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Bambi concludes her deep dive into Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, widow of Alexander Hamilton—the only American so far to have been shot dead by the sitting Vice President of the United States. Using the Hamilton musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda as a touchstone, we explore Eliza's happiest years, heart-wrenching tragedies, lifelong grudges, and many charitable works before her death at 96 years old. Most notably, we delve into her tireless efforts to house and educate orphans in New York City.

Why did Eliza hate James Monroe for the rest of her life? Did she burn her husband's letters out of anger, or was it part of a cover-up? Did the Reynolds Affair actually happen, or was it an elaborate lie? Why did Benedict Arnold travel around Europe with a portrait of Alexander Hamilton? These burning questions and more will be answered as we ask, "Who tells your story?" when it comes to Eliza Hamilton.

["It's Fucking Chainsaw History Time"]

And then one day I got hacked by somebody in Vietnam

and Facebook rewarded me by having my account permanently deleted.

Yeah, that's complete bullshit. But you know what's not complete bullshit?

Act two. Act two of Eliza Hamilton.

Yup. So we start out with Thomas Jefferson's homecoming.

We, this song is called

["What Did I Miss?" by Thomas Jefferson plays.]

And so, you know, they, it starts out with Jefferson coming back home.

Jefferson comes home instantly the coolest person in the entire story.

Ah, and he really was the coolest person in the entire musical,

even just the way that he strutted out.

Which is like, ugh, sexy.

Which is so funny too, because the thing about Thomas Jefferson in real life is he

was socially awkward, shy, he did not like public speaking.

He's like, I'm a writer, I am not a talker.

And he did not like any of the more public-facing roles and stuff.

And the idea that he was socially confident and just

walking in with his dick swinging around is very much not like the actual dude.

But that's a whole nother story.

Well, you know, they gave his, a shout out to his slave wife, Sally Hemings.

Mentioned her real briefly for her to do something for him, which makes sense.

Yep.

Here, Sally, get me this.

Yep.

And you know, Jefferson, he's such a mixed pack.

Yeah.

Like I said, there is, there is little relation in the musical Jefferson to the, the dude

in real life, but I did, I immensely enjoyed the performance.

Oh, so much.

He stole the show in so many ways.

He was even great at, I mean, the, the,

Oh, his Lafayette.

The, yeah, I specifically thinking of the Broadway, but I'm sure it was great in the,

the one you just saw too.

That's a great, that is just a juicy role to play both Lafayette and Jefferson.

It was really good.

Although, I was reading the, I read a comment about the musical and it was like one of the

comments and it was supposed to be Peggy and she whispers to Peggy whispers to Lafayette

had let's change our clothes and ruin Alexander's life.

It's like, that's fun.

Cause yeah, but I'm not here to, to fix all the wrongs of this musical.

We're here for Eliza Hamilton.

I'm only here for Eliza and, and her family.

Although in this song he sang,

and one of those ladies just happened to be Angelica.

He wrote her several letters suggesting they hook up.

Yeah.

And also he was very flagrant with his affair with this teenage girl in Paris.

She was like sent to him while he was over there.

Yeah.

And technically Sally Hemings must've been dedicated to him cause she could have just,

she was a free citizen in, in Paris, even weirder when you understand how there was

no slavery in France.

So she could have just been like, peace out dude.

And fucking left.

She was, I mean, technically, uh, related to his dead wife, Martha.

Yeah.

Like they were half sisters and they looked a lot more deeply fucked up.

The more you think about it.

Oh yeah.

See this again, mixed fucking back.

So that's fun.

But again, this is how Alexander gets this little piece of information about Sally Hemings

that he throws back at Jefferson at different opportunities.

Cause yeah, Jefferson wasn't super shy about it in case anybody still holds on to this

idea that that's just a naughty rumor.

Like DNA is confirmed from descendants of these people that know a hundred percent.

He had children with Sally Hemings.

Yeah.

But again, we're not talking about Thomas Jefferson.

Fuck him.

Let's move on.

Yep.

So we have, and we have Eliza and Alexander living in Philadelphia and he's working at

the treasury and this is a really, really happy time for Eliza.

In fact, the only dark stain on it is at this point, Eliza lost her best friend,

Marie Charlotte Antle.

It was a real bummer.

So Marie, Marie Charlotte gave birth and to a little baby girl and immediately died.

And so Eliza brought Fanny and her sister Harriet into their home and into their nursery

and raised the girls for two years.

The girl's father, Colonel Edward Ansel took Harriet, but left Fanny.

And two years later, they both sadly died.

So the Hamiltons had already informally adopted Fanny.

So she just stayed with their family.

Welcome to how much fun it was in the very early 19th century or late 18th century.

Now Eliza and Alexander really had a soft spot for orphans.

This is their first, but not their last.

Yeah.

I mean, Hamilton had a certain, you can understand from his background why he had a thing for

orphans.

He did.

And I guess because of it, he gave her a thing for orphans and she was a really loving mother.

So more kids just here for just made her happy.

I can understand that.

I am married to someone kind of like that.

Yeah.

So at one point they even harbored George Washington Lafayette, friend of Alexander,

the son of Alexander's friend, the Marquis de Lafayette.

The most patriotic.

But yeah, he was like hiding out in America at one point and they literally harbored him

and hid him.

Oh, I don't think a lot of Americans truly understand what a genuine American hero, uh,

Lafayette was.

I mean, he was, he was a teenage boy when he decided to throw in with us and throw everything

in with us.

And he, and he got fucked for it.

He got completely and totally fucked for it.

And he still didn't have any regrets.

Nope.

He was a cool fucking dude.

Yeah.

We, uh, like me, Marquis, the Marquis.

So soon after taking in Fanny, Eliza gave birth to their next child, a son named Alexander

Hamilton Jr.

Born on May 16th, 1786.

Next we see Eliza sing the song.

Take a break.

Take a break.

And Alexander is writing Angelica letters and he's working so much.

He's neglecting his family.

And we see Eliza teaching her son French and piano.

And if we stop there, this probably wasn't way too off.

Eliza was a really hands-on mother.

She was always with the kids.

The biggest, stupidest part of this song was I have a sister, but I want a little brother.

Yeah.

Again, they had her in that pregnancy suit at the, at the beginning.

And then they took it off of her.

They really should have just kept that shit on for the entire fucking thing until the

very end, because the only time in her life that she stopped getting birth was after

Alexander was fucking dead.

After he died and stopped plugging babies into her every chance he got.

Yeah.

And I mean, her mom stopped getting, her last child was born when she was 48.

Damn.

So yeah, she could have had a few more years.

Those good Dutch birthing genes.

Mm-hmm.

So in 1787, Eliza sat for her portrait in debtors' prison for one of Alexander's friends.

Now this is the famous portrait with the ribbon around her neck with her high white hair.

I do remember this.

This is the famous portrait of Eliza.

And the next one is hers, a shriveled old husk of a woman.

Well, it's expensive and a pain in the ass to get a portrait done back then.

But she sat specifically so she could raise money to earn this guy's freedom.

And she convinced other women to do the same.

It became kind of a charitable thing for her to do.

And she sat there day after day and this prison scared the shit out of her.

Like this became her greatest fear.

She had nightmares about this place.

But she still did it.

She sat stone-faced and motionless for days on end in this horror place

that she could not stand and convinced other people to do it.

There are certain people who would love to see debtors' prisons come back

and indentured servitude and stuff like that.

Gross.

Yay.

But yeah, this had an influence on her and probably like influenced a lot of her decisions

later on in life because this fucking terrified her.

Debtors' prison was the scariest, most awful thing that she could think of.

On April 14, 1788, Eliza gave birth to her third son and fourth child, James Alexander Hamilton.

We can go back to the song Take a Break.

Most of the little inaccurate parts aren't really interesting.

But in 1789, Angelica did come home for a visit.

I'm coming home this summer at my sister's invitation.

I was distracted for a second by the fact that he had a kid with the same name as my son,

James Alexander.

