HAMILTON PLANS

While baby #3, Alexander Junior, stirs in his sleep beside his mom, Daddy is awake and making big plans...

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    Books by Juliet Waldron

http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion  

...Betsy awoke. The newest baby, Alexander, grumbled in bed beside her, but her husband was gone. She knew he was not far, though, for she could hear him nearby. Lifting her head, she saw his outline against the moonlit window.

He was thinking aloud. Or, more properly, trying out a speech. Like the Iroquois, he often composed orations in this way, creating without benefit of pen and paper.

“Congress stands in a very embarrassing situation,” Alexander spoke into the darkness. “On the one hand they are blamed for not doing what they have no means of doing; on the other, their attempts are branded as encroachments and lust for power. It is the duty of all those who have the welfare of the community at heart to direct the attention of the people to the true source of the public disorders—the want of efficient government—and to impress upon them that the States must have a stronger bond of Union, one capable of drawing forth the resources of the country. This will be a more worthwhile occupation than complaining about a weakness which is built into the current constitution...”

He turned towards her, having divined that she was listening.

“I shall go to the Annapolis Convention after all. Something could happen, something that could finally pull this country together. We can’t leave untried any possibility.”

He returned to their bed, and took a seat beside her.

 “My Betsy.” He stroked her hair, “I shall soon be leaving you again.”

She slipped her hand through the open nightshirt to touch his chest. It was hard not to be cross. He seemed happy when he was home with her and the little ones, but he was also gone a great deal; he arranged his life that way.

She had a premonition that like his tenure in the Continental Congress, he’d return to her from this latest Convention in a state of rage, boiling over, like a neglected kettle...

The spectacle of thirteen states, creating trade barriers, warring over boundaries, with differing currencies and laws, all while the Continental army remained unpaid and with a huge war debt coming due, was not one which inspired confidence in either foreign lenders or in America’s more thoughtful citizens.

Hamilton and his father-in-law agreed that without a central government which paid its debts and soldiers, they were sure to come to grief. Some land-grabbing European power could easily appear on the scene to fragment and then gobble up the weak, separate states...

Autograph cover in his best secretarial hand

~~Juliet Waldron, A Master Passion

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