My Dear Hamilton

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of enslavement, pregnancy and child loss, racism, sexism, anti-gay bias, and xenophobia.

In the spring of 1825, more than 20 years after Alexander Hamilton’s death, his widow Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, usually called Eliza or Betsy, receives a visit from President James Monroe, a former enemy of Hamilton. Monroe wants to reconcile with Eliza, but she feels doing so would betray Hamilton’s memory.

Flashing back to 1777, when she was 20, Eliza’s father Phillip Schuyler, a general in the Continental army, returns home with several British prisoners of war, to whom he has been ordered to show hospitality. Eliza admonishes her younger sister Peggy for flirting with one of them. Their father was recently accused of treason, when another daughter, Angelica, eloped with an Englishman named Jack Carter. Eliza feels responsible because she assisted the elopement. Though Schuyler forgives Eliza, it is hard for her to forgive herself.

Eliza goes with her father to the hospital in their town of Albany. General Benedict Arnold, the hero of the recent Battle of Saratoga and a friend of the Schuylers, tells them of a young soldier from France named Lafayette who was given a command.