To give the reader a front-row seat, we’ve sparingly placed our protagonist and other characters where they might not have been. One example is the Loyalist attack on Schuyler Mansion, and the chop of the wooden banister, for which there is a vivid and detailed account by a family member, but the veracity of its particulars is questionable. Another example is Evacuation Day where the Hamiltons’ arrival in New York was close enough that we wished to portray it. (No one seems to know why Hamilton was not present at Washington’s subsequent farewell in Fraunces Tavern, so we had to come up with a reason.)
Our focus, as biographical historical novelists, of course, is on character. And that is where we were forced to do the most speculation. For example, historical paintings give proof that Eliza Hamilton was a petite and attractive woman. In fact, Talleyrand thought Eliza’s beauty was underappreciated. Eliza’s admirer Tench Tilghman not only praised her as the finest tempered girl in the world, but also portrayed her athleticism in his diary. Even well into her old age, we are told, Eliza insisted on taking very long walks, traversing fields and climbing over fences. As for her personality, her contemporaries describe her as impulsive and vivacious. She herself copied out a prayer to envision herself as an instrument of God’s will. And, within the realm of what was appropriate for women at the time, she was a relentless crusader, having, as one friend claimed, a “rare sense of justice.”
These were all important details that we took into account in crafting Eliza’s persona.
But our approach to biographical historical fiction has always been to find the character-defining moment in a person’s life and build a story around it.
For Hamilton-centric historians, the defining moment of Eliza’s life seems to be that she stood by her man and forgave her husband’s infidelity. For us, her character-defining moment was the dramatic documented encounter she had with an aging James Monroe.
Just as in the novel, in the twilight of his life, the real President James Monroe wished to reconcile. But an uncompromising and stalwart Eliza wouldn’t have it. What she wanted was an apology, which Monroe would not give. Again, what strikes Hamilton-centric historians about the much ballyhooed meeting was Eliza’s loyalty to her husband.
But what struck us about this visit was that Monroe made it at all.
What would compel the so-called Last Founding Father to seek out Eliza Hamilton? Though Monroe made it a principle of politics to engender his Era of Good Feelings, by the time he paid call to Eliza he’d retired from the presidency and politics. Nor does Monroe appear to have been motivated by guilt because he didn’t offer an apology when Eliza all but demanded one. So why go to the trouble? Especially since this inconvenient visitation almost assuredly took place at Eliza’s home in New York, and not Washington, D.C., as is often posited. (Eliza didn’t move to Washington until the 1840s, at least a decade after Monroe’s death.)
The answer doesn’t seem to have been Monroe’s nostalgia for his old friendship with Alexander Hamilton. In the sparse sketch of their encounter from Allan McLane Hamilton, Monroe doesn’t even mention his old friend and comrade-at-arms. Instead, the former president framed the speech he made to Eliza in terms of how long it had been since they met, and that their past differences could be forgiven and forgotten.
This raised tantalizing questions. Just how long had it been since James Monroe met Eliza Hamilton? What was the nature of their meeting? What sort of relationship did they share that might motivate such an unprecedented visit—and such a hostile reception? And what sort of power did she hold as a historical figure in her own right that he would prize a reconciliation with her?
It’s most probable that Eliza met James Monroe when he came to New York City to serve in Congress in 1785. Possibly sooner, but we ruled out a family account published in a missionary pamphlet that places Eliza Schuyler at Valley Forge, because if she’d met Monroe there, she’d have met Hamilton as well. Yet, we noticed that after Monroe’s heroics at Trenton, he became aide to Lord Stirling, who served in the Hudson Highlands during 1777.
In that, we saw an opportunity.
Because Lord Stirling tried to guide Lafayette successfully to Albany, where he conferred with Eliza’s father, Philip Schuyler, we invented the notion that Lord Stirling sent Monroe to help, and that Monroe dined thereafter at Schuyler Mansion, where Eliza took a shine to him. Whether or not Eliza Hamilton would later have any cause to speak to Monroe either on the night he came to Hamilton’s house to investigate the Reynolds matter or shortly before the publication of the Reynolds Pamphlet is not known. And as for any romantic feelings between them, we only know that Monroe was coy and secretive about his fondness for Dutch girls, one of whom turned him down when he asked for her hand after the war because she was already pledged. And of course, though Eliza assuredly was acquainted with Elizabeth Kortright before she married Monroe, the notion that Eliza introduced them is our fabrication.
We have no historical evidence that Eliza was present with Lafayette at the Six Nations convention at Johnstown where the Oneida formally allied with the nascent United States. There is even some question as to whether or not Philip Schuyler personally attended that meeting. However, Eliza accompanied her father to at least one other Indian convention and was adopted by the Iroquois—something important enough to
