Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton interviewed McHenry, Pickering, and Wolcott about Adams’s behavior behind closed doors. Hamilton intended for his open letter indictment of Adams to circulate only among “influential Federalists in New England and especially South Carolina” (621), but someone stole—and published—the letter. Historians suspect Burr of providing the letter.

Hamilton’s pamphlet was published on October 24, 1800. It was “broadcast to a national audience” (746). The author calls the pamphlet a “petulant survey of John Adams’s life and presidency” (746), and no one thought it was a wise decision. At the end of the document, Hamilton ironically endorsed Adams for president, since he still thought Adams a better candidate than Jefferson.

Adams did not respond publicly to the pamphlet until 1809, when he wrote a series of articles defending his presidency. 

On October 3, 1800, “the American envoys concluded a treaty with France at Chateau Mortefontaine, ending the Quasi-War” (752).

During the presidential election, it began to look as if Burr and Jefferson would have an equal number of votes. Hamilton found himself forced to defend Jefferson, since his unease with, and dislike of, Burr had grown too great. For Hamilton, a Jefferson presidency was preferable to Burr.

He was right. Burr and Jefferson tied with 73 votes each, and the vote then moved on to the House.

Jefferson won the presidency after the deadlock was broken, and Burr was his vice president. In his inaugural address, Jefferson promised to support the Jay Treaty, and the funding system. He appointed James Madison the secretary of state. Three of Hamilton’s greatest foes were now in the positions of greatest power. 

Hamilton’s fame as a lawyer increased, but “the painful decline of his political stature” (761) tormented him. He and Eliza built a country home he called the Grange. He spent more time with his children and appeared to be content with his family life. But he still followed the political scene.

Jefferson disliked Burr enough to exclude him from most meetings, and Burr soon became “a pariah in Washington” (765).

George Clinton ran for Governor again, against Stephen van Rensselaer, who was married to Eliza’s sister, Peggy. Peggy died of an illness in March, and Hamilton felt compelled to help her widower against his enemy, Clinton.

In office, Jefferson realized that many of Hamilton’s policies had been prescience and wise, and that most of them had been designed to make them nearly impossible to get rid of.

James Marshall, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, was the leading Federalist in 1801. His guiding principle was that “he detested Thomas Jefferson” (768).

Hamilton continued to criticize Jefferson with 18 essays he called “The Examination” (769). Hamilton and his friends founded a Federalist paper called the New-York Evening Post and hired William Coleman as chief editor. The Post published the 18 essays.

Philip Hamilton, Alexander’s son, challenged a man named George Eacker to a duel. Eacker was an attorney who had given a Fourth of July speech that had framed Hamilton’s policies in an unflattering light. Eacker called Philip a rascal later that night, after Philip heckled him, and that was when Philip challenged him to a duel. Hamilton encouraged Philip not to fire, which would show his honor. Philip agreed and was shot in the hip, which typically would have been a survivable wound. However, the bullet ricocheted through his body and he died at five the next morning because of the organ damage the ricochet caused. Hamilton supporters believed that “Philip had been killed after withholding his fire for the sake of honor” (774).

Hamilton was “an altered man” (776) after Philip’s death, and “some new, impenetrable darkness had engulfed his mind” (776). 

Jefferson’s popularity exacerbated Hamilton’s depression, but there was little he could do about it. His anti-Jefferson writings did not persuade Jefferson supporters.

Hamilton grew preoccupied with religion. While he never reached Eliza’s levels of piety and commitment, the papers of his son John would later imply that “Hamilton experienced a resurgence of his youthful fervor” (780) after Philip’s death.

One of Hamilton’s few pleasures was that Burr was being excluded from most political circles, even though he was the vice president. Jefferson found Burr useless, tasteless, greedy, and was happy to keep him at a distance. This divide between the president and vice president did not go unnoticed, and pamphlets began to appear, damning Burr. One contained the initials of many courtesans that had allegedly had sex with Burr.

On September 1, 1802, Callendar published a story about Jefferson’s romance with Sally Hemmings. Sally was one of Jefferson’s slaves, and there had long been rumors that Jefferson had fathered several of her children. Callender’s body was found in the James River on July 17, 1803. The cause of death was ruled to be drowning, and the theory was that Callender had fallen into the river while drunk. 

Hamilton’s health worsened, but his intellectual curiosity remained. He continued to comment on political and social issues in various newspapers, even as Jefferson’s popularity continued to grow. His battles with Jefferson moved to an “unexpected arena: freedom of the press” (786). Despite his professed loathing of the Sedition Act, Jefferson conducted “two high-profile prosecutions of Federalists editors” (786). One was Harry Croswell. Croswell had written that Callender was a traitor, and that Jefferson had paid him for everything he wrote.

Hamilton defended Croswell, but lost the case. However, many who heard his final summation believed that they had never heard him give a better speech.

In April 1803, Jefferson achieved the Louisiana Purchase, adding 828,000 square miles to America. Hamilton believed that Jefferson had overstepped the bounds of presidential power in a way that “far exceeded anything contemplated in the Constitution” (790).

There were rumors of a secessionist movement that would spread to the west, now that there was so much new land. By doubling America’s size, it now gave the government a larger job to do as it would have to extend its reach all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

Burr knew that he would not serve as vice president again, so he decided to run for governor of New York. He eventually lost the race and blamed Hamilton, who “was a curse, a hypocrite, the author of all his misery” (796). Hamilton had campaigned vigorously against Burr, but no one man could share the responsibility for dooming Burr’s candidacy, particularly given Burr’s reputation.