He brims with passion as he shows me his smelting furnace and explains the process of removing impurities from the crude lead dug from the ground. As he discusses his work, I hear the echo of Alexander’s zeal in discussing policy and politics. And, like his father, William has found success. Everywhere we go, the people all know William—Wisconsin’s Hamilton, they call him—and respect what he’s built and the man he’s become.
And, despite my reason for coming here, I do, too.
When William mentions a place he describes as the great natural wonder of the north, the Falls of St. Anthony, I naturally insist on seeing it. Getting to the falls requires a steamboat ride and an eight-mile climb on horseback over winding trails, and I feel like the girl I once was, exploring the beauty of nature.
I hear the falls before I see them. God in heaven, the sight is majestic. Multiple falls curve and twist, the surging streams descending from forty or fifty feet onto water and rock below. Spray rises up in great clouds that tickle my face in the breeze, filling me with a newfound vigor.
William calls over the roar of the water, “The Dakota call the Mississippi hahawakpa, or ‘river of the falls.’ They believe spirits live beneath them.” I can understand the belief, for seeing such miraculous evidence of God’s power imbues me with the feeling of being in the presence of something sacred.
I am still moved when, later that afternoon, we return to Fort Snelling to find Colonel Campbell and his officers waiting at the entrance in full dress uniforms. For me, as if I was now the Guest of the Nation.
The colonel offers me his arm and conducts me inside the four-sided fort, where a very fine band plays and an armchair waits upon a carpet. He bids me sit, and then, when the music stops, he speaks to his assembled troops. “We have with us today Mrs. General Hamilton, wife of the hero of Yorktown!” A cheer rises up from the soldiers, and then, with weapons upon their shoulders, the troops march in formation, demonstrating a series of maneuvers. The display goes on for some time, and when it ends, I rise shakily to my feet, too moved to speak. For most of these men hadn’t even been born while Alexander Hamilton still lived, yet have honored me this way.
And in front of Alexander’s son, who most needed to see it.
When September brings cooler air and fields covered in lavender aster, my visit with dear William is near its end. Winter will soon choke the rivers with ice, making travel impossible.
I have to go home. I’ve intended, all along, to ask William to come, but now I realize that I can’t. I can’t ask him to come home with me . . . because William is home. I see that now. It would be wrong to deny him his place here, where new possibility hangs in the air. And yet, the realization is bittersweet, because I know I shall never return. I shall never see him again.
And I think he knows it, too.
“Mother,” he says gravely, planting a kiss atop my head. “I shall always be at your side, even as I make my own path here.” His voice is tight with emotion, and all I can do is clutch at his strong, calloused hands.
He’s happy here. And how can I want anything more for my children than to have the liberty to pursue their happiness? It’s what their father lived and died for.
And it is enough.
*
This aged petitioner, now numbering nearly fourscore and ten years, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, and the daughter of Philip Schuyler, still cherishing an ardent attachment for the husband of her youth, wishes, before she, too, passes away, to see his publications spread before the American people. Hamilton must be classed among the men who have best known the vital principles and the fundamental conditions of a government. There is not in the constitution of the United States an element to which Hamilton has not powerfully contributed.
—CONGRESSIONAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE LIBRARY ON ELIZABETH HAMILTON’S PETITION
Washington City
July 4, 1848
“Do you think they’ve patched up their quarrel?” I ask Mrs. Madison, who sits beside me in a carriage as it slowly rolls through streets lined with thousands of onlookers waving American flags.
We’re riding together to the ceremony celebrating both the Fourth of July and the laying of the cornerstone to the new monument to the memory of George Washington. We’re accorded positions of prominence in the celebration because we’re the only remaining icons of the founding age. The only dignitaries left who personally knew the Father of His Country.
Dolley and I are both turned out as elegantly as two aged widows can be. Me in my fanciest bonnet. The former first lady in a silk taffeta gown, black like my own.