This was admirable and honorable, yes, but it placed our little household in the same predicament that we’d before encountered when Alexander had served in the Congress of the Confederation, and later in the Constitutional Convention. We simply hadn’t the funds to afford it. As perhaps the most prominent attorney in the state, Alexander had earned an excellent living, and we’d all grown accustomed to the little luxuries that his toil had made possible: the fine wines, his tailor and my mantua-maker, the small but growing collection of French and Italian prints on the walls of our parlor, the schools for our children, and the elegant furnishings in our house.
As secretary of finance, however, Alexander’s income had plummeted to a mere $3,500 a year. For President Washington and the other members of his cabinet, all of whom were wealthy, older gentlemen with plantations, land, and investments that earned them substantial incomes, their government salary was inconsequential, but for us, it was all we had, and with a houseful of young children to support as well.
Yet Alexander still wished us to live with the same outward grandeur as the others, and though I felt I constantly scrambled to balance our expenses as best I could, he assured me over and over that we would be fine, and that any setbacks we suffered would be temporary. Because he claimed it was essential to his position in the cabinet, we continued to dress fashionably, attend the theater and the assembly, and entertain our friends and his associates with costly dinners and wines at our house. It remained our secret irony that the secretary of finance teetered on the edge of insolvency, but that was the uncomfortable truth of our situation, and the possibility of moving to Philadelphia kept me awake at night wondering how we’d possibly manage.
But whilst this brave new government prided itself on being a true republic, we all were learning that some things must still be accomplished in the older style of politics, with private meetings between prominent statesmen held late at night behind closed doors. One warm night late in June, I was awakened by Alexander entering our darkened bedchamber, attempting to be silent but making a poor show of it.
“What time is it, my love?” I asked sleepily, pushing myself upright against the pillows.
“Half past midnight,” he said, his figure shadowy in the dark room. “But such things we’ve accomplished tonight, Betsey!”
“Then light a candle and tell me,” I said, instantly awake, “and stop fumbling about in the dark like a clumsy thief.”
“I didn’t wish to wake you,” he said contritely, striking a flint for a spark to light one of the candlesticks. He was still fully dressed for evening in the clothes he’d worn to dine at Mr. Jefferson’s lodgings in Maiden Lane, and from the slight slur and giddiness to his voice I suspected the company—all male, and all involved in the government—had drunk a good deal of wine to ease their discussion.
“So what exactly did you accomplish tonight while good Christians were asleep?” I asked, looping my arms around my bent knees as he shed his coat and his waistcoat. “Who was in the company?”
“Jefferson, of course,” he said, dropping into a chair to unbuckle his shoes and pull them off. “And Madison. Those are the ones who mattered. But listen to what we agreed, Betsey. You know how Madison and his followers refused to support assumption.”
“I couldn’t live in this city and not know that,” I said. “But the question is done, isn’t it?”
He grinned, tugging at the knot in his neck cloth to work it free. “It’s done, my love, but not in the manner you’re thinking. Madison has finally agreed to sway his block of nay-saying representatives to vote for a new bill with assumption at its heart. It is a wonderful compromise, Betsey. A lovely, beautiful compromise!”
He might have been half in his cups, but I was not. “Beautiful or otherwise, Alexander, a compromise implies that if Mr. Madison agreed to change his mind in this, then you must have offered something to him in turn, too.”
“It does,” he admitted, pulling the tails of his shirt free from his breeches before he drew it over his head in a billowing cloud of wrinkled linen. “But the sacrifice will be well worth it in the end.”
“It had better be,” I said. “You’ll have to tell the rest of the world in the morning. You might as well tell me now.”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing beneath each of his arms with the bundled shirt. “In return for Madison’s votes, I agreed to urge that the permanent capital shall be built on the Potomac, and the temporary one shall be Philadelphia.”
“Oh, Alexander, you didn’t!” I cried, shocked beyond measure. “You abandoned New York? You, who consider yourself a New Yorker, tossed this city’s future prospects away for the sake of a bill that has already been defeated once?”
He nodded, still holding that wretched shirt in his hands.
“There are times, Betsey,” he began, “when personal preference must be put aside for the good of the nation, and—”
“No,” I said flatly as the magnitude of what he’d done swept over me. “This isn’t a preference, Alexander. This is our home, or it was, and now I do not know how we shall be able to hold our heads up when we walk down the street.”
But my thoughts were nothing compared to what my father said when he heard the news. He came directly to speak with Alexander, who, fortunately for him, was not at home, leaving me alone to receive the full brunt of Papa’s ire.
“I know he is your husband, Eliza,” he thundered, standing in the front hall with the door to the street still wide open behind him and my footman cowering beside it. “Until this day I have also regarded him as another son, but this—this makes me question every favorable thought that I have had of the man.”
He struck his walking stick sharply on the floor with every word, no doubt imagining he was doing the same to my husband.
“Papa, please,” I began, trying to take him by the arm. “It’s not wise for you to upset yourself in this way.”
He shook me off. “Don’t coddle me, Eliza,” he ordered. “You know as well as I that what your Hamilton has done to New York is nothing short of a complete betrayal to those who have supported him from the moment he washed up on the shores of our harbor.”
He was far from alone in his opinion. When the House approved the Residence Act in July, officially naming both Philadelphia as the current capital and the Potomac site as the future one, New Yorkers united in their anger, and their anguish, and Alexander’s part in it brought comments wherever we went. Of course, I defended him as best I could; as unhappy as I’d been (and still was) with his decision, he was my husband. And, to be honest, to those in Philadelphia and the southern states, his part in the decision was lauded.
But what was perhaps most surprising of the whole affair was Mr. Jefferson’s part in it. Before the act had even been signed, he began to tell about town a curious version of that infamous dinner.