But I couldn’t lobby for the pension while Jefferson was still president. I was told that upon a pedestal in the entryway of Monticello, Jefferson kept a bust of my husband across from a bust of himself, and quipped to guests that he and my husband were “opposed in death as in life.”
That icy hypocrite wouldn’t just thwart me but laugh in my face as he did it. In a very genteel, southern fashion, I’m sure. Just as he was likely doing to Aaron Burr, whose downfall that summer became something of a spectacle in which I must admit to taking pleasure.
For Burr had finally been arrested—though not, as one might have imagined, for the murder of my husband. Instead, Burr had been apprehended in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex, possibly by military force, Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to establish an independent republic.
Treason!
I didn’t find it difficult to believe that, denied acceptance, power, and influence in our country, Burr had resolved to create a new one. Just as Alexander warned, Burr was willing to dismantle the Union for which we’d all sacrificed. And I hoped to see him hang for it.
It had taken years to see some manner of justice brought to bear upon Aaron Burr. It might take years for Mason to complete my husband’s biography or for me to ever have the opportunity to collect his pension.
But I knew how to use patience as a political weapon.
And I could bide my time.
*
March 1810
Baltimore, Maryland
“Are you certain you know what you’re about?” McHenry asked, seated in the closed coach beside me as it jerked and jostled along the country roads.
Mac had long since retired from politics to his Maryland estate, which he named Fayetteville, after our old French friend. Mac had also long since gone from stout to portly, and his health was not good. He devoted his time entirely to domestic pursuits—his wife, their delightful children, and writing a novel.
Or at least he had been thus engaged until the former president, John Adams, published a series of letters in the paper purporting to tell the real history of his administration—the failure of which he laid squarely at the doorstep of my dear Hamilton, with McHenry in a conspiring role.
That put Mac in a fighting mood, so much so that he agreed to accompany me and my eldest son, Alex, to the nation’s capital, where I intended to petition my government for redress.
Now that I had a biographer, I wanted my husband’s pension. Finally, there would be recognition for Alexander’s accomplishments.
Still, Mac couldn’t seem to stop warning me against it.
Not even after Alex, serving as our driver, had taken the reins and got us under way.
Inside the carriage, I told Mac, “Washington City can’t be that frightening a place.”
He snorted. “Last I spent time there it was a swampy, malarious wilderness. And you’ll find a friendly face even more rare than an honest man.”
“But Jefferson is gone,” I said, because that was the important thing. After eight years as commander in chief, our third president bowed to the tradition set by George Washington and withdrew to his mountaintop plantation of Monticello.
Hopefully for good.
But McHenry wasn’t nearly as relieved. “You remember that the Federalists still lost the election?”
My husband’s party did more than lose. We’d been obliterated. Still, I waved his concern away. “Nevertheless, Jefferson is gone and the new president is a different man.”
“You think so? These Virginians are all the same.”
“Washington was a Virginian,” I reminded him. “Besides, I know James Madison.”
Of course, I’d also known Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe. And at some point, I’d believed the best of each of them.
There was no reason to believe Madison was different. It was more of a feeling. Some instinct that I derived from the fact that Madison had, after all these years, remained publicly coy on the authorship of the individual Federalist essays, tentatively honoring the pledge we’d made decades before.
Then, too, there was the letter. I’d found it in one of the locked cupboards of my husband’s desk at the Grange—the last letter Madison ever wrote to him, three years before Alexander died. Short and businesslike, about some matter of state, Madison had closed the letter with this line: I have the honor to remain, sir, your obedient servant.
That was not the standard closing. The word remain leaped out to me, as if Madison had meant it in wistful recollection of friendship lost. Alexander must’ve thought so, too, for him to have kept it locked away, separate from his other papers. It wasn’t much to cling to, I admit. But it gave me hope.