James Alexander.

It's a pretty nice name.

Shout out to Xander.

Okay.

And this is when basically all the troubles and all the rumors and all the gossip started.

His political enemies were pretty much everywhere.

They were numerous.

And the fact that Angelica Hamilton and Peggy and Steven were both...

They were all wild flirts.

Eliza was the tame one.

They were all way more fun than she was.

She was the mom of the group.

Always.

So they had a fucking grand old time while she was in town.

They went to parties and they went to dances.

And this is where rumors of an affair with Alexander started.

And they were on the dance floor.

And Angelica...

It's doubtful because there are two things that could have happened.

One was that she lost her garter, which is a ribbon that would tie up her stocking.

So that her stocking fluttered to the ground.

And the other one was that she lost a shoe bow.

Either way, Peggy being Peggy, scooped it off off the floor

and then tucked it into Alexander's buttonhole.

And then they had a little flirtatious thing.

And Angelica says,

Oh, I didn't know you were a knight of the garter.

And Peggy replies,

He'd be a knight of the bedchamber if he could.

Saucy.

But all of that little bitty flirtation among very close friends

is how rumors of an affair got started.

And he didn't just...

It wasn't just rumors and affair with Angelica,

which they implied in the musical, but also with Peggy.

He was rumored to be banging both of his sisters-in-law,

which is so incredibly unlikely,

especially considering he wasn't just close to the women.

He was also very close to those men.

But you just, if they haven't done the Hamilton porn parody.

Yeah, that's three sisters.

Yeah, it's all right there.

It's right there with, you know, Thomas Jefferson.

What did I miss?

It's gross.

I refuse to start writing the lyrics in my head.

Let's move on.

But yeah, so the likelihood of him having an affair with Angelica,

especially during this time, because she was staying with them.

And she was also staying with her sister and they went to her parents.

Yeah, I don't remember hearing anything about that particular story.

But even from the Chernow biography and even the musical,

it never actually suggested that they did anything.

It just said they wanted to and they didn't.

Yeah, it was a flirtation.

It was this thing, but you're saying it wasn't even much of that.

It wasn't serious.

No, it wasn't serious at all.

And again, these were Eliza's favorite people in the world.

And she was indulging.

She probably was just like, Oh my God, rolling her eyes.

Exactly.

Oh, my, my horse sisters are just being obnoxious again.

Look at them being all flirts.

But during this time, they did go to the first inaugural ball and tongues were wagging hard

because Eliza was dancing with president Washington and Alexander danced with Angelica.

Granted, Angelica also danced with Steven.

And also when you remember how people danced at this point,

it wasn't exactly like they were Patrick Swayze.

I had the time of my life.

No, this was all very...

And it was proper for him to take a dance with his sister-in-law.

At the end of it, Hamilton rushes Washington who does the lift.

That would have been it.

Because I'm pretty sure those men were way more in love with each other than they did

with these women.

Epic father-son bromance.

Yeah, but Angelica left and it would be a long time before she returned.

And part of it was because Angelica was in town

because I want to say one of her brothers eloped.

Yeah, because that's what the Skylars do.

That is what they do.

It's a fuck you, dad.

I'm going to marry who I want now.

This is the new post-revolutionary period.

Yeah, but every time they did it, they all ran to Eliza for help.

Eliza, help me with my elopement.

And they never told her about it beforehand

because she would have put a stop to it.

When I eloped, we made sure nobody knew about it

and didn't bother anybody until it was done.

Well, that's how they all did it too.

They all ran to grandparents and siblings and fixed this for me.

So it was a long time.

Angelica came twice within like a two-year period

and then she didn't come back for a decade.

Well, that boat trip sucks.

That boat trip sucks a lot.

And her husband didn't want her to leave,

especially while he was trying to build a political career.

In between all his gambling and whoring.

Yes, but he was a proper gentleman.

Yeah, that's how it's done.

Once he has enough money, it's fine to do all that stuff.

Just not cool when you're broke.

So in 1790, the couple left New York

to go to the temporary home of the Capitol in Philadelphia.

Another thing they skipped over in the musical,

they just went straight from New York to Washington D.C.

forgetting that we had a stopover in Philly for a while.

Yeah, I mean, we didn't...

It was Jefferson who spent the first term in the Capitol, I think.

Because the temporary home was Philadelphia

and I want to say John Adams' term was spent in Philadelphia.

The White House was built during John Adams' administration.

And then so Thomas Jefferson was actually the first president to move in.

And then he was like, help!

So Dolly Madison had to step in.

But that's a whole different side story.

Yeah, I always remember that really excellent John Adams miniseries that...

Yeah, the excellent John Adams miniseries that HBO did.

I always remember that period where he rides in

and there's all the slaves building the White House.

So Angelica wrote her quote,

Do you live as pleasantly in Philadelphia as you did in New York?

Or are you obligated to bear the formalities of female circles

and their trifling chitchat?

For you to have at home the most agreeable society in the world,

how you must smile at their manner of losing time.

Throwing shade?

She was.

I mean, apparently Angelica and Peggy were some shady bitches.

They were popular society ladies.

It's like we're from New York, not the crudeness of Philadelphia.

Yeah, I'm assuming they're more fun.

So they lived in a rented house next to the Washingtons

who were helping to raise two of Martha's grandchildren.

And they had daily play dates

and President Washington would sit in Eliza's parlor

reading the newspaper and watching the children play.

And this is one of the happiest times in Eliza's marriage.

She really did.

She loved...

The Philly years.

Well, she loved living next to the Washingtons.

They were her people.

She felt very at home with them.

And they were able to, you know,

their children did dance lessons together.

And it's like, because they were raising grandparents.

They were raising kids.

So it was a really, really nice time for them.

And unfortunately it was short-lived.

Which takes us to our next song, Say No To This.

So the story goes in the summer of 1791,

Eliza went with her children to Albany,

a trip she took every summer to escape malaria

and yellow fever in the city.

Because that's what rich people did.

They escaped disease season.

Yes.

And Alexander always had to work.

So it was always Eliza going to her family with the children.

And they were always stuck there longer than she wanted to be.

She was like, I'm going to go for two weeks.

Fuck this, I'm out.

And always she was there for months.

And she hated it.

This was one of the most vexing and trifling things in her marriage.

She hated being separated from Alexander.

Mostly because he was a bitch and he could write enough for her.

But she did.

She hated being away from him.

But at the same time, he's like,

oh, we got a bunch of kids and malaria is going to knock at least one or two of them out.

I almost died from it.

Look at how sickly I am.

Of course, he had to have his annual bout of being just horribly ill.

Yeah.

It's like, I can't get sicker.

But no.

So she went to go stay with her father.

And one of Eliza's cousins, which they don't even mention in the musical,

but Mariah Reynolds, shows up with a sob story.

And Alexander gives her some cash and they start an affair.

Mariah's husband, James Reynolds, finds out and starts blackmailing Alexander.

We end the song with nobody needs to know.

And Alexander hands off money to James Reynolds.

They walk away.

Nobody needs to know.

And that is all that will be mentioned for a while.

Yeah.

Even though it's like way more complicated than that in real life.

Yes.

And the next song in the musical is the best in the musical, The Room Where It Happens.

But it doesn't matter here.

So we're just gonna...

That's just Aaron Burr, doing Aaron Burr shit.

Doing Aaron Burr shit, talking about how our political system is a little fucked.

But we're gonna go on to Skylar defeated.

And the important part of this part is General Skylar lost his Senate seat to Aaron Burr.

And it pisses Alexander off.

And this is where tensions start.

Which, yes, but it was also more complicated than that.

And this is not where the animosity...

They're still good at this point.

They might be frenemies.

This is where the frenemies start.

They stop being friendly and stop being...

The fact that he knocked his father-in-law out of his Senate seat.

Yeah, well, he also had to change political parties to do it.

And that was a big deal.

He felt it was a personal betrayal on two levels.

