Alexander Hamilton to Eliza Schuyler
Amboy, New Jersey, Thursday Forenoon, March 17, 1780
If I were not afraid of making you vain, I would tell you that Mrs. Carter, Peggy, and yourself are the dayly toasts of our table . . . though as I am always thinking of you, this naturally brings Peggy to my mind who is generally my toast. Capt Beebe is here and talks of her sometimes; but I won’t give my consent to his being her favourite. I don’t think him clever enough for her; he sings well and that’s all.
ELIZA WAS SPRAWLED ON HER STOMACH ON THEIR bed, reading aloud from Hamilton’s letter. Pausing, she looked up to ask, “Which one is Captain Beebe, Peggy?”
Peggy was trying to remember herself. “I think he is an officer in the Corps of Sappers and Miners. I only danced once with him. A sweet but rather short, stocky man. Talked a bit about the importance of trenches.” She made a face. “Not exactly scintillating. But he did have a lovely voice. I recall that now. He sang for the assembly when His Excellency gave the musicians a few minutes to enjoy some grog and let their fingers rest.”
“Oh, was he that man who sang that heartbreaking love song?” asked Eliza.
“I thiiiink so?”
“Awwwwww.” Eliza put her hand over her heart.
“He most certainly was.” Angelica spoke up. “And he completely sank the mood with it, remember? A sapper and miner, indeed. Best beware of him, Peggy, he’s a sap, all right.”
The girls laughed. Peggy was overjoyed to hear the carillon peal of their joint amusement once more. How she had missed the sound of her sisters’ mirth and their interconnected thoughts—like the harmonies and synonymous beat of a song. It was a hard price to pay for growing up—not hearing that daily. Was romance and marriage really worth splitting and scattering the three of them? Angelica’s husband certainly was not convincing her that the bittersweet sacrifice was worth it. And Peggy still wasn’t positive that the jocular Alexander Hamilton was devoted enough for the loyal and loving Eliza.
Angelica was pacing, lightly rocking her four-month-old daughter, who slipped in and out of slumber peacefully. Her firstborn, a two-year-old named for their father, was toddling about the bedroom, protected from being hurt if he fell by a padded, helmetlike pudding cap.
Peggy sat cross-legged in a settee, rubbing her toes to push out the ache in them. The pain was getting more frequent and more annoying and frightening. She needed to ask her uncle about it. The discomfort was jabbing, knifelike, in her joints. Just like Papa. But she said nothing, not wanting to disturb their sisterly conclave. She had so missed them.
Angelica’s lullaby rotation brought her to her youngest sister’s side. She reached out with her free hand and fondly twirled one of Peggy’s curls. “Just think, little one, General Washington’s aides-de-camp toasting you. You are quite grown up now.”
“Indeed she is! Perhaps I should be jealous that Peggy is, hmm . . . wait a moment . . .” Eliza looked down to the neat handwriting: “Alexander says, and I quote, This naturally brings Peggy to my mind who is generally my toast.”
Angelica abruptly let go of the tendril of Peggy’s hair with what felt like a little yank. Peggy frowned and rubbed her scalp, saying, “It is only because he thinks he has enlisted my help in his courtship of you, Eliza.”
“Does he say anything about the prisoner exchange he is negotiating?” asked Angelica. “Mr. Carter is hoping a friend of his will be released. He thinks he can cajole the man to help procure supplies for General Washington from the islands. They were childhood friends in England.”
“Wouldn’t that be treason for a British officer to engage in trade and smuggling to the Patriots’ benefit?” asked Peggy.
“Only if he returns to Great Britain after the war.” Angelica laid her daughter in an awaiting cradle. “Besides, it’s simply good business, my husband would say,” she added with a sigh, straightening up.
“When does Mr. Carter return to us?” Eliza asked.
“Not for a while. The winter has been so harsh he has to travel farther and farther south to find any provisions at all.” She wandered back to the window and gazed out, again petting Peggy’s hair absentmindedly. “Lord, Lord, it looks like it might snow once more. Isn’t it almost April?”
Peggy and Eliza exchanged a raised-eyebrow look at Angelica’s uncharacteristic melancholic tone. Both of them were growing worried about their beautiful eldest sister’s happiness.
