Alexander Hamilton (26 page)

In describing his ideal wife, Hamilton sketches something of a self-portrait as he tries to strike a balance between worldliness and morality. He frankly admits to a desire for money yet is not a slave to greed. A believer in conventional morality and marital fidelity, he nevertheless hates a prig. He likes religion in moderation. Clearly, he dislikes fanaticism and sanctimony. And instead of a sex goddess or a nubile coquette—types that had always titillated him—he opts for a solid, sensible, reasonably attractive wife.

When Washington took his troops to winter headquarters at Morristown that December, Hamilton had extra time to dwell on his future plans. Washington and his staff occupied the mansion of the late Judge Jacob Ford, a stately white house with green trim. Hamilton worked in a log office annexed to the mansion and slept in an upstairs bedroom with Tench Tilghman and James McHenry. The elements conspired against the Continental Army that winter, said to be the most frigid of the century. In New York Bay, the ice froze so thick that the British Army was able to wheel heavy artillery across it. Twenty-eight snowstorms pounded the Morristown headquarters, including a January blizzard that lasted three days, piling snow in six-foot-high banks.

For Washington, it was the war’s nadir, a winter even more depressing than the one at Valley Forge. The snowstorms shut off roads and blocked provisions, leading to looting among troops freezing in log huts. Men mutinied and deserted in large numbers. On January 5, 1780, Washington sent Congress a dreary account: “Many of the [men] have been four or five days without meat entirely and short of bread and none but on very scanty supplies. Some for their preservation have been compelled to maraud and rob from the inhabitants and I have it not in my power to punish or repress the practice.”
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These problems were compounded by the structural inability of Congress to tax the states or establish public credit. The memories of Valley Forge and Morristown would powerfully affect the future political agendas of both Washington and Hamilton, who had to grapple with the defects of a weak central government.

In January, when Washington didn’t allow Hamilton to join Laurens for a combat command in the south, Hamilton tumbled into the darkness of depression. “I am chagrined and unhappy, but I submit,” he wrote to Laurens. “In short, Laurens, I am disgusted with everything in this world but yourself and
very
few more honest fellows and I have no other wish than as soon as possible to make a brilliant exit. ’Tis a weakness, but I feel I am not fit for this terrestrial country.”
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It was not the first time that Hamilton had glancingly alluded to suicide or emigration or suggested that he was miscast on the American scene.

Salvation, it turned out, was at hand, as the Morristown winter proved unexpectedly sociable. The marquis de Chastellux remembered one convivial dinner with George Washington at which the lively Hamilton doled out food, refilled glasses, and proposed gallant toasts. Sleighing parties full of pretty young women succeeded in crossing the snowdrifts to attend receptions. Hamilton subscribed to “dancing assemblies”—fancy-dress balls attended by chief officers—held at a nearby storehouse. Washington, in a black velvet suit, danced and cut a dashing figure with the ladies, while Steuben flashed with medals, and French officers glistened with gold braid and lace. In this anomalous setting, the women courted these revolutionaries in powdered hair and high heels. To the vast amusement of Washington’s family, Hamilton was infatuated that January with a young woman named Cornelia Lott. Colonel Samuel B. Webb even wrote a humorous verse, mocking how the young conqueror had himself been conquered: “Now [Hamilton] feels the inexorable dart / And yields Cornelia all his heart!”
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The fickle Hamilton soon moved on to a young woman named Polly.

On February 2, 1780, hard on the heels of Cornelia and Polly, Elizabeth Schuyler arrived in Morristown, accompanied by a military escort, to stay with relatives. She carried introductory letters to Washington and Steuben—“one of the most gallant men in the camp”—from her father, General Philip Schuyler.
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The general’s sister, Gertrude, had married a well-established physician, Dr. John Cochran, who had moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to have a safe, pleasant spot to inoculate people against smallpox. Not only was Cochran an excellent doctor—he also traveled with the army as Washington’s personal physician, and Lafayette had dubbed him “good doctor Bones”—but he was later appointed director general of the army’s medical department. During the winter encampment at Morristown, Cochran and his wife stayed at the neat white house of their friend Dr. Jabez Campfield, a quarter mile down the road from Washington’s headquarters. So Schuyler found herself in close proximity to her future husband.

