Excerpt from my new Novel, The Riddle of Alexander Hamilton

By Terrence Crimmins

Chapter One

Childhood Trauma  

               Our story starts out on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in the West Indian Islands, a chain of islands that got their inaccurate name by Christopher Columbus’ mistaken idea that they were off of the coast of India. Nevertheless, of course, they were and are beautiful islands, with dazzlingly white sands descending into crystal clear waters that become azure blue above the coral reefs where many brightly colored fish swim. Along the coast tropical weather is hot, but not oppressive, as the ocean winds that accompany the Gulf Stream sweep away the humidity that makes life uncomfortable for people on the tropical mainland. The leaves of palm trees swayed in the gentle breezes, and dirt packed roads for horse drawn wagons were lined by unpainted wooden houses that constituted the urban thoroughfares. The economy of these islands was dominated by sugar cane plantations, the major products of which were sugar, molasses and rum. These money making ventures were made quite profitable by the labor of slaves, who toiled from dawn to dusk in what did not seem to them to be a tropical paradise. In the plantations, tropical sun bore down on the thick fields of sugar cane, termed cane breaks, making the heat there oppressive, where slaves were also subjected to a different kind of backbreaking labor manning the crude tools of early conversion of the cane plant to sugar. European demand for their sugary products seemed insatiable, so global trade became violent, as both pirates and privateers made it their business to disrupt commercial shipping to their own advantage.  Ships were robbed of their cargo in brutal confrontations on the high seas, where crews were massacred, or, somewhat more mercifully, their sails were burned and the ships left to drift aimlessly in the ocean’s random currents. 

The adventures inherent in such conflicts were a thing that fascinated young Alexander Hamilton, who, one day, as a precocious eleven year old boy in 1765, was watching as a Dutch Pirate was being led into the island’s courthouse to stand trial for piracy.

               The courthouse was a stucco building with a dark wooden paneled courtroom on the first floor sitting above a maze of crude jail cells in the basement. There were held prisoners of different sorts, some white trash for petty offenses like theft and public intoxication, and others were slaves who had offended White civilians, or tried to run off. The poor slaves, in most cases, would receive more severe corporal punishment when they were returned to their plantations. Occasionally, however, the courthouse would host more unusual visitors, and it was such an occasion that brought about the keen interest of Alexander Hamilton, who stared intensely in youthful fascination as a Dutch ship captain was being led into the courthouse to be arraigned on the charge of Piracy. Hamilton hid behind the low wall that adjoined the stairs and peered over it to view the burly, dark haired Dutchman who was being led up into the courthouse by British Naval Officers in their navy blue double breasted coats and white flannel slacks. The Pirate wore an open leather vest without a shirt so that a forest of coarse black hair could be seen in the middle of his chest above a slight pot belly, and his muscular arms were in front of him, chained together by iron handcuffs. A red polka-dotted bandanna was tied about his neck, and the curly black hair on his head was long and unruly. Golden earrings graced both of his ears, and he made the jaunt up the stairs with an insouciant pride that fascinated the young Hamilton. How could he be so proud and disrespectful when he was, in all likelihood, to be hanged at the port tomorrow, for all to see?! It was more than the grisliness of this event which fascinated Hamilton’s young and fervent imagination, though, as his curiosity was deeply aroused by the complexities of international trade that led to such sea born violence.

               His obsession with the Pirate was about to be cut short, however, as his father, or the man he thought to be his father at that young age, arrived to escort him home. Alexander resisted to the best of his ability as John Hamilton wordlessly seized his elbow and began to drag him off.

“No, daddy, please, I’ve got to watch this!”

“We’ve got more important things to do today, Alexander, and your mother has ordered that I bring you home.”

“He’s going to be tried as a pirate, daddy! But people say that he’s not really a pirate but a privateer! Do you know what that means, Daddy?”

John Hamilton walked on in sullen silence, having the look of a man who had long grown used to the winds of fate having their way with him, with downcast eyebrows denoting his inner frustration and despair. Additionally, as we shall see, there were other events brewing on the parental horizon that darkened the affairs of Alexander’s father. Young Hamilton spoke out upon this eerie silence.

“That means he’s being paid to be a pirate by other countries! They say that he works under the pay of England to attack Dutch ships! He attacks ships from his own country, Daddy! Isn’t that interesting?” 

Young Alexander was being very precocious and showing a curiosity in analysis of the world far beyond his years, but his father was hardly listening. The young man tired of his father’s non-responsiveness and walked silently with him, growing bored with the lack of conversation. So he began to observe the urban goings on about him. A gang of slaves was being marched up an adjoining avenue from the harbor, just off the boat from Africa and toward the house where they would be examined and auctioned. They wore leg irons and handcuffs, and were chained together. As if such bondage was not enough, men on horses accompanied the slaves beat them mercilessly with long leather whips to speed them up. Because of the massive amount of slaves needed to provide a labor force for the lucrative sugar plantations, where so many slaves died quickly in the back-breaking labor there, Whites on the island were outnumbered by Blacks by more than eight to one. Hence, the Whites preferred, for their own safety, to treat their captives with almost unimaginable cruelty. 

“Why are they so mean to the slaves?” Alexander inquired. 

“Perhaps because there are so many of them,” his father replied.

“It doesn’t seem right, Daddy.”

               His wife Rachel was much more of a go-getter than John Hamilton, which was reflected in her vibrant relationship with Alexander, who ran up the stairs of the storefront-cottage to meet and converse with her. 

               “So the British will try him and execute him even though he is under the command of their King as a Privateer?” she queried.

               “That’s right mommy!” Hamilton replied. “And the Pirate Captain knew he risked that when he became employed with England!”

               “That’s too much for me,” his mother declared, “how on earth could he go to his death without saying a word of the truth?”

               Rachel was a beautiful dynamic redhead with an indomitable spirit, in sharp contrast with her lethargic husband. She was the type of woman that had a clear lust for life, with an enthusiastic demeanor that was apparent to any observer at first glance. Her one fault, unfortunately, was bad luck with men, which perhaps had something to do with the limited selection available in the tropics. Her previous husband, technically still her husband as there was never a divorce, was a man named Philip Lavien, who perhaps changed the spelling of his last name to conceal the fact that he was Jewish.  Whatever his ethnic heritage, he had proved to be a very difficult mate for Rachel, as well as being demonstrably dictatorial in his behavior toward her. Like John Hamilton, Lavien was not an astute businessman, and squandered most of Rachel’s family inheritance on farming investments that did not pan out. The aristocrats of the islands were the large plantation owners who Lavien tried to imitate, but he did not have deep enough pockets to succeed at their game, so that Rachel helplessly watched as her portion of the family inheritance was squandered by a thick headed man who was ignorant of the economics of his day.   That, along with the brutal and dictatorial