November 2, 2016 • 47 mins
In the summer of 1791, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Maria Reynolds began an affair that would lead to blackmail, political rumors, a 98-page confessional document ... and eventually a song in a hit Broadway musical.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. So we
have some good news and bad news. The good news
(00:23):
is today is our New York Comic Con Live podcast
on the Reynolds Pamphlet, which we're really excited about because
we had a great time at that show and our
audience it was just fantastic. Uh. And the bad news is,
every single time we do a live show, when folks
ask us if it's going to be an episode of
the podcast, every time my answer is sure, unless something
(00:45):
goes horribly awry with the recording. Uh. So the thing
went this time. Yeah was the time we've always said
we haven't had to really invoke that phrase. Yeah, And
something went horribly right with part of the recording, and
we're not sure exactly what happened. Our team had done
a really solid sound and technical check before we started
(01:08):
and everything was perfect. But apparently when we actually started
the show, something had happened and we were not It
wasn't perfect anymore. Fortunately, our producer Noel had come to
New York with us and he was filming the show,
and as soon as he realized something had gone wrong,
he jumped over to the soundboard and he fixed it.
But as a result, the first ten minutes of the
(01:28):
show in that live recording are not usable. Correct our apologies. Yeah,
we are really really sorry this happened. This is an
eventuality we fret over every single time we do a
live show. I mean we it's kind of ridiculous the
steps that we take to try to make sure this
never happened. So we're very sorry that we did. So
(01:50):
what you are going to hear today, we'll start off
with a studio version of the first act of this
story to replace the unusable audio with what we're basically
having a do over on, and then after our first
break for a sponsor, we will join the New York show,
which at that point will already be in progress. So
(02:11):
not how to get into the show, our little do
over that we're having our mulligan, so to speak, Uh,
not hercules mulligan. That's a different thing. As anyone who
has seen or listened to Hamilton's knows, Alexander Hamilton had
a torrid affair and he wrote it down in a
document that came to be known as the Reynolds pamphlet. Today,
most folks probably imagine a pamphlet is like a piece
(02:33):
of paper that's printed front and back and folded, maybe
like a little triptych, or maybe two pieces of paper
that are saddle stapled. But this is not that. It
is incredibly long and wordy, uh And it can be
hard to imagine what would drive somebody to write such
a thing. And I have read it so that you
do not have to. And that is what we are
(02:54):
going to talk about today. And we said this a
lot while we were promoting the show, but just again
to clarify up front, there's nothing graphic in here. But
it is about a political sex scandal. So judge for
yourself whether it is appropriate for your kids or students,
any of the younger history buffs that you listen with.
In the summer of twenty three, year old Maria Reynolds
(03:15):
came to the Philadelphia home of Alexander Hamilton's, who was
in his mid thirties and he was serving as U
S Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton's and his wife, Elizabeth
Skyler Hamilton's had been married for about ten years at
this point, but at this particular time, she and the
Hamilton's children were away in Albany visiting family. As Hamilton's
(03:36):
himself would later describe it, the Reynolds claimed that her
husband had abused her and then abandoned her for another woman,
and she said she was originally from New York and
she was coming to Hamilton's for help because he was
a citizen of New York too, and she thought maybe
he could loan her some money so that she could
get back to her family and her friends in New York.
(03:56):
Hamilton's wanted to help. He was known for trying to
help people in need, which might have been another reason
why Reynolds decided that he was the man to assist her,
in addition to also both being from New York. But
he didn't have any funds on him at the time
that he could give her, so he asked where she lived,
and he promised to visit in the evening. True to
his word, he stopped by with a bank note. But
(04:20):
when I got there, she took him up to the bedroom, and,
in Hamilton's words quote, some conversation ensued, from which it
was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable,
and They went on with their other than pecuniary consolation
for the rest of the summer and into the fall.
(04:42):
By the time Mrs Hamilton's and the children came back,
it seems like the affair had pretty much ended, and
somewhere along the way James Reynolds came back into his
wife's life as well. Things are apparently quiet until December,
when Maria Reynolds at Hamilton's This letter Colonel Hamilton's. Dear Sir,
(05:04):
I have not time to tell you the cause of
my present troubles, only that Mr has wrote you wrote
to you this morning, and I know not whether you
have got the letter or not. And he has swore
that if you do not answer it, or if he
does not see or hear from you today, he will
write Mrs Hamilton's. He has just gone out, and I
am alone. I think you had better come here one
(05:24):
moment that you may know the cause. Then you will
the better know how to act. Oh my God, I
feel more for you than myself, and wish I had
never been born to give you so much unhappiness. Do
not write to him, no, not a line, but come
here soon. Do not send or leave anything in his
power so that sounded like several sentences, but just to
(05:48):
be clear, beginning with he has just gone out to
the end. That is all written as one sentence. And
in spite of Maria's warning him not to, Hamilton's sent
James Reynolds a note saying to call on him in
his office, But at that point James Reynolds had actually
already written a letter of his own, also dated, although
(06:10):
Hamilton's didn't receive it right away, and this letter began, Sir,
I am very sorry to find out that I have
been so cruelly treated by a person that I took
to be my best friend, instead of that my greatest enemy.
You have deprived me of everything that's near and dear
to me. I discovered whenever I came into the house.
(06:31):
James Reynolds went on to describe having come home to
find his wife crying and on her part insisting that
it was only because she was reading something affecting. But
then he found a letter his wife had written to
another man. He had copied that letter, put the original
back where he'd found it, and then followed his wife
as she handed the original letter off to a black
(06:53):
man to deliver, and he followed that man to his destination,
and he wound up at Hamilton's door. According to James
Reynolds letter, he confronted his wife that night, and she
told him that she had gone to see Alexander Hamilton's
for a loan and that he had taken advantage of her.
In her heartbroken state, Mr Reynolds went on to write, quote,
(07:14):
you have made a whole family miserable. She says, there
is no other man that she cared for in this world. Now, sir,
you have been the cause of cooling her affections for me.
He went on to say how much he loved his
wife and how he was now determined to leave her
and take their daughter with him. He ended on a threat, quote,
and I am determined to see you by some means
(07:37):
or other, for you have made me an unhappy man. Forever.
Put it to your own case and reflect one moment
that you should know such a thing of your wife.
Would you not have satisfaction? Yes? And so will I
before one day passes me more. James Reynolds sent another
letter on December seventeenth, which was a Saturday, telling Hamilton's
(07:58):
to meet him at the Sign of the George on
Tuesday morning at eight o'clock, by which point he would
have made up his mind on what direction he wanted
to take regarding Hamilton's affair with his wife. And he
said this delay until Tuesday was because he had just
learned that his sister had died, and otherwise he would
definitely want a resolution a whole lot sooner. So what
followed was a series of meetings and letters in which
(08:21):
James Reynolds sort of dithered about as far as exactly
what he wanted Hamilton's to do, and Hamilton's became increasingly
frustrated with Reynold's indecisiveness. Ultimately, Reynolds asked Hamilton's for a
thousand dollars, saying that he would use it to leave
his wife and take their daughter and resettle somewhere among friends.
So Hamilton's sent Reynolds a partial delivery of that money
(08:44):
on the twenty second, in the amount of six hundred dollars,
and he sent the rest on January third, but it
wasn't actually over at this point. James Reynolds wrote Hamilton's
again on the seventeenth of January, apparently still living with
his wife, even though he had previously said he could
not be reconciled to doing so now. He claimed that
(09:05):
Maria wanted to see Hamilton's, but only as a friend.
Over the next few months, James and Maria Reynolds each
wrote to Hamilton's periodically, and her letters read like I
mean every teenage heartbroken love letter cliche in existence. She
writes about being too bereft to leave her bed. She
says things like quote, your neglect has filled with the
(09:28):
sharpest thorns. She talks about having a heart ready to
burst with grief and says quote I can neither eat
or sleep. I have been on the point of doing
the most horrid acts that I shudder to think where
I might be and what will become of me. James's letters,
on the other hand, encourage Hamilton's to visit his wife
(09:48):
to soothe her pain and then to ask for money. Uh,
you know, because they were friends. Uh. He never made
reference to the nature of Hamilton's relationship with Maria or
what this quote comforting would involve. He distressed that by
the nature of their friendship, he was sure Hamilton's can
loan him some small amount of money thirty dollars here,
(10:12):
ninety dollars there, of forty death that he needed to pay.
On May second, James Reynolds wrote to Hamilton's and forbade
him from seeing his wife ever again. He was, among
other things, really incensed that Hamilton's refused to enter their
house by the front door, which I don't know from
my point of view, when you're having an illicit affair
(10:33):
with somebody, maybe it's better to go in the back way.