After a moment, with forced lightness, Angelica asked, “What else does your ardent suitor write?”
Eliza read on: “The express arrived with your dear billet under cover of one from your guardian. I cannot tell you what extacy I felt in casting my eye over the sweet effusions of tenderness it contains. My Betseys soul speaks in every line and bids me be the happiest of mortals. I am so and will be so. You give me too many proofs of your love to allow me to doubt it and in the conviction that I possess that, I possess every thing the world can give.”
“Oh my, Eliza.” Peggy sighed now. “That is quite beautiful.” To herself, she added a mark in the positive column in her tally of whether Alexander Hamilton was worthy of her loving sister.
But Eliza looked stricken.
“What is wrong with you, you silly goose?” Angelica asked. She crossed the room to sit beside Eliza on the bed.
“I should never have let you tell me what to write in my last letter, Angelica. I will never pen something as good. He will discover me a fraud!”
“It won’t matter once he is allowed to hold you in his arms, and . . .” Angelica trailed off with a mischievous smile.
Eliza turned absolutely crimson. Then she whispered, “But maybe he won’t want me if I cannot keep up with his wit. Oh, Angelica, you can’t ever leave us again. You must stay and help me know how to speak to him.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Eliza, just speak from your soul,” Peggy reassured her. “That is poetry enough. Your sincerity is one of your greatest charms, and carries a beautiful eloquence, because it is genuine.”
For a moment Eliza brightened. Then Angelica asked, “Has Alexander spoken to Papa yet?”
“I . . . I don’t think he has. He planned to stop in Philadelphia either on his way there or back from the prisoner exchange.” She glanced down at the letter and skimmed it. “Surely he would have mentioned meeting with Papa if he had.” Her face puckered up again and she burst into tears.
Peggy made a what-are-you-doing face at Angelica and added herself to the bed’s pile of Schuyler sisters. “You mustn’t be so afraid, Eliza. You’ll worry yourself sick. Honestly, if this man doesn’t approve of your words, he doesn’t deserve you and you don’t want him. There are plenty others who would find your words intoxicating honey.”
That statement turned out to be worse than what Angelica said. Eliza wept in earnest now. “But I don’t want any other man. I love Alexander—since the moment I saw him.”
“Oh dear,” Angelica murmured. She gathered Eliza into her arms. “Then you shall have him, my pet. I will teach you how to write playful letters, so that you can write them on your own as second nature. Letters that promise much but not all. Letters that tantalize enough to keep him feeling not quite satisfied and needing to continue his pursuit. It can be as simple as where you place a comma. For example, place one between an adjective and Hamilton’s name in a formal phrase. Instead of starting your letter ‘my dear sir,’ write it this way: ‘my dear, sir.’ It will catch him off guard. He’ll start looking for other little hidden endearments.
“Now that won’t be so hard.” She pushed Eliza’s hair back from her pretty, tear-streaked face. “Will it?”
Eliza smiled and shook her head.
“Angelica, honestly, leave her be!” Peggy pleaded. “Eliza’s own sentiments are perfect.”
“Oh, it’s all right, Peggy,” Eliza said. “I’m grateful. And once . . . once Alexander and I are married . . .” She paused and her voice hushed. “Once we’re married, we’ll be together and I will be able to show him how much I love him.”
“Oh really, little sister?” Angelica teased.
“I didn’t mean that! I meant . . .” Eliza sat up, clasping the sacred letter. “I mean like this. Listen to this next part: ‘The good Meade had the kindness to tell me that you received my letter with apparent marks of joy and that you retired with eagerness to read it. ’Tis from circumstances like these we best discover the true sentiments of the heart.’”
Angelica laughed again. “So he has spies watching you. That’s good!” Then she shook her head. “Those aides-de-camp are such a pack. Lord knows how they will survive being separated when he weds you.”
“Papa will say yes, won’t he? Alexander isn’t exactly, isn’t . . . he is new to America. He has no connections.”
Angelica snorted—a most unladylike and unusual sound coming from her. “No connections? Alexander has His Excellency’s ear. He is probably the most trusted aide in Washington’s family. Of course Papa will approve.”
