I didn’t notice the letter to Thomas Jefferson lying there in the glass case at the auction house next to a document that I had to touch, to see. Jefferson’s letter wasn’t a piece of ephemera that had grabbed my attention.
I was more taken with the 1864 letter that black Civil War soldier Joseph O. Cross had written to his wife back in Connecticut, an autobiography of a slave woman written by Martha Griffith, an 1893 signed copy of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and several other early books on slavery.
During the auction, I didn’t even blink when the auctioneer mentioned the heavy interest in the Jefferson letter, including from institutions. Not even when the bidding started at $2,000 and ended at $4,000 – one of the top prices paid for ephemera at this recent auction at one of my favorite auction houses.
I assumed it was another of those stuffy government documents that put you to sleep in American history classes.
I didn’t notice the letter until later when I was reading the listing about the soldier’s letter on the auction bid sheet and noticed the Jefferson listing just above it. I took the time to read the synopsis. The wording was almost unintelligible, with its unusual spellings and abbreviations and references to some issue with which I was unfamiliar.
The listing mentioned the “Hamilton-Reynolds Affair” and again I assumed it was referring to some mundane “issue.” Never would I have guess that it meant “affair” literally, as in two married people messing around with each other behind their spouses’ back.
Now I sat up, very interested. I Googled to find out what it was all about. We all love juicy gossip, and this was even better because it was from 1797 and seemed to involve some very public figures.
Around 1792, Alexander Hamilton, the country’s first treasury secretary, a leader in the Federalist Party and a major political leader who had the ear of President George Washington, began an affair with a woman named Maria Reynolds. It is considered the first real sex scandal in the country.
Reynolds had arrived at his home seeking help, accusing her husband of abusing her, according to several sites. He agreed to come around to her place with some money and did so a few hours later. At her rooming house, he was shown to her bedroom and as he told it: “Some conversation ensued, from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would (also) be acceptable.”
In other words, he slept with her. Her husband James Reynolds got wind of it (or they both may or may not have conspired on it, depending on what you read) and blackmailed Hamilton. He paid off the husband, and Reynolds apparently allowed the affair to flourish. The two adulterers even got together at Hamilton’s home while his wife and children were away.
James Monroe (then a U.S. senator who would later become president) was among three members of Congress who were told of the affair, along with accusations that Hamilton had engaged in a securities scheme that benefitted Reynold’s husband. They confronted Hamilton at his home, he admitted to the liaisons and the blackmail, but not the financial misconduct. They appeared satisfied with his answer, wrote a report on it and left it at that.
The affair ended about a year later and stayed under wraps until around 1797 when a pamphlet publicized the affair and the alleged scheme. To prove his innocence regarding the misuse of funds, Hamilton published his love letters to Maria Reynolds and wrote about the affair in detail. Again, he denied any financial impropriety.
Needless to say, his supporters were appalled and his opponents delighted.
Hamilton apparently felt that Monroe had betrayed him and had revealed the information about their meeting five years earlier and the affair. At Hamilton’s request, Monroe and several others met with him again, the two got a bit testy and Monroe challenged him to a duel.
The letter up for auction was from John Barnes of Philadelphia, a friend and agent of Jefferson who was also a merchant from whom he bought teas. Written Oct. 3, 1797, it referred to a pamphlet that Jefferson had requested regarding the Hamilton affair. Jefferson and Hamilton were political enemies, clashing often over issues, including when both were in Washington’s cabinet.
“WH has assuredly reduced his Consequence to the most degrading & Contemptable point of view; And I am pleased to find Mr. Monroe would not, humor his restless, unreasonable, & foolish Vanity, for under all circumstances, the several Gentlemens treatment towards him-was thoroughly polite & respectful.
“Such another piece of ridiculous folly: sure, never Man was guilty of-first, in committing himself via his Dear (dear, indeed) Maria, and than, to publish it, himself; as if, it were possible-by-that means- to justify, his public Conduct, by a simple Confession of his private ridiculous Amour, at the expense of both-his Reputation and future piece of mind; how it must, on Reflection, torture him, on poor Mrs. H. Account whose feelings on the Occasion-must be severely injured; if not expressed.”
Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth, stood by her man, according to several sites.
Jefferson, according to the auction letter, seemed to have been pulled into the mess after a male acquaintance showed Hamilton two letters from Jefferson promising to hire the man. Hamilton apparently took them to read and never returned them. The auction letter indicated that Hamilton may have used them to defend the accusations against him: “And by this sorry means made Use of to Grace-as he suppose, his ungracious defence. … I intimated too him the improbability of your employing him-and added the very imprudent disclosier of your letters-to Mr. H, could not but displease you. ”
The letter from Barnes was signed and acknowledged by Jefferson as received Oct. 14, 1797.
Five years later, in 1802, John Callender, the man who printed the pamphlet, would write publicly about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, a slave with whom he fathered children. One account I came across noted that just before his own affair, Hamilton had alluded to it.
As for Hamilton, the affair hurt his reputation, including any potential bid for the presidency. He was killed in an infamous duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.