But James is really mad about that, and he said, quote,
am I a person of such a bad character that
you would not wish to be seen coming in my
house in the front way? Of course, if you're only
sneaking in and out through like the back of the
side door, it looks a lot shadier than if you
just go in through the front um. Hamilton's kept making
(10:59):
these financial pay months, though, fearful that if he did not,
James Reynolds would indeed tell his wife Hamilton's wife about
the affair. However, one of Reynolds's requests finally crossed a
line dated on June twenty two. It was a request
for a three hundred dollar loan that he planned to
invest in a speculative venture. Hamilton's response, quote, it is
(11:21):
utterly out of my power. I assure you, upon my honor,
to comply with your request. Your note is returned. This
whole cycle of writing to Hamilton's suggesting that he visit
his wife and then asking him for money probably could
have continued on indefinitely, but eventually James Reynolds turned his
attention and from blackmailing Alexander Hamilton's, onto a different crime,
(11:46):
which was attempting to defrive the government. He had already
been into some pretty shady speculative dealings, but then he
and a clerk named Jacob Klingman, who worked for Representative
Frederick A. C. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, decided to set themselves
up as the executors of the estate of a man
who had a claim to be paid by the government.
And the problem was that man was actually not dead.
(12:08):
So a third accomplice, John de la Bar, perjured himself
validating their claims about the estate of this actually living man.
When this fraud came to light in November of sevento
both Reynolds and Klingman were arrested. While in jail, Reynolds
tried to get Hamilton's to help him, and Hamilton's refused,
(12:29):
so Reynolds started to suggest and then insist that he
had incriminating information against a certain highly placed government official.
For his part, Klingman kept dropping hints that his friend
and co conspirator new things that could greatly harm Alexander Hamilton's. Unsurprisingly,
this pretty quickly turned in a into a political issue,
(12:50):
with Democratic Republicans deciding to look into whatever it was
that Klingman and Reynolds were talking about to see if
it might be useful to them against their political opposed
Federalist Alexander Hamilton's. Muhlenberg teamed up with fellow Democratic Republicans
James Monroe and Abraham Vannable to try to figure out
what Reynolds was talking about. They were extremely interested in
(13:13):
the possibility of taking down such a powerful figure in
the Federalist Party, and they launched a secret congressional investigation
into Alexander Hamilton's after Reynolds claimed that he knew of
several illegal financial transactions that Hamilton's had made. Uh He
also said that Hamilton's had basically forced himself to share
his wife, which was a claim that Maria Reynolds confirmed.
(13:37):
So we're gonna get into the details of that congressional
investigation and we will pick up with the section of
our episode that was recorded in New York after we
first paused for a sponsor break that sponsors the Great Courses.
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(15:07):
show now. Yeah, So, now let's sober up and right
back to it. On December fifteen, Speaker of the House
Frederick Muhlenberg, Senator James Monroe, and Representative Abraham Venable, who
are played in the musical Hamilton's by Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison and Erin Burr, confronted Alexander Hamilton's about these
(15:29):
allegations that James Reynolds had made against him, and Hamilton's
basically told him everything, that he had had an affair
with Reynolds's wife, and that Reynolds had blackmailed him, and
that all these various payments he had made were his money,
not the government's money. And Hamilton's owned up to the
fact that he had been wrong to have this affair
and really foolish to let things drag on for so
(15:49):
many months, and he basically showed receipts for the whole
thing there's a whole cartoon that runs in my head
the second I think about that. Uh. He also said
he was pretty sure that Maria and James Reynolds had
actually been conspiring together this whole time against him, like
from the start this was conceived as a way to
(16:11):
get at him, and that her original story of abuse
and abandonment had simply been made up as a ruse
to get Hamilton's sympathy. So these three investigators later on
wrote a joint statement which set in part, last night
we waited on Colonel h when he informed us of
a particular connection with Mrs r the period of its
(16:32):
commencement and circumstances attending it, his visiting her at ns keeps,
the frequent supplies of money to her and her husband.
On that account, his darressed by them for the fear
of disclosure and anxiety to be relieved from it, and
them to support this, he showed a great number of
letters from Reynolds and herself commencing in early See he
(16:55):
acknowledged all letters in a disguised hand in our possession
to be his. So we didn't really say that before,
but he was disguising his handwriting when writing to this woman,
we left him under an impression our suspicions were removed,
and that would have been that, But of course it's not.
James Monroe had, apparently without the knowledge of Muhlenberg and Venable,
(17:17):
made copies of those letters, which he gave to another
prominent Democratic Republican, Thomas Jefferson, whoever just said oh, no,
I love you. Uh. It's possible that John Beckley, who
was Clerk of the House of Representatives, also made a
copy during the investigation, and over the next few years,
(17:41):
these copies of these letters kind of lurked and hung around,
and rumors variously circulated about Hamilton's maybe having had some
kind of dalliance. So, in addition to these vague hints
of some kind of extramarital goings on, Hamilton's also received
his share of criticism and accusation over his actual job
(18:01):
as Secretary of the Treasury, which he was doing at
this point in Democratic Republicans in the House of Representatives
tried to have him removed from office, and the result
was a document called Resolutions on the Secretary of the Treasury,
which today are more known as the Giles Resolutions, which
makes me think there's a vampire slayer involved in some way. Uh.
(18:25):
They're called that because they were purpose They were purportedly
orchestrated by Virginia Congressman William Brandt Giles, but really it
was Thomas Jefferson. And these resolutions alleged that Hamilton's had
gone against the law, public interest, and the president and
how he had handled foreign loans and the nation's money.
And it ended by saying, quote resolved that the Secretary
(18:48):
of the Treasury has been guilty of maladministration in the
duties of his office, and should, in the opinion of Congress,
be removed from his office by the President of the
United States. The House and Senate both issued similar sets
of resolutions on January twenty three, seventeen nine. In response
to all this, Uh, in very little time, Alexander Hamilton
(19:12):
produced two hundred pages of immaculate documentation demonstrating his innocence,
because apparently he just was like, here are my receipts.
They are organized, their indexed, I have a codex of
what's what here you go it just do that how
he operated apparently. Uh. And we've also done a whole
(19:32):
show about the Whiskey Rebellion in sevent and Hamilton's recommendations
to very heavily tax whiskey in spite of knowing it
was going to infuriate people and be just about impossible
to enforce. I love that so much that a duck
just quacked. Um I do no shade. I love that sound. Um.
(19:52):
So it wasn't like he didn't have, you know, other
documented issues of people not liking what he was doing. Yeah,
it's it's that's definitely not an issue that his his
Secretary of the Treasure of the Treasury tenure was not
something that was just universally met with a claim and support.
He had enemies, for sure, And in seventeen he resigned
(20:12):
and he went back to New York to practice law.
But then, uh in the summer of seventeen, political writer
James Callender published a book which was called The History
of the United States for seventeen six. And this book
is very critical of Hamilton's pretty much every time his
name comes up, and it pieces together a lot of
(20:33):
the letters, notes and payments as we already talked about,
but with a much more sinister conclusion. His conclusion is
that Alexander Hamilton's was using James Reynolds to orchestrate his
own illegal speculation, bringing in some thirty thousand dollars in
illicit profits. Also in the book was the statement that
(20:53):
Hamilton's had debauched Mrs Reynolds, and that she had burned
Oliver husband's correspondence with him at Hamilton's quest and in
response to this book, Hamilton's, who we know to be
a man of few words, very quickly wrote a letter
to the editor of the Federalist Gazette, which was also
picked up and published elsewhere, stating that the documents Calendar
(21:14):
had printed were genuine, but that they had nothing to
do with any sort of financial corruption whatsoever. He promised
more detail later, and he set about trying to rally Monroe,
Muhlenberg and Venable to back him up, since they had
earlier cleared him of suspicion. But to Hamilton's apparent complete
total surprise, UH from a political point of view, the
(21:36):
Democratic Republican reaction to this book was not so concerned
with the whole stealing the government's money and illegally speculating
with it part. They cared a whole lot more about
this allegation of his Eskee extra marital affair. I mean
today we're like, yeah, of course, like we we live
in the world today, Yes, yeah, But Hamilton's was shocked, shocked,
(22:00):
and so he categoried. He he also was sort of
stuck between a rock and a hard place, right if
he categorically denied all of the accusations, it was going
to be incredibly easy to prove that he was lying, Like,
too many people knew about this affair at this point
for him to be like, no, I didn't do any
of that, And if if he was lying about the affair,
if he were to take that route, then people would
naturally assume that he was also lying about all this
(22:22):
financial wrongdoing, even though like that he had some pretty
strong evidence that he was not, and even though he
was no longer the Secretary of the Treasury anymore. If
if people began to believe he was a liar about
all these financial things, that would ruin his marriage and
his political career and undermine the fiscal policy that he
had built for the United States, but at this point
(22:43):
was basically still in its diapers that had not been
a country for very long. He probably doesn't laughed that
part of the screen. So while we were looking over
these notes, I just wrote gross next to the word diapers,
because yeah, I'm scared of babies, y'all. I don't. Godspeed
to those of you that have them, but I couldn't. Uh. So,
(23:04):
to come clean about everything and attempt to protect his
political legacy and the nation's economic policy, Hamilton's wrote the
document that came to be known as the Reynolds Pamphlet.
