William’s gaze is uncertain, and then he blinks and looks away. Swallowing hard, he says, “I’m glad you were able to find your peace with him.” When he looks back at me, his blue eyes are blazing with that achingly familiar illusion of violet. “But I’ve been shaken in my conviction of who I thought he was. Or hoped he was. And there’s no way to repair that, for me. No way to make it right between a father and a son. Not with him gone.”
The pain in his expression threatens to break my heart, because I’ve felt that pain. I’ve worked the same equation. I’ve tried the same case. But unlike my son, I’ve been able to reach a conclusion, and I share this with him now.
“Oh, William,” I say, taking his hand. “No man should be judged only for his best act or his worst. By only his greatness or his flaws.” And no woman either, I think. For if my sister did betray me, did it obliterate all the ways in which she’d been my first and most constant friend?
No, it did not. And I swallow as the thought heals another broken piece inside me.
“It seems, to me,” I continue, “that the only just way to judge a person is by the sum of their deeds, good and bad. And in the balance, your father did far more good than harm. That’s all any of us can aim to do with our lives.”
William’s throat bobs. “I was so small when he died that I can’t remember him well. And yet, I . . . I miss him,” he says, as if both admissions pain him.
Reaching up, I take his face into my trembling hand. The same hand upon which I wear a gold wedding ring inscribed with my name and Alexander’s; a ring that I will never again remove. “I miss him, too. You must know, William. He loved you. And love is a kind of faith. A blessing to everyone it touches. Your father earned my love a thousand times over and I earned his in return. So I ask you to find your peace with your father.”
William looks at me a long moment, and finally, his expression goes soft. “My love for you allows me to do no other than accede to your wishes, Mother.”
Then come home with me, I think. But I decide to savor this victory and put that battle off for later. When I know him a little better. Because the years have made him a stranger, I devote every moment of the time I have in getting to know my son.
He brims with passion as he shows me his smelting furnace and explains the process of removing impurities from the crude lead dug from the ground. As he discusses his work, I hear the echo of Alexander’s zeal in discussing policy and politics. And, like his father, William has found success. Everywhere we go, the people all know William—Wisconsin’s Hamilton, they call him—and respect what he’s built and the man he’s become.
And, despite my reason for coming here, I do, too.
When William mentions a place he describes as the great natural wonder of the north, the Falls of St. Anthony, I naturally insist on seeing it. Getting to the falls requires a steamboat ride and an eight-mile climb on horseback over winding trails, and I feel like the girl I once was, exploring the beauty of nature.
I hear the falls before I see them. God in heaven, the sight is majestic. Multiple falls curve and twist, the surging streams descending from forty or fifty feet onto water and rock below. Spray rises up in great clouds that tickle my face in the breeze, filling me with a newfound vigor.
William calls over the roar of the water, “The Dakota call the Mississippi hahawakpa, or ‘river of the falls.’ They believe spirits live beneath them.” I can understand the belief, for seeing such miraculous evidence of God’s power imbues me with the feeling of being in the presence of something sacred.
I am still moved when, later that afternoon, we return to Fort Snelling to find Colonel Campbell and his officers waiting at the entrance in full dress uniforms. For me, as if I was now the Guest of the Nation.
The colonel offers me his arm and conducts me inside the four-sided fort, where a very fine band plays and an armchair waits upon a carpet. He bids me sit, and then, when the music stops, he speaks to his assembled troops. “We have with us today Mrs. General Hamilton, wife of the hero of Yorktown!” A cheer rises up from the soldiers, and then, with weapons upon their shoulders, the troops march in formation, demonstrating a series of maneuvers. The display goes on for some time, and when it ends, I rise shakily to my feet, too moved to speak. For most of these men hadn’t even been born while Alexander Hamilton still lived, yet have honored me this way.
And in front of Alexander’s son, who most needed to see it.
When September brings cooler air and fields covered in lavender aster, my visit with dear William is near its end. Winter will soon choke the rivers with ice, making travel impossible.
I have to go home. I’ve intended, all along, to ask William to come, but now I realize that I can’t. I can’t ask him to come home with me . . . because William is home. I see that now. It would be wrong to deny him