Hamilton’s place on Washington’s staff enabled him to socialize with Eliza Schuyler on equal terms. He had already met her on his flying visit to Albany in 1777 when he coaxed General Horatio Gates into surrendering troops to Washington. Even without this prior meeting, Hamilton would have met Schuyler because she came with their mutual friend, Kitty Livingston, long a favorite object of flirtation with Hamilton. Hamilton, twenty-five, was instantly smitten with Schuyler, twenty-two. Fellow aide Tench Tilghman reported: “Hamilton is a gone man.”
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Pretty soon, Hamilton was a constant visitor at the two-story Campfield residence, spending every evening there. Everyone noticed that the young colonel was starry-eyed and distracted. Although a touch absentminded, Hamilton ordinarily had a faultless memory, but, returning from Schuyler one night, he forgot the password and was barred by the sentinel. “The soldier-lover was embarrassed,” recalled Gabriel Ford, then fourteen, the son of Judge Ford. “The sentinel knew him well, but was stern in the performance of his duty. Hamilton pressed his hand to his forehead and tried to summon the important words from their hiding-place, but, like the faithful sentinel, they were immovable.”
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Ford took pity on Hamilton and supplied the password.

By the time Hamilton left Morristown in early March to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the British in Amboy, New Jersey—scarcely more than a month after the courtship began—he and Schuyler had decided to wed. Hamilton must have been struck by the coincidence that his paternal grandfather, Alexander Hamilton, had also married an Elizabeth who was the daughter of a rich, illustrious man.

For Hamilton, Eliza formed part of a beautiful package labeled “the Schuyler Family,” and he spared no effort over time to ingratiate himself with the three sons (John Bradstreet, Philip Jeremiah, and Rensselaer) and five daughters (Angelica, Eliza, Margarita, Cornelia, and the as yet unborn Catherine). The daughters in particular—all smart, beautiful, gregarious, and rich—must have been the stuff of fantasy for Hamilton. Each played a different musical instrument, and they collectively charmed and delighted all visitors to the Schuyler mansion in Albany. After spending a week with the family in April 1776, Benjamin Franklin expressed pleasure “with the ease and affability with which we were treated and the lively behaviour of the young ladies.”
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Tench Tilghman was likewise captivated: “There is something in the behavior of the gen[eral], his lady, and daughters that makes one acquainted with them instantly. I feel easy and free from restraint at his seat.”
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The daughters had enough spunky independence that four of the five eventually eloped, Eliza being the significant exception. Cornelia enacted the most colorful escape, later stealing off with a young man named Washington Morton by climbing down a rope ladder from her bedroom and fleeing in a waiting coach.

With fairy-tale suddenness, the orphaned Hamilton had annexed a gigantic and prosperous clan. After seeing pictures of Eliza’s younger sister Margarita (always called Peggy), he sent her a long, rambling letter in which he poured out his love for her older sister:

I venture to tell you in confidence that by some odd contrivance or other your sister has found out the secret of interesting me in everything that concerns her.... She is most unmercifully handsome and so perverse that she has none of those pretty affectations which are the prerogatives of beauty. Her good sense is destitute of that happy mixture of vanity and ostentation which would make it conspicuous to the whole tribe of fools and foplings.... She has good nature, affability, and vivacity unembellished with that charming frivolousness which is justly deemed one of the principal accomplishments of a
belle.
In short, she is so strange a creature that she possesses all the beauties, virtues, and graces of her sex without any of those amiable defects which ...are esteemed by connoisseurs necessary shades in the character of a fine woman.
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In this letter, Hamilton endows Schuyler with traits exactly consistent with the list he had prepared for John Laurens ten months earlier: she was handsome, sensible, good-natured, and free from vanity or affectation. And since she was the daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest, most powerful men, Hamilton would not have to choose between love and money.

