With him away so often, I closed up our New York house and retreated with our children to The Pastures, where the air was healthier for them. My sister Peggy also came often from Rensselaerwyck bringing her young son and daughter, too, so that the infant cousins could be together.
Peggy and I both wished that Angelica could be there with us as well, particularly this summer. The child my older sister had been carrying the previous summer had been born, a third son named Richard Hamilton Church, soon after they’d arrived again at their home in Paris. I’d rejoiced at her safe delivery, but Angelica’s own joy was obviously mitigated by the baby’s frailty. Unlike his siblings, he was never strong, and despite all the best efforts of the physicians in Paris and then London, he had finally given up his innocent soul to Heaven after only a few short months of mortal life. Sharing her sorrow for the nephew I’d never had the chance to meet made me appreciate my own little ones even more, and thank God for their sturdy health.
Angelica was distraught with grief, as can be imagined, and Peggy and I both longed to be able to comfort her in person, and not just by letter. Privately I suspected that if Mr. Church had not been so insistent upon hauling my sister back and forth across the ocean whilst she was in a delicate condition, then the son she’d carried might have been of a stronger constitution and survived; of course, I would never be so cruel as to share that opinion with my poor sister, who in her grief already blamed herself too much. But Mr. Church had no plans to return to America that year, and so poor Angelica suffered without our consolation.
I returned to New York City in September, in time to help prepare Alexander for traveling to his commerce conference in Annapolis. I worried over his decision to ride by himself on horseback to Maryland. He had attempted to maintain as much of his legal work in New York even as he served in the Assembly, and he worked prodigiously long hours. He’d never seem to require as much sleep as most men, but even he had his limits, and over the summer he’d developed a raspy cough that had not gone away. Given the state of his health, I’d preferred he travel by coach or sea instead, but he’d insisted that the ride through the autumn countryside would do him good. He was right, too. He remained an excellent horseman, and being out of doors and away from his office proved the proper prescription, for he claimed by the time he arrived in Annapolis, he felt thoroughly restored.
I suspect, however, it was more the company he found in Annapolis than the journey that restored him. The conference consisted of only a dozen gentlemen, but among them was James Madison, the small, scholarly representative from Virginia whom he’d met during the Continental Congress, and who shared many of his views. In fact, from Alexander’s telling when he returned to New York City in October, the entire conference soon set aside the question of interstate commerce—its reason for convening—and instead devoted its conversation and energy to proposing another, much more important convention to revise the old Confederation to favor a stronger federal government. By the time they all returned to their home states, they took with them a resolution for a Constitutional Convention to be held in Philadelphia.
Alexander himself arrived home late one night toward the end of September, after the children and servants were abed and I myself was already undressed and ready for my prayers. I was surprised but delighted to see him after he’d been away, and happily greeted him in the hall wearing only a dressing gown over my nightshift, my feet in slippers and my hair plaited for bed.
“You should’ve stopped at an inn along the way,” I chided after he’d kissed me. “It’s not safe for you to ride so far alone at night.”
“The harvest moon lit my way,” he said grandly, still holding me close. “Besides, I wanted to come home to you.”
“I’m grateful that you did, dearest.” I smiled, and kissed him again. He smelled of leather and horse and sweat, the wonderful scent of his homecomings, and reluctantly I slipped free. “I’ll wager you didn’t stop to eat, either. Come to the kitchen, and I’ll make you dinner.”
“You know me so well, Betsey,” he said, reaching out to tug playfully on my braid as he followed me into the kitchen. Not wanting to wake the servants, I made him dinner myself from what was on hand, and I sat with him in the kitchen by a single candlestick while he ate. It was like the old days when we’d first wed, especially when he began to tell me of the Convention, of what had been accomplished and what hadn’t. After his first glass of wine, he retrieved his saddlebag from the hall and handed me a copy of the Convention’s resolution.
“You wrote this, Alexander, didn’t you?” I’d only to skim the first paragraphs to recognize his words and style.
He shrugged with a carelessness that didn’t fool me for a moment. “I wrote the first draft,” he said. “Others had suggestions.”
Looking over the edge of the paper, I raised my brows, waiting for further explanation.
“The Virginians found my initial efforts too impassioned,” he finally admitted. “Madison begged me to be more moderate, or else lose his state’s support.”
“I can only imagine,” I murmured. I could, too. I’d been listening to Alexander at his most unguarded for years. The subject of the resolution was so dear to his heart that it was easy enough for me to guess the dramatic and—to most men—terrifyingly extreme suggestions that he’d put forth in that first draft.
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. “I wouldn’t have had to edit it to such a degree if you’d read it first.”
“Perhaps,” I said, even though he was likely right. I didn’t read everything he wrote before he shared it with others—and in fact, since I’d become so occupied with raising our children, I’d sadly read less and less—yet I appreciated that he, too, was remembering fondly to earlier days in our marriage, and the furious compositions on finance that he’d addressed to Robert Morris.
I set the paper down on the table, smoothing it thoughtfully with my palm. “When would this Constitutional Convention take place?”
“First the states must agree to it,” he said. “Then each state must choose its delegates, and finally a date can be chosen. So the answer, I suppose, is as soon as possible, which won’t be very soon at all. I should hope we’ll gather early in the new year.”
“ ‘We’?” I repeated. “You are certain you’ll be a delegate?”
He smiled with assurance. “Not even Clinton would dare block me from it now.”
I smiled, too, but sighed as well, for I suspected that matters would not be so simply resolved. “I should congratulate you, then,” I said. “This is exactly what you’ve wanted, isn’t it?”
“It’s a beginning,” he said. “There’s no time to be lost. We must move forward and we must make changes, substantial changes, else the country will collapse.”