“They won’t,” he assured me. “They took his fish and made him bleed. That will be enough.”
I prayed my husband was right, remembering that we’d both seen worse horrors. But the lawlessness unleashed in America since our victory threatened my faith. When a Tory was acquitted by a judge in Charleston, his neighbors simply laid hold of him as soon as he left the courthouse and strung him up. I feared everything we’d struggled for was all coming undone. No sooner had we driven the king from our shores than we seemed intent on proving that we were uncivilized people who couldn’t live without a monarch to keep us from behaving as beasts.
“What kind of place is this in which to bring up our children?” I asked.
“I know, my angel,” Alexander said, holding me. “I, too, fear the revolution’s fruits will be blasted by the violence of rash or unprincipled men motivated by vindictive and selfish passions. So we must set the example and be kind to our neighbors.”
I remembered a time when I hadn’t set an example. When I’d failed to do the right thing. When I’d not given water to an injured Redcoat soldier for fear of what others might think of me. So I resolved to make up for that now and do just what my husband suggested.
That Sunday I put on my bonnet and marched, with great purpose, to Saint Paul’s Chapel. It was all that remained of the burned-down Episcopal Trinity Church, which had been a haven for Loyalists. I made a point to seat myself for prayers near to the shunned Tory families. And it was there that I first met sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of a Loyalist merchant who’d lost much of his wealth during the war.
We exchanged a few pleasantries as I tried to ease the girl’s obvious tension, and before long she burst forth, as if the words couldn’t be held inside even before a stranger. “My father took no part in the war. He stayed because he loves New York. He shouldn’t be scorned because he also loved his king. And how can I help him rebuild his fortune if no man will have me for a wife?”
“You’re far too pretty to worry on that score,” I said reassuringly, certain that her sweet face and dignified manner would make any man overlook the sins of her father. And I invited her to tea at my house the next time I entertained ladies.
It was all I could think to do.
Fortunately, my husband did much more.
Alarmed at the violence—he set out to use the mightiest power he had at his disposal.
His pen.
And though I didn’t know it then, my husband was the best writer of the founding generation. Oh, there are those who will argue that honor goes to a certain Virginian, but he receives enough applause from the rabble without my praise, and I despise him too much to credit his talents.
It’s enough to know that it was my husband who, in this dark hour, held out so eloquently against the mob in a letter to his fellow citizens under the pseudonym Phocion, urging them to heed the principles of law and justice.
But if Alexander hoped his pen name—cleverly chosen to refer to yet another soldier from antiquity with murky parentage and noble wisdom—would shield his identity, he was wrong.
On my daily strolls with my little boy, I felt the glares of passersby. The baker was no longer content to extend me any sort of credit for bread. The delivery of fresh fruit from my father’s farm arrived smashed upon my front stoop, partially wrapped in a paper that featured an anonymous poem aimed, unquestionably, at my husband, for having become a supposed lackey for the royalists.
I burned this poem straightaway in the kitchen fire, but that didn’t stop Alexander from learning of it. And it wounded him gravely. Many of our friends, most especially Colonel Burr, advised him to let tempers cool and not risk his reputation, or our livelihood, to defend the Tories.
But my dear Hamilton wouldn’t listen.
Chapter Sixteen
September 25, 1784
New York City
A GIRL,” I SAID, gently handing over the little bundle.
And at the sight of his daughter, Alexander murmured, “My heart is at once melted into tenderness.”
“Shall we name her after your mother?” I asked, peering up at him from our bed.
He furrowed his brow and rubbed his sleeve over his joyful eyes. “Should we not name her after your mother?”
There were already three baby Catherines in our family, for both my mother and Angelica had used the name for their youngest daughters, and Peggy had used it for her first, too.
Angelica. There was not a day that passed since my sister left for Europe that I didn’t think of her or wish she was nearer to me. I pined for her, treasured every gift she sent, and had even papered the walls of our children’s nursery with French sheeting, all covered in pink roses and ivy. I read Angelica’s letters with a selfish avarice—keeping them in a box upon my dressing table, including the one in which she shared the news of the birth of a new baby daughter, Elizabeth. She’d named her for me.
That was it. If I couldn’t have my sister with me, at least I would have her namesake. “What about the name Angelica?”
“Angelica Hamilton,” my husband said, an affectionate smile growing upon his face. “We’ll call her Ana to distinguish. I cannot think of a more perfect honor for two whom we both hold so dear.” So our daughter was named. A baby with rose-pink cheeks, wide eyes, and a commanding cry. I clutched little Ana to my breast, wishing to give her all the love I couldn’t give her namesake across the sea.
After I nursed her, I shifted to rise from the bed.
“The doctor says you should rest,” Alexander said, moving to assist me.
“So should you,” I replied, longing for
