To my joy, Alexander did exactly what he’d pledged, and resigned that afternoon, effective when the new congressional session began in January. No one in Philadelphia had expected it, the least of all President Washington. The president tried to persuade him to stay for the last year of his own term, but Alexander held firm.
I still marveled that he did, for in many ways he had been at the height of his powers in Philadelphia. The rebellion had been quelled in the best way possible, with measured authority and a minimal loss of life. Everything that he had created or put into effect during his tenure was running effectively, and the country was at ease and at peace.
Needless to say, the Democratic-Republicans believed otherwise, harping on the perceived indignities of the Whiskey Rebellion and other old slanders dredged from the past. As Alexander’s last proposals were combined into a bill before Congress, Senator Aaron Burr tried to introduce a number of Democratic-Republican-approved amendments to the bill, amendments that Alexander thought undermined his proposals for no reason except to be contrary. Fortunately, the bill passed without the amendments, and at last Alexander was free.
We turned the key to the door of the Third Street house for the last time in February 1795. I’ll admit that while I was thankful to be done with the politics of government, I’d also made many friends in the city, and I was sorry to be leaving them behind. I’d borne one child while I was here, and lost another, and yet overall, Alexander and I had been happy. But I was eager to return to New York City, the city that still felt most like our home.
We spent the rest of the winter and the spring at The Pastures, the first break that Alexander had permitted himself from work in years. He did little but read, ride, and a little writing, and played a great deal with the children, which they adored. As a boy in the Caribbean, he’d never ridden a sled, and he took to it now with ferocious delight, racing down the long hill before our house with the boys. He took turns taking our younger sons, James and John, down the hill with him, tucking them securely between his knees while they shrieked with delight, and I watched with the trepidation that all mothers do. Each night before supper, I played my old pianoforte in the parlor, and Alexander and our daughter, Angelica, would sing ballads together, their voices in the most pleasing harmony imaginable.
The best part of the day for me was the end, when he and I would retire to bed together, without any talk of politics crowded in between us. By the end of the first fortnight, he was smiling and laughing again as he hadn’t in years; by the end of a month, he looked like a new man.
And yet as idyllic as this all might seem, the reality of our lives was never far away. He insisted on reading the New York newspapers that my father had brought up the river each day, and after supper they often shared their outrage at this or that, while Mamma and I had no choice but to listen.
One evening as we all sat together in the front parlor, however, I learned far more than I’d expected. One of the more outrageous New York Democratic-Republicans (and a friend of Mr. Burr as well), Commodore James Nicholson, had accused Alexander of having profited so handsomely from his position in the Treasury and from British bribes that he could retire with ease, having an account with over one hundred thousand pounds sterling in a London bank.
“I cannot believe that even Nicholson would present such a statement,” Papa said indignantly. He sat in his customary chair close to the fire, where the heat of the coals might warm his knees. “The man is a rascal, Hamilton, but for him to imply that you have accepted so much as a single penny, let alone a sum of that amount, is preposterous and supremely insulting.”
I sighed, only half listening as I darned one of the boys’ stockings. Seated across from me, my mother knitted a new scarf for James, who’d become her unabashed favorite from the time he’d spent here with her when he’d been so ill. She and I had already tried to steer the conversation away from politics to the snowman the children had built in the yard earlier in the day, but Alexander and Papa had been unable to resist returning to their favorite topic once again, and now Mamma and I were resigned to another evening of listening to it.
“Clearly, Nicholson has no knowledge of my private affairs, or my banking accounts, either,” Alexander said, standing before him with one arm resting against the mantel. “If he did, he’d realize how laughable such a charge is. I have left office far more poor than when I assumed it. Why, my entire fortune in the world cannot be above five hundred dollars.”
My father laughed, considering this an exaggeration for effect, but Alexander sounded to be in earnest. I looked up sharply from my work, unsure of what exactly he was claiming.
“I am perfectly serious, sir,” he continued, addressing Papa. “I own neither house nor property, and there has never been enough to spare for investments. Beyond our household furnishing and the clothes that Eliza and I possess, we are as good as paupers. We’re charming and amiable paupers, to be sure, but paupers nonetheless.”
“Please, Alexander,” I said uneasily. “Do not make jests like that.”
He smiled, and indeed he was both charming and amiable.
“It’s not a jest, dearest,” he said. “Surely you were aware of that.”
“How could I be aware when this is the first you have said of it to me?” I didn’t dare look at either of my parents.
“You knew the meagerness of my salary,” he said. “Living to the expectations of the office on what I was paid would have been impossible, and it has exhausted all my resources.”
I flushed. He wasn’t faulting me—to his credit, he never did that—but he was making it sound as if our apparent poverty had been unavoidable. I thought of all the times I’d tried to be cautious in our spending, and how he in turn had assured me that it wasn’t necessary. I thought of the large house and stable on Third Street and the carriage and horses that we’d kept, the boarding school for the older boys and the various private teachers of French, music, dance, and needlework for the girls, the costly clothes—oh, the clothes!—that we’d both bought for the entertainments and ceremonies of life in the capital. And because of it all, it now appeared we had nothing.
“You’re not serious, Hamilton,” my father said, clearly uncomfortable with what he’d just heard. “You can’t be.”
“I am,” Alexander said, and when he answered, he looked to me, not Papa. “I gave away these last years of my life to the country, and now I must make good on it. I calculate it shall take me five or six years of steady work to clear my debts and be ahead. But for the sake of Eliza and the children, it will be done.”
“Hah.” My father looked down at the table, lost for words. “That’s not what I ever expected to hear from you, Hamilton.”
It wasn’t what I’d expected, either, even when I pressed my husband later when we were alone together in our bedchamber.