If he possessed traits that made him thoroughly hated by some, he had other qualities that bound his friends to him with bonds of steel. He commanded affection because he was himself affectionate. His letters to his wife were uniformly tender and playful. He was idolized by his children. His comrades in the army loved him because he not only shared their hardships, but at times helped them to necessities out of his own all but empty pockets. He was sensitive to the sufferings of many refugees in Philadelphia and New York, and he would often direct his wife to send money and delicacies to the women and children.[172] We have many instances of his generosity, like his attempt to spare Andre the humiliation of the scaffold, and his letter to Knox protesting against the execution of British officers in retaliation for the murder of an American.[173] Among the young French officers he was idolized because of his merry disposition and the cleverness and brilliancy of his conversation. While prone to hold aloof from the mass, he was a ‘good fellow’ among those whom he considered his social equals. In social assemblies of both sexes he fairly sparkled with boyish enthusiasm.[174] In stag affairs, where he was immensely popular, we may be sure that he was nothing of a prude. It is not of record that he often drank to excess, but like most men of his time he loved his wine, and we have it on the best authority that he sometimes took a wee bit too much.[175] On these convivial occasions he could always be prevailed upon to sing his one and only song:
‘We’re going to war, and when we die
We’ll want a man of God near by,
So bring your Bible and follow the drum.’
His one serious weakness was an inordinate fondness for women which was to involve him in the one serious scandal of his career. It was McHenry who wrote to Pickering, another friend: ‘Far be it from me to attempt to palliate his pleasures, the indulgence in which Mr. Hamilton himself publicly lamented.’[176] It was Otis who wrote of his ‘liquorish flirtation’ with a married woman at a fashionable dinner party.[177] It was Lodge who, in touching on his overpowering passions, refers to his ‘relations, which had an unenviable notoriety.’[178] It is Oliver who says that ‘his private shortcomings cannot be denied,’[179] and that ‘in private life Hamilton was not always vigilant.’[180] It is the historian of ‘The Republican Court’ who records that ‘it is true that Hamilton was something of a roué.’[181] And it was reserved for a descendant to remind us of the story of the alleged relations with the celebrated Madame Jumel, who, in old age, made an unsuccessful attempt to live with Aaron Burr,[182] and of the gossip, which he discredits, that his relations with his sprightly sister-in-law, Mrs. Church, were more tender than they should have been.[183] This same descendant, writing with professional authority, explains these moral delinquencies on the theory that, like other men of genius and great intelligence, he was prone to ‘impulsively plunge into the underworld in obedience to some strange promptings of their lower nature.’[184]
And yet, such are the strange inconsistencies of the temperamental—nothing could have been more beautiful than his home life. His endearing traits are evident in the passionate devotion of all who knew the Hamilton of the hearth. If the ties that bound Angelica Church to him were not more tender than they should have been, her letters indicate something akin to love.[185] His wife, who must have suffered tortures over the confessions of the Reynolds pamphlet, clung to him with a faith born perhaps of an understanding of how much he must have resisted. If he sometimes broke his vows, there can be no doubt that the shrine of his heart was at his hearth.
‘Colonel Beckwith tells me that our dear Hamilton writes too much and takes no exercise, and grows fat,’ wrote Angelica Church to Mrs. Hamilton from London. ‘I hate both the word and the thing, and I desire you to take care of his health, and his good looks.’[186] Here we have the suggestion of another frailty which makes all the more notable the intensity of his sustained efforts and the magnitude of his achievements—the delicacy of his health. The first, and possibly the last, medical service rendered by McHenry on becoming a member of Washington’s military family was to prescribe for Hamilton and make suggestions as to his diet. Early in the war he who was never robust contracted a malarial infection from which he suffered every summer throughout his life.[187] His correspondence is sprinkled throughout with references to his health.[188] While in no sense an invalid, the magnitude and multiplicity of his labors despite a chronic physical disability measure the power of mind over matter and indicate something of his unyielding will.
XI
In view of the sincere or simulated interest in religion shown by Hamilton where political interests were involved, it would be interesting to know just what he thought and felt. The records here are slight. During his youth he passed through the period of religious exaltation not uncommon in the average life. Not only was he attentive to public worship, but he prayed fervently and with eloquence in the seclusion of his room.[189] About this time he wrote a hymn, ‘A Soul Entering into Bliss,’ which is said to have had some literary merit.[190] We hear no more concerning his religious fervor for many years until he pretended, if he did not feel, an intense indignation against the revolutionary reaction aimed at the church establishment in France. He was shocked that ‘equal pains have been taken to deprave the morals as to extinguish the religion of the country.’[191]
A few years more, and, with the fall of his party, he outlined to Bayard a ‘Plan of Conduct’ for Federalists with a view to its rehabilitation, and proposed an association to be denominated ‘The Christian Constitutional Society,’ having for its objects ‘the support of the Christian Religion’ and ‘the support of the Constitution.’[192] This hints strongly of the Old World idea of the union of Church and State. In Connecticut the clergy had been the shock troops of Federalism, and it is quite possible that the political advantage of an alliance between the Church and his party appealed to Hamilton.
At any rate, he was a member of no church. One of his descendants assures us that ‘he was a man of earnest, simple faith, quite unemotional in this respect, so far as display was concerned, but his belief was very strong.’[193] Strong as it was, it never led him to the altar.
Leaving his idol’s death-bed, Oliver Wolcott wrote his wife that ‘Colonel H. in late years expressed his conviction of the truths of the Christian Religion, and his desire to receive the Sacrament—but no one of the clergy who have yet been consulted will administer it.’[194] At length, life ebbing away, a bishop consented after being earnestly solicited the second time. Thus in his dying hour, Hamilton declared: ‘It has for some time past been the wish of my heart, and it was my intention to take an early opportunity of uniting myself to the church.’ The natural deduction from the meager information we have is that his intensive political and professional activities and consuming ambitions gave him little time to meditate on religion. He certainly never gave it the consideration of his greatest political opponent whom his party attacked as an enemy of Christianity. But he used the Church, whenever possible, to advance his political views—and with effect.