“Eliza, listen to me,” said Peggy. “No, better yet, listen to what Hamilton just wrote you. You don’t need to worry. You don’t need to deal in flirtation or artifice. He loves your—how did he call it—the true sentiments of your heart.”
“You can say that, Peggy, because you are as clever as Angelica. And it’s not just me who is intimidated by his intellect. Remember that sweet letter I received from Kitty?” Eliza bounced off the bed, nearly knocking down little Philip on her way to the writing desk. She pulled out a letter from their friend and distant cousin. “Let’s see.” She quickly read the paper. “I have purchased your apron . . . no, no, not that part . . . here: assure Colonel Hamilton of my best wishes . . . . I would endeavor to say something in behalf of this poor letter, pray do not let Colonel Hamilton see it. His forte is writing I too well know, to submit anything I can say tonight to his inspection . . .”
Angelica waved her hand in dismissal. “I love dearest Kitty, but she is in danger of turning into a simpering old maid.”
“Angelica!” Eliza and Peggy exclaimed at the same time.
“Well, she is.” Angelica shrugged. “Kitty is closing in on twenty-nine years of age, isn’t she? She had her chance with Alexander, back when he had just arrived from Saint Croix and was studying at Elizabethtown Academy and staying at their house. He told me he wrote her the most ardent letters at the beginning of the war, calling her goddess, damsel, promising to attack windmills in her service. And she spurned him. Her loss. He now belongs to you, ladybird.” She pointed to Eliza.
Peggy burned to ask Angelica why Alexander Hamilton—their sister’s lover—was telling her about his past love affairs. Clearly the man was a gossip. But what was Angelica up to with such conversations? Did she always have to insert herself in every situation and relationship around her? Besides, Hamilton had written wanting Peggy as his confidante, hadn’t he? Peggy felt a sudden swell of her childhood competitiveness with Angelica. She didn’t like the feeling at all.
“What about Cornelia Lott?” Eliza whispered.
So that was the Cornelia whom McHenry had referenced at the ball while Eliza and Hamilton danced their mesmerizing minuet. Peggy sat up.
“She is Caty Greene’s close friend. Why do you ask?” To Peggy, Angelica seemed suddenly evasive. Her nonchalant question was clearly hypothetical since she kept talking. “Now, that Caty; there is someone who made a rather remarkable marriage in her General Nathaniel Greene, don’t you think? A man fifteen years older than she, not particularly well-educated. He wheezes and walks with a limp. And he’s a Quaker, mind you! Who could have foreseen that a man coming from the pacifist Society of Friends would take up arms and become one of our most important and brave generals? General Washington has great faith in him. They have become close friends. Clever girl, that Caty . . .” Angelica trailed off, lost in thought.
Now Angelica was going to imply that the totally delightful Caty Greene was cunning in her affections? Why was she being so peevish? “I don’t think there was anything calculating in that match, Angelica. I think the general adores her and she just fell in love,” said Peggy. “I really like Caty. She’s completely engaging in conversation, and has such a joyous nature. Warmhearted and exuberant. But there’s nothing frivolous about her. Frankly, she reminds me of you.”
The look Angelica gave Peggy was so sad it took her breath away.
“Yes, I suppose,” Angelica murmured. She stood and smoothed out her petticoats. “Now, to your reply, sweet Eliza. Take up your quill. Let’s think of winter and the cold of separation. How, when dear Hamilton returns, spring will bloom, and in your heart . . .” She smiled. “What? What would you say? Think about the promise, the flowering, the flush of life hiding beneath those wretched snowbanks longing to be awakened.”
Eliza dipped a quill into her inkwell. “Oh goodness.” She looked up in surprise. “The ink has frozen!”
“Then we will warm it up by the fire and melt it with the heat of your thoughts,” Angelica quipped.
They all laughed—that wondrous chime.
As Eliza stirred the hearth’s fire to make it roar, and Angelica held the inkwell near the flames, rubbing and rotating it in her hands to unstop the liquid, Peggy returned to the window.
A few days before, through the frosty panes, she had been able to hear, very faintly, fifes and drums in the distance. But not military parade music. Jigs and “Yankee Doodle.” General Washington had proclaimed a day of rest to celebrate St. Patrick’s holiday and to honor the parliament of Ireland for its own growing protests and potential revolt against the tyranny of Britain. The general had even given the men a hogshead of rum to enjoy.
