As Monroe strides out of the room without another word, much less an apology, I realize I’ve been asking the wrong questions and examining the wrong evidence. I’ve asked myself who Alexander Hamilton was. I ought to have asked who I am. And now I know.
I am a Schuyler. Semper Fidelis.
Always faithful. Always loyal. And I will never again let my dear Hamilton be forgotten.
Epilogue
March 1837
On the Ohio River
HAMILTON ALWAYS DID have to have the last word. And so, it seems, do I.
For the past decade, I’ve fought to make sure my husband isn’t written out of the history of the country he helped found. I’ve fought and won.
In the end, I filed a lawsuit to retrieve the papers Nathaniel Pendleton stole from me and the Federalists tried to keep from ever seeing the light of day—drafts of President Washington’s Farewell Address in Alexander’s hand that proved his authorship. And seeing those old scribblings—the notes we made together—I was overcome with emotions.
For that address defined what this nation is, has been, and what it shall ever be. It also defined us. Alexander and me. Sitting together, matching wits as partners and patriots and parents seeking to build a better future for our children, and their children, too.
I’m gratified now that I’ve finally held Alexander’s biography in my own hands. The first volume anyway. Written by my son Johnny, the whole work will be long, wordy, thorough, and in multiple parts. Just as it should be. Having shouldered the great weight of it for more than three decades, I feel as though I can finally take a deep breath.
And now, like more and more of my countrymen, I am westward bound.
I may not have a long time remaining, but I resolve to see as much of this country as I can. And set one last matter to right. With both triumph and trepidation, I travel with Lysbet and her husband, Sidney Augustus Holly, the curly haired customs inspector she met at Lafayette’s ball. He’s not a man of great means, but their happiness together is evident, which is why I gave my blessing. And they both wish to accompany me partly out of curiosity and the desire for adventure, and partly because my children feel the need to chaperone me, at eighty years old—as if I haven’t outlived nearly everyone I once knew, including my enemies.
Monroe passed away only a few years after our final reckoning—a heart ailment, they say.
Destitute and alone, Aaron Burr died with a grimace. His death mask is kept as an object of amusement in a museum that brags of the busts, casts, and skulls, human and animal, of some of the most distinguished men that ever lived, along with those of pirates, robbers, and murderers.
I know the category to which Burr belongs.
Yes, I have outlived them all. Even Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the Jacobin and the madman, who saw fit to die on the very same day, and upon the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence at that. In his eulogy for them, Daniel Webster said that no two men had given a more lasting direction to our country.
Webster was then and remains now, quite simply, wrong.
I give credit to Jefferson for the power of his Declaration. Even I can grant him that. And there’s an argument to be made that we’d never have declared our independence at all without Adams. But otherwise, the two men who most shaped America did not die together on the fiftieth anniversary of that heralded declaration.
One died nearly thirty-three years ago. And the other survived until just recently.
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
Those two men made America.
I learned of Jemmy’s recent passing with a bolt of unexpected grief. Now, remembering how warmly he and Dolley received me at the White House, I feel the keenest sympathy for her loss. I wonder if I shall ever see her again to convey such sentiments in person.
I’d like to. But there’s a more important reunion I must bring about.
I must see my son.
I must have William home again from the wilds of America, where he fled in the wake of my suspicions about his father. I’ve made peace with Alexander. More importantly, I’ve made peace with myself. And I believe that all my husband’s sacrifices and contributions—all our sacrifices and contributions—outweigh our personal, private failings.
I need William to see that, too.
Thus, at the first signs of spring, Lysbet, her husband, and I set off on a four-day stagecoach trip from New York to Pittsburgh, then down the wide Ohio. Weeks we steam along that waterway, and it seems only right that, despite how far William wandered, I’m still able to reach him by river, as if, all this time, we’ve been connected by the thread of life stitching through this great land.