Page 6 of My Dear Hamilton

June 1778

Albany

M AMA WAS DANGEROUSLY ill, burning with fever in the confines of her curtained bed, pale and weak as a lamb. Though my father was sometimes afflicted by bilious fevers and gout, my sturdy mother’s Dutch constitution had seemed a shield against every ailment.

Every ailment but one.

Childbirth. The most dangerous female ailment of all. And even though none of us spoke the words aloud as my mother tossed upon her fevered bed, we all feared it might claim Mama and her baby, too.

After a difficult delivery, Mama presented my father with a frightfully little infant son. As was the custom, we’d celebrated the birth with sweet pastries and cinnamon caudle, but Mama had been too sick to take part. And now, only weeks later, her milk had dried up.

Because none of our servants were breeding, we had no wet nurse. Nor could I coax the babe to suck cow’s, sheep’s, or goat’s milk from a cloth. As the sickly little thing trembled in my arms, withering by the hour, I felt, for the first time in my life, an ache in my breasts to feed a hungry child.

“Betsy,” Mama whispered to me, and I looked up from the rocking chair beside her sickbed. Sweat poured from her forehead, and her braid of long black hair had come frayed and lay wild. “If the Lord should take me, I need for you to know something.”

Intent upon her every rasping word, I leaned closer, mopped the sweat from her brow with a cool cloth, and wondered if I should fetch the doctor again.

“You can marry,” she said. “You needn’t. But you mustn’t think that you can’t .”

For her to say such a puzzling thing, I decided that the tincture of saffron, sage, and snakeroot must not have done her any good. “Don’t tire yourself with talk,” I said, trying to hush her as I patted the baby’s back.

But twisting against the sheets, Mama continued, “A son-in-law could be a great blessing to your poor father, who is so... harried.”

“Just get well, Mama,” I said, wondering if she remembered that she already had a son-in-law in Jack Carter, even if he was in faraway Boston with Angelica. “Don’t worry about anything else but getting well.”

After all, I worried enough for the both of us. Papa had been torn between staying close to my mother in her illness, collecting rents from our tenants, and rebuilding the charred ruins of our mills at Saratoga. Our wealth was in the timber we cut and the flour we milled there. And I knew Mama worried our family fortune would never entirely rebound.

But what she rasped was, “Peggy is quite pretty.” My brow furrowed as I tried to follow the workings of her fevered mind. She blinked, as if struggling to scrutinize my face with the honest frankness of our shared Dutch heritage. “But you’re pretty enough, my dear child.”

“Worry not, Mama. I shan’t let such praise go to my head.” It was so mild a compliment that in the past, I might have taken pleasure in it, knowing it was not false flattery. But even though I’d had no letter from Monroe, our flirtation—and my adventure with the Marquis de Lafayette—had opened my mind to possibilities for my future I hadn’t previously considered. Even as I felt the weight of my responsibilities here, with my family, as never before.

And if my mother should not survive... no, I couldn’t think of that.

“But if you do marry...” Her words trailed off. “You must promise not to run off with some macaroni like Jack Carter.”

“Mama! I thought you’d come to like him.”

“I do. But oh, to have missed my own daughter’s wedding...”

“I won’t give you such a pain,” I promised, trying to soothe her. But my heart ached at the turn of her thoughts, and the fact that a breach between us remained. Moving to sit at the edge of the bed, I asked, “Can’t you ever forgive me for helping Angelica to run off?”

Mama reached for my hand and clutched it with a surprising strength. “It’s forgiven, my dear child. Forgiven and forgotten .”

Blinking back bittersweet tears, I gave a quick nod. But before I could tell her how much it meant to me, she slipped into a fitful sleep.

Then the babe gave a frightening weak cry and I hurried down the stairs, determined to do for him what my mother could not. I found Peggy on the lawn overseeing the littlest children as they played hoops and leapfrog. “Take the baby,” I said. “I’m going to get help.”

I needed to find a willing woman to take my infant brother to the breast, and I wasn’t averse to using our status to secure assistance. Whatever my father’s reputation, the Schuylers, the Livingstons, the Van Cortlandts, and the Van Rensselaers were the great families of the region. If I couldn’t impress upon the people here, then I would cross the river to Fort Crailo, where my mother was born and raised.

“You’re going to leave ?” Peggy asked, a little panicked. “Mama is too ill to know her own name, the servants are gone, and someone needs to play mistress of the Pastures.”

The servants were gone to celebrate Pinkster, she meant.

For Dutch settlers, the springtime holiday was a time for religious services, but for slaves it was a week free from work, a week during which they might travel to nearby plantations to visit family, or dance and sing at one of the festivals in Albany or New York City. Papa had been eager for the arrival of Pinkster, from which his servants usually returned cheerful. But now he feared some might not return at all.