Yeah, because originally they were all federalists together.

And then he jumped over to the Jeffersonian side of things.

So that pissed them off.

And so tensions are rising.

Political opponents...

Alexander is getting increasingly more unpopular.

And then the one line I do love from this is...

We smack each other in the press and we don't print retractions.

Because that fucking shit was true.

They would be like, he's a goat fucker and leave it alone.

Well, that's what all those things were.

Because everybody would just write under little clever pseudonyms.

And they would just trash talk each other.

Yeah, it was gross.

So this is where the timeline gets a little sloppy.

So you're gonna have to bear with me.

Because in the next few songs don't really happen in any correct order.

But whatever, whatever.

So we're in Philadelphia and rumors around Alexander were getting so bad.

Eliza just stopped going out.

And except for with Marshall Washington who protected her from gossip.

Now, I don't know if you know the practice of what calling is, Jamie.

But the practice of calling is ladies of upper social standing

going and visiting their friends every day at a certain time.

Like there's literally a certain time of day where you go calling on people.

And that's why people used to have calling cards that they would leave if they miss someone.

So they would know that they had been called on.

I am familiar with this.

Yeah, and for political wives, it was especially important.

And wasn't something she just couldn't do.

She was still one of the most prominent socialites in Philadelphia.

Even though plagued by scandal.

She was plagued by scandal.

And she got to this point where she refused to go out

except for with Martha Washington who would protect her.

No one would say shit in front of Martha.

She had this quiet, terrifying presence.

She did.

Nobody fucked with her.

I have, it's like, I want to look more into Martha Washington.

I bet she was a fucking, she was a cool lady.

Certain people just disappeared around Martha Washington and were never seen again.

See, Jamie, that's, that's called slander.

It's called speculation.

Okay.

So on August 22nd, 1792, Eliza had yet another son whom she named

John Church Hamilton after her brother-in-law.

So that's how close she was to these motherfuckers.

She was naming her kids after them.

Everybody's naming everybody after their closest members of their family.

Angelica.

But made sure to get the suck out to dad name right out of the way.

And I know that's not even the last time they do that.

Weirdly enough, we have more than one Phillip Hamilton.

Yeah.

So in spring of 17, nine of 1793, Alexander gave George Washington his

letter of resignation because things were getting spicy.

So he gave his resignation and he was going to resign at the next session of Congress

at Eliza's urging Angelica wrote quote.

It has been whispered to me that my friend Alexander means to quit the employment of

secretary.

The country will lose one of her best friends and you, my dear Eliza, will be the only person

to whom this change will be either necessary or agreeable.

I am inclined to believe that it is your influence induces him to withdraw from public life.

That's so good a wife, so tender a mother, to be so bad a patriot is wonderful.

End quote.

Sick burn.

Mm hmm.

But yeah, she was like, yeah, you're not a good patriot, but you're a great wife and

mother.

So thumbs up.

That's wonderful.

Even though she was more politically motivated than Eliza.

I'm so glad you're such a good wife and mother that you want to fuck your country.

But she still thought it was wonderful.

So in the summer of 1793, the couple, the couple rented a house outside the city to

escape fucking yellow fever again.

But this time they were unfortunately unable to.

Both Eliza and Alexander got terribly sick because yellow fever also not fun.

So they had to send away all their children with the exception of the infant who was still

nursing.

Give me a how about a quick fuck you to everybody out there who doesn't want to vaccinate

their children.

This is what the old days were like.

Yeah.

The only thing that was fortunate for Alexander and Eliza was that Alexander's friend and

possible half brother, Dr. Edward Stevens was in town from the West Indies.

Yes.

And I am familiar with that story too.

That was another part of the orphan bastard son of a whore that maybe he was the family

that took him in after after a couple other people died.

Just happened to have a son that looked just like him.

It's like, it's weird.

Yep, yep.

So, but Dr. Stevens actually saved their lives because at the time, this man's too beautiful

to die.

So Edward Stevens, but he used cold baths to help with fevers instead of bleeding and

purging, which was popular at the time.

Yeah.

The thing that only helped people die faster versus the thing that actually helped deal

with direct symptoms such as your overheating and you need to cool down.

But yeah, and bleeding was one of, they actually, bleeding was probably the reason George Washington

died because he had sick, he got sick and instead of letting him rest, they basically

bled him until he didn't have enough.

He didn't have enough in him to stay alive.

Yeah.

And then George Washington was literally died taking his own pulse.

I don't think I have any blood left.

Nope, definitely don't.

Thumb shit.

Oh yes.

Just bleed yourself out to death and drink some mercury.

It's going to be great.

So, but Dr. Stevens was like, let's give him a cold bath.

Holy shit.

Somebody with a basic common sense.

So the good news is, is they survived, but unfortunately the lead city doctor, Benjamin

Rush, he probably killed more patients than the actual fever.

Just because again, making, bleeding you and making you throw up might not be the best

thing for you when you're sick as fuck.

Medicine was nonsense until like 10 minutes ago.

But fortunately Alexander and Eliza were able to recover, although both were sick off and

on for the next year.

Yeah.

And Alexander was sickly, but Eliza wasn't.

He's like, I'm used to all these tropical diseases.

She was a sturdy girl and this took it out of her.

I'm Dutch.

I'm not supposed to get yellow fever.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

But this is what happens when you refuse to escape the city like your husband tells you

to.

Lesson learned.

They were like, let's just go a little way away from the city.

And it wasn't enough.

He's like, I'm going to get sick every year anyway, but you don't have to.

Yup.

So Alexander put off his resignation because of the volatile situation in France.

You know, King Louie's head.

Yeah.

And Eliza, one of the most awesome times ever.

I know.

Cut off a shitload of rich people's heads.

It was great.

Oh, love it.

Then Napoleon came along.

Ruined everything.

But yeah, I saw a great meme the other day and it was of the French revolution with this

woman with the French flag with one tit hanging out.

And it was, and it said tits out rich eight.

I love it.

Now France to this day, they're like threatening to raise your retirement age by like six months

and they just burn half of Paris to the ground.

They do not fuck around.

Yes.

The French are make their will known.

Yup.

So Eliza was really frustrated with having to deal with all this shit.

And in the summer of 1794, Alexander went off with the army to fight the whiskey rebellion.

Not long after he left, Eliza found out that she was pregnant.

And on November 24th, Eliza suffered her one and only miscarriage.

Now Eliza kind of freaked out and it was very, very much unlike her to freak out.

And she freaked out and it freaked her mother out because she was like, my daughter is strong

and strong willed.

And this is not like her to have a nervous breakdown.

Exactly.

So Kitty Schuyler started writing letters and pulling strings until she got all the

way up to Washington.

In fact, George Washington himself personally, who personally he loved Eliza.

So he wrote Alexander himself and quote, my dear Hamilton, Mrs.

Alexander has had or in in danger of a miscarriage that has much alarmed her.

She is extremely desirous of your presence to tranquilize her and quote, Alexander went

home on leave at Washington's urging.

And after a brief stay, he went back to the army and gave Washington his letter of resignation

again.

I got to take care of my wife.

Yeah.

Like she's so upset she's losing babies, which she was upset and she was also recovering

from yellow fever.

So she was all fucked up.

And if she hadn't been all fucked up, she probably would have carried that baby to term

too, because she just like the fucking rest of them.

So back to the musical, we have Jefferson Madison and Burr angry and losing another

cabinet battle about sending aid to France.

They're all mad because no one can rap battle like Alexander Hamilton.

That is true.

So quick witted.

Alas, I admit it.

I bet you were quite a lawyer.

My defendants got acquitted.

Yeah.

Well, someone ought to remind you what you're nothing without Washington behind you.

He could fucking rap battle like no one else.

Everyone thought of him before.

Yep.

He threw down that beat and everybody just fucking couldn't hold it.

So they sing and they fuss about Alexander being too close to Washington.

He has quote Washington in his pocket, unquote.

