This was why the Constitution had to be ratified.
An entire generation was growing up in a world without sure principles by which to live in peace. And I couldn’t help but wonder, would my own son, after what he’d seen in the streets, come of age believing that there was no way to solve any problem but with a club or a pistol?
Chapter Eighteen
Summer 1788
Albany
NEW HAMPSHIRE MAKES nine states!” Peggy cried, clapping her hands with glee. With Alexander in the New York Assembly arguing for the adoption of the Constitution, I’d taken the children home to the Pastures to await news. And now Peggy prodded me. “Why aren’t you smiling? You said the Constitution only needed nine states to ratify it.”
“Officially,” I said, swallowing hard against hope, knowing how happy this news would make Alexander, and how devastated he would be if all our efforts came to naught. “But it means nothing without Virginia and New York. If the largest and wealthiest states don’t join this union, there won’t be one.”
Our only hope was Jemmy Madison. If—half dead of exhaustion and a bilious fever—Madison could convince his state to ratify, New York would be forced to follow suit or lose influence. Which was why Hamilton’s strategy in the assembly was to delay, delay, delay and hope we were saved by Virginia.
“In the meantime,” Peggy said, “let’s go shopping.”
Which was how, a few days later, we found ourselves coming home from the dressmaker on Market Street when riders came galloping through in a cloud of dust shouting, “Virginia has ratified! Virginia has ratified!”
Peggy and I ran almost the whole way home where my brothers Johnny and Jeremiah—grown men now—popped the corks on bottles of Papa’s best sparkling wine in the main hall under the chandelier. I worried it was ill luck to celebrate prematurely, but inside, some part of me began to believe. Peggy grabbed a glass and raised it. “To Virginia!”
“To Virginia,” I agreed, laughing, never realizing it would be the last time I ever had reason to celebrate that accursed state.
In anticipation of our own state’s ratification, the celebrations continued in New York City. Bricklayers and wig makers rallied on Broadway with colorful ribbons, banners, and flags. Bakers marched a giant federal loaf of bread down the street. Brewers rolled a massive cask of ale. Sailmakers carried a twenty-foot flag depicting my husband with a laurel leaf and his Constitution. And when New York finally ratified, Hamilton was so celebrated that, as fireworks lit the skyline under a bright moon, the people of Manhattan suggested the city be renamed Hamiltoniana.
At last—the honors and glory my husband craved.
The legacy he’d made for a name he wasn’t deemed fit to carry. The base-born orphan from Nevis who might have toiled in poverty and obscurity if God hadn’t bestowed upon him a giant intellect and ambition to match. And the honors were no more than his due.
He’d done it. He’d vanquished Governor Clinton and all our antifederalist foes. More than that, he’d battled back the forces of ignorance and anarchy with his pen and the power of his ideas. He was, at that time, perhaps more than any other, my conquering hero. Like the son of an ancient god who’d driven that chariot of the sun after all. And when we were finally reunited, I wrapped my arms around his neck and teased, “The people love you. But remember, thou art but mortal.”
It’s what the old Romans whispered to conquering heroes so that they might never fall victim to hubris. And Alexander laughed. “So you did read those books I gave you.”
Not well enough. Because if I’d studied the ancient stories, I’d have known that the same people who could lift a hero and his family out of obscurity could also tear them to pieces.
*
March 1789
New York City
We had a new Constitution, a new government, and a new baby.
It was everything for which we’d worked for so long.
And then, to make my happiness complete, my sister returned home from London for what she promised, this time, would be a long visit.
Oh, Angelica. Her dark hair, worn in a chignon beneath her fashionably plumed bonnet, smelled of rosewater. Cinched beneath her bosoms, her muslin gown was perhaps more fitting for the boudoir than the docks of New York. I felt drab and shabby in comparison but couldn’t get enough of looking at her. We embraced again and again as her servants carried her boxes into her new dwelling.
“You should stay with us,” I said again, even though I knew she’d insisted Hamilton rent for her very handsome lodgings nearby, so as not to burden us. As if having my sister at my side could ever be a burden.