Chapter Thirty-Three
NEW YORK CITY
New York
Washington recovered, and that summer every important man in his administration hurried to cement necessary changes in government
lest we again be thrown into such a panic.
Thanks to a compromise forged at a dinner between Secretary Hamilton, Secretary Jefferson, and Mr. Madison, we were to move
the capital. First to Philadelphia, then later, to a stretch of swampy wilderness on the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia,
where they aimed to build a city from scratch.
Hamilton would have his financial plan—the federal government assuming the war debts of the states and filling the pockets
of those who had invested in those government notes long ago, myself among them. Hamilton’s plan might make us wealthy, but
I detested the idea of leaving New York.
Especially since our family was already experiencing so many private changes.
Having swept into Nabby’s new house on Nassau Street, immediately setting everything better to my liking, moving furniture
here and there, I said, “Your baby brother is through commencement now, though it was not the affair it might’ve been. Gone
are the days I can ask your Aunt Cranch to make a plum cake for three hundred.”
Nabby looked a little appalled. “Surely Tommy at least had a celebratory dinner.”
I sighed in reply, glancing around the parlor, trying to decide where better to relocate her tea cart so visitors would not bang into it every time they walked in the hall.
“I shall have to make it up to him somehow. For now, I’m glad my boys have all passed through college, and have done so well, despite the almost constant absence of their parents. ”
It was my daughter who worried me now, soon due to birth another child—much too soon after the last—which made me hover. “This house is too small and hot and stuffy in the summer for you to give birth
here. You must come to Richmond Hill to bring forth your child.”
I think she took it for implied criticism of her husband, because she argued, “This house is in the midst of the hustle and
bustle. It shall be easy for the doctor to be called, if need be. And in any case, I cannot leave my husband.”
“Whyever not? There are at least servants at my home to watch after the children so you can lie in restfully and regain your
strength.”
“Colonel Smith is happy to look after our boys while I rest.”
I gave her the most skeptical look of my life. “I scarcely even trusted your papa to look after you when you were the age
my grandsons are now.”
But I could no longer command her. Nabby would likely move her furniture back to the way she had it the moment I left the
room. And in the end, she insisted upon giving birth where she was.
When our newest grandson was born, blue eyes glistening with wonder at the world, I couldn’t help but laugh at his size.
“Such a big fellow,” John said, pretending to grunt under the weight in his arms. “And ginger hair! What branch of the family
do we owe that to?”
I laughed. “Not mine. What shall he be named?”
“Thomas,” Nabby said. “In honor of my little brother who graduated from Harvard without fanfare.”
“Poor Tommy,” Charles broke in. “Always an afterthought.”
Nabby poked his arm. “Well, now he has a namesake.”
To which her brother crowed, “The next one ought to be named after me!”
“The next one?” I cried. “No man ought to talk about the next one so soon after a woman’s labor unless he wants his ears boxed.”
Towering over me, Charles said, “You cannot even reach my ears anymore, Mother.”
My husband snorted with amusement. “Oh, do not dare her, my foolish son. Where the vice president’s lady has a will, she finds
a way.”
Our family was happy in New York that summer mixing in an entirely new social circle—one inhabited by no lesser figure than
Alexander McGillivray, a chieftain of the Creek Indians who had come to New York to negotiate a treaty with President Washington.
“I should never have suspected him to be of that nation, as he’s not very dark,” I told Nabby. “Indeed, he dresses in our
own fashion and speaks English perfectly well.”
“Well, that is a dull report,” Nabby said.
“Never fear, his fellow chieftains are much more exotic to our eyes. All of them very fine-looking men in deerskin breeches,
silver armbands, and feathered turbans. The painter Mr. Trumbull has pronounced them perfect models.”
The treaty signing was expected to draw more than fifteen hundred Creek Indians and eight hundred Cherokees. Rations were
given for the celebratory bonfire, around which they danced like spirits, hooping, singing, and yelling.
At Washington’s official function later, the gentlemen mingled to one side of the room, while ladies mingled on the other.
And I noticed many of our ladies either felt distaste, or felt obligated to pretend distaste, for these tribal people.
All except for the young Eliza Hamilton, which surprised me. Of the cabinet officers’ wives, she’d always seemed the most
timid. “You didn’t take alarm by the bonfire dancing, Mrs. Hamilton?”
“Oh, no,” she said, sipping from a crystal goblet, then dabbing her cleft chin with a kerchief. “My father, Senator Schuyler,
is a longtime Indian agent. I’m much accustomed to such things.”
“I wish I could converse better with them,” I said. “For they seem friendly, manly, generous, grateful, and honest. Not at
all what people say of them. And they certainly know how to express their pleasure in true savage style.”
“It’s true,” said Mrs. Hamilton, adorned for the occasion in a plain powdered wig and black ribbon round her throat for decoration. “But are they the savages or are we? I wonder.”
It was an interesting comment. One that seemed quite out of place coming from the wife of the suave Secretary Hamilton, who,
sporting a peacock silk tailcoat with gold lapels, never seemed to harbor the slightest doubt about our enterprises.
Nevertheless, as the evening went on, and dinner was served, I felt true delight when one of the chieftains bent his knee
and conferred upon me an Indian name. “Mammea.”
I was honored, though I had absolutely no idea what it meant, and did not wish to offend by asking. I looked about the room
to see if anyone might offer a translation; but no one did.
The secretary of war was studiously cutting into his ham, and his wife, Mrs. Knox, seemed rather flummoxed, for a change,
about the etiquette called for on this occasion. Yet, on the other side of me, I noticed Secretary Jefferson smirk. And I
leaned in to whisper, “Do you know what the chieftain is saying?”
Still smirking, Jefferson replied under his breath. “I cannot swear to it, but in their language, I do believe that he either
proffered you the respect due a woman leader of the people . . . or else he called you a pluck-able round grape.”
“No!” I gasped, covering my splutter with a napkin.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell Mr. Adams.”
With a strangled laugh, I said, “You must never tell anyone.”
Jefferson smiled into his Madeira wine. “It will be our secret, on my honor as a Virginian.”
And I do believe he kept that secret all his days.
The lovely evening went on, and I was happy to have Mr. Jefferson for a partner in conversation. We spoke of family and the
delights of New York, because we both knew our time here was coming to a close.
Thanks to the bargain he’d brokered with Hamilton, we must follow the government to Philadelphia. I did not wish to go, but
what else could a woman leader of the people do?