“I fear it, too,” I replied. With Shay’s rebellion, there already was a civil war in Massachusetts. It was spreading to other states. And it could happen here, too, especially with Congress in session in the city.
“Don’t worry,” Theodosia said. “Burr will look out for your husband. He has a very good nose for the prevailing winds.” It’s painful now to recall how reassured those words had made me feel, but they truly did, especially when she looped her arm through mine and said, “And in the meantime, we’ll look out for each other.”
That night, having slammed back into the house and awakened our sleeping children, Alexander was only mildly apologetic.
“And did you hunt down the source of this rumor?” I asked after putting the baby back to sleep.
Alexander surprised me by saying, “I did. And it was a nobody. Just another indebted drunkard—a ne’er-do-well named James Reynolds.”
There was nothing to be gained in quarreling with a man like that. Instead, Hamilton spent the days that followed directing his anger at our antifederalist governor Clinton, accusing him in a series of essays of poisoning the people’s minds against reform, and against the convention in Philadelphia to which my husband would again return.
“Are you sure that you should publish this?” I asked, reading over his shoulder. “You’re drawing battle lines. Governor Clinton is a powerful man and you—”
You’re a revolutionary, I thought, watching my husband scribble some note as if he hadn’t heard me at all. He’d already gone against a king and won. He’d quarreled with George Washington and prevailed. He wouldn’t be stopped by a governor.
He wouldn’t stop until he’d changed the world. And I wanted to help him do it.
*
October 1787
En Route to New York City
We went to battle in the bowels of a ship.
Returning from a visit to my parents, we’d taken a cabin on a sloop bound for New York—and this narrow berth, with its single table secured to the wooden planks of the deck and one porthole, would be our war room for the week-long trip. There was just enough space for the children and their bedrolls, the gentle rocking of the single-masted boat lulling them fast to sleep.
During the day Alexander worked, and I took the little ones above deck to enjoy the passing scenery of towns on the shoreline, green pastures, and blazing red autumn foliage. As I watched the children play and laugh and even bicker, my heart was torn between joy at their innocent hopefulness and sorrow at having learned the terrible and unexpected news that Peggy’s little son, Stephen, had died in his sleep. Her husband had written that she was too indisposed to travel or receive visitors, so I hadn’t had the chance to see her during our visit, and I ached to offer her what comfort I could.
But by night, beneath the light of two lanterns swinging from the joists above us, I joined Alexander amidst his letters, treatises, newspapers, paper, ink, and quills. “My arms and ammunition,” he quipped.
“And who are we to fight?”
“Almost everyone,” he said, ruefully. “The foes of the new Constitution are many.”
A few weeks earlier, my husband had returned from Philadelphia, where he affixed his signature to a blueprint for an entirely new government. He hated the plan—which he thought a hodgepodge of ideas and bitter compromises, particularly between the northern and southern states on the issue of slavery. But he’d said that “without these compromises, no union could possibly have been formed, though Washington does not think this Constitution will last twenty years.”
Twenty years. Long enough for my sons to grow into men and get their educations. Long enough for my daughter to fall in love, marry, and have children of her own. Long enough for the new baby growing in my belly to get a good start in life. It had been only ten years since my sister climbed out a window to elope with John Church and that felt like a lifetime ago.
Twenty years of peace and stability would be enough, I thought. We could fix the rest. We could keep working to end the injustice of slavery and make the new nation live up to the ideals of the revolution. But first we needed a nation.
And nine states would have to ratify the Constitution before it would become law.
Alexander had a plan to make that happen. A secret plan.
“We must defend the Constitution,” he said, shuffling papers. “We must overwhelm the opposition with evidence and arguments. The Constitution is as flawed as some of my clients, but like them, it deserves a fair trial. At least in the court of public opinion.”