They're all whiny and bitchy about it.

It must be nice.

Yeah.

So as a result, it has Jefferson resigning from office.

I have to resign.

Somebody has to stand up for the South.

Somebody has to stand up to his mouth.

If there's a fire, you're trying to douse.

You can't put it out from inside the house.

I'm in the cabinet.

I am complicit in watching and grabbing and power and kissing.

And Washington isn't going to listen to discipline dissident.

This is the difference.

This kid is out.

And Washington and Alexander have a heartfelt talk.

And Washington has Alexander write his farewell speech.

The scripture says everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree.

And no one shall make them afraid.

They'll be safe in the nation we've made.

Washington leaves office with fanfare and clapping.

Huzzah!

He's gone.

And also let's just a quick note that our own, that I found out actual cousin,

James Madison is just portrayed as a Jefferson wheezy yes man.

Just repeating shit Jefferson said because he got nothing of his own to say.

Which is not at all.

No.

After I found out we're related at some point, we may even talk about Mr.

Madison.

Mr.

Madison.

So Washington leaves the office and the next comes up is the Adam administration

and Alexander finally leaving office in Philadelphia.

But first King George strutting out to laugh at the whole thing.

Which I haven't said one word about King George, but he is absolutely my

fucking favorite in the entire thing.

He pops out twice and steals the entire show.

Three times.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah.

He does pop out.

He pops out a third time.

But yeah, when he does pop out, it's, it's, it's, it's glorious every single time.

President John Adams.

Good luck.

Cause he was like, yeah, George Washington had this like presence and,

and John has just this wormy little guy.

And honestly, it's the thing, it's like, if you watch the Paul Giamatti

miniseries that I mentioned earlier, like the whole ultimate was like John

Adams did a lot and accomplish basically nothing.

He was just sort of spent his whole life frustrated with everyone else around him.

He was the first person to find out how useless being vice president was.

Yeah.

And then he was a useless president.

So, and then Hamilton blamed everybody else for his bad administration.

It was somebody else's fault.

And called Hamilton racist name, very racist names.

He was a piece of shit.

But any who creole bastard was, it was implying that he was a half breed

because he's from the islands, even though I'm sorry.

You look at Hamilton's portrait.

Very white.

He was about as white as you could fucking get.

Yeah.

When they said he was Scottish, it was like that tracks cause he was like

raised in the West Indies, but it looked like he hadn't seen sunlight ever.

Even though, as we portrayed it, his Scottish dude may not have actually been his dad.

His mom was a little wild, but she had a hard life.

You know what?

Sometimes fun women be like that.

So in the summer of 1795, after a few months stay in Albany for rest and relaxation,

the family moved back to Manhattan.

Family aunt Hill, who had been with Antle, who had been with the couple for 10 years,

went to go live with her older sister at this point.

So her married sister took Fanny off and they lost their, their little foster kids.

Yeah.

Kid kid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The other one went off with dad and died.

Just sad for Harriet.

Now, Fanny, it's all your turn to go off and die.

Yeah.

So Alexander restarted his law practice and Eliza was pregnant for the seventh time.

Just getting started.

And now we reached the scandal.

This is when, uh, Alexander's little naughtiness, uh, comes back to bite everybody in the ass.

Yep.

In the musical, we are see, we see Alexander.

He is confronted by Madison, Jefferson, and Burr about money missing from his accounts

and the amount of a thousand dollars.

We're not the actual people involved in that conversation, but that's okay.

Mr. Vice president, Mr. Madison, Senator Burr, what is this?

Alexander comes clean about his affair and blackmail.

In reality, it was four senators that included James Monroe and Burr.

Although Monroe was the true problem.

Alexander was already under congressional suspicion for using the treasury for personal gain.

This was the reason he decided to leave office, hoping no charges would be filed.

The problem started when he appointed his friend, William Dewar as the assistant secretary.

Dewar was very obviously corrupt and he knew that certain properties were going to come

up on the market and he and all his friends would buy up land cheap.

They were also buying up government, government securities and ditching them for higher prices.

So they would buy them cheap and then sell them off for higher prices.

They were getting fucking rich.

Wait, what about you're telling me that these,

these finance guys are counted some shady bullshit just to enrich themselves.

Well, good thing they nip that shit in the bud.

And that never happens in America these days.

Yup.

See, we call this insider trading today and we for some reason just think that's cool.

Business as usual, as long as you're a member of Congress.

There's a free market in people.

We have a free market economy.

They should be able to participate in that.

You have to be in government.

You have to be a public servant in order for that shit to not be illegal because otherwise

you go to jail like Martha Stewart.

By the way, kids, there is an app now that allows you to just literally automatically

follow the investments of Nancy Pelosi, who just somehow manages to do great.

So it's like, if you can just chase the genius to pick a Congress person and then boom,

you will beat the stock market.

Yeah.

From the book quote, money was being made hand over fist by the men in their social circle

and some by the men in Eliza's family whom were gambling with debt in a wild,

exuberant bubble.

The unseemly financial speculation of 1790 put Alexander at risk.

The speculation of 1791 was worse and the appeal partnered far more damaging.

Philip Schuyler, John Church, John's business partner, Jeremiah Wadsworth,

William Dewar, Governor Morris, Robert Morris, Eliza and Alexander's friend,

William Bingham, and both Peggy's patroon, Steven and his brother, Philip Von Rensselaer,

were all playing the market so aggressively and trading the government securities and

speculating on real estate development.

Eliza's father liquidated $67,000 worth of securities, pocketing over 1.5 million in

today's values.

Money, money, money, money, money.

Yeah.

And see that, that, I don't know if you know this, Jamie, but that's kind of, it might

be a little bit of a temptation, questionable.

It's a bit of a temptation, you know, to kind of want to get in on that.

Yeah, I think Alex name wants to wet his beak a little bit if you know what I'm saying.

So there's a big financial bubble and when it burst, it brought down the fortunes of

a lot of people and landed several of Alexander and Eliza's friends in debtors prison, and

this included William Dewar.

Dewar has the honor of having America's first financial scandal and congressional hearing

for misconduct.

I mean, the financial misconduct was just so blatant.

Setting a long and proud American tradition of shady banker and finance bro motherfuckers.

And again, this was a bubble.

So when it broke these fucking, all these motherfuckers lost more than they could afford.

See a shitload of crypto idiots these days.

So Dewar ended up dying in debtors prison seven years later.

So Eliza and Alexander are in New York and a journalist is given Monroe's secret dossier

and expose the affair and calling it a cover up for financial fraud.

Alexander and the journalists, they go back and forth in the press.

And now we go back to the musical.

We see torn Alexander debating with himself and reflecting on his life.

He decides to quote, write his way out.

And publish the Reynolds pamphlet.

I am going to do what I always do and write a fucking encyclopedia's worth of shit that

no one needs to know about.

Yes.

The pamphlet is a detailed raunchy description of the affair, how, where and why it happened,

followed by the account of the blackmail.

His poor wife.

Next, we see a heartbroken Eliza come on stage and reading and singing about her love letters.

We see her cry and try to understand how this could happen, how he could do this to her

family.

And at the end of the song, she burns all her letters and declares he's he will be sleeping

in his office.

She is writing herself out of history.

We end with the line.

I hope that you burn.

And this is the most logical, reasonable, and it's just this fits.

This is a very fitting way of how a woman should react to her husband openly cheating

on her.

And not only that, but publishing it and humiliating them all.

Jake is like, it's one thing to have done it, but it's another thing to just tell the

world all the deets.

Yeah.

So, but the problem is that isn't what happened.

Eliza doesn't get angry.

In fact, when there's trouble, Eliza goes tribal.

She pulls everybody in close.

She holds her family even tighter together than usual.

Yeah.

And that's again, we're like applying our modern standards of marriage to, to like,

you know, important people at this time period.

They're not going to react the same way.

Yeah.

I don't even honestly know that there was any assumption that a husband would ever be

sexually faithful to a woman back then.

