But what he said next chilled me to the bone. “I’m going to volunteer with the Duke of Wellington to fight Napoleon Bonaparte on the Peninsula.”
Alex wanted to go to war. For England. Horrified, I said, “You’re an American.”
His spine stiffened. “I haven’t forgotten. But when we were in Washington City, President Madison said I should take the opportunity to write to him. If I can report back to him on the goings-on in Europe—”
“Alex,” I said, more upset by the moment.
He took my hand. “Mother, there’s no way for a Hamilton to make his name in American politics. Business was foreclosed to me once I abandoned my position in Boston. That leaves only the battlefield. My father was a general. My grandfather was a general. Heroes, both of them, you’ve always told me. How can I want to be anything else?”
How could he want to be anything else, indeed? Alex had the right to determine his own fate. His father had fought for that principle, and I would uphold it. So, the following spring, I stood bravely next to Angelica at the docks as we tearfully saw our sons off to a war on foreign shores, grateful that they were, at least, together.
Just as we’d always been.
And a year later, Angelica and I were still together, worrying about our sons and taking coffee at the Tontine, as was our habit, while all the talk around us was of the war coming to our own shores. Because the British had never stopped visiting humiliations upon American ships—seizing them and impressing our soldiers. Behaving as if we’d never won our war of independence and were still merely a rebellious set of colonies.
This was the chatter of passersby that swirled around us while we warmed our hands against our coffee cups at the curbside table. My sister took hers with sugar and cream and always ordered a pastry that she never touched, saying she’d eaten too large a breakfast before offering it to me.
“I’m not a starving urchin,” I said, though those were, indeed, lean times. “If anything, you’re the one growing too thin.” There was a fragility to her delicate features that had never been there before. Worry over Flip, no doubt. Our fear for our boys was always present, even when we gave it no voice. Maybe especially then.
“I don’t want to grow as stout as Mama did,” Angelica said, pushing the plate to me. “I intend to fight for my beauty to the bitter end.”
Surrendering, I savored a sweet morsel of the pastry. “I believe your vanity is overcoming good sense.”
“You’re one to speak of good sense. You forget I have spies in your household.”
She did. My children told their beloved Aunt Angelica everything. “And what do they report?”
“That you’re considering a foolhardy trip into the wilds of western New York to visit an Indian school.”
It wasn’t just an Indian school, as she had good cause to know. It was the Hamilton-Oneida Academy that my husband helped to found for the advancement of our Indian allies, the plight of whom was always dear to my heart. “It’s soon to be chartered as Hamilton College, and I don’t see why I should not be present for its christening.”
“Because it’s a ghastly journey,” Angelica said, with a sniff. “The only way my son could persuade me to visit western New York was to name a town after me.” Before he left for England, Flip had done that, to the not-so-secret delight of his mother. “Of course, your wanderlust is far less concerning than the other report I’ve received that you spend hours upon your knees, sorting through boxes of dusty papers like a madwoman.”
I gulped at my coffee and shrugged. “I’m looking for Alexander’s draft of Washington’s Farewell Address. It’s as important a contribution as anything else he ever wrote and if I can find his notes, I can prove it.”
“Maybe he didn’t keep notes,” Angelica said. “Or perhaps he sent them to someone for safekeeping.”
“I think someone took them,” I replied. But I couldn’t stay to elaborate, because a glance down at the timepiece suspended from my needlework chatelaine told me I ought to leave soon to interview a new teacher for the orphanage.
My son Johnny was to escort me, and he was seldom late. But on that day, he sauntered to our table slowly and sat beside us with a certain gravity.
At nineteen, Johnny was a gentle, bookish student of literature. Of all my sons, he was the last I might ever suspect would announce that he was to join the military. But he said, “As the son of Alexander Hamilton, I cannot shirk my duty.”
So it was that I lost my eldest sons all at once to the Hamiltonian desire to rise up on the tide of war.
* * *
March 1814
New York City
It was called the War of 1812, though most of the fighting took place after that year. They also called it the second war for independence, and a new generation of Hamiltons were fighting it. My battle-hardened Alex returned from Europe to serve as a captain in the U.S. infantry. James commanded a New York militia brigade. Johnny served as aide-de-camp to Major General William Henry Harrison. And seventeen-year-old William—a wild and lanky mischief maker whose indifference to his studies, and to wearing shoes, would’ve snapped even his indulgent father’s patience—now trained to be an officer at West Point.
Angelica’s son had returned to fight for America, too. “When our boys come for a visit, we’ll have a veritable army at our table,” she said. We’d just left Sunday service at Trinity Church to stroll, taking our exercise in the brisk air. And I remembered a