He strongly denounced these accusations of financial wrongdoing, and he
confessed everything that he had done regarding this affair, and
he once again backed it all up, including reprinting as
(23:26):
part of it a huge pile of correspondence. Who has
seen or better yet read the Princess Bride? You know
how there's a lot of skipping to the good parts. Uh,
there's a lot of that to do in the Reynolds Pamphlet.
It is ninety eight pages long, pages more than eleven
(23:51):
thousand words. So thirty seven of these pages are his
own account of this whole thing, and then sort of
the index to the letters, and then the other to
eight pages, um are things like all of the Reynolds
Is letters, Maria's being like just very free in their
non use of punctuation um, and even more weirdness in
(24:15):
spelling than you would expect from a document from that
time period. I I were on the show pretty uh.
We've said pretty clearly like don't don't go around policing
other people's grammar. But these letters are very particular in
their weird misuse of spelling and grammar in a way
that you just feel like there is a flighty teenage
(24:38):
bird twittering at you and he reprinted all that. Uh.
And we joked at one point that we were gonna
do a dramatic reading of the Reynolds pamphlet for this show,
but it really would not have been so great. It
would have been about four times as long and a
lot of mispelling. And even the title of this this
(25:00):
particular document is really long. It's actual title is Observations
on certain documents contained in number five and six of
the History of the United States for the year sevent
in which the charge of speculation against Alexander Hamilton's late
Secretary of the Treasury is fully refuted. So, in terms
(25:21):
of snappy headline writing, I'm gonna give him a D minus,
but an A for effort for the Hamilton fans. You
know that part where he's arguing with Aaron Burr, and
he's like, here's an item ns list of twenty years
of disagreements. Totally, you mean, sweet Jesus, Like you can
read all of these things on the internet too, and
(25:42):
like all of Aaron Burr's letters are like, I have
a problem with you, Hamilton's here it is. And then
Hamilton's is like, here are my three pages of like
really tiny writing of a million things. There you go. Uh.
So there are also scans of the original document of
(26:02):
this on the internet and you can read them, including
all this correspondence between Hamilton's and the Reynolds is, which
is included in the appendices. And there's this added layer
of either frustration or hilarity, depending on how you want
to look at it, because it uses the long s,
which looks like an F. So it's the charge against
me is a connection with one James Reynolds for the
(26:23):
purposes of improper speculation. Uh. Fortunately, the kind people and
like the archives, like the National Archives or I forgot
now the name of that actual agency, have transcribed it
(26:43):
so you can read it without the long esses that
look like f's. Uh. And Hamilton's begins his pamphlet pamphlet
with a lengthy denunciation of Jacobinism. This is, of course,
a term that arose from the French Revolution. Go French
Revolution UH, the Jacobin Club was a radical political club
that eventually became increasingly associated with Robespierre and violence and
(27:08):
the reign of terror. And in the wake of the
French Revolution, other nations began to use the term Jacobin
and jacobin is m to describe other political extremist groups,
and in the US it was a name that federalist
newspapers used to describe the Democratic Republican Party. So this
denunciation goes on for a while. He compares Jacobinism to war, famine, pestilence,
(27:33):
and says that Jacoban is ms political gains are due
to slander and lies and maliciously tarnishing the good names
of good people. He defends his own quote unblinished pecuniary
reputation upon taking the office of the Secretary of the Treasury,
and then he summarizes some previous allegations of financial UH
misdoings that he was consistently able to refute, before finally
(27:55):
mentioning the history of the United States for the year
seventeen nineties six. After about eighteen hundred other words of
writing it's a busy bee. Uh. And that's when he
gets to one of the two bits of the pamphlets
that are actually in Hamilton's quote, the charge against me
is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of
improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection
(28:19):
with his wife for a considerable time, with his privity
and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination
between the husband and wife with the design to extort
money from me. Yeah, Littmnuel Miranda shorten that last bit
to knowing consent and also left out the word pecuniary
(28:40):
because it doesn't scare very well. So uh. Hamilton's says
that he can't make this confession without a blush. He
asks for forgiveness for even having to talk about it
in the first place, and then says, quote, I can
never cease to condemn myself for the pang which it
may inflict in a bosom eminently entitled to all my gratitude, fidelity,
and love. But that wism will approve that, not even
(29:02):
at so great an expense, I should effectually wipe away
a more serious stain from a name which it cherishes
with no less elevation than tenderness. And so that is
this nice little nod to the best of wives and
best of women who he cheated on with Maria Reynolds
and is now telling the whole world about in even
(29:24):
more greater detail than James Calendar already had done. And
then he walks through all the things that we've already
talked about, like the whole drama of how it played out,
though he doesn't reference nine O two one know like
we did um and he calls James Reynolds quote an obscure,
unimportant and profligate man, discussing reynolds other attempts to defraud
(29:45):
the government and his co conspirators on that score, before
finally getting to the part where a young woman showed
up at his house one day soliciting these other than
pecuniary comforts, and then says quote after this, I had
frequent meeting with her, most of them at my own house,
Mrs Hamilton's, with her children being absent on a visit
(30:06):
to her father. No, have you read this, okay? Uh?
He sums up the situation. The intercourse with Mrs Reynolds
in the meantime continued and though, yeah, he didn't mean
it that way, but we know what he means. Uh.
(30:29):
And the various reflections in which a further knowledge of
Reynolds's character and the suspicion of some concert between the
husband and wife were a part induced me to wish
a cessation of it. Yet her conduct made it extremely
difficult to disentangle myself. All the appearances of violent attachment
(30:49):
and of agonizing distress at the idea of a relinquishment
were played off with the most imposing art. In other words,
I could not stop how having an affair with that
woman because she was too sad. I feel ways about things,
but we're gonna keep moving. We on purpose, they're not
(31:12):
talking about his wife right Like I feel like when
whenever there's a political scandal, there's way too much focus
on what the wife is up to, Like let's let's
let's just let her have her privacy. Uh. But with
Maria Reynolds, like her husband was willing to throw her
under the bus to get out of jail, and Alexander
Hamilton was willing to throw her under the bus to
(31:33):
try to get out of political trouble, and the Democratic
Republicans were willing to throw her under the bus to
try to take down Alexander Hamilton's and then the newspapers
were willing to throw her under the bus to sell
newspaper copies. So like, there are so many ways that
this whole affair could have started, and only one of
them starts with her being like a willing, consenting participant,
(31:55):
not under durest. So I feel pretty bad for her. Yeah,
I have issues. I mean, I see all of those points,
like I don't. I do think she was probably manipulated terribly,
and because she was not a person considered to have
a position of power that could be lost, it was
very easy to make her the scapegoat and say, oh,
(32:16):
there's really no consequence at that point. But I just
still have that whole thing of like, don't sleep with people,
you don't that that goes for multiple people in this story. Yeah, Thomas,
Oh yeah, that's not Jomis. Her person did not have
room to be talking about anybody else's affairs. But now
it's time for another sponsor break, so we'll just leave
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we didn't mention before is that after all of this,
(34:08):
Alexander Hamilton's and the pamphlet then walks through all of
those letters that we've talked about and all of their
various levels of spelling and grammar um, which are also
reprinted as part of it. This is the second time
that Holly has seamlessly picked up a thing I skipped
completely over in a script I wrote, you're not supposed
(34:29):
to tell them. So Alexander Hamilton was hoping that by
publishing such a thorough and well documented refutation of all
of this, that he would prove that he had been
steadfastly honest with the nation's money, and his only moral
failing was a private one that related only to his marriage,
had nothing to do with the nation's money. I sort
(34:52):
of feel like this is something like I imagine an
episode of Scandal where Olivia Pope came over and was like,
you gotta get ahead of this, but he didn't. He
didn't get ahead of it very well, no, because instead
the confession that he laid out in the Reynolds pamphlet
really really damaged his reputation. News papers picked it up
(35:13):
and they printed all of these titillating and mocking pieces
about it, including poems and songs that were written, as
well as other jibes. One example in one newspaper quote,
dear colonel, did you never hear? If you did not?
