Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ they were required to make a payment in specie to a considerable amount by persons that had been travelling night and day.' Pittsburgh is a considerable town on the junction of three rivers, no beauty but good Buildings, gloomy from the use of coal. I shall write you from Cincinnati where I shall be today. Adieu! write to me and let me know how Angelica is.

      Your Affectionate Mother,

      E. Hamilton.

      Later she wrote:

      Mrs, Alexander Hamilton to Philip Hamilton

      Mississippi May 23, 1837.

      My dear Son: I have passed the Ohio, the river is very spacious, but very difficult of navigation, the shores beautiful and the vessel approaching the shore at the distance of one dozen feet; no wharf, the water is so mixed with clay that it is not drinkable without wine. This evening we shall be at St. Louis on the Mississippi. Our passage will be tedious as we go against the stream. Let me hear from you, particularly respecting Angelica and all the family.

      Your affectionate mother

      Elizabeth Hamilton.

      And again:

      Mrs. Alexander Hamilton to Philip Hamilton

      I thank you My Dear Son for yours of the fifteenth. I hope you may have leisure and the opportunity to have the Speach of your beloved Father copied. Solicit it most anxiously, and if that won't do request it as a favour for me. Hire a person to copy it and let me be at the expense. How desirous must you be to see all given to the publisher that your father has done for our country.

      I wish you to make inquiry where the location is to be made and when this is the last of your father's services of the grant of land. I am quite recovered. I wish you may see some of General Washington's family and that you go to Mount Vernon. Adieu, x our Brothers are all well.

      Every Blessing attend you prays Your Affectionate Mother

      Elizabeth Hamilton.

      New York, February 21, 1839.

      ' A certificate for a section of land was awarded Hamilton by the United States for military service, but he never took advantage of this allotment.

      Very few of the children presented any of the father's dominant attractions. William Stephen, however, must have been a winning character. He certainly possessed a great deal of his father's personal beauty, and much of his charm of manner, but it is said that he was unconventional and something of a wanderer.

      The youngest son, Philip, also manifested much of his father's sweetness and happy disposition, and was always notably considerate of the feelings of others, and was punctilious to a fault in his obligations. In his old age he devoted much of his time to helping others in many quiet ways, and no one came to him in vain for advice or such material help as he could afford. Born at a time when his mother was in great poverty, he was denied those advantages accorded to his elder brothers, and had, in every sense, to make his own way. He had no college education, but studied law with one of his brothers; had a hard, up-hill professional life, and died comparatively poor. Much of his time was given up to unselfish acts, and the number of his poor clients, especially those who followed the sea, was very great

      James A. Hamilton described the family life in New York when he and his brothers and sisters were children. "I distinctly recollect," he says, "the scene at breakfast in the front room of the house in Broadway. My dear mother seated, as was her wont, at the head of the table with a napkin in her lap, cutting slices of bread and spreading them with butter, while the younger boys, who, standing at her side, read in turn a chapter in the Bible or a portion of Goldsmith's Rome.' When the lessons were finished the father and the elder children were called to breakfast, after which the boys were packed off to school."

      During the time that Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury and when he lived in Philadelphia, his family worries were increased by reason of the menace of yellow fever, which seems to have been prevalent. As the result of the absence of all needful sanitary precautions and ignorance of the disease, we find that this scourge flourished in Philadelphia to an alarming extent during the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was sometimes given its familiar name, and again spoken of as the "plague." Nothing could be more pitiful than Robert Morris's description of its invasion of the debtors' prison, where he was confined, which was known as "Prune Street." Not only the corridors, but every available space was filled with coffined bodies, and the prisoners were dying like sheep. Hamilton and his family were exposed, and it is said that some of them were stricken, but all managed to recover. The alarming extent of the disease upon several occasions practically led to the abandonment of Philadelphia by those who could afford to go. After leaving their house in that city, the Hamilton family first went to the hills and [then to Albany, but for a time were quarantined outside of the limits of the latter place.

      Previous to this time the Schuylers devised measures to lessen the danger of contagion and to remove the children to a healthier spot, and when the danger became alarming this was done. Later they prevailed upon the Hamiltons to join their children. In the following letter the "little one" referred to is John Church Hamilton who was then more than a year old.

      One writer whose book bears the title of "Occasional Writings on the Yellow Fever. Addresses to Those Who have not Forgotten what has Happened Within a Few Years Among their Friends and Fellow Citizens, by a Philadelphia presents tables showing the enormous death-rate up to iSoa. Upon the authority of Benjamin Johnson, 13,394 persons were buried in "Potter's Field" in that city from August I to November 9,1793.

      Philip Schuyler to Elizabeth Hamilton

      Albany, Sunday 16, 1793.

      My dearly beloved Child: I feel that It will give you pain to be deprived for some time longer of the pleasure of embracing your Dear Children, but the reasons assigned in my letter to my Dear Hamilton are such as I trust your good sense will acquiesce in,—especially when you reflect what additional anxiety I should be exposed to If the Children were with you before It is fully ascertained that all danger from the dreadful disorder is at an end.—

      The tenderness and affection which your Dear Children evince for us every moment of the day, their docility, the health they enjoy are so many sources of happiness to their parents and to us. The little one strives to articulate, he will soon succeed, he walks from one end of the hall to the other with ease,—eats well, and is the most lively of children.

      Your Dear Mama and all the family join me in love,—I hope you are still at fair Hill, and that you will remain there at least until the result is known from the return of the inhabitants who had left the city during the prevalence of the calamity.

      Adieu My beloved Child, the best blessings and warmest prayers of Your affectionate parents attend you.

      Yours ever affectionately,

      Ph. Schuyler.

      Mrs. Hamilton.

      General Schuyler's solicitude for the comfort of his daughter and her children led him, at this time, to devise means for alleviating their distress, and to bring them to the family home in a Hudson River sloop where they would be safe. In those days the passage from New York to Albany was really in the nature of a voyage. In 1732 a certain Dr. Alexander Hamilton, whose travels took him to Albany, devoted a week to the journey and graphically pictures the discomforts of the sloop, which was the only method of conveyance, and this he does as one would nowadays refer to a transatlantic trip. Fifty years later Hamilton himself, in letters to his wife, speaks СКАЧАТЬ