I mean, in America and culture, it was definitely more of a thing than in Europe, but, but even

still, it's like, it's not like the idea that like, even now we're not surprised when, when

some important dude is cheating on his wife.

It's sort of the oldest story in the fucking book.

And I mean, and she faced really horrible ridicule.

I mean, they were like, why does she stay with him?

It's like, first of all, yeah, of course she would stay with him.

Where else would she go?

You didn't leave your husband.

It's just, it wasn't done.

Although funny enough, there were divorces granted for infidelity all the time.

It wasn't just, it wasn't done with proper ladies.

A proper lady wouldn't do that.

Right.

So the one thing we do know is that Eliza did.

She burnt all of her old love letters.

Like no one gets to see these.

The question is why?

Why did she do it?

It certainly implies that at one point she was pissed.

Cause that is the thing you do when you were pissed and you feel betrayed.

I mean, there's no way to know for sure.

You know what her motives were, but it's, it's, I mean, the two that I can think of

one would be, you know, an act of anger, a symbolic, I'm going to literally burn all

these things because obviously this, you know, or, or it's the idea that she, that

she was hiding details.

Yeah.

Things it's just covering up.

Yeah.

What if the affair is a ruse, Jamie?

What if she wasn't a scorned wife?

What if she was an accomplice?

Yeah.

What if it was a financial crime and this was the way, this was the way to get them

out of it, to get out of it and allies.

And yeah, this was, yeah.

Eliza didn't care about the idea of infidelity.

She cared about debtors prison.

I've been there and it's public scrutiny.

She was like, no.

So it's possible that she helped Alexander cover up his financial crimes.

And part of it might have been by using her love letters as a template.

One of the things that they said was the writing seemed inconsistent, that some of

the letters, um, some of the words in the letters were spelled wrong while other

more complicated letter words were spelled correctly.

Now granted, sometimes people just do be writing like that.

Right.

Especially for not formal correspondence.

Yeah.

But what if...

So conspiracy theory time, let me put on my Alex Jones.

All right.

So what if they were gonna, you know, cover up a crime here by like pretending

he was cheating on his wife and they ran around the whole time and kept the money?

Yes.

And what if instead of being heartbroken, she was being calculated?

Yeah.

I mean, we saw her burn the letters.

And that may have happened, but she might not have burned them for the reasons.

Well, if she, if there's no indication that she ever got upset at him that we

know of and she burned it once again, that's like I said, the two things were

either anger or cover up and you're on team cover up.

I am on team cover up.

Now granted the Reynolds pamphlet was written while she was out of town.

And if she had been in town, she might've been able to influence him.

Don't fucking do this.

You dumb shit.

And it was the one of his biggest regrets in life.

Right after he published it, he was like, this is dumb.

So her and her family were trying to round up as many of the pamphlets as

they could get a hold of and then his enemies started republishing.

Yeah, it's still the moment and it's out.

It's like putting it on the internet.

It was once it was out, it was out.

You can't, you can't get your, your nudes back.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

So evidence suggests she might have known as early sometime in 1792.

Okay.

So James Monroe always thought that the fair was a coverup.

Mariah Reynolds also denied the affair and was willing to testify about it to Congress

stating that Alexander and her husband were in collusion on insider trading scheme.

She claimed that Alexander would use James as a proxy for land and stock speculation.

She even divorced James Reynolds using Aaron Burr as her divorce attorney under

charges of fraud infidelity and falsely destroying her character,

which was not in the Ron Tranel book.

Burr, you're a better lawyer than me.

No, none of that.

Yeah.

I am just this slutty chick in a bad marriage.

My husband's doing me wrong, beating me, cheating me, mistreating me.

And she's like, no, you don't get to say that.

I'm just some tramp doing all this, blaming me when it was my husband and this dude in

doing some shady, shady shit.

And I'm already aware of a couple of like, it's been a long time, so I can't remember

the details, but after the musical, I found out about certain records that came up that

show that Hamilton was in a number of very shady ass business deals.

Cause he was out to enrich himself.

He was, he was a climber.

He was a climber.

And even though they have, you know, they were like, oh, obviously this affair.

And they accused him of sleeping with hookers and all kinds of women.

There was actually no evidence of Alexander being unfaithful to his wife.

None ever.

Also, it wouldn't be surprising if he was either, especially when he was off with the

army and off doing when they were separated at times, it wouldn't be unusual, but whatever.

But at the same time, I mean, the bitch was always pregnant, so he couldn't stay off.

So, so which is, which is better, you know, cheating husband or, uh, you know, prototype

for every member of Congress we've had since then minus a couple of gems.

Yeah.

So James Monroe, Aaron Burr heard both sides of the story and they said Mariah and they

believed Mariah.

They found her innocent of infidelity.

James Reynolds dipped out before charges could be filed against him.

And it literally like the day Alexander was, Oh, I have letters.

Don't don't mind me.

Meet me later.

And you can, uh, see, I'll have these letters for you.

Give me a week.

Give me it.

Give me some time.

And the first thing he does is run off and goes and warns James Reynolds.

His business partner potentially.

Yes.

This is interesting.

Okay.

So yeah, James Reynolds dipped and never heard from him again, literally in a court of law.

He, she was found that this shit didn't happen.

Shit did not happen.

She was found innocent.

I didn't do it.

This is all bullshit.

James Reynolds business associate, Jacob Clingman also was willing to testify as a witness.

Several times Jacob came to the house and saw Alexander and Reynolds exchange money.

He also claimed Reynolds confessed to him about the fraud.

Now Clingman married Mariah soon after his divorce was granted.

So there is doubt in that corner.

Yeah.

He's also not necessarily a reliable witness.

Exactly.

God, everybody in this story is shady.

Yup.

But let's consider Eliza.

Except Eliza.

She seems all right.

Her fears didn't include public scrutiny.

Her biggest fear was debtors.

And she witnessed the awful conditions firsthand and she would do anything to protect her loved ones.

And again, this wasn't even just about Alexander.

It was also about protecting her father, her brothers-in-law.

Her whole family, all the dudes in her family.

Exactly.

So it is very possible that Eliza was a willing participant in, in at least the cover-up of

these scandals.

She's like, I will endure humiliation if it keeps everybody I love.

Safe.

Out of prison.

Got it.

Yup.

This wasn't a great time for Eliza.

Yeah.

Either way, it's not great to be-

It's not great.

And she, she was pregnant.

And her one big comfort during this time is Angelica finally moved back to the US.

She's always pregnant.

Always pregnant.

I'm telling you.

Angelica was always pregnant too.

I'm telling you.

These bitches just stayed.

They had one on the boob and one in the belly at all times.

And others running around after them going, Mom!

Broods of children.

So Angelica moved back to Manhattan and built a big mansion not far from Eliza.

So the sisters got to be together a lot.

So when the scandal broke, Eliza was home seven months, or I'm sorry, eight months pregnant.

And Alexander was in Philadelphia.

So he sent his brother-in-law John to go check on her.

Quote, Eliza is well.

It makes not the least impression on her.

Unquote.

The biggest problem wasn't public scrutiny.

It was nasty, but she could deal with it.

The issue was she really wanted to lay low,

but considering her sister was the richest and most popular socialite in town, it made it impossible.

I'm going to be having like dinner parties all the time.

Yeah, so she didn't get to stay out of the limelight.

Her sister is the limelight.

Is the limelight.

On August 4th, 1797, Eliza gave birth to her sixth child, William,

just a week shy of her 40th birthday.

Don't worry, I've got plenty more babies.

I'm not done yet.

And the summer of 1797 saw Alexander in the papers again, but this time it's for a nicer reason.

Alexander was being promoted in the army to general, only one rank below George Washington.

So that's nice.

Yeah, this was during that, if I'm not mistaken, this was during that period

where they, in order to sort of keep the country together, they wanted George Washington to

resume his role as commander in chief, even post presidency.