For amongst our slaves that spring had passed sullen looks and dark whispers. From the kitchen, Dinah had sent up only cold dishes. Our dairy maid had the temerity to refuse Papa some trifling request with the cows, and he seemed too bewildered by the incident to have punished her.

I initially attributed the insolence of our people to fear. For everyone was fearful. No sooner had the leaves on the trees come to bud, than did four of the Six Nations attack nearby villages and settlements, just as Two Kettles Together had warned. Our slaves might’ve worried about the Indians, who also kept Negroes in bondage and were said to treat them harshly.

I think now, though, upon more mature reflection, that the people of our plantation must have been weighing their loyalty between us and the British, who offered freedom to runaways. Our slaves must’ve wondered at men like my father, ready to die for his own freedom, while holding others in bondage.

And they were not wrong to wonder.

In those desperate hours, though, I thought only of the sick little baby. “You’ll just have to manage by yourself, Peg,” I said, giving her the swaddled infant before bolting for the stable and galloping down the drive, bypassing azalea-festooned festival stalls, dancers, and drummers in town.

I went first to our Livingston relations at the Elm Tree Corner, where I pleaded with an indentured Irish girl who was breeding. But by the time we returned, my infant brother was struggling to breathe, let alone suckle. I’d barely dismounted when the sweet babe, with a head so tiny it fit in my palm, gasped and shuddered and perished in my arms.

In the days thereafter, Papa wrote the baby’s name in the family Bible. A carpenter made a tiny pine coffin. My father dug a tiny grave. “ God gives and God takes away; blessed be the name of God, ” Papa said, determined to submit to the Lord’s judgment, but Mama was powerfully afflicted, and I’d never felt so terrible about anything.

God could not wish this, I thought. Our ancestors’ Dutch Reform faith held that much was predestined. But God could not wish helpless babes to die after only a few painful breaths. No just God could wish suffering, sickness, slavery, and savagery.

Wasn’t that why we were fighting a revolution?

I’d never been a patient girl in church services. I’d read the Bible only indifferently and because my mother insisted. But now, at the grave site of my dead baby brother, hearing clods of earth fall upon the tiny coffin like the sound of knocking, I was struck by the powerful conviction that God put us here to make a better world.

And it is a conviction that has informed the rest of my life.

Though I burned for some heroic deed to accomplish, the uncomfortable realization of maturity was dawning. The grinding toil of duty might not be as glorious as adventures in the wild, but more necessary. To make this world a better place, my family needed to survive this war. And so I applied myself for the first time to the housework I’d always shirked, laundering clothes, feeding chickens, bundling herbs, pickling vegetables, bottling cider, and making soap. And to make sense of any of it occasioned countless trips up and down the stairs to disturb my poor mother’s rest.

This was especially so because Dinah, our cook, had not returned from Pinkster. She’d been found in a barn, harbored by a Scotchman, and now marked time in jail as a runaway until Papa could reclaim her. Despite my father’s reassurance that he wouldn’t punish Dinah harshly, Jenny was beside herself with fear—or perhaps with guilt that she’d not joined her mother in running away. And even after a chastened Dinah returned to our kitchens, tensions on our plantation ran high, with Prince thin-lipped and more insistent upon protocol than ever.

Meanwhile, my father slept scarcely at all that spring and well into autumn.

He’d lost his child, his command, and his honor. For months now, despite his continued service, Congress denied him the opportunity to defend himself against charges of neglect and disloyalty. All while General Gates discounted our reports of devastating raids by the Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga.

It wasn’t until October—perhaps under my father’s subtle threat that he would publish a pamphlet to exonerate himself—that he was finally called upriver for his court-martial.

The verdict came in three days.

The court having considered the charges against Major-general Schuyler, the evidence and his defense, are unanimously of opinion that he is NOT GUILTY and the court do therefore acquit him with the highest honor.

Sweet vindication! All the sweeter because it helped put an end to talk of replacing Washington. His trusted officers had proved trustworthy. Lafayette had avoided the trap of a disastrous misadventure in Canada and salvaged his reputation by recruiting Indian allies to the cause. My father had been acquitted by an honest court. Our generals and young officers had stood together with Washington.

Semper Fidelis .

And I will always believe it was loyalty to the cause over personal ambition that saved us. General Gates was forced to apologize for his role in attempting to undermine Washington and became, himself, the subject of an inquiry. Other conspirators resigned in humiliation. And since Mama was quite nearly recovered, it was a thing I meant to celebrate in high style.

Peggy and I determined to host a party, something to bring cheer and joy back to the Pastures. The little ones thought to make a pie for Papa’s return, so we invited friends from our community troop of Blues on a foraging day to pick the last of the season’s berries. A group of us ventured into the wilds, singing and joking, as we’d done since we were young.