I think tis queer that only fools do kiss and
tell even though they tell their story. Well, so the
(35:34):
night that's some serious shade. That's These accounts also often
held up Maria Reynolds as this virtuous and pure woman
of impeccable character who Hamilton's had basically come along and
wronged and ruined, and like this was a sort of
a theme that drew a lot from romantic fiction that
was really popular at the time. They kind of were
(35:54):
setting it up playing along the same ways as like
kind of the more scandalous Bodis Rapery kind of novels,
but like they literally had her letters she wrote to
him in front of them when they were writing these things,
and like we said before, like there they're full of mistakes, uh,
like really full of mistakes. They don't sound as full
(36:16):
of mistakes in the bits that we read because I
had to like clean up the typing because we were
going to read them in front of you on stage
and we needed to not be like, wait, what is
she saying? Uh? But in the in addition to the mistakes,
they have this very breathless, overwrought childishness to them. And
when you compare that to his wife, Elizabeth Skyler Hamilton,
(36:39):
who was witty and smart and actually helped Hamilton's draft
a lot of his own documents, it's really easy for
a person to wonder, like, dude, what in the world
that is your wife? Why are you messing around over here?
Like that doesn't make sense. Well, that this predicated on
the presumption that smart as always whip they are most
(37:00):
attracted to. It's not Tracy. We're gonna have a long
talk later, I'm gonna tell you all about it. Uh.
But apart from Maria's letters, which were literally right there
in front of people who were portraying her as some
kind of symbol of wronged patriotic virtue, there was also
this testimony of people who actually knew her. When later
(37:23):
we're canting his previous praise of her, john Wood wrote, quote,
I have been informed from the best authority, from the
authority of her own acquaintances, to have been one of
those unfortunates who, destitute of every regard for virtue or honor,
traffic with the follies of youth, and lay their snares
to entrap the feeling heart and benevolent mind. Such was
(37:45):
the origin of her acquaintance with Mr Hamilton's, whose unsuspecting
generosity became the victim of her art and duplicity. That's
kind of where I want to go, generosity, But that's
I'm really a harpy about this whole affair. I'm sorry.
So you know we said before the whole reason that
these letters stuck around is because James monrou had secretly
(38:07):
kept a copy of them, and Hamilton's was really really
angry James Monroe over his role in all of this,
and it actually attempted to challenge him to a duel.
This duel was prevented due to negotiations of Monroe's second
Aaron Burke. Uh And even though this whole thing did really,
(38:37):
really lower Hamilton's public esteem, and it made him the
butt of a lot of jokes in the newspaper right
up until his death in eighteen o four. It was
not a decisive torpedo of his whole political career, as
it is sometimes portrayed. His ongoing feuds with other political figures,
including John Adams and Aaron Burr, were a way bigger
factor in all of that, and his marriage Stu Elizabeth
(39:00):
did whether this whole affair, even though she does seem
to have also carried a grudge against James and Row
for the rest of his life. He died in five after,
of course, serving as the fifth President of the United States.
Calendar went on to reprint the story again in sev
before publishing a different pamphlet accusing John Adams of public corruption,
(39:23):
which landed him in jail force edition in eighteen hundred.
Thomas Jefferson ultimately pardoned him. However, it was Calendar who
famously published allegations of Jefferson's involvement with Sally Hemmings, an
enslaved woman that he had inherited in seventeen seventy four,
in the Richmond Recorder. On September one of eighteen o two. Yeah,
(39:45):
Thomas Jefferson did not have room to be, not a
leg to stand on in the whole judguty right now.
He was not on the moral high ground here. Regarding
the Reynolds is, it's really not a clear whether, like
j James Reynolds hatched a blackmail scheme that Maria was
eventually in on, or whether she was in on it
(40:06):
from the beginning, or whether she started the affair herself
and then joined him in the blackmail scheme later, although
it does seem that by the end of it the
two of them had become co conspirators. However, their marriage
did not last. They divorced in sevente with Maria being
represented by Aaron Burr. He's like that rule in comedy
(40:33):
or if you say it enough times, like it becomes
funny again. It's just like Aaron Burr. And also Aaron Burr.
Did I mentioned erin Burr? Hey you guys, Aaron Burr uh,
And then you know eventually. But after this divorce, she
then married her husband's former co conspirator, Jacob Klingman, and
moved with him to Virginia. This is actually the moment
where I go really not all the times where Aaron
(40:56):
Burr is like preventing duels and being her liar, but
the part where she divorces her husband and then Mary's
the guy that he went to prison with for trying
to take the government claim of a dead person who
was really alive. However, we're gonna end with with Maria Reynolds.
She seems to have turned her life around in her
(41:18):
later years. I will say, as many silly teenage girls
who write over rought letters. He wasn't a teenager at
the time, but they so sound like a teenager, you know.
She turned her life around. She eventually married a respected
French physician. She joined an evangelical church, the first Reformed
Dutch church in Philadelphia. Allegedly, she did write her own
(41:40):
pamphlet at one point tailing her side of the story,
but it was never published and I wasn't able to
find like documentation of it. Uh. Towards the end of
her life, people began to describe her as quote serious,
sedate and religious. She died in at the age of
sixty six, and that is the pamphlet. So that was
(42:14):
the Reynolds pamphlet. Thank you so so much for everybody
who came to see it. We apologize again for having
to start a little bit late because the line to
get in was so long. Uh. I guess that's maybe
a good problem to have at a live show. I mean,
obviously no problem will be better, but but it's because
(42:35):
we have amazing listeners and they were all there up
and ready. And thanks also for the folks who stayed
behind afterwards to meet us and talk to us. We've
talked to so many awesome people. A number of people
brought us little tidbits to take home with us, including listeners.
Sophie who we have talked about before, who makes such amazing,
amazing like dress interpretations of episodes. She brought us another
(42:59):
uh sile of beautiful drying gorgeous. Yeah. So, and and
we we a number of folks just just brought us
little things, the little nickknacks to take home, which was
so thoughtful and appreciated. Yeah, and we also need to
issue some thanks as well to New York Comic Con.
New York Comic Con Presents and read Pop and particularly
Matt Wizowski, Jennifer Martin, Collette Oliver, and James McNerney who
(43:23):
coordinated the entire event and they took care of business
on the day and took immaculate care of us and
they're always so great to work with. I absolutely love
the team at read Pop. Yeah, me too. And we
also want to thank the house Stuff Works crew who
came out to New York Comic Con as well. Our
producer Noel was there, uh and and folks got to
give a little wave to knowl Um. And then our
(43:43):
colleagues Annie, Christian and Paul were also there and they
did a lot of footage with Holly on the actual
comic Con show floor, so you can see that on
the house Stuff Works website. Yeah, that's churning out. And Uh,
it was an amazing New York Comic Con is always
a big, sort of crazy just because of the size
of the crowd event. Uh, but it's so fun and
(44:07):
you get to see so much amazing stuff and so
many cool people and I just love it so Uh.
With all of that said and my ongoing love of
New York Comic Con, Tracy, do you have some listener
mail for us? I have very brief listener mail. It
is actually about a previous live show. It is about
our live show from Dallas on Pierre to Coubertan. Uh.
(44:29):
And it is from Lisa, and Lisa says high History Buffs.
Thanks for the fantastic work on the Pierre to Coubertan podcast.
I don't think I could be that coherent that late
after a stressful day of travel. At the end of
your podcast, you added a note regarding the collision of
Nicki Hamblin and Abby Dastino in which they were awarded
the Pier to Cubertan Metal. This is an error. They
were awarded an International fair Play Award by the c
(44:52):
i f P. So then she goes on to to
talk about us some favorite podcasts and liking that we've
had some on New Zealand and a favorite being in
the Gnome Serum run Um and us gives us an
episode suggestion. Thanks so much, Lisa. His funny thing we
recorded uh that live show literally the next day was
(45:14):
that collision on the track. Uh. About a day or
two after that, there were numerous reports that they had
been awarded the Pierre to Coubertam Metal, which is why
we we recorded that um, that little addendum to the
end of the podcast. We were pretty sure we were
gonna get a whole lot of email about it. And
then sometime after that a whole bunch of corrections came
(45:36):
out being like, actually, no, that was not the pier
to kouber tam metal um so our efforts to be
thorough kind of backmard uh. So, thank you so much,
Lisa for noting that. Apologies for that error that very
well sourced but later retracted error. Yeah, sometimes it happens.
(46:02):
You source of thing and then they change it and
then you feel stupid. Well, and we got that email
and I was like, well, that's annoying. Not the email.
The email was not annoying. I was more annoyed that.
I was like, wow, okay, we recorded that extra thing
and then that extra thing turned it out to be wrong.
It happens. So thank you again, Lisa uh. If you
(46:23):
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast, we're at History Podcast at how stuff Works
dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com
slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in History.
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We're also on pinterest attris dot com slash missed in History.
