*
“MARQUIS, MAY I present to you our instructors and students,” I said, introducing him to the gathered ladies and rows of smiling public school children at the African Free School, all wearing Lafayette badges made of satin ribbon, each straining to catch a glimpse of the great man. Our tour of the orphanage had been short but had allowed me to send someone ahead to prepare the school administrators for this little assembly. And that someone was Mrs. Fanny Anthill Tappan—my adoptive daughter, now returned to New York all grown and happy with a husband and children of her own. For years now, it’d been a balm to have Fanny in my busy life again, and her eagerness to assist in my charitable work filled me with pride.
Bracing upon his cane, Lafayette kissed both of Fanny’s cheeks in the French style, then he walked the length of the gathering, greeting every child. “What a bright, industrious group of pupils,” he said.
“The original Free School for Africans was only one room, and could admit only forty students,” I explained as we toured the new buildings, in which were educated more than seven hundred of the best and brightest. “The English headmaster finds these black children every bit as capable as white children.”
Lafayette didn’t seem surprised. “I regret that my own efforts to emancipate slaves in the French colonies was forestalled . . .”
He trailed off there, his mind seeming to retreat to a dark place, and I worried it was the darkness of his old prison cell. To draw him back, I said, “There’s still more to be done, but our state legislature passed a law of gradual emancipation, and complete abolition is nearly accomplished. It cannot happen soon enough.”
Though I’d long been a convert to the cause of abolition, I hadn’t before spoken in public against the national cancer. And Lafayette’s presence encouraged me. No longer needing to measure my words for fear of how they might affect my husband’s political career, I felt a freedom to say exactly how disillusioned I was. “In the South, the vile institution of slavery spreads like a contagion. Such is inevitable when the country has been run these past twenty years by presidents and congresses elected by the counting of slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation, while not otherwise counting them as a person at all. The South doubly reaps the benefits of slavery at the expense of fairness, morality, and liberty.”
Lafayette turned an appraising smile on me. “I hear something of the passion of Hamilton in your speech, madame.”
Heat infused my cheeks as I struggled with the complicated emotions dredged up by the comparison, but fortunately, a gaggle of awed children swarmed the general, distracting him from my reaction to words which were, at once, the highest praise and a painful reminder.
Finally, Lafayette escorted me outside and turned to me with fondness. “You do good work here, Elizabeth. You will perhaps finish what we started.”
I tilted my head. “What we started?”
“The revolution. It is unfinished. Maybe liberty must always be fought for. And you have kept fighting when others laid down their swords in defeat, or exhaustion, or corruption.”
“I’m afraid you misjudge me,” I said, feeling an ache of shame in my breast. “I stopped fighting long ago.”
Lafayette gestured at the school behind us. “Then what is this school? What is your orphanage? These things seek to expand the promise of America. To give opportunity to all as free citizens.”
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as my ache of shame melted into recognition. I’d not thought of my work as more than charity. But it always had been. Whatever I told myself, I never stopped trying to finish what we started when we were all so young and idealistic about what this nation could be.
“Would that my friend was here to help you.” Lafayette sighed. “Will you take me to see him? I wish, with your blessing, to lay a wreath upon Hamilton’s grave, but there is no ceremony planned for it.”
Of course, no ceremony had been planned. For years now, even I had shied away from the monument in Trinity Churchyard where my husband was buried. I made any number of excuses for my reticence. The distressing reminder of my losses; the spectacle of people looking at me when I knelt beside the stone. The fact that I’d suffered for a public life and didn’t wish my most private grief to be exposed. All these things were true, of course, but the real reason I didn’t go was because both Angelica and Alexander were buried there.
For ten years, I’d hid the festering wounds of my suspicions from everyone, in every way I could. My greatest failing in that endeavor had been with William, who was, I’d learned, never fooled by my facade. He’d seen his father’s letters to my sister and, worse, he’d seen me laid low. It’d changed something in him to have the heroic image of his father shattered. And we’d lost him over it. He’d withdrawn from West Point and gone west, as far as he could go from civilization, all because I couldn’t leave a matter alone. So I didn’t intend to reopen it now. “You have my blessing to go to the grave, of course, General, but I’ve already taken too much of your time. Your public is waiting.”