Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander
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silence is caused by dispair; for do not years, days and moments pass and still find me separated from those I love! yet were I in America, would ambition give an hour to Betsey and to me. Can a mind engaged by Glory taste of peace and ease?
You and Betsey in England. I have no ideas for such happiness, but when will you come and receive the tears of joy and affection?
Your devoted Angelica.
August 15th 1793.
When Hamilton became Secretary of the Treasury his sister-in-law wrote about him: "All the members of Congress have made the first visit to the General, it is very rare to find a person in political or private life so respected and beloved—shall I say by both sexes?
"We dine tomorrow with Mrs. Bingham and Viscomte Importance, Madame de Tilley is quite a la francaise, rouge and short petticoats—poor young creature she has been the victim to a negligent education. I have seen enough of Philadelphia."
The real and only authenticated mistake, which would have been the ruin of a weaker man, was the affair with the notorious Mrs. Reynolds which was brought to light by the mean traps laid for him, principally by Monroe.
For a long time, as has been said, persistent attempts had been made when Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury to find him guilty of peculation and misuse of the government funds, but each time Hamilton vindicated himself and put the combination to rout. Finally, Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venables waited upon him with supposed damning proof that Hamilton had supplied one Reynolds and a confederate, Clingman, then in jail, with money to speculate in the public funds upon information supplied by Hamilton, who was supposed to make use of the knowledge of national affairs he possessed. The precious pair were in prison, but one of them subsequently escaped. These confident confederates, armed with ammunition supplied by the rascals who had already been turned out of their positions and arrested at the instance of the Secretary of the Treasury, were finally delighted with the idea that the daring Federalist might be shorn of his power and disgraced; but when he quietly made his innocence absolutely clear, two of them, Muhlenberg and Venables, were convinced and manfully made amends in apology, but Monroe for a long time held out and preferred to take his original view that Hamilton was guilty. This led to a virulent correspondence and demands from Hamilton that Monroe should retract, which, after much delay, he reluctantly did. Even then the question of a duel was raised. The copy of a challenge written by Monroe, but never sent, has been preserved.
It was necessary at this time for Hamilton to make, perhaps, the greatest sacrifice that can be imagined to save his honor, and this he did. He had given money to Reynolds, but it was in payment of blackmail imposed by that person and his wife, the former having been a mari complaisant for a long period. Oliver says:
"Hamilton elected to tell the whole story; to publish every document in his possession, and to expound the situation, the motives of the parties, and the dangers to the community and to public life arising out of such methods, in that vehement and copious manner which he was famed for pursuing at the bar. . . .
"He exhausted the case. When he had made an end there was nothing more to be said. The statement is without a reservation, and yet it is never familiar. He shirks nothing, nor seeks for any shelter against the opinion of the world. His sole aim is to set his honesty in discharge of his public duty beyond attack. A single departure from the strictest rule of simplicity, a single disingenuous excuse or sentimental quaver, would have made the statement odious. Temptations to an eternal loss of dignity lay on every side, but he had only one concern; to clear his honour. No one has yet been bold enough to challenge the completeness of his vindication."
The wonder is, how a man of Hamilton's refinement and critical sense should ever have been led into an amour with a coarse and illiterate woman, apparently of a very low class, and this is quite inconceivable to most people. The letters and notes of Mrs. Re]molds to him are monuments of vulgarity and bad spelling, and it is to be wondered what he found to admire in such a person that would lead him to run the risk he did. There certainly could not have been anything but rather indifferent physical attractions. Such an entanglement can only be understood by those who are familiar with the sporadic lapses upon the part of other great men who have been tempted to give way to some such impulse, and for a time degrade themselves, often to their lasting ruin. To the psychiatrist the matter is simple, for it is a well-known fact that those possessing the highest order of intelligence; professional men, great statesmen, and others; even those teaching morals, manifest at times what can be only looked upon as a species of irresponsibility that accompanies the highest genius, and impulsively plunge into the underworld in obedience to some strange prompting of their lower nature.
Chapter III
Hamilton as a Writer and Orator
Hamilton's literary activity suffered no interruption from the time he wrote his well-known account of the hurricane in his West Indian home until his death. Not only was it his keen pleasure to write, but his pen was always at the service of others who appealed to him, the result being the production of an enormous amount of general correspondence, political and other essays, and even occasional verse. Laurens, in December, 1776, regarding General Lee's "Infamous Publication," and the fitness of Hamilton's answer, playfully wrote to the latter: "The ancient Secretary is the Recueil of modern history and anecdotes, and will give them to us with candour, elegance and perspicacity. The pen of Junius is in your hand and I think you will, without difficulty, expose in his defence letters and last productions, such a tissue of falsehood and inconsistency as will satisfy the world, and put him forever to silence." The part he played throughout the Revolution, as the secretary and aide-de-camp of Washington, was one requiring a great amount of literary work, his duties being ever of an onerous kind, and his writings of the most diversified nature. The collection of military papers that remain and are now at the Congressional Library show that most of Washington's orders in the field were largely Hamilton's work, and it is to be presumed from their nature that he had most to do with their preparation.
All of them are singularly free from correction, and are legibly and carefully written. This power of prolific creation seems to have increased until his death, and while his correspondence was not as voluminous as that of Jefferson, who is said to have written twenty-five thousand letters, Hamilton's facility for expressing himself on paper led him to write upon every occasion, and the newspapers of the day are a veritable repository of articles upon every conceivable political subject. Worthington C. Ford, in a personal letter, says in this connection: "Think of the man who writes himself hundreds of letters required of him when organizing the provisional army in 17981 It makes the modern General of Industry seem insignificant with his small following of typewriters and a highly organized system of red tape." In the twelve volumes that constitute Lodge's works, most of Hamilton's important reports, speeches, pamphlets, and letters are reproduced, and the list is by no means complete. His communications upon Foreign Relations were thirty-three in number, on Finance and the National Bank thirty-nine, on Commercial Relations twenty-seven, and on Manufacturing and the Whiskey Rebellion seventeen each. His published military letters number seventy-six, his other papers on Coinage, the Mint, Taxation, and the Fisheries seven; and there are no less than thirty-two speeches presented in this work alone. Other miscellaneous papers, relating to the Jefferson and the Adams controversy and the Reynolds affair, numbered seventeen. Of the eighty-five articles in The Federalist it is believed that he wrote sixty-three unaided, and three in collaboration with Madison.
In this collection we, therefore, find over three hundred and twenty-eight important productions brought forth in a period of less than thirty years. If we are to include the various other papers and letters contained in Hamilton's works, edited by his son, or reproduced elsewhere, the number would be very great. From time to time, as in the life and correspondence of McHenry, valuable and hitherto unpublished letters have been unearthed in the last few years. The writer's collection contains many papers relating to both public and legal matters, and that at Washington is still, to some degree, untouched by the historian.
As was the custom