And I couldn’t decide if my sister’s anguish halved or doubled mine. I fanned Alexander’s feverish face and mopped his brow and when his precious blood soaked through the bandages and the mattress to pool upon the floor beneath the bed, I begged Bishop Moore to consent to give my husband communion, despite the sin of the duel. When the bishop finally relented, Alexander declared, “I have no ill will against Colonel Burr. I forgive all that happened.”
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Not ever.
But Alexander said again to me, “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.”
I knew then that it was a plea not for my comfort, but for my forgiveness. And I nodded my head, eager to give him what he wanted and needed before the Lord took him and I could give him nothing else. But in that crucial moment, I also turned and fled the room, because I knew I’d told my dying husband a lie. After all, how can one forgive what one doesn’t understand?
How had I not known? How had I let this happen? Why hadn’t I predicted that the long rivalry between my husband and Aaron Burr would come to this?
After I composed myself, I returned to my husband’s side. Then, all we could do was wait and wonder if each labored breath would be the last. In the morning, though those blue eyes appeared clearer and tinged with violet in the light of dawn, my beloved lay nearly motionless. And so I did perhaps the hardest thing I’d ever before had to do as a mother—I gathered my darling babies around me and somehow uttered the words, “Your father is dying, my little loves. And we must now say farewell.”
It was a scene of shattered innocence and grief that I still cannot allow myself to recall too closely. The way those little faces crumpled. The disbelieving despair. The younger ones who cried because the older ones did, not because they understood what was happening, or ever really would.
I’d lived forty-six years and I would never understand, either.
I led the children into the room and lined them up at the foot of the bed so that Alexander might be able to see them all. The fruit of our love. I lifted Little Phil, too short to be seen, to give his father a kiss, and then we waited as Alexander gave each child a final look, as if committing them to memory. Suddenly, seeing them became too much, and my husband clenched his eyes shut and pressed his lips into a tight, trembling line. Over the protests of my oldest sons, my sister took them from the room. And I was grateful for it.
I wanted to do something, but there was nothing to be done but wait as a man who had always burned so hot grew ever colder. So I simply held Alexander’s hand—determined to hold him through every agony until the last drop of blood. I held on to him with the full knowledge that, after this day, I’d never get to do it again.
The clock over the mantel ticked out a mournful cadence as the last of Alexander Hamilton’s life bled away. Though he couldn’t move, and had trouble breathing, he retained his beautiful mind and his warrior’s spirit until the very end.
“If they break this Union, they will break my heart,” he said, eyes unfocused.
Finally, the chimes on the clock struck twice. Alexander breathed no more. And the silence of his passing stole what was left of mine.
For I knew that no breath I ever took again would be the same.
Chapter Thirty-Six
If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible, without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem.
—ALEXANDER HAMILTON TO ELIZA HAMILTON
July 14, 1804
New York City
THEY’D MURDERED HIM.
First my son, then my husband.
Because they thought they could get away with it.
And I was sick to the depths of my soul. Sick and enraged. These furious thoughts echoed as church bells rang and flags lowered to half-mast and somber crowds gathered all along New York’s streets. And then a military procession wearing black armbands arrived to accompany my husband’s body to the church. To take him away.
Come back to me, I silently pleaded, as I’d done all those times he’d ridden off to battle.
But this time he would not return.
It was not the custom for women to attend graveside services, and I couldn’t have borne so many witnesses to my grief. So with my youngest children at my knees, and my sister Angelica’s hand clasped tight in mine, all serving to hold me up, the pallbearers lifted the mahogany casket topped with my husband’s hat and sword.
Two black servants in turbans followed with a dappled gray horse bearing my husband’s empty boots and spurs in the stirrups.