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(46:43):
how stuff Works dot com. You can learn all kinds
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Then you can come to our website, which is missing
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(47:06):
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or missed in History dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
dot com
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. So we
have some good news and bad news. The good news
(00:23):
is today is our New York Comic Con Live podcast
on the Reynolds Pamphlet, which we're really excited about because
we had a great time at that show and our
audience it was just fantastic. Uh. And the bad news is,
every single time we do a live show, when folks
ask us if it's going to be an episode of
the podcast, every time my answer is sure, unless something
(00:45):
goes horribly awry with the recording. Uh. So the thing
went this time. Yeah was the time we've always said
we haven't had to really invoke that phrase. Yeah, And
something went horribly right with part of the recording, and
we're not sure exactly what happened. Our team had done
a really solid sound and technical check before we started
(01:08):
and everything was perfect. But apparently when we actually started
the show, something had happened and we were not It
wasn't perfect anymore. Fortunately, our producer Noel had come to
New York with us and he was filming the show,
and as soon as he realized something had gone wrong,
he jumped over to the soundboard and he fixed it.
But as a result, the first ten minutes of the
(01:28):
show in that live recording are not usable. Correct our apologies. Yeah,
we are really really sorry this happened. This is an
eventuality we fret over every single time we do a
live show. I mean we it's kind of ridiculous the
steps that we take to try to make sure this
never happened. So we're very sorry that we did. So
(01:50):
what you are going to hear today, we'll start off
with a studio version of the first act of this
story to replace the unusable audio with what we're basically
having a do over on, and then after our first
break for a sponsor, we will join the New York show,
which at that point will already be in progress. So
(02:11):
not how to get into the show, our little do
over that we're having our mulligan, so to speak, Uh,
not hercules mulligan. That's a different thing. As anyone who
has seen or listened to Hamilton's knows, Alexander Hamilton had
a torrid affair and he wrote it down in a
document that came to be known as the Reynolds pamphlet. Today,
most folks probably imagine a pamphlet is like a piece
(02:33):
of paper that's printed front and back and folded, maybe
like a little triptych, or maybe two pieces of paper
that are saddle stapled. But this is not that. It
is incredibly long and wordy, uh And it can be
hard to imagine what would drive somebody to write such
a thing. And I have read it so that you
do not have to. And that is what we are
(02:54):
going to talk about today. And we said this a
lot while we were promoting the show, but just again
to clarify up front, there's nothing graphic in here. But
it is about a political sex scandal. So judge for
yourself whether it is appropriate for your kids or students,
any of the younger history buffs that you listen with.
In the summer of twenty three, year old Maria Reynolds
(03:15):
came to the Philadelphia home of Alexander Hamilton's, who was
in his mid thirties and he was serving as U
S Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton's and his wife, Elizabeth
Skyler Hamilton's had been married for about ten years at
this point, but at this particular time, she and the
Hamilton's children were away in Albany visiting family. As Hamilton's
(03:36):
himself would later describe it, the Reynolds claimed that her
husband had abused her and then abandoned her for another woman,
and she said she was originally from New York and
she was coming to Hamilton's for help because he was
a citizen of New York too, and she thought maybe
he could loan her some money so that she could
get back to her family and her friends in New York.
(03:56):
Hamilton's wanted to help. He was known for trying to
help people in need, which might have been another reason
why Reynolds decided that he was the man to assist her,
in addition to also both being from New York. But
he didn't have any funds on him at the time
that he could give her, so he asked where she lived,
and he promised to visit in the evening. True to
his word, he stopped by with a bank note. But
(04:20):
when I got there, she took him up to the bedroom, and,
in Hamilton's words quote, some conversation ensued, from which it
was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable,
and They went on with their other than pecuniary consolation
for the rest of the summer and into the fall.
(04:42):
By the time Mrs Hamilton's and the children came back,
it seems like the affair had pretty much ended, and
somewhere along the way James Reynolds came back into his
wife's life as well. Things are apparently quiet until December,
when Maria Reynolds at Hamilton's This letter Colonel Hamilton's. Dear Sir,
(05:04):
I have not time to tell you the cause of
my present troubles, only that Mr has wrote you wrote
to you this morning, and I know not whether you
have got the letter or not. And he has swore
that if you do not answer it, or if he
does not see or hear from you today, he will
write Mrs Hamilton's. He has just gone out, and I
am alone. I think you had better come here one
(05:24):
moment that you may know the cause. Then you will
the better know how to act. Oh my God, I
feel more for you than myself, and wish I had
never been born to give you so much unhappiness. Do
not write to him, no, not a line, but come
here soon. Do not send or leave anything in his
power so that sounded like several sentences, but just to
(05:48):
be clear, beginning with he has just gone out to
the end. That is all written as one sentence. And
in spite of Maria's warning him not to, Hamilton's sent
James Reynolds a note saying to call on him in
his office, But at that point James Reynolds had actually
already written a letter of his own, also dated, although
(06:10):
Hamilton's didn't receive it right away, and this letter began, Sir,
I am very sorry to find out that I have
been so cruelly treated by a person that I took
to be my best friend, instead of that my greatest enemy.
You have deprived me of everything that's near and dear
to me. I discovered whenever I came into the house.
(06:31):
James Reynolds went on to describe having come home to
find his wife crying and on her part insisting that
it was only because she was reading something affecting. But
then he found a letter his wife had written to
another man. He had copied that letter, put the original
back where he'd found it, and then followed his wife
as she handed the original letter off to a black
(06:53):
man to deliver, and he followed that man to his destination,
and he wound up at Hamilton's door. According to James
Reynolds letter, he confronted his wife that night, and she
told him that she had gone to see Alexander Hamilton's
for a loan and that he had taken advantage of her.
In her heartbroken state, Mr Reynolds went on to write, quote,
(07:14):
you have made a whole family miserable. She says, there
is no other man that she cared for in this world. Now, sir,
you have been the cause of cooling her affections for me.
He went on to say how much he loved his
wife and how he was now determined to leave her
and take their daughter with him. He ended on a threat, quote,
and I am determined to see you by some means
(07:37):
or other, for you have made me an unhappy man. Forever.
Put it to your own case and reflect one moment
that you should know such a thing of your wife.
Would you not have satisfaction? Yes? And so will I
before one day passes me more. James Reynolds sent another
letter on December seventeenth, which was a Saturday, telling Hamilton's
(07:58):
to meet him at the Sign of the George on
Tuesday morning at eight o'clock, by which point he would
have made up his mind on what direction he wanted
to take regarding Hamilton's affair with his wife. And he
said this delay until Tuesday was because he had just
learned that his sister had died, and otherwise he would
definitely want a resolution a whole lot sooner. So what
followed was a series of meetings and letters in which
(08:21):
James Reynolds sort of dithered about as far as exactly
what he wanted Hamilton's to do, and Hamilton's became increasingly
frustrated with Reynold's indecisiveness. Ultimately, Reynolds asked Hamilton's for a
thousand dollars, saying that he would use it to leave
his wife and take their daughter and resettle somewhere among friends.
So Hamilton's sent Reynolds a partial delivery of that money
(08:44):
on the twenty second, in the amount of six hundred dollars,
and he sent the rest on January third, but it
wasn't actually over at this point. James Reynolds wrote Hamilton's
again on the seventeenth of January, apparently still living with
his wife, even though he had previously said he could
not be reconciled to doing so now. He claimed that
(09:05):
Maria wanted to see Hamilton's, but only as a friend.
Over the next few months, James and Maria Reynolds each
wrote to Hamilton's periodically, and her letters read like I
mean every teenage heartbroken love letter cliche in existence. She
writes about being too bereft to leave her bed. She
says things like quote, your neglect has filled with the
(09:28):
sharpest thorns. She talks about having a heart ready to
burst with grief and says quote I can neither eat
or sleep. I have been on the point of doing
the most horrid acts that I shudder to think where
I might be and what will become of me. James's letters,
on the other hand, encourage Hamilton's to visit his wife
(09:48):
to soothe her pain and then to ask for money. Uh,
you know, because they were friends. Uh. He never made
reference to the nature of Hamilton's relationship with Maria or
what this quote comforting would involve. He distressed that by
the nature of their friendship, he was sure Hamilton's can
loan him some small amount of money thirty dollars here,
(10:12):
ninety dollars there, of forty death that he needed to pay.
On May second, James Reynolds wrote to Hamilton's and forbade
him from seeing his wife ever again. He was, among
other things, really incensed that Hamilton's refused to enter their
house by the front door, which I don't know from
my point of view, when you're having an illicit affair
(10:33):
with somebody, maybe it's better to go in the back way.
