Alexander was suddenly, decidedly less giddy. “I agreed to use my influence to move the capital city from New York to the wilderness of the Potomac.”
Already imagining the uproar it would cause amongst our New York friends, I tried to reconcile myself to the news. “It will take time to build a new city. Surely, in the meantime, we’ll remain here?”
Hamilton shook his head, more than a little frustrated at the outcome. His enemies had whispered that the capital city was to be called Hamiltonopolis, so he’d been forced to give New York up even as a temporary home for the government, lest he appear to be self-interested. “All of us—the congressmen, the senators, the cabinet officers and their wives—are to pack up and migrate to Philadelphia.”
I didn’t relish upending our life on Wall Street, but there was nothing for it but to close up the house, pack up the children, and sell the chickens.
But that autumn, with the move entirely in my command, I was inconsolable.
Not to leave New York—but because our faithful Jenny fell prey to yellow fever.
It’d started as a fever and some aches, and though she insisted she felt better, I sent her back to the Pastures for a rest and a visit with her mother. She never made it there. She died on the sloop, it was reported to me, bleeding from the mouth, nose, and eyes, screaming in pain. And I grieved as much that she had died alone, without me to tend her, as I would have for a member of my family. Which made me deeply ashamed.
For I had not treated her with the love and respect someone ought to treat family. Instead, I’d told myself polite lies to disguise the fact that I’d “borrowed” Jenny. I’d taken her away from her mother at the Pastures and I’d taken her labor and kindness as if I had a right to them.
Jenny had been a servant, yes. Why say it politely, even if it was the custom? She was a slave. She’d been my children’s nursemaid, and they loved her. She’d also been my helpmate, and I considered her a friend. I should have told her that. No, I should have treated her like a friend. I should have treated her like a person, with the same God-given rights as any other.
I should have seen to her freedom. And now it was too late.
Papa had joined the New York Manumission Society; he wasn’t insensible to the injustice of slavery. He meant to do away with it at the Pastures as soon as he could afford to. But even if Papa wouldn’t have released Jenny from bondage, I should have paid her a wage.
In guilt and grief over her death, I wanted nothing more to do with slavery.
Now I vowed never to own, rent, or borrow another human being.
That wasn’t enough, of course. Not enough to wipe away the stain on my soul or the everyday injustices of the institution. But I kept true to my vow.
I’d been born and raised on a plantation; my happiness had been built on the subjugation of others. My past was tainted with it, no matter what excuses I made for myself. But I could change. The country could change. So I put slavery—and New York—behind me in the hopes of bringing about a government that would help guarantee that all men, and perhaps all women, would be treated as equals before the law.
Determined to make a fresh start in our new capital, we found ourselves renting a home in Philadelphia on the corner of Walnut and Third streets, not far at all from the theater. Our neighbors were thee-and-thou Quakers, including Mrs. Dolley Payne Todd, who welcomed us with a warm apple pie from her kitchen. Like my husband, I admired Quaker morals and their antislavery stance, but upon hearing of our move Peggy had complained about Quakers having humorless pretensions to gravity and ostentatious plainness. I thought she’d change her mind if she ever met the vivacious young Mrs. Todd, who, even then, had such an impeccable sense of style that her dark workaday frock gave the impression of good fashion, its somber hues lightened by a smattering of whimsical Swiss dots.
In any case, I was grateful for the pie and the knowledge of a friendly face only a block away on Walnut Street where, rising up from the red-bricked streets, our snow-dusted stylish new abode was enclosed by a wrought iron gate, leading to a yard that provided more than enough elbow room for children, chickens, or even monkeys if we should want them.
“Much more in keeping with the style to which you grew accustomed as General Schuyler’s daughter,” my husband boasted as he showed me into the drawing room, where some expensive French chairs were already invitingly arranged by the fireplace. “And best of all, only a block from the new treasury. Such as it is.”
Alexander was so very proud of himself that I couldn’t help but set down my bags, straighten my bodice, and give him a very proper kiss. “Well, then, what is to prevent you from tumbling from our bed straight into the chair at your office without so much as running a comb through your hair?”