Born on August 9, 1757, Elizabeth Schuyler—whom Hamilton called either Eliza or Betsey—remains invisible in most biographies of her husband and was certainly the most self-effacing “founding mother,” doing everything in her power to focus the spotlight exclusively on her husband. Her absence from the pantheon of early American figures is unfortunate, since she was a woman of sterling character. Beneath an animated, engaging facade, she was loyal, generous, compassionate, strong willed, funny, and courageous. Short and pretty, she was utterly devoid of conceit and was to prove an ideal companion for Hamilton, lending a strong home foundation to his turbulent life. His letters to her reflected not a single moment of pique, irritation, or disappointment.

Everybody sang Eliza’s praises. “A brunette with the most good-natured, lively dark eyes that I ever saw, which threw a beam of good temper and benevolence over her whole countenance,” Tench Tilghman wrote in his journal.
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She was no pampered heiress. An athletic woman and a stout walker, she moved with a determined spring in her step. On one picnic excursion, Tilghman watched her laughingly clamber up a steep hillside while less plucky girls required male assistance. The marquis de Chastellux liked her “mild agreeable countenance,” while Brissot de Warville credited her with being “a delightful woman who combines both the charms and attractions and the candor and simplicity typical of American womanhood.”
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Like others, James McHenry sensed intense passion throbbing beneath her restraint; she could be impulsive. “Hers was a strong character with its depth and warmth, whether of feeling or temper controlled, but glowing underneath, bursting through at times in some emphatic expression.”
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In 1787, Ralph Earl painted a perceptive portrait of Eliza Hamilton. It shows her with strikingly alert black eyes—the feature that most attracted Hamilton—that glowed with inner strength. She flaunts one of the powdered bouffant hairdos so popular among society women at the time—what one of her friends called her “Marie Antoinette coiffure.”
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Her gaze is frank and open, as if she were ready to chat amiably with the viewer. Beneath her white silk taffeta dress, she has a shapely body but not a delicate femininity. Her makeup is so understated as to be scarcely noticeable. She seems robust and energetic, and one can imagine her having been a tomboy. All in all, she seems a cheerful, modest soul, blessed with gumption.

She received us so kindly, kissing us both, for the general and papa were very warm friends. She was then nearly fifty years old, but was still handsome. She was quite short: a plump little woman with dark brown eyes, her hair a little frosty, and very plainly dressed for such a grand lady as I considered her. She wore a plain, brown gown of homespun stuff, a large white handkerchief, a neat cap, and her plain gold wedding ring, which she had worn for more than twenty years. She was always my ideal of a true woman.
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As soon as Schuyler arrived in Morristown, she gave Martha Washington a pair of cuffs as a gift, and the latter reciprocated with some powder. In time, the relationship between Schuyler and the older woman ripened into something akin to a mother-daughter bond.

Schuyler had received some tutoring but little formal schooling. Her spelling was poor, and she didn’t write with the fluency of other Schuylers. One doesn’t imagine her dipping into Hume or Hobbes or the weighty philosophers regularly consulted by her husband. On the other hand, as the daughter of a soldier and statesman, she was well versed in public affairs and had been exposed to many political luminaries. At thirteen, she accompanied her father to a conclave of chiefs of the Six Nations at Saratoga and received an Indian name meaning “One-of-us.”
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She had been taught backgammon by none other than Ben Franklin in April 1776 when he visited General Schuyler en route to his diplomatic mission to Canada. Like Hamilton, Eliza was avidly interested in the world around her.

One intriguing question about Eliza Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton concerns their religious beliefs. An active member of the Dutch Reformed Church, Schuyler was a woman of such indomitable Christian faith that Tench Tilghman called her “the little saint” in one letter. Washington’s staff was slightly taken aback that the rakish Hamilton chose this pious wife.
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Hamilton had been devout when younger, but he seemed more skeptical about organized religion during the Revolution. Soon after meeting Schuyler, he wrote a letter of recommendation for a military parson, Dr. Mendy. “He is just what I should like for a military parson except that he does not whore or drink,” Hamilton said. “He will fight and he will not insist upon your going to heaven, whether you will or not.”
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Eliza never doubted her husband’s faith and always treasured his sonnet “The Soul Ascending into Bliss,” written on St. Croix. On the other hand, Hamilton refrained from a formal church affiliation despite his wife’s steadfast religiosity.