But James is really mad about that, and he said, quote,
am I a person of such a bad character that
you would not wish to be seen coming in my
house in the front way? Of course, if you're only
sneaking in and out through like the back of the
side door, it looks a lot shadier than if you
just go in through the front um. Hamilton's kept making
(10:59):
these financial pay months, though, fearful that if he did not,
James Reynolds would indeed tell his wife Hamilton's wife about
the affair. However, one of Reynolds's requests finally crossed a
line dated on June twenty two. It was a request
for a three hundred dollar loan that he planned to
invest in a speculative venture. Hamilton's response, quote, it is
(11:21):
utterly out of my power. I assure you, upon my honor,
to comply with your request. Your note is returned. This
whole cycle of writing to Hamilton's suggesting that he visit
his wife and then asking him for money probably could
have continued on indefinitely, but eventually James Reynolds turned his
attention and from blackmailing Alexander Hamilton's, onto a different crime,
(11:46):
which was attempting to defrive the government. He had already
been into some pretty shady speculative dealings, but then he
and a clerk named Jacob Klingman, who worked for Representative
Frederick A. C. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, decided to set themselves
up as the executors of the estate of a man
who had a claim to be paid by the government.
And the problem was that man was actually not dead.
(12:08):
So a third accomplice, John de la Bar, perjured himself
validating their claims about the estate of this actually living man.
When this fraud came to light in November of sevento
both Reynolds and Klingman were arrested. While in jail, Reynolds
tried to get Hamilton's to help him, and Hamilton's refused,
(12:29):
so Reynolds started to suggest and then insist that he
had incriminating information against a certain highly placed government official.
For his part, Klingman kept dropping hints that his friend
and co conspirator new things that could greatly harm Alexander Hamilton's. Unsurprisingly,
this pretty quickly turned in a into a political issue,
(12:50):
with Democratic Republicans deciding to look into whatever it was
that Klingman and Reynolds were talking about to see if
it might be useful to them against their political opposed
Federalist Alexander Hamilton's. Muhlenberg teamed up with fellow Democratic Republicans
James Monroe and Abraham Vannable to try to figure out
what Reynolds was talking about. They were extremely interested in
(13:13):
the possibility of taking down such a powerful figure in
the Federalist Party, and they launched a secret congressional investigation
into Alexander Hamilton's after Reynolds claimed that he knew of
several illegal financial transactions that Hamilton's had made. Uh He
also said that Hamilton's had basically forced himself to share
his wife, which was a claim that Maria Reynolds confirmed.
(13:37):
So we're gonna get into the details of that congressional
investigation and we will pick up with the section of
our episode that was recorded in New York after we
first paused for a sponsor break that sponsors the Great Courses.
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plus dot Com slash stuff. So get back to the
(15:07):
show now. Yeah, So, now let's sober up and right
back to it. On December fifteen, Speaker of the House
Frederick Muhlenberg, Senator James Monroe, and Representative Abraham Venable, who
are played in the musical Hamilton's by Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison and Erin Burr, confronted Alexander Hamilton's about these
(15:29):
allegations that James Reynolds had made against him, and Hamilton's
basically told him everything, that he had had an affair
with Reynolds's wife, and that Reynolds had blackmailed him, and
that all these various payments he had made were his money,
not the government's money. And Hamilton's owned up to the
fact that he had been wrong to have this affair
and really foolish to let things drag on for so
(15:49):
many months, and he basically showed receipts for the whole
thing there's a whole cartoon that runs in my head
the second I think about that. Uh. He also said
he was pretty sure that Maria and James Reynolds had
actually been conspiring together this whole time against him, like
from the start this was conceived as a way to
(16:11):
get at him, and that her original story of abuse
and abandonment had simply been made up as a ruse
to get Hamilton's sympathy. So these three investigators later on
wrote a joint statement which set in part, last night
we waited on Colonel h when he informed us of
a particular connection with Mrs r the period of its
(16:32):
commencement and circumstances attending it, his visiting her at ns keeps,
the frequent supplies of money to her and her husband.
On that account, his darressed by them for the fear
of disclosure and anxiety to be relieved from it, and
them to support this, he showed a great number of
letters from Reynolds and herself commencing in early See he
(16:55):
acknowledged all letters in a disguised hand in our possession
to be his. So we didn't really say that before,
but he was disguising his handwriting when writing to this woman,
we left him under an impression our suspicions were removed,
and that would have been that, But of course it's not.
James Monroe had, apparently without the knowledge of Muhlenberg and Venable,
(17:17):
made copies of those letters, which he gave to another
prominent Democratic Republican, Thomas Jefferson, whoever just said oh, no,
I love you. Uh. It's possible that John Beckley, who
was Clerk of the House of Representatives, also made a
copy during the investigation, and over the next few years,
(17:41):
these copies of these letters kind of lurked and hung around,
and rumors variously circulated about Hamilton's maybe having had some
kind of dalliance. So, in addition to these vague hints
of some kind of extramarital goings on, Hamilton's also received
his share of criticism and accusation over his actual job
(18:01):
as Secretary of the Treasury, which he was doing at
this point in Democratic Republicans in the House of Representatives
tried to have him removed from office, and the result
was a document called Resolutions on the Secretary of the Treasury,
which today are more known as the Giles Resolutions, which
makes me think there's a vampire slayer involved in some way. Uh.
(18:25):
They're called that because they were purpose They were purportedly
orchestrated by Virginia Congressman William Brandt Giles, but really it
was Thomas Jefferson. And these resolutions alleged that Hamilton's had
gone against the law, public interest, and the president and
how he had handled foreign loans and the nation's money.
And it ended by saying, quote resolved that the Secretary
(18:48):
of the Treasury has been guilty of maladministration in the
duties of his office, and should, in the opinion of Congress,
be removed from his office by the President of the
United States. The House and Senate both issued similar sets
of resolutions on January twenty three, seventeen nine. In response
to all this, Uh, in very little time, Alexander Hamilton
(19:12):
produced two hundred pages of immaculate documentation demonstrating his innocence,
because apparently he just was like, here are my receipts.
They are organized, their indexed, I have a codex of
what's what here you go it just do that how
he operated apparently. Uh. And we've also done a whole
(19:32):
show about the Whiskey Rebellion in sevent and Hamilton's recommendations
to very heavily tax whiskey in spite of knowing it
was going to infuriate people and be just about impossible
to enforce. I love that so much that a duck
just quacked. Um I do no shade. I love that sound. Um.
(19:52):
So it wasn't like he didn't have, you know, other
documented issues of people not liking what he was doing. Yeah,
it's it's that's definitely not an issue that his his
Secretary of the Treasure of the Treasury tenure was not
something that was just universally met with a claim and support.
He had enemies, for sure, And in seventeen he resigned
(20:12):
and he went back to New York to practice law.
But then, uh in the summer of seventeen, political writer
James Callender published a book which was called The History
of the United States for seventeen six. And this book
is very critical of Hamilton's pretty much every time his
name comes up, and it pieces together a lot of
(20:33):
the letters, notes and payments as we already talked about,
but with a much more sinister conclusion. His conclusion is
that Alexander Hamilton's was using James Reynolds to orchestrate his
own illegal speculation, bringing in some thirty thousand dollars in
illicit profits. Also in the book was the statement that
(20:53):
Hamilton's had debauched Mrs Reynolds, and that she had burned
Oliver husband's correspondence with him at Hamilton's quest and in
response to this book, Hamilton's, who we know to be
a man of few words, very quickly wrote a letter
to the editor of the Federalist Gazette, which was also
picked up and published elsewhere, stating that the documents Calendar
(21:14):
had printed were genuine, but that they had nothing to
do with any sort of financial corruption whatsoever. He promised
more detail later, and he set about trying to rally Monroe,
Muhlenberg and Venable to back him up, since they had
earlier cleared him of suspicion. But to Hamilton's apparent complete
total surprise, UH from a political point of view, the
(21:36):
Democratic Republican reaction to this book was not so concerned
with the whole stealing the government's money and illegally speculating
with it part. They cared a whole lot more about
this allegation of his Eskee extra marital affair. I mean
today we're like, yeah, of course, like we we live
in the world today, Yes, yeah, But Hamilton's was shocked, shocked,
(22:00):
and so he categoried. He he also was sort of
stuck between a rock and a hard place, right if
he categorically denied all of the accusations, it was going
to be incredibly easy to prove that he was lying, Like,
too many people knew about this affair at this point
for him to be like, no, I didn't do any
of that, And if if he was lying about the affair,
if he were to take that route, then people would
naturally assume that he was also lying about all this
(22:22):
financial wrongdoing, even though like that he had some pretty
strong evidence that he was not, and even though he
was no longer the Secretary of the Treasury anymore. If
if people began to believe he was a liar about
all these financial things, that would ruin his marriage and
his political career and undermine the fiscal policy that he
had built for the United States, but at this point
(22:43):
was basically still in its diapers that had not been
a country for very long. He probably doesn't laughed that
part of the screen. So while we were looking over
these notes, I just wrote gross next to the word diapers,
because yeah, I'm scared of babies, y'all. I don't. Godspeed
to those of you that have them, but I couldn't. Uh. So,
(23:04):
to come clean about everything and attempt to protect his
political legacy and the nation's economic policy, Hamilton's wrote the
document that came to be known as the Reynolds Pamphlet.