And he would only agree to do it with Hamilton, essentially just doing the entire job.

So Hamilton would actually have to go in the field and deal with it

while Washington just stayed the fuck home in Mount Vernon.

Yes, but at least he was given a nice little pay raise and promotion.

Also, and he made the army get all new uniforms, if I remember correctly, fancy boy uniforms.

Yeah.

In the summer, Eliza refused to leave the city for the summer.

She was just like, yeah, she was, after the chaos of last time she left,

the Reynolds pamphlet was released.

Yellow fever or fuck you or all this other shit.

I got to stick around and I'll take my chances.

So they kind of compromised and Eliza Angelica rented houses

next to each other outside the city in the popular Harlem Heights area.

And Eliza liked it so much, Alexander surprised her by buying

37 acres of property and building a large home.

And the local basketball team.

But yeah, so they lived in Harlem Heights and it was named the Grange

after Alexander's ancestral home in Scotland, supposedly.

Supposedly.

But yeah, if I were to ever do my Alexander Hamilton episode,

like one of my personal theories about him is he really was a little attached to that idea

that he's, he may have been born poor and under these rough circumstances,

but he's still descended from the Scottish nobility.

He is one of the upper crust and he deserves to be among them.

And he used that as his justification for some of his bullshit.

Which is funny because his wife seemed very down to earth.

So 1798, another yellow fever epidemic swept through New York City.

Only this time doctors believed that they had discovered the cause.

They now believed that dirty city water was the source of the problem.

Alexander put his weight behind a company that would install safe and new infrastructure.

When he learned that it was a bait and switch deal and the real plan

was to finance a competing bank to his New York project, Alexander was furious.

Worse, the company dug wells in the filthiest corners of town,

which made citizens even sicker.

Burr was unfortunately the reason for this.

He was part of it.

And this action plus flagrant land speculation had Alexander believing verbally publicly

that Burr was unfit to hold public office.

And he made it his life's mission at this point to thwart him from kind of public position.

And this is where the relationship between these two men really starts unraveled.

But I guess that was a little bit more complicated.

Yeah, firstly, first the shit talk started in the newspapers

and the anonymous rags and then the letters back and forth.

Well, and Burr was also amongst the people who knew about the Reynolds scandal

and could have possibly have released that information.

And then meanwhile, but Hamilton was like talking shit about Burr at parties.

Oh yeah, it was a lot.

So the couple's seventh child, Elizabeth called Betsy after her mother

was born on November 20th, 1799.

And then Hamilton runs into the room, incoming!

In February, while Liza was tending some flooding at the Grange, Peggy passed away in Albany.

Alexander was there on business and he actually stayed at the house with Peggy

for several days while she died.

And even though Eliza was devastated and she couldn't say goodbye,

she was really comforted by the fact that Alexander was with her

and was able to tell her that Eliza loved her.

So at least somebody was there to represent her.

Exactly.

He was there to represent her.

He loved her and was close to her for all those years.

So yeah.

Yeah, and again, he was also close to Steven.

The coolest Schuyler sister has now passed.

Yeah.

And Peggy, poor thing, she had like problems with childbirth.

Like she had three sons named Steven, only one of them.

She kept giving birth to Stevens.

I'm gonna get one of these Stevens right.

But I mean, she would give birth to children one after another, but then they would die.

Not uncommon.

Not uncommon.

So she had a real problem with that.

So Peggy died and they were sad.

But back to the musical, We Reach, Blow Us All Away.

This song follows young Phillip getting into an argument followed by a duel.

This is pretty straightforward.

Phillip and his friend Price were attending a play

when the boys got into a verbal fight with James Eaker.

They arranged two duels.

The first between Price and Eaker, ending with no bloodshed and handshake.

Phillip, with the help of his uncle John and loaning him his dueling pistols and helping

him write the letters, goes to the duel and is shot in the groin.

Yep.

And I mean, he's actually shot in the groin.

And while he's falling, he's the bullet exits into his hand.

So Phillip was taken to Angelica's house where after an intense night of pain and delirium,

he perished while being held between his parents.

He was 19 years old and they laid him on a bed and Alexander and Eliza had him on each side

and they held him and each other until he passed.

It's Quiet Uptown is a sad ass song and the reality is even more dark and tragic.

Alexander had to be physically escorted.

He was so upset.

He did not take this one well.

No.

And Eliza was even too upset to attend.

Like she couldn't even go.

The worst part of all, Angelica, the couple's oldest daughter, whose mental health was always

fragile, completely broke.

Angelica went back to a childlike state where her brother was alive and would sing

songs from their childhood.

It's impossible to diagnose her, but it was believed she had schizophrenia

and she never recovered after her brother's death.

So this is this unseen character in the musical.

It's just a tragic little story.

Yeah, and so Eliza essentially lost two children.

The funny and most ironic part of the musical is in this and there's the line.

Yeah, Phillip died on November 24th, 1802.

The couple immediately got pregnant.

She gave birth for the eighth time.

It's Phillip 2.

And the eighth and final time and she named the boy Phillip.

But that's what their family did.

You just kept naming them until they stick.

Yeah.

Maybe you won't get shot.

And soon after this, Eliza lost her mother in 1803.

So Kitty died.

So we lost Peggy, Phillip and Kitty.

All kind of within rough stretch.

She's in a rough stretch.

Can we get back to politics, please?

During this time, we have the election of 1800.

In our musical, we see Burr lose to Jefferson because of Alexander.

This enrages Burr, leading to a duel.

This is a simplification and it's inaccurate.

Burr's biggest grievance with Alexander wasn't the endorsement of Jefferson,

but also ruining his chances to run for governor of New York in 1804.

Yep.

Hamilton just locked Burr out as best he could.

Yeah, he did.

He did.

He made it his fucking mission.

And Burr at this point knew it.

But then they started sending these letters back and forth that are like volumes.

I've actually read the entire exchange between these two men.

And it was like the funny little song back and forth was cute,

but it just barely even scratches the surface.

I have the honor to be your obedient servant.

A dot ham.

A dot Burr.

Of like Hamilton writing these 60-page letters.

In spring of 1804, Eliza was awoken in the early hours while allowed banging at her door.

The visitor was Burr in desperate need of $10,000.

Alexander gathered up his friends and helped raise the money.

In hindsight, Eliza thought shooting Alexander was a really shitty repayment.

That's one way to get out of heaven to pay him back.

Motherfucker.

Well, yeah, I guess he couldn't have.

But Alexander wasn't even the main donor of that.

They had much richer friends.

Right.

He was just the one who could convince them.

I hate you, but, you know, when one of our rich bros needs some money.

Yeah.

So then we stand Alexander, Weehawken, Dawn, guns drawn.

And our story continues with a sweet exchange between the couple,

Alexander writing a letter, and Eliza asking him to come back to bed.

She leaves him while he sings best of wives and best of women.

Just like he did say in real life in a letter.

Then Alexander meets Burr and on their final exchange,

Alexander takes one last look back at his life before raising his arm to the sky being shot.

I want to read an insert for the last letter that Alexander wrote to Eliza.

If it had been possible for me to avoid the interview, my love,

for you and my precious children would alone have been a decisive motive.

But it was not possible without sacrifices,

which would have deared me unworthy of your esteem.

I need not tell you of the pangs I feel,

of the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish I know that you would feel.

Nor could I dwell on the topic.

Least it unmanned me.

Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted.

With my last idea, I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world.

Adieu, best of wives and best of women.

Embrace all my children for me."

So yeah, that's sad.

Yeah, but yeah, I do remember I read that letter.

Now Alexander, he's been shot and he was taken to the closest home available to him,

which was his friend, Governor Morris' house.

Since it took several hours for Eliza to get to him,

because she was all the way outside the city at the Grange.

So he told them to break the news to her slowly.

So at first, she didn't even know what was fully going on.

But in fact, she was almost the last to know,

since there are already mobs of people looking for Burr to either fucking hang or beat him.

