We exchanged a few pleasantries as I tried to ease the girl’s obvious tension, and before long she burst forth, as if the words couldn’t be held inside even before a stranger. “My father took no part in the war. He stayed because he loves New York. He shouldn’t be scorned because he also loved his king. And how can I help him rebuild his fortune if no man will have me for a wife?”
“You’re far too pretty to worry on that score,” I said reassuringly, certain that her sweet face and dignified manner would make any man overlook the sins of her father. And I invited her to tea at my house the next time I entertained ladies.
It was all I could think to do.
Fortunately, my husband did much more.
Alarmed at the violence—he set out to use the mightiest power he had at his disposal.
His pen.
And though I didn’t know it then, my husband was the best writer of the founding generation. Oh, there are those who will argue that honor goes to a certain Virginian, but he receives enough applause from the rabble without my praise, and I despise him too much to credit his talents.
It’s enough to know that it was my husband who, in this dark hour, held out so eloquently against the mob in a letter to his fellow citizens under the pseudonym Phocion, urging them to heed the principles of law and justice.
But if Alexander hoped his pen name—cleverly chosen to refer to yet another soldier from antiquity with murky parentage and noble wisdom—would shield his identity, he was wrong.
On my daily strolls with my little boy, I felt the glares of passersby. The baker was no longer content to extend me any sort of credit for bread. The delivery of fresh fruit from my father’s farm arrived smashed upon my front stoop, partially wrapped in a paper that featured an anonymous poem aimed, unquestionably, at my husband, for having become a supposed lackey for the royalists.
I burned this poem straightaway in the kitchen fire, but that didn’t stop Alexander from learning of it. And it wounded him gravely. Many of our friends, most especially Colonel Burr, advised him to let tempers cool and not risk his reputation, or our livelihood, to defend the Tories.
But my dear Hamilton wouldn’t listen.
Chapter Sixteen
September 25, 1784
New York City
A GIRL,” I SAID, gently handing over the little bundle.
And at the sight of his daughter, Alexander murmured, “My heart is at once melted into tenderness.”
“Shall we name her after your mother?” I asked, peering up at him from our bed.
He furrowed his brow and rubbed his sleeve over his joyful eyes. “Should we not name her after your mother?”
There were already three baby Catherines in our family, for both my mother and Angelica had used the name for their youngest daughters, and Peggy had used it for her first, too.
Angelica. There was not a day that passed since my sister left for Europe that I didn’t think of her or wish she was nearer to me. I pined for her, treasured every gift she sent, and had even papered the walls of our children’s nursery with French sheeting, all covered in pink roses and ivy. I read Angelica’s letters with a selfish avarice—keeping them in a box upon my dressing table, including the one in which she shared the news of the birth of a new baby daughter, Elizabeth. She’d named her for me.
That was it. If I couldn’t have my sister with me, at least I would have her namesake. “What about the name Angelica?”
“Angelica Hamilton,” my husband said, an affectionate smile growing upon his face. “We’ll call her Ana to distinguish. I cannot think of a more perfect honor for two whom we both hold so dear.” So our daughter was named. A baby with rose-pink cheeks, wide eyes, and a commanding cry. I clutched little Ana to my breast, wishing to give her all the love I couldn’t give her namesake across the sea.
After I nursed her, I shifted to rise from the bed.
“The doctor says you should rest,” Alexander said, moving to assist me.
“So should you,” I replied, longing for his presence at my side. “You didn’t come to bed last night or the night before. I can’t remember the last time you slept.”
“I am kept at work,” he said, for contrary to his jests about how the law was a study in how to fleece one’s neighbor, he’d turned the law into an instrument of justice. In court, my husband, a lion of the revolution against the British, now held himself out as a champion of unfortunate Loyalists. And he was something to behold—relentless, persuasive, almost mesmerizing. Not just a lawyer or a politician, but a statesman determined to change minds and build a united country at any cost.