He strongly denounced these accusations of financial wrongdoing, and he
confessed everything that he had done regarding this affair, and
he once again backed it all up, including reprinting as
(23:26):
part of it a huge pile of correspondence. Who has
seen or better yet read the Princess Bride? You know
how there's a lot of skipping to the good parts. Uh,
there's a lot of that to do in the Reynolds Pamphlet.
It is ninety eight pages long, pages more than eleven
(23:51):
thousand words. So thirty seven of these pages are his
own account of this whole thing, and then sort of
the index to the letters, and then the other to
eight pages, um are things like all of the Reynolds
Is letters, Maria's being like just very free in their
non use of punctuation um, and even more weirdness in
(24:15):
spelling than you would expect from a document from that
time period. I I were on the show pretty uh.
We've said pretty clearly like don't don't go around policing
other people's grammar. But these letters are very particular in
their weird misuse of spelling and grammar in a way
that you just feel like there is a flighty teenage
(24:38):
bird twittering at you and he reprinted all that. Uh.
And we joked at one point that we were gonna
do a dramatic reading of the Reynolds pamphlet for this show,
but it really would not have been so great. It
would have been about four times as long and a
lot of mispelling. And even the title of this this
(25:00):
particular document is really long. It's actual title is Observations
on certain documents contained in number five and six of
the History of the United States for the year sevent
in which the charge of speculation against Alexander Hamilton's late
Secretary of the Treasury is fully refuted. So, in terms
(25:21):
of snappy headline writing, I'm gonna give him a D minus,
but an A for effort for the Hamilton fans. You
know that part where he's arguing with Aaron Burr, and
he's like, here's an item ns list of twenty years
of disagreements. Totally, you mean, sweet Jesus, Like you can
read all of these things on the internet too, and
(25:42):
like all of Aaron Burr's letters are like, I have
a problem with you, Hamilton's here it is. And then
Hamilton's is like, here are my three pages of like
really tiny writing of a million things. There you go. Uh.
So there are also scans of the original document of
(26:02):
this on the internet and you can read them, including
all this correspondence between Hamilton's and the Reynolds is, which
is included in the appendices. And there's this added layer
of either frustration or hilarity, depending on how you want
to look at it, because it uses the long s,
which looks like an F. So it's the charge against
me is a connection with one James Reynolds for the
(26:23):
purposes of improper speculation. Uh. Fortunately, the kind people and
like the archives, like the National Archives or I forgot
now the name of that actual agency, have transcribed it
(26:43):
so you can read it without the long esses that
look like f's. Uh. And Hamilton's begins his pamphlet pamphlet
with a lengthy denunciation of Jacobinism. This is, of course,
a term that arose from the French Revolution. Go French
Revolution UH, the Jacobin Club was a radical political club
that eventually became increasingly associated with Robespierre and violence and
(27:08):
the reign of terror. And in the wake of the
French Revolution, other nations began to use the term Jacobin
and jacobin is m to describe other political extremist groups,
and in the US it was a name that federalist
newspapers used to describe the Democratic Republican Party. So this
denunciation goes on for a while. He compares Jacobinism to war, famine, pestilence,
(27:33):
and says that Jacoban is ms political gains are due
to slander and lies and maliciously tarnishing the good names
of good people. He defends his own quote unblinished pecuniary
reputation upon taking the office of the Secretary of the Treasury,
and then he summarizes some previous allegations of financial UH
misdoings that he was consistently able to refute, before finally
(27:55):
mentioning the history of the United States for the year
seventeen nineties six. After about eighteen hundred other words of
writing it's a busy bee. Uh. And that's when he
gets to one of the two bits of the pamphlets
that are actually in Hamilton's quote, the charge against me
is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of
improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection
(28:19):
with his wife for a considerable time, with his privity
and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination
between the husband and wife with the design to extort
money from me. Yeah, Littmnuel Miranda shorten that last bit
to knowing consent and also left out the word pecuniary
(28:40):
because it doesn't scare very well. So uh. Hamilton's says
that he can't make this confession without a blush. He
asks for forgiveness for even having to talk about it
in the first place, and then says, quote, I can
never cease to condemn myself for the pang which it
may inflict in a bosom eminently entitled to all my gratitude, fidelity,
and love. But that wism will approve that, not even
(29:02):
at so great an expense, I should effectually wipe away
a more serious stain from a name which it cherishes
with no less elevation than tenderness. And so that is
this nice little nod to the best of wives and
best of women who he cheated on with Maria Reynolds
and is now telling the whole world about in even
(29:24):
more greater detail than James Calendar already had done. And
then he walks through all the things that we've already
talked about, like the whole drama of how it played out,
though he doesn't reference nine O two one know like
we did um and he calls James Reynolds quote an obscure,
unimportant and profligate man, discussing reynolds other attempts to defraud
(29:45):
the government and his co conspirators on that score, before
finally getting to the part where a young woman showed
up at his house one day soliciting these other than
pecuniary comforts, and then says quote after this, I had
frequent meeting with her, most of them at my own house,
Mrs Hamilton's, with her children being absent on a visit
(30:06):
to her father. No, have you read this, okay? Uh?
He sums up the situation. The intercourse with Mrs Reynolds
in the meantime continued and though, yeah, he didn't mean
it that way, but we know what he means. Uh.
(30:29):
And the various reflections in which a further knowledge of
Reynolds's character and the suspicion of some concert between the
husband and wife were a part induced me to wish
a cessation of it. Yet her conduct made it extremely
difficult to disentangle myself. All the appearances of violent attachment
(30:49):
and of agonizing distress at the idea of a relinquishment
were played off with the most imposing art. In other words,
I could not stop how having an affair with that
woman because she was too sad. I feel ways about things,
but we're gonna keep moving. We on purpose, they're not
(31:12):
talking about his wife right Like I feel like when
whenever there's a political scandal, there's way too much focus
on what the wife is up to, Like let's let's
let's just let her have her privacy. Uh. But with
Maria Reynolds, like her husband was willing to throw her
under the bus to get out of jail, and Alexander
Hamilton was willing to throw her under the bus to
(31:33):
try to get out of political trouble, and the Democratic
Republicans were willing to throw her under the bus to
try to take down Alexander Hamilton's and then the newspapers
were willing to throw her under the bus to sell
newspaper copies. So like, there are so many ways that
this whole affair could have started, and only one of
them starts with her being like a willing, consenting participant,
(31:55):
not under durest. So I feel pretty bad for her. Yeah,
I have issues. I mean, I see all of those points,
like I don't. I do think she was probably manipulated terribly,
and because she was not a person considered to have
a position of power that could be lost, it was
very easy to make her the scapegoat and say, oh,
(32:16):
there's really no consequence at that point. But I just
still have that whole thing of like, don't sleep with people,
you don't that that goes for multiple people in this story. Yeah, Thomas,
Oh yeah, that's not Jomis. Her person did not have
room to be talking about anybody else's affairs. But now
it's time for another sponsor break, so we'll just leave
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we didn't mention before is that after all of this,
(34:08):
Alexander Hamilton's and the pamphlet then walks through all of
those letters that we've talked about and all of their
various levels of spelling and grammar um, which are also
reprinted as part of it. This is the second time
that Holly has seamlessly picked up a thing I skipped
completely over in a script I wrote, you're not supposed
(34:29):
to tell them. So Alexander Hamilton was hoping that by
publishing such a thorough and well documented refutation of all
of this, that he would prove that he had been
steadfastly honest with the nation's money, and his only moral
failing was a private one that related only to his marriage,
had nothing to do with the nation's money. I sort
(34:52):
of feel like this is something like I imagine an
episode of Scandal where Olivia Pope came over and was like,
you gotta get ahead of this, but he didn't. He
didn't get ahead of it very well, no, because instead
the confession that he laid out in the Reynolds pamphlet
really really damaged his reputation. News papers picked it up
(35:13):
and they printed all of these titillating and mocking pieces
about it, including poems and songs that were written, as
well as other jibes. One example in one newspaper quote,
dear colonel, did you never hear? If you did not?