He had to go on the lam.

He did. He had to go on the lam hard.

And again, let's not forget, at the time he was vice president of the United States

and president of the Senate.

And it was illegal.

Dueling was straight up illegal.

And maybe when you're vice president, they're going to go shooting somebody.

Jesus Christ, Burr.

Yeah.

When Alexander finally passed, church bells rang all over the city to let the citizens know.

And Burr says, fuck!

Yeah, and he beat feet.

Eliza joined a crying Morris outside in the garden,

and she asked him to pray for her death and then take and raise her children for her.

She was distraught.

And she stayed really distressed for a while.

It's like the only thing that kept her going was she fucking had to.

Losing her son, then losing.

And then the daughter losing it.

And then her husband dying.

That's a lot.

It was a lot.

And Eliza was strong, but she really did.

She was forever lonely, and she always missed Alexander.

So bummer.

And now we are at the end of our we are at the end.

That was the beginning, but still not the end, because our musical

alludes to some of her achievements and that she lived another 50 years.

I live another 50 years.

It's not enough.

So we'll talk about that.

Because, you know, the musical was Hamilton's story, not Eliza Hamilton's story.

The good news is, is because we don't also have to talk about

Alexander's story is going to go a lot faster.

His story is officially over at this.

Yeah.

And again, his biography was 36 hours long, where hers was 11.

Well, he had this very documented life, and she burned all a lot of the letters

that would have given her a lot of extra.

Not even just her letters.

Her family burned letters around that time as well.

It's all very sus.

Yeah, because it's as if they were covering up a massive crime.

Yeah, exactly.

Instead of just, oh, this affair.

It breaks my heart.

Burn, burn, burn all the documentation.

Yes.

So Alexander left his family in dire financial straits.

There was a large mortgage on the Grange, and their debts were a lot larger

than their assets, and the couple had very little in savings.

So he left her fucked.

Who's going to commit the crimes now?

Yeah.

Well, and they were expecting him to live for another

and work for another couple decades.

He was the founding father that started really fucking young.

Yeah, he was only in his 40s when he died.

Yeah.

Younger than me right now.

Every other founding father gets to grow old.

Yeah.

Hopefully I have a little bit of juice left.

Yeah, I mean, I just hope that I die before the fall of society.

We'll see.

I'm not ready to live in the Mad Max future.

No, I'm not.

I'd rather just keel over now, but that's just me.

So on August 6th, 1805, a meeting was held on Eliza's behalf at the Bank of New York.

Oliver Wolcott, Edward and William Tillman,

plus 35 other men, donated funds to help support Eliza and the children.

Eliza was a very busy single parent,

and when she wasn't dealing with the older children's work and school,

she was raising the younger.

The children's ages from this point were 2 to 20.

And she remembered what it was like to not be pregnant.

And fortunately, daughter Angelica was doing well in the wake of her father's death,

so it was at least one less thing off her plate.

So Eliza just relied on her father for emotional and some financial support.

And they were looking to start writing Alexander's memoir.

But then on November 18th, 1804, Eliza lost her first love, her daddy.

The old coot finally kicked.

She lost her sister, then she lost her kid,

then she lost her hubby, and now she's lost her daddy,

and she's pretty much just feeling pretty alone right now.

At this point in life, you know, her dad wasn't expected to live a whole lot longer.

Yeah, but it's not great.

It's really bad, in fact.

And to make matters worse,

she then got into a bitter inheritance battle with her siblings.

Of course.

Well, some of the biggest problems were one of her younger brothers

and one of her sister's husbands.

And they insisted that he had given her this large sum of money,

which Eliza never received.

So they were trying to take it out of her inheritance.

So now you already got this.

You already got this.

And she was like, what the fuck I did.

I just checked.

Let me ask me.

And yes, after consulting with me,

I decided that that's what happened and I get the money now.

Yes.

So it was a long and bitter battle,

and it kind of divided the Seitler siblings into two factions.

Those that were with Eliza and those that weren't.

Probate court.

Always a good time.

And so at the end of it, it left her with $15,000.

And Eliza was depressed.

The good news is $15,000,

it was a lot more back in the early 19th century.

Yeah.

It reached a peak when her beautiful house, the Grange,

got put on the auction block for $30,000.

What Eliza didn't know was that her friends and relatives bought the property

and then sold it back to her for the $15,000.

And because of this, Eliza and her children were able to keep their home.

Yay.

Yay.

Widows not getting evicted from their homes is good.

Yep.

Throughout the course of their marriage,

Eliza and Alexander took in children and orphans in need.

And now Alexander was gone.

Eliza did not stop taking in children.

Which is good.

That helps make up for the fact that that home was bought with a bunch of crime money.

Well, unfortunately, that money wasn't bought with a bunch of money at all.

It just had a large mortgage.

So I don't know how many crimes the people who donated it to were committed.

They were all like New York bankers.

Probably a lot.

All of the crimes.

Yes.

A lot, I would assume.

But I have plausible deniability on that front.

But at least she was helping kids.

Yep.

So she was a warm and loving mother and she just took in kids.

At first, she took in two of her nephews whose mom had died.

And so her brother needed some help and she took in a couple kids.

And she took in some more.

And she kind of started throwing herself into charity work.

And the charity that she joined was the Society for the Relief of Widows with Small Children.

And then she would go on help raising funds to open up an orphanage.

I established the first private orphanage in New York City.

Because on March 15, 1806, the Orphan Asylum Society opened

as the first charitable orphanage in New York City.

It started with 12 children, then 20.

And soon it needed a larger building, so Eliza started gathering funds.

I think by the end, they opened two buildings

and were trying to raise funds to break ground on a third.

19th century orphanages, the most cheerful and happy places on earth.

But it was still better than kids dying in the street.

Oh yeah, no, the orphanages were an improvement.

And just like the foster system was theoretically

meant to be an improvement on the orphanage system.

But unfortunately, you know.

Yeah.

In early 1810, Eliza traveled to Philadelphia to petition Congress for Alexander's war pension.

He had stupidly waived it because I do not need the money

when he absolutely needed the fucking money.

And now Eliza needs the money.

I currently plan to commit many financial crimes and I'm going to be great.

Gonna be fine.

I'm totally not going to get shot in Jersey.

Well, he should have because he kept fucking trying to duel people.

It wasn't the first one.

He did that all the time.

It's like when he couldn't talk his way out of a fight,

he would be like, throw down guns.

And people would be like, what's wrong with you?

I'm a soldier and I'm a good shot.

Yeah, but then he'd be like, I'm waving my pistol at the sky.

So he gets shot in the armpit.

Well, that's the whole stupid honor duel tradition.

And the fact that a lot of them would just go and shoot their guns over each other's heads

so that they could save face.

A lot of times they would agree to that in the first place.

Like I'll shoot up in the air.

You shoot up in the air.

Yeah.

And that way we all that way, nobody's a coward.

And we can just say, well, yeah, we shake hands and we agree to disagree.

Nobody has to die because getting shot with a musket ball sucks.

Yeah, but that's how Eliza lost two of the people she loved most.

So people who decided to not shoot in the air.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, Congress is fucking slow.

Congress being slow and ineffective.

That's no way that could be true here in the good old US of A.

Just look how fast they banned TikTok.

In 1812, all but her youngest son joined the war.

At different times.

Fuck the British part two.

Yep.

James joined the New York militia.

Alexander Jr. was a captain in the army.

John was an aide to camp to William Henry Harris.

And 15-year-old William registered at West Point, although he never graduated.

So all of his sons ran off to war except for the baby.

That's what dad's, I mean, that was the Alexander Hamilton thing.

Join the military to advance your place in the world.

Make a name for yourself.

Yeah, and I don't even know if I wrote this down, but pretty much all of his sons

at least studied law if weren't actual lawyers.

They all at least studied it.

Join the military, become a lawyer.

So they're just checking off the list.

And a couple of them became politicians.

