“Naughty young man,” I scolded, for he was entirely too much like his father had once been—irresistibly brilliant, shamelessly flirtatious, and outrageously handsome. I’d already had to warn him against making eyes at our pot-scrubbing girl. Now I snatched the butter before he absconded with it, too. “Don’t make me fear to send you on errands for the charity lest you flirt with the ladies.”
“I wouldn’t flirt with Widow Rhinelander.” Philip’s mouth twisted into a feigned expression of horror and he shuddered. “She reminds me of the Baron von Steuben, may he rest in peace. Besides, she says all her German gentlemen friends are voting Republican . . .”
Of course they were.
Which was why, for the coming elections, I found myself undertaking the most energetic role in the political wrangling that I could without forfeiting my dignity as a lady. While going door to door and church to church raising charitable donations, I’d made careful note of those with Federalist sympathies who might be approached for support. Every day that my husband—who should’ve been about the business of the military—rode hither and yon, haranguing passing crowds on street corners, attending committee meetings in various wards, and even enlisting our sons to stand watch at polling stations where we suspected election trickery, I pinned my black Federalist cockade to my hat and went out to praise the virtues of courage and perseverance in the Federalist cause.
It was an unseemly business to electioneer in support of President Adams, but we’d been forced to it by Aaron Burr, who opened his house to offer refreshments and a mattress upon the floor to any grubby miscreant willing to campaign for a populist sweep of Jeffersonians into the government.
And now Philip complained, “It seems Colonel Burr sent someone to the neighborhood who spoke German. And he’s drawing up lists of voters in all the immigrant precincts.”
“For all the good it will do him,” I said, smugly. “To vote, immigrants must have resided here fourteen years, and own substantial property.”
But, having embarked upon the study of the law in his father’s footsteps, Philip explained, “Burr’s found a legal loophole. He’s going to have them pool the value of their property so they can qualify to vote.”
Damn Aaron Burr! Was there no end to his schemes?
Of course, it was just what Alexander would’ve done if he’d thought of it. My husband had, after all, filled the Federalist slate with booksellers, a grocer, a mason—precisely the sort of working people who ought to appeal to populists. And, as if in diabolical mockery, Burr filled the Republican slate with rich and venerable old Clintonites and Livingstons for the cachet of their family names.
Despite what he’d said to me on the street that day, however, I didn’t think Burr’s tireless campaigning came from any principled stance; he simply wanted to be vice president. And perhaps that wouldn’t be so terrible an ambition if he didn’t want to serve under Jefferson, who would assuredly plunge us back into a world of chaos, starvation, and riots.
“We’d better warn your father,” I said, grabbing up the lunch basket I’d filled with fruit and pastries. I wouldn’t open my home with mattresses on the floor for every mercenary willing to campaign under my husband’s generalship, but I was determined to feed and encourage the troops.
As I searched for Alexander and passed out my baked goods to my husband’s loyalists on the streets, I heard the most outrageous talk amongst the milling crowds. Hollow, ignorant Republican slogans. Curses and taunts at our party’s volunteers. Libelous rumors about President Adams. I felt a growing dread that if we lost this election, my future and that of my children would be thrown into a world characterized by such vitriol—all at the hands of Jefferson—an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics.
I would see half the earth desolated, Jefferson once said to me.
That must not be allowed to happen.
I finally found my husband outside a notorious boardinghouse on Greenwich Street warning a discontented crowd of ruffians against a Jefferson presidency.
“Alexander,” I called, attempting to push through them with my basket.
But he didn’t hear me, and they refused to hear him. Instead, the men shouted him down. “Thief! Rascal! Villain!”
They cursed my husband, their general, a man still in uniform with a sword on his hip. Stunned, I took a step back and quite nearly bumped into the Quaker proprietress of the boardinghouse waving her arms at my husband, and shrieking, “If thee dies a natural death, Hamilton, I shall think there is no justice in heaven! I’ll never support anything you’re about. I tell all my boarders to vote with Burr!”