（Additionally, there is some historical confusion over the burial place of Philip Hamilton, but we chose to accept the interpretation presented in the book of Trinity Church history that says he is buried in the same plot as his father and mother. It’s also unclear why Angelica Schuyler Church is buried in the Livingston vault. Angelica fostered with the Livingstons as a girl, and there may have been a closer familial connection there. But the ambiguity fit well into the narrative and so we used it to our purposes.）
Another friend of Eliza’s was James McHenry, who did, indeed, get pulled back into the political fray during the Madison administration, in part because of John Adams maligning him in the press, but also because his advice was sought with regard to the forthcoming War of 1812. McHenry escorting Eliza to Washington City, though plausible, is our invention so that he could serve as a standin for the Federalists she lobbied at this time.
Then there’s the matter of Eliza’s enemies.
Her first meeting with Thomas Jefferson probably took place in New York when Jefferson arrived to take up the mantle of secretary of state, not in Philadelphia, as we portrayed it, before he served as ambassador to France. But because Jefferson happened to be in Philadelphia with his daughter when the Hamiltons were there, we found it hard to resist giving the reader a glimpse of young Patsy Jefferson of America’s First Daughter.
As for Aaron Burr, it isn’t known if Eliza played a role in his exile from New York, but there is circumstantial evidence that she was lobbying New York society, with her grieving children in tow, only days after Hamilton’s death. Eliza is known to have come face to face with him only once after the duel. The occurrence took place on a ferry and thereafter the rumor went round that Eliza had screamed upon seeing Burr’s face, and that Burr coldly went about eating his supper. In fact, Eliza only stared icily at Burr and retained her composure, but she never corrected the record, presumably because the story made him look heartless and irredeemable.
Saintly or not, Eliza Hamilton could hold a grudge.
She could also hold her silence. For example, she left nothing behind to tell us how she felt upon learning of her husband’s infidelity with Maria Reynolds. Historians have inferred, from the way her family wrote to her about the controversy surrounding the Reynolds Pamphlet by placing the blame upon envy and newspapermen, that Eliza tolerated her husband’s adulteries and that she was only distressed to see them exposed. But if that were the case, we think it unlikely Hamilton would have submitted to blackmail in the first place.
We think it more probable that those family letters—and Hamilton’s own restrained mention of his wife’s likely feelings on the matter—are simply evidence of the fact that Eliza had already learned about the affair and forgiven it years before. Whilst he lived, Hamilton certainly exerted a measure of charm that allowed many people to forgive him many things.
But what about after he died? Eliza left no indication of her reaction upon reading her husband’s letters after he was shot—letters so compromising that her son even scrawled upon one that it should not be published. And amongst those letters are a correspondence with Angelica Church that is flirtatious at best and damning at worst.
Though eighteenth-century people wrote to one another in more flowery and effusive ways than we do now, the fact remains that Hamilton’s letters to and mentions of his wife’s other sisters do not share the same flirtatious tone. To complicate matters, of course, is the fact that Hamilton’s own contemporaries appear to have believed that he was sleeping with his wife’s sister—a relationship that would have been considered incestuous by the standards of the time. More tellingly, this was believed not only by his enemies, but by his friends.
Hamilton’s longtime friend, Robert Troup, believed it was a torrid affair, and though there is some confusion about the exact details regarding the incident with the garter, Eliza’s sister once taunted Hamilton and Angelica about their flirtation in public. Although we’re aware of no direct proof of a rift in the marriage of John Barker Church and Angelica Schuyler, there’s circumstantial evidence that the marriage was troubled. To start with, Angelica’s letters—flirting with other men, including Thomas Jefferson—imply that she didn’t find her husband to be eloquent or interesting. That she was bored in Church’s company and that perhaps he was bored in hers. Then there is the matter of Angelica’s long visit to America without the company of her husband or children, during which Hamilton paid her expenses, some of which were to be reimbursed by her husband, others of which apparently were not.