So why not?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in the early months of 1814, Eliza came over every day to sit with

Angelica as she lay dying, likely of tuberculosis.

She passed away on March 13th, 1814.

She is buried in Trinity Church near you.

When I needed her most, she was right on time.

Although Wikipedia says it's March 6th.

I don't know.

Record, record, record keeping.

What are you going to do?

I don't know.

As someone who has done direct research, sometimes the records just don't agree.

Like we don't even know how old Alexander Hamilton is.

There was a discrepancy of a couple of years.

So the funeral was the last time she saw her brother-in-law, John.

He moved back to London as soon as he, Angelica died.

He settled his shit here.

Till death do us part, I'm going back home.

He went back home.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

But at least she got to be here for the end of her life, which is what she would have wanted.

So in 1816, Congress finally passed the relief of Elizabeth Hamilton and awarded her five

years of full pay for Alexander's services in the army and the sum of $10,609.64.

Good.

It's nice to pay the vets and the families of vets.

It's something that America likes to try to get out of.

Yeah.

Congress is especially squirrely about that from inception.

Well, no, my, oh, the trick question.

I always ask people who talk about different things like that with veterans issues.

Like, you know, you want to know who the very first president is who fucked over United

States veterans, George Washington.

It's just a long and storied tradition here in our country.

And again, I mean, Congress was fucking over veterans during the revolutionary war.

We will say, we just heard a rap about it.

We will hear all kinds of bullshit to get teenage boys to sign up.

And then the moment we're done with you, our promises aren't so important anymore.

By 1817, Eliza tried to find a second biographer for Alexander and the same old fucking rumors

started spreading probably because of James fucking Monroe.

Cause that's who she blamed.

She was not pleased.

She hated him so hard.

We'll get to it.

Cause that was how the Cherno book opened.

It was, it was like Monroe wanted to visit her and she told him to go fuck himself.

Okay, we're going to get there.

Got it.

Yep.

Later on when Aaron Burr came back from Paris, a prankster sent Burr a note challenging to

a duel claiming it was from James Hamilton.

Only written confirmation from James denying the challenge prevented violence.

What are you talking about?

Yeah.

So you already shot dad.

Yeah.

You already shot dad.

Fuck you.

So, but yeah, so, well, but that was the thing.

James was like, no, I don't want to challenge you to what the fuck.

So didn't happen, but people were, that was something that was happening.

And often the Hamilton's were, they were getting pumped.

They're all lawyers.

They're not going to, they're not interested in shooting old men in dual.

Yeah.

So Eliza became first director of the orphan society in 1821 before she was the second

director.

Now she is the first director.

She would often bring home children from the orphanage when it was at full capacity.

She, she just didn't turn away children.

She just literally scoured the cities looking for little urchins to take in and raising

money to help raise these kids.

So her biography told the story of Eliza being brought this little boy while she was standing

outside of this home being burnt down.

The firefighter brought her this little boy that killed both of his parents.

So Eliza took him home and kind of cared for him until there was a spot for him in the

orphanage.

And then even then she would, was really hands on and later paid for his education out of

her own budget, her own personal family budget.

So she really at this point was like, wow, we're raising cause the kids were learning

things, trades and in the orphanage.

And so she decided that education should be the next accomplishment on her big list.

Let's help kids by teaching them how to read and shit.

Yep.

So Eliza opened up the first free public school in Harlem Heights by donating a parcel of

land and raising the funds.

Nice.

The woman was a fundraising machine education.

Who would have thought?

So in early 1830 Eliza sold her home the Grange for $25,000 and purchased a five-story brick

house on St. Mark's place in New York City.

Angelica, her daughter was moved to a lunatic asylum not far from the house.

So at that point they had to lock Angelica up.

Yeah.

She had basically reverted back to being a small child and there was just, and yeah,

and she would go, I think she went catatonic.

So she had just all kinds of problems that they couldn't do anything about back then.

It's like, well, the leeches didn't do anything.

So, and the exorcism didn't work.

So I guess we're just going to lock her up.

Yeah, but they had her in the care of this really good, nice doctor at the time.

Eliza trusted him.

Again, she wanted to visit.

She didn't go to the poor people's lunatic asylum.

Yeah, no.

And it's too early to get lobotomized.

And so, yeah, she wanted to move near Angelica.

So she could visit with her daughter and make sure she's doing okay.

Yep.

So while at number four, St. Mark's, their cousin James Finamore Cooper moved in next

door at number five.

Cooper's book, The Last of the Mohicans was popular and reminded Eliza of her childhood

on the frontier.

So she got to hang out with her cousin who wrote The Last of the Mohicans.

That's super cool.

Yeah.

In 1833, James Monroe came to visit Eliza at number four.

She was in the garden when he arrived and was not pleased by the uninvited guest.

She met him in the front parlor and glared at him.

He said, quote, it has been many years since we have met.

The lapse of time has brought its softening influences.

We are both nearing the grave when past grievances may be forgiven and forgotten.

She interrupted him.

Mr. Monroe, if you have come to tell me that you repent, that you are very, very sorry

for the slanders that you circulated against my dear husband, no lapse of time, no nearness

to the grave makes any difference, end quote.

With that, she walked back to her garden without a second glance.

She might as well have just put up two fingers while walking out of the room.

That's awesome.

No, it was hard.

That was the, when I, when I read the biography, that was the kind of the opening scene of

the book.

But yeah, but then they didn't follow up with her doing or being anything else.

It was that idea that she was so devoted to her husband that she would not only continued

all of his works and try to continue memory, but literally would hold a grudge on his behalf.

It wasn't holding a grudge on his behalf.

He made her life fucking miserable.

Yeah.

It wasn't about Alexander.

It was about her.

But again, we, I don't expect fucking misogyny to understand that.

And there was so much misogyny in that goddamn book.

Oh yeah.

Well, it's definitely hard.

It just didn't even.

It grated against my soul.

It just literally didn't even consider the female perspective.

Not even once, which I mean, it didn't even exist and is not a defense of that, but at

the same time, the source material that he's working from all those documents and primary

sources, none of those give a shit about the women either.

You have to really work at it.

And this, and the biographer you had to read, I mean, they had to work around the fact that

she burned a shitload of her correspondence and will never know.

Like I said, the truth that she may have been involved in a shady financial crime.

For the record.

I love that scenario.

I love the scenario that she was like a fucking accomplice of a coverup than being the sad

for learned wife.

So I don't know which story is true, but I know which one I like.

So in 1834, the first installment of Alexander Hamilton's biography came out written by John

Hamilton.

They had tried to find a biographer and Eliza hated all of them and finally just made John

write it.

You do it.

Yeah.

The nerdy kid.

That was her nerdy bookish kid.

So that was the one she made do it.

In 1834.

Completely unbiased source.

Yes.

Unbiased source, John Hamilton.

John Hamilton with his mother standing over him the whole time.

Biography or love letter?

You decide.

Cause that's how I felt about Ron Chernow's biography.

It wasn't a biography.

It was a fucking love letter.

He loved him.

He loved him so much.

It was not unbiased at all.

Well, there's no such thing as unbiased.

Everybody has to pick their perspective and their take on things.

The idea of unbiased is a myth in journalism and in history.

Also in 1834, Aaron Burr's new wife caught him in flagrante and asked Alexander Hamilton

Jr. to represent her in court.

Ooh.

Yeah.

So he married this wealthy widow and she, she wasn't a broad, well brought up lady.

She was like raised on a brothel and she married well and she was shrewd and she made a bunch

of money.

And so Burr married her.

For the money.

For the money and immediately started cheating on her with younger women.

And so she was like, fuck you.

Not only did she want to take him to court, she wanted Alexander Hamilton Jr. to do it

for her.

I literally want you to have to face Alexander Hamilton.

Yes.

And as a fuck you, he filed the motion for divorce on the anniversary of his father's

death.

Burr suffered a stroke during the proceedings and his soon to be ex-wife gave not one single

fuck.