“I’m sure it is only a protest against Great Britain. If we must choose a side in the European war, the people would choose our first ally. France.”
“We mustn’t choose any side,” Alexander said, wearing a hole in the floor by the window. “It’s not our war. Even if it was, we can’t win another war. We can’t afford it. And war would prevent the Tontine from selling their coffee, the fools.”
Giving him a peck upon the cheek, I said, “Fortunately, it’s no longer your worry.”
We had plans for the theater, after all, and it was time to dress. Now that he’d returned to private practice, we could afford new clothes, and I was eager to see him in his new double-breasted white waistcoat and dark breeches, worn loosely as was now the fashion. But he continued to pace like an angry lion. “To see the character of our government sported with tortures my heart.”
“I know, my love,” I said, patiently guiding him toward the stairs.
He took two steps before stopping again. “Am I more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American ground? How can everyone else view this so calmly?”
As someone who drew first breath upon American ground, I defended myself. “I don’t view it calmly, but you cannot keep writing treatises for the president as if you were still in the cabinet.” He scowled, but since our marriage was now on a more equal footing, I dared to scowl back. “Oh, did you think you fooled me into believing the scribbling you’ve been doing late at night was for some legal case?”
For a moment, his eyes blazed with indignation, as if he meant to deny it. Then his bravado gave out. “You think I’m a fool—a romantic Don Quixote tilting at windmills.”
“I think you’ve already accomplished everything you set out to do.” It was not flattery. He’d fought and won a war and built a federal government. He’d created a coast guard, a national bank, and invented a scheme of taxation that held the states together. He’d founded a political party, smashed a rebellion, and put in motion a financial system that was providing prosperity for nearly everyone. In short, Alexander Hamilton was a greater man than the country deserved, and I wasn’t enough of a patriot to willingly give him back.
Especially not when I saw what my countrymen were doing to poor John Jay.
There was not a street corner one could pass without hearing some raving Jacobin denouncing the man for his controversial treaty, which antifederalists feared prioritized closer economic and political ties with the British monarchy over support for French republicanism and therefore repudiated American values. Damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t put up lights in the windows and sit up all night damning John Jay.
After the treaty was signed, Jay was—as he told us himself—burned in effigy in so many cities that he could’ve traveled the country at night with nothing to guide him but the light of his own flaming form. My poor cousin Sarah Livingston Jay had reason to fear leaving the house. And this could’ve been our fate, I knew. My husband had narrowly missed being sent to negotiate in Jay’s place, had already resisted an attempt to make him a chief justice, and was daily forced to dismiss rumors that he should throw in to be the next president of the United States.
So, I was unspeakably grateful that my husband no longer held any office. And yet, he was still giving speeches. Which was how, while I sat trying to mend a pair of Philip’s shoes he’d outgrown, my now nearly fourteen-year-old son came to ask, “Can I go watch Father speak in favor of the Jay Treaty?”
Quite against the idea, I said, “Your father isn’t likely to say anything that you haven’t already heard at the supper table. And I dislike for you to be by yourself in a crowd.”
Philip made a sound of exasperation. “At my age, my father was his own man, in command of a trading firm.”
Your father was an abandoned boy trying to make his way in the world with any job he could get. This is what I wanted to say. But Alexander never wanted his children to know the scars of his youth; he only ever wanted them to see him as heroic. And I wanted them to see him that way too. Especially Philip.
So, if my son wanted to see his father give a speech, I could scarcely deny him. Besides, it was only a five-minute walk to Federal Hall from our new lodgings. “We’ll go together. There’s a new shoemaker near Wall Street,” I said, giving up on mending the old leather. “If we leave now, we’ll be in time to see your father’s speech on the way back.” When Philip grinned beneath the down of a burgeoning mustache upon his lip, I added, “Now change clothes so you look like the fine young gentleman you’re becoming instead of an urchin.”
While my eldest donned his best shirt, I found my straw bonnet with its white ribbon, and, leaving the younger children with our newly hired governess, we were off.
It was a fine, clear, summer day and I was astonished at the size of the crowd. Thousands packed into the square. Not just dockworkers in knit caps and young toughs in homespun jackets, but the better sort of people, too, including ladies with colorful lace parasols and gentlemen in top hats from the finest families. There, too, upon a stoop near our old house, stood my husband, surrounded by half-a-dozen impeccably dressed Federalist lawyers like Robert Troup and Nicholas Fish.
It was nearly impossible to push closer, given the throng. But at the toll of the clock bell, my husband’s voice boomed out to ask who had convened the assembly. And that’s
