*
THE WAR HAD been won, but it had hardly brought peace.
Every day the clamor of the multitudes in the streets grew more menacing. While those streets were christened with new names—Crown Street became Liberty Street, Queen Street became Cedar, King became Pine—in coffeehouses, over bowls of grog, at the theater or wherever workmen struggled to clear away the debris and charred remains of war, we heard that no royalists should be suffered to live amongst patriots.
What right had men who, for eight years, had been destroying property, plundering, burning, killing, and inciting Indian massacres to expect kind and gentle treatment at the hands of a people they’d so deeply injured?
The next day, I heard a commotion outside the front window and looked out to see that the usual ebb and flow of carriages and well-dressed people on our wide avenue was now choked by an ill-clad mob, all pointing and laughing at some spectacle at their center. Heedlessly, I rushed onto the front stoop to catch the scent of pine tar, sharp in the air.
And there, to my dread, I saw Cranston the fishmonger—being forcibly stripped to the waist.
I shouted in alarm, but the ruffians ignored me completely as they slathered the warm tar over the poor fishmonger’s chest and back and tore open a pillow for the feathers with which to humiliate him. This was followed by placement of a cowbell round his neck, and a sign that read “LOOK YE TORY CREW, SEE WHAT GEORGE YOUR KING CAN DO.”
Fighting back nausea and defying all reason, I took hold of my skirts and waded into the crowd. “Stop this at once!”
“Get back, Mrs. Hamilton,” one of the men said, daring to lay hands on me as the crack of a whip elicited a shriek of agony from its victim. “We Sons of Liberty ask you to remember all the times your husband came so near to death at Washington’s side, and you’ll know these traitors deserve whatever they get.”
Oh, how easily any man could lay claim to the title Son of Liberty now that the war, and the danger of being hanged for it, had passed. “How do you know he’s a traitor?” I asked, pulling away from the grubby self-styled patriot. “How could anyone know without giving the man a fair trial? Why the poor tailor Hercules Mulligan was thought to be a traitor until Washington himself revealed that he’d been our spy during the occupation.”
“The fishmonger is no Hercules Mulligan,” another man called. Perhaps he was unused to being spoken to in such a fashion by a woman, because the man stared with such contempt I thought he might strike me.
Fortunately, moments later it was Alexander who had me by both arms, forcing a retreat back to our house. I hadn’t expected my husband to return from his law office so early, but oh how grateful I was to see him, even as he scolded me for being in the street. “I cannot have you risk yourself,” Alexander said, his hand pressed protectively to my belly. “Especially not in your tender condition. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that they’re going to murder him,” I cried, shaking with impotent rage.
“They won’t,” he assured me. “They took his fish and made him bleed. That will be enough.”
I prayed my husband was right, remembering that we’d both seen worse horrors. But the lawlessness unleashed in America since our victory threatened my faith. When a Tory was acquitted by a judge in Charleston, his neighbors simply laid hold of him as soon as he left the courthouse and strung him up. I feared everything we’d struggled for was all coming undone. No sooner had we driven the king from our shores than we seemed intent on proving that we were uncivilized people who couldn’t live without a monarch to keep us from behaving as beasts.
“What kind of place is this in which to bring up our children?” I asked.
“I know, my angel,” Alexander said, holding me. “I, too, fear the revolution’s fruits will be blasted by the violence of rash or unprincipled men motivated by vindictive and selfish passions. So we must set the example and be kind to our neighbors.”
I remembered a time when I hadn’t set an example. When I’d failed to do the right thing. When I’d not given water to an injured Redcoat soldier for fear of what others might think of me. So I resolved to make up for that now and do just what my husband suggested.
That Sunday I put on my bonnet and marched, with great purpose, to Saint Paul’s Chapel. It was all that remained of the burned-down Episcopal Trinity Church, which had been a haven for Loyalists. I made a point to seat myself for prayers near to the shunned Tory families. And it was there that I first met sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of a Loyalist merchant who’d lost much of his wealth during the war.