To me, the worst part of his numerous responsibilities was the one I’d feared from the beginning. He worked constantly, and by the time he returned home from his office he was exhausted, and barely able to topple into bed. He was frequently summoned to Philadelphia, and he could be gone for weeks at a time. The plain truth was that I missed him.
With Alexander so much absent and my children growing, I began to hunt about me for useful ways to keep my loneliness at bay. In the fall of 1798, I hadn’t far to look.
New York was the country’s largest port city, with scores of foreign strangers arriving on its docks every day. In most ways, this was a fine and prosperous advantage to the city, but toward the end of every summer, when the heat gathered most fiercely, it also meant that there was a higher risk of yellow fever. Much like Philadelphia to the south, New York saw some years with only a handful of cases, and then others when the fever was so widespread and severe as to become a veritable plague upon the citizens.
Thus was the case in 1798. The first cases began in the poorer neighborhoods near the docks, as was often the way, but soon spread north at an alarming rate. People took sick as they went about their work and collapsed in the streets, and died there, too, as all others fled. Because of the sweltering heat that lay so heavily upon the city this year, the fever took hold and progressed at a faster pace than was customary, swiftly claiming victims of every class of society.
Like every other person of any means, we, too, left the city to escape the risk of the fever, taking lodgings in the country in September. I couldn’t forget how ill from the same fever Alexander and I had been in Philadelphia five years before, and I would do all that was necessary to preserve my children from such suffering. At least this time I prevailed upon Alexander to remain with us, and not venture back into the city as he foolishly had in Philadelphia, but he still continued to work, and through his associates reported to us that at the height of the sickness, a hundred people and more were said to be dying a day: a considerable number in a city of 60,000 souls.
Shops and other businesses were closed, courts shut, and streets were deserted. Farmers who usually brought their wares to the markets to sell kept away, and there were shortages of food among those who remained. Still the sun blazed down upon the suffering city, with no relief for the ill.
Finally, in late September, cooling rains came from the ocean, and at last the deaths began to subside. We returned to our home, and I had every inch of it thoroughly scrubbed with vinegar, just to be sure.
But for many other families, it would take far more than vinegar to clear away the effects of the fever. While illness most often claimed the very young and the very old, it was the special cruelty of yellow fever that it could devastate and kill even the strongest of men in a matter of days.
The city was filled with fresh widows of every age, their sorrowful faces and clinging, fatherless children everywhere. Most of these women were abruptly left without any support, and were now forced to contend not only with the dreadful grief of a husband’s death, but the desperate realization that they’d no way to support themselves or their children.
It was the sight of these poor women that inspired me. I had always been involved in charitable works; my mother had instilled that virtue in me, as the duty of a Christian lady. But now I presented myself to Mrs. Isabella Graham, a Scottish widow who well understood the plight of her sisters, and had ten years before founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children. Unlike many of the wealthier women who solely offered financial contributions (which were, of course, most welcome and essential), I gave myself over whole-heartedly to Mrs. Graham’s activities, calling on the widows with packages of food, clothing, and medicine. I offered solace and prayer as best I could, and perhaps most importantly, I listened to their melancholy recollections of the husbands they’d lost.
“It’s a good thing that you are doing, Betsey,” Alexander said proudly as I described to him yet another sad case of a young woman with twin babies who’d never thought she’d be left in such a sorrowful state. “I’ve always known you to be kindness itself, and now the rest of the city shall see it as well.”
“I don’t do it to be recognized,” I said. “You know that of me. Rather I’ve been so blessed in my own life that I feel it’s my obligation to help others who haven’t.”
“As you do, dearest,” he said, smiling warmly before he kissed me. “As you do.”
It was in a way one more interest we’d always shared, for he himself was extraordinarily generous by nature, and his own sad situation as a child had left him with special sympathy for unfortunate women and children. But as much as I wished it could be otherwise, his own kindness was now restricted to making contributions—the names of “General & Mrs. Hamilton” were prominent on many of the membership rolls of city charities—and his countless responsibilities with the army meant he was almost never at home.
I suppose my loneliness would have been easier to bear if Alexander had himself been happy. But the grander his schemes for the army became, the less support from Congress he had to enact them, and most especially from President Adams. The first bloom of enthusiasm gave way to increasing frustration.
After over a month of inconclusive meetings in Philadelphia, he came home to New York in December, the tail end of 1798. I knew from his letters that he hadn’t been well, but I was shocked by his appearance: he’d grown thin and weary-looking, and beneath the powder and pomatum in his hair, there was far more gray than there’d been before. He’d begun wearing his spectacles more often, too, their flashing lenses masking his eyes and making him appear older as well.
Our house was bedecked with greenery for the Christmas holidays and our children were wildly excited over the coming festivities, but for Alexander and me, alone together in the parlor the night he returned, there was little joy, and less cheer.
“I cannot help think that I am wasting both my time and my energies,” he said, standing beside the fire. I’d poured him a glass of his favorite brandy, but instead of drinking it, he’d merely swirled it within the glass, staring into the amber liquid like an oracle searching for signs.
“Perhaps there will be more interest in the new year,” I suggested. As much as I did not like the idea of the army, I hated seeing him like this. “People are often distracted by their own affairs in December.”
“It’s more than that, Betsey,” he said. “Adams has no interest in leading, and shrinks from his responsibilities. He retreats to Massachusetts, and lets Congress run wild. There is no hint of civility, no respect, no decency. Senators openly brawl on the floor as if they were drunken sailors in a tavern, and debates deteriorate into shouting matches.”