I think tis queer that only fools do kiss and
tell even though they tell their story. Well, so the
(35:34):
night that's some serious shade. That's These accounts also often
held up Maria Reynolds as this virtuous and pure woman
of impeccable character who Hamilton's had basically come along and
wronged and ruined, and like this was a sort of
a theme that drew a lot from romantic fiction that
was really popular at the time. They kind of were
(35:54):
setting it up playing along the same ways as like
kind of the more scandalous Bodis Rapery kind of novels,
but like they literally had her letters she wrote to
him in front of them when they were writing these things,
and like we said before, like there they're full of mistakes, uh,
like really full of mistakes. They don't sound as full
(36:16):
of mistakes in the bits that we read because I
had to like clean up the typing because we were
going to read them in front of you on stage
and we needed to not be like, wait, what is
she saying? Uh? But in the in addition to the mistakes,
they have this very breathless, overwrought childishness to them. And
when you compare that to his wife, Elizabeth Skyler Hamilton,
(36:39):
who was witty and smart and actually helped Hamilton's draft
a lot of his own documents, it's really easy for
a person to wonder, like, dude, what in the world
that is your wife? Why are you messing around over here?
Like that doesn't make sense. Well, that this predicated on
the presumption that smart as always whip they are most
(37:00):
attracted to. It's not Tracy. We're gonna have a long
talk later, I'm gonna tell you all about it. Uh.
But apart from Maria's letters, which were literally right there
in front of people who were portraying her as some
kind of symbol of wronged patriotic virtue, there was also
this testimony of people who actually knew her. When later
(37:23):
we're canting his previous praise of her, john Wood wrote, quote,
I have been informed from the best authority, from the
authority of her own acquaintances, to have been one of
those unfortunates who, destitute of every regard for virtue or honor,
traffic with the follies of youth, and lay their snares
to entrap the feeling heart and benevolent mind. Such was
(37:45):
the origin of her acquaintance with Mr Hamilton's, whose unsuspecting
generosity became the victim of her art and duplicity. That's
kind of where I want to go, generosity, But that's
I'm really a harpy about this whole affair. I'm sorry.
So you know we said before the whole reason that
these letters stuck around is because James monrou had secretly
(38:07):
kept a copy of them, and Hamilton's was really really
angry James Monroe over his role in all of this,
and it actually attempted to challenge him to a duel.
This duel was prevented due to negotiations of Monroe's second
Aaron Burke. Uh And even though this whole thing did really,
(38:37):
really lower Hamilton's public esteem, and it made him the
butt of a lot of jokes in the newspaper right
up until his death in eighteen o four. It was
not a decisive torpedo of his whole political career, as
it is sometimes portrayed. His ongoing feuds with other political figures,
including John Adams and Aaron Burr, were a way bigger
factor in all of that, and his marriage Stu Elizabeth
(39:00):
did whether this whole affair, even though she does seem
to have also carried a grudge against James and Row
for the rest of his life. He died in five after,
of course, serving as the fifth President of the United States.
Calendar went on to reprint the story again in sev
before publishing a different pamphlet accusing John Adams of public corruption,
(39:23):
which landed him in jail force edition in eighteen hundred.
Thomas Jefferson ultimately pardoned him. However, it was Calendar who
famously published allegations of Jefferson's involvement with Sally Hemmings, an
enslaved woman that he had inherited in seventeen seventy four,
in the Richmond Recorder. On September one of eighteen o two. Yeah,
(39:45):
Thomas Jefferson did not have room to be, not a
leg to stand on in the whole judguty right now.
He was not on the moral high ground here. Regarding
the Reynolds is, it's really not a clear whether, like
j James Reynolds hatched a blackmail scheme that Maria was
eventually in on, or whether she was in on it
(40:06):
from the beginning, or whether she started the affair herself
and then joined him in the blackmail scheme later, although
it does seem that by the end of it the
two of them had become co conspirators. However, their marriage
did not last. They divorced in sevente with Maria being
represented by Aaron Burr. He's like that rule in comedy
(40:33):
or if you say it enough times, like it becomes
funny again. It's just like Aaron Burr. And also Aaron Burr.
Did I mentioned erin Burr? Hey you guys, Aaron Burr uh,
And then you know eventually. But after this divorce, she
then married her husband's former co conspirator, Jacob Klingman, and
moved with him to Virginia. This is actually the moment
where I go really not all the times where Aaron
(40:56):
Burr is like preventing duels and being her liar, but
the part where she divorces her husband and then Mary's
the guy that he went to prison with for trying
to take the government claim of a dead person who
was really alive. However, we're gonna end with with Maria Reynolds.
She seems to have turned her life around in her
(41:18):
later years. I will say, as many silly teenage girls
who write over rought letters. He wasn't a teenager at
the time, but they so sound like a teenager, you know.
She turned her life around. She eventually married a respected
French physician. She joined an evangelical church, the first Reformed
Dutch church in Philadelphia. Allegedly, she did write her own
(41:40):
pamphlet at one point tailing her side of the story,
but it was never published and I wasn't able to
find like documentation of it. Uh. Towards the end of
her life, people began to describe her as quote serious,
sedate and religious. She died in at the age of
sixty six, and that is the pamphlet. So that was
(42:14):
the Reynolds pamphlet. Thank you so so much for everybody
who came to see it. We apologize again for having
to start a little bit late because the line to
get in was so long. Uh. I guess that's maybe
a good problem to have at a live show. I mean,
obviously no problem will be better, but but it's because
(42:35):
we have amazing listeners and they were all there up
and ready. And thanks also for the folks who stayed
behind afterwards to meet us and talk to us. We've
talked to so many awesome people. A number of people
brought us little tidbits to take home with us, including listeners.
Sophie who we have talked about before, who makes such amazing,
amazing like dress interpretations of episodes. She brought us another
(42:59):
uh sile of beautiful drying gorgeous. Yeah. So, and and
we we a number of folks just just brought us
little things, the little nickknacks to take home, which was
so thoughtful and appreciated. Yeah, and we also need to
issue some thanks as well to New York Comic Con.
New York Comic Con Presents and read Pop and particularly
Matt Wizowski, Jennifer Martin, Collette Oliver, and James McNerney who
(43:23):
coordinated the entire event and they took care of business
on the day and took immaculate care of us and
they're always so great to work with. I absolutely love
the team at read Pop. Yeah, me too. And we
also want to thank the house Stuff Works crew who
came out to New York Comic Con as well. Our
producer Noel was there, uh and and folks got to
give a little wave to knowl Um. And then our
(43:43):
colleagues Annie, Christian and Paul were also there and they
did a lot of footage with Holly on the actual
comic Con show floor, so you can see that on
the house Stuff Works website. Yeah, that's churning out. And Uh,
it was an amazing New York Comic Con is always
a big, sort of crazy just because of the size
of the crowd event. Uh, but it's so fun and
(44:07):
you get to see so much amazing stuff and so
many cool people and I just love it so Uh.
With all of that said and my ongoing love of
New York Comic Con, Tracy, do you have some listener
mail for us? I have very brief listener mail. It
is actually about a previous live show. It is about
our live show from Dallas on Pierre to Coubertan. Uh.
(44:29):
And it is from Lisa, and Lisa says high History Buffs.
Thanks for the fantastic work on the Pierre to Coubertan podcast.
I don't think I could be that coherent that late
after a stressful day of travel. At the end of
your podcast, you added a note regarding the collision of
Nicki Hamblin and Abby Dastino in which they were awarded
the Pier to Cubertan Metal. This is an error. They
were awarded an International fair Play Award by the c
(44:52):
i f P. So then she goes on to to
talk about us some favorite podcasts and liking that we've
had some on New Zealand and a favorite being in
the Gnome Serum run Um and us gives us an
episode suggestion. Thanks so much, Lisa. His funny thing we
recorded uh that live show literally the next day was
(45:14):
that collision on the track. Uh. About a day or
two after that, there were numerous reports that they had
been awarded the Pierre to Coubertam Metal, which is why
we we recorded that um, that little addendum to the
end of the podcast. We were pretty sure we were
gonna get a whole lot of email about it. And
then sometime after that a whole bunch of corrections came
(45:36):
out being like, actually, no, that was not the pier
to kouber tam metal um so our efforts to be
thorough kind of backmard uh. So, thank you so much,
Lisa for noting that. Apologies for that error that very
well sourced but later retracted error. Yeah, sometimes it happens.
(46:02):
You source of thing and then they change it and
then you feel stupid. Well, and we got that email
and I was like, well, that's annoying. Not the email.
The email was not annoying. I was more annoyed that.
I was like, wow, okay, we recorded that extra thing
and then that extra thing turned it out to be wrong.
It happens. So thank you again, Lisa uh. If you
(46:23):
would like to write to us about this or any
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(46:43):
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Then you can come to our website, which is missing
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(47:06):
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com