“General Washington is leaving the army,” I said, broaching the subject for the third time in as many days. But since the invitation had arrived, Alexander’s mood had turned dark. “He’s saying farewell to his officers at the tavern, and were you not first and foremost amongst them?”
Though I believed right down to the marrow of my bones that my husband had been the best and brightest of Washington’s officers, I still expected him to modestly protest that generals like my father, Nathanael Greene, Lafayette, or Henry Knox had been more instrumental to the victory. But modesty was never one of Alexander’s virtues. Instead, he complained, “Congress has not seen fit to recognize me as such.”
“Alexander—”
“I’m not going.”
Something had changed in him, I thought.
Something ate at him, night and day, and I didn’t think it was Congress.
I wished I understood it.
“But Washington is laying down his sword,” I said. “Such a moment will surely be recorded in the annals of history, Alexander. Shouldn’t your name be noted as one of those in attendance?”
It was then, for the first time, that I learned what it was like to truly stand in opposition to Alexander Hamilton. For what followed was not an indulgent remonstration. Nor even a small lecture on all the reasons he should not—would not—attend.
It was, instead, an onslaught of arguments, stinging in tone as if I were not merely a nagging wife but also an enemy to be destroyed. Raising every objection I had made or might make as a target, Alexander fired off ten, twelve, twenty points in rapid succession. Not just vanquishing my opinion, but also snapping even at the fly-wisp ideas that might have still buzzed around its corpse in my brain.
When, stunned, I finally opened my mouth to reply, he snapped his paper open. “No more, Betsy.”
I cannot decide whether my rebelliousness was stoked by the lawyerly tenaciousness with which he harangued me, or the high temper with which he did it, or simply the knowledge that my own mother would never have allowed such an episode to pass in her parlor without exacting a heavy price from my father’s peace of mind.
The truth was that in refusing to say farewell to Washington, I believed my husband to be doing something enormously foolish that he might one day regret. Sitting there beside him, Mrs. Washington’s advice came suddenly to mind. “Sometimes we encourage, sometimes we challenge, and sometimes we manage . . .”
And so, instead of staying silent, I challenged him with the one thing I knew to be unutterably true. “George Washington is a great man.”
My husband’s intense eyes fixed on me with dark, stormy disapproval. An edge of contempt and enmity I’d never before imagined could come from the expression of a man as dear to me as life. “I told you, ‘No more.’ A certain indulgence must be afforded a Dutchman’s daughter in matters of hearth and home, but I’ll teach you the absolute necessity of implicit obedience if I must.”
It was not the first time my husband warned of discipline. He had, in fact, written similar words in love letters. But those were playful threats, embellished with a courtier’s wit. This time, he seemed in earnest.
Would he dare raise a hand to me? Though the Bible might have confirmed his right to, my fists balled with a sudden urge to turn my back, summon a carriage, and return with our baby boy to Papa’s home in Albany at once.
Other fathers would refuse to step into a quarrel between a daughter and a husband, but I didn’t doubt even for a moment that my father would shelter me and his grandson, nor that he would take my part in any quarrel. And for Alexander, a breach with my father—one of the foremost men in the state—would dash his ambitions forever. So I felt a gratifying, if discomforting, satisfaction that I held a greater power of happiness and misery over my husband than he held over me. Except for one single, solitary thing.
I loved him. I loved him so deeply and truly. Desperately.
And so I let him make this terrible mistake—toward Washington and me. That night, I said not another word. Quietly seething, I went to bed. I wouldn’t abandon him, as so many others had in his life, but I was no saint. And in the days that followed, I couldn’t manage more than polite conversation that felt stilted by the breach.
From a newly married Tench Tilghman, I later learned that Washington—notorious for his reserve—toasted his officers, invited them to shake his hand, and actually embraced them, weeping. I wasn’t there to see it myself, of course, but after it was done, I went alone with Philip to mingle with the crowds at Whitehall Wharf, holding my darling boy so that he wouldn’t miss the moment as the church bells rang and everywhere along the route people pressed noses to windows and crowded balconies to watch Washington go.
At nearly two years old, Philip was an uncommonly handsome little boy who laughed with delight and raised his little fists when the soldiers, still cheering, waved their hats as Washington boarded his ferry.
I laughed, too, at the joy in the moment, but also wept bittersweet tears.
Because I feared we might never set eyes upon the grand old man again as the river carried him away. And because, for days, I’d stifled emotion that now crested over at having uncovered another dark layer in my husband that I hadn’t known was there before.
I soldiered on and tried to distract myself with an upcoming dance assembly that week—a gathering of the city’s finest citizens at a grand ball that would effect a reconciliation between the patriots and any Tories still left in the city. I was eager to slip into my best gown—and the more genteel life that I imagined had preceded the war.
More importantly, amiable society so often brought out my husband’s playful wit and
