Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ relief from the local courts, and lived together until her death, which occurred February 25, 1768, when she was thirty-two years old. It is quite true that the courts of St. Croix were available, but this was a Danish island, and Levine was a Dane, and a man of great local influence, which was used against them, so that their efforts were thwarted.

      The social life of England and the colonies during the eighteenth century was, to say the least, unsettled, and this is especially true so far as the morals of the better class were concerned. According to Lodge, "divorce was extremely rare in any of the colonies, and even in England, and in the crown provinces it involved long, difficult, and expensive proceedings of the greatest publicity." In fact, if we may be guided by the existing reports, annulment was resorted to much pore often than divorce, and it is impossible to find any account of the existence of divorce laws on the islands of St. Kitts or Nevis; according to well-informed persons, there was even no act providing for separate maintenance.

      Marriage rites were informal and elopements common, both in Great Britain and her dependencies; in fact, it was not until the passage of Lord Hardwick's marriage bill, and the energetic labors of Wilberforce, that the solemn nature of the marriage rite was established. Even then Hardwick's bill was opposed by Heniy Fox, who had married a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and with the subsequent ascendancy of the gay Walpoles and Pelhams there was more tolerance with irregular marriages than ever.

      Lecky and, later. Sir George Russell,' referred to the casual nature of the marriage customs, and the easy manner in which unions were made and broken, and at this time the pilgrimages to Gretna Green of those who were impatient of the law's delays or the objections of discriminating parents, were frequent.

      In referring to the easily solemnized marriages which did not endure. Swift said: "The art of making nets is very different from the art of making cages," and very litde, if any, odium was attached to those who took matters into their own hands. In this country elopement was so common as to be a popular proceeding among the higher classes, and many of our forefathers chose this romantic and unconventional, but in those times perfectly innocent manner of mating. Four of General Philip Schuyler's daughters "arranged and took charge of their own marriages," that of his daughter who married Hamilton being an exception. Her beautiful sister, Angelica Church, ran off with an Englishman who came to the colonies, it is said, after a duel, and who changed his name to Carter, but subsequently resumed his own cognomen of John Barker Church, and was afterward the Commissary for Rochambeau.

      Many other young women did the same thing, among them a daughter of Heniy Cruger, who eloped with Peter van Schaak, and "Peggy" White, who ran away with Peter Jay. Other young women of romantic inclinations were Susannah Reid and Harriet Van Rensselaer.

      Hamilton's father and mother had much in extenuation of the bold step they took, and their subsequent mode of life does not appear to have been followed by any loss of caste; possibly because of the local sympathy, and the knowledge of the true facts of their unconventional relationship; and again, because there was no doubt of the sincerity and depth of their love for each other. From perfectly reliable sources it appears, and may be believed, that his mother's first husband was a coarse man of repulsive personality, many years older than herself. After Rachel left her mother's house and went to James Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton was born a year later. Levine then divorced her. In the records of the Ember Court of St. Croix it appears that "John Michael Levine (Lawein) was granted a divorce for abandonment and Levine was permitted to many again ; but she, being the defendant, was not."

      It is said that Levine was not above depriving his wife's children by her union with Hamilton of the inheritance from their mother. At her death in 1768 she possessed several slaves which she left to her sons, Alexander and James Hamilton. John Michael Levine subsequently made application for these in "behalf of her lawfully begotten heir, Peter Levine." It is here distinctly stated that the grounds for divorce were that she had "absented herself." Mrs. Atherton who, in her collection of letters, refers to these facts, has made painstaking and careful examination of the records of the courts, not only in the West Indies but in Copenhagen, and states positively that there was no evidence that she deserted her husband to live with Hamilton, but was living with her mother in St. Kitts in 1756, when the latter appeared upon the scene. In a letter written by Alexander Hamilton the fact of his mother's unhappy marriage, which was brought about by her mother, is mentioned, and there seems to be no reason to doubt its truth. Whether Levine's failure to apply for a divorce on more serious grounds was due to a belief in his wife's innocence, or to the realization that he had driven her, by his cruel, to the arms of another man whom she truly loved, or whether the local court refused to take a severe view of her action because of its own knowledge of Levine, and the marriage itself, is a matter of speculation. Possibly he may have felt some of the magnanimity which, in more recent years, actuated Ruskin and Wagner. Certainly the best proof that no prejudice existed in after life in regard to Hamilton because of his birth are the facts, not only that General Washington invited him to become a member of his military family, but that General Schuyler heartily approved of the marriage with his daughter.

      Hamilton's father does not appear to have been successful in any pursuit, but in many ways was a great deal of a dreamer, and something of a student, whose chief happiness seemed to be in the society of his beautiful and talented wife, who was in every way intellectually his superior. After her death he apparently lost all incentive he had before to continue any mercantile occupation, and left the island, going to St. Vincent, where he lived until a time shortly before his son's death.

      It is not evident that Hamilton knew much of his Scotch relatives until after the War of the Revolution, although in a letter to his brother in 1783 he casually alludes to his uncles. In 1797 he wrote a long letter to Alexander Hamilton, the Laird of the Grange at the time, which tells very simply the story of his career in America and may be here used in an introductory way to what is to follow.

       Alexander Hamilton from Alexander Hamilton.

      Albany, State of New York, May the 2d, 1797.

      My dear Sir: Some days since I received with great pleasure your letter of the 10th of March. The mark it affords of your kind attention, and the particular account it gives me of so many relations in Scotland, are extremely gratifying to me. You no doubt have understood that my father's affairs at a very early day went to wreck; so as to have rendered his situation during the greatest part of his life far from eligible. This state of things occasioned a separation between him and me, when I was very young, and threw me upon the bounty of my mother's relatives, some of whom were then wealthy, though by vicissitudes to which human affairs are so liable they have been since much reduced and broken up. Myself at about sixteen came to this country. Having always had a strong propensity to literary pursuits, by a course of steady and laborious exertion I was able, by the age of nineteen, to qualify myself for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the College of New-York, and to lay the foundation for preparatory study for the future profession of the law.

      The American Revolution supervened. My principles led me to take part in it; at nineteen I entered into the American army as Captain of Artillery. Shortly after I became, by invitation, aid-de-camp to General Washington, in which station I served till the commencement of that campaign which ended with the siege of York in Virginia, and the capture of Comwallis's army. The campaign I made at the head of a corps of light infantry, with which I was present at the siege of York, and engaged in some interesting operations.

      At the period of the peace of Great Britain, I found myself a member of Congress by appointment of the Legislature of this State.

      After the peace, I settled in the city of New-York, in the practice of the law; and was in a very lucrative course of practice, when the derangement of our public affairs, by the feebleness of the general confederation, drew me again reluctantly into public life. I became a member of the Convention which framed the present Constitution of the United States; and having taken part in this measure, I conceived myself to be under an obligation to lend my aid towards putting the СКАЧАТЬ