Nearly a quarter of the soldiers shivering and starving and stubbornly surviving the winter in log huts they’d built in nearby Jockey Hollow were recent Irish immigrants. Their loyalty to America’s cause would certainly strengthen with Washington’s tribute to their heritage and his applauding their home country rattling England’s chains.
Her uncle Johnny had also shared with Peggy a startling fact that he had come to recognize as he kept records of all the illnesses and the men he treated in the hospital. His journals revealed that nearly three out of four men in the Continental Army had been born someplace other than America—England, Ireland, Germany mostly. Many of them were paid substitutes for rich men who were born in the colonies and with roots dating back a few generations. Africans—slaves and freemen both—were beginning to fill the ranks as well. The enslaved were promised freedom papers after the war.
The American Army may have begun with homegrown Patriots and their eloquent writings or audacious protests, but it was becoming a fighting force of immigrants—like Alexander Hamilton.
Peggy looked toward the Ford Mansion, sitting atop the hill outside the small courthouse town of fifty houses and two churches. She knew that in its first floor things were happening! Washington and his aides were receiving and writing letters, worrying over dispatches, pleading Congress for money to clothe and feed the soldiers, trying to convince locals to sell them meat or eggs or dried fruit at a reasonable price, speculating about what the British forces might be up to in New York City, perhaps even planning the spring’s first attacks on the Redcoat strongholds.
How she longed to be part of that! Not worrying over the wording of love letters and whether a man would find them engaging enough.
She sighed heavily.
“What’s wrong?” Eliza looked up from her letter, uncertainty on her face again.
Peggy smiled at her. “Nothing. Just thinking about . . .” She searched for a plausible fib. “I was remembering . . .”
“Captain Beebe?” Angelica quipped.
“No!” Peggy gazed back out the window, finding her cover. “I was remembering the story Kitty told in that letter. About those two British regiments raiding their home.”
“Oh yes, wasn’t that just awful,” breathed Eliza. “Thank God their father escaped capture. Can you imagine how terrifying that would be?”
“Yes, their poor family,” murmured Angelica. “Ever since their father became the Continental governor of New Jersey, their house has been repeatedly attacked and pillaged.”
“Didn’t Kitty say the rogues have even stolen all the house’s door hinges to melt down for musket balls?”
“I was actually marveling at how Susannah kept her head to save her father’s dispatches,” said Peggy.
Her sisters laughed.
“She always has been frisky, that one!” Angelica commented with obvious respect.
During a recent raid, infuriated that Governor Livingston had escaped into the night, British soldiers ransacked the house looking for any letters or records that would reveal Patriot secrets. To stop the Redcoats threatening her family, Susannah offered to help them look. She led them from place to place, finally coming to the locked secretary where she knew her father filed his precious correspondence. Standing with her back to it, Susannah pleaded with the soldiers to spare her secrets, that she had hidden there love letters her parents knew nothing of. If they promised to leave those notes alone, she would take them to her father’s important papers. Beguiled, the Redcoats nodded and followed her to the library, where she climbed a ladder to the highest shelf and pulled out old law briefs her father had written before the Revolution’s outbreak, neatly bound and official-looking.
“Wouldn’t you have loved to have seen the look on those Redcoats’ faces when they opened the governor’s old law papers and found they had been bamboozled?” laughed Peggy. “And by a girl!”
Even though Peggy jested, Susannah’s little triumph was an important one. Having watched her papa carefully veil the wordings of his communiqués with General Washington in case of interception, and seeing how excited Schuyler was when his spies like Moses Harris brought him messages that revealed British plans, Peggy knew how vitally important Susannah’s save had been. Her clever ruse had probably protected information about Patriot troop numbers, encampments, ammunition levels, where they got their supplies, where their scouts patrolled—all insights that could have helped the British or their Loyalist allies plan ambushes or kidnappings.
“I wonder if I would have been that ingenious,” she wondered aloud. “That defiant.”
“You?” Eliza asked with a grin.
Angelica laughed. “Oh yes, baby sister, you would be. We have no doubt.”