It was an old Dutch tradition meant for matchmaking. All New Netherlander children were divided from the youngest ages into teams for races and games, outings and house parties. The Blues, the Reds, the Greens. Even in Papa’s day, no chaperones were present, which was how, I supposed, my oldest sister had come to be born only a few months after our parents married.

Not that I’d ever dared ask my starchy mother about it.

In any case, amongst our children’s troops, Angelica had been our undisputed leader. Never one who enjoyed the outdoors, Peggy had often groused her way through all of our troops’ adventures, but Angelica had cheered our Blues in the winter as I skated to victory past one of the Livingston girls. And sang songs as we climbed through the brambles to explore the mist-slick caves along the river. And lolled on the green grass, nose buried in a book while the rest of us stuffed ourselves on a picnic of good bread, butter, and jam.

Every boy of the Blues had wanted to marry Angelica; every girl wanted to be her friend. But they called me Buckskin Betsy , and it was once suggested that I should make a new troop of the so-called strays I was known for collecting. But Angelica never tolerated a mean word to be said against me, and promised that if I left the Blues, she’d leave, too. That had been the end of it.

I’d never forgotten my sister’s loyalty. And it made me miss her even more.

But our mood was so celebratory that morning as we set off that even Peggy seemed to enjoy herself. Laughing and teasing, we paddled canoes to get to the berry patch, gathering and eating the sweet berries until fourteen-year-old Stephen Van Rensselaer, the young patroon of Rensselaerswyck, suddenly lifted his hunting rifle with wary eyes on the shoreline. And everyone fell silent.

Except Peggy. “What is it?” she whispered.

“ Indians, ” he said, eyes wild.

My heart thumped a drumbeat as I measured the distance back to the Pastures, where we might slam the shutters and guard the doors. Alas, they’d come upon us too stealthily. We’d never make it, I thought, when I spotted the Iroquois emerge from the foliage.

I knew them on sight. Oneida .

Friendly Iroquois. Not a war-painted party wielding hatchets, but a small delegation of Oneida chieftains dressed in buckskin and moccasins, carrying a haunch of venison. And a tall woman walked with them, a clay pipe between her teeth.

“Two Kettles Together!” I called, my voice shaky with relief. She gave a regal nod of her head, explaining that she was on her way to see my father. And she carried grave news. Though Lafayette’s bounty had turned the tables on the spy, we’d never captured Major Carleton. Now he was leading coordinated raids against our settlements. And a separate force of three hundred Indians had skulked through Cherry Valley with two hundred British Rangers, laying waste to everything in their path—including the fortifications Lafayette had authorized to defend our friends. Forty women and children had been butchered, mangled, or scalped—some had their heads, legs, and arms cut off, or the flesh torn from their bones by dogs.

Our Oneida friends had tried to warn us, and for months after the treaty conference, Papa had tried to warn Gates, to no avail. Now that my father had been exonerated, I expected that he would take back his command and lead the army in reprisals. I’d been at his side in Johnstown when, with Lafayette, he promised to treat the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Seneca, and the Onondaga as enemies if they persisted.

Someone would have to make good on that promise.

For more than a year now, I’d burned with a desire to see Papa again in his general’s uniform, his honor restored.

But when my father was finally offered back his command of the Northern Army, he refused it.

“Why?” I asked, mortified.

“Because I have been appointed to Congress,” he replied.

Congress . I supposed it to be a great deal of jabbering. Scarcely anyone paid the men who labored with paper and pen the respect due a major general of the Continental army.

I couldn’t see the glory in it. And I couldn’t imagine how my father would be content with it, given the abuse he’d already suffered. Not even when he said, “Too few legislators know anything about provisioning an army. They know even less about these territories and the real power of the Six Nations. If they did, they would quake in their boots. So it seems I am needed in Philadelphia.”

I wanted to change his mind. How was he to finish rebuilding our fortunes from Philadelphia? How would we provide for the family without completed mills or timber? Shouldn’t he be remembered as the great general that he was?

But before I could argue, my mother rested her hand atop his. “Whatever you decide, your family needs nothing but your presence to make us happy. Whether you are called General Schuyler or simply Philip Schuyler , Esquire .”

The warm and grateful way he smiled at her made me bite my tongue.

I have since thought back many times to that moment. Remembering how graciously she accommodated both my father’s pride and his sense of duty. The way she convinced him that his family would love and honor him just the same. That there was nothing whatsoever he needed to prove. That he was enough of a husband, a father, and a patriot, in and of himself. That he could be at peace with private honor over public laurels.

And I’ve wondered why I couldn’t accomplish the same when it came to my own husband.

Perhaps it was because the man I married was not born to a great family. He was not secure in his heritage or in himself. It would be easy to blame the wounds that my husband carried that had nothing to do with me. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I wonder if, unlike my mother, I have always carried within myself some spark of ambition or expectation that my husband sensed he mustn’t disappoint lest he lose my love.

Even if it meant his death...