clintons, the Livingstons, the newspapers, the Congress, the French ambassador—”
“And I beat them,” Alexander replied. “You mustn’t fear, my love. I will defend you and the children to my last breath.”
He said this with fierce devotion, leaning over to kiss me. And I could hear my sister say, Ah, Betsy! How lucky you were to get so clever and so good a companion.
But I whispered, “I could leave you.”
I startled as if the words had come from someone else’s mouth.
Hamilton startled, too, his eyes ablaze. “What?”
I straightened up, and this time I spoke clearly. “I could leave you.” I’d scarcely allowed myself to acknowledge these thoughts much less speak them aloud, but now the words mutinied upon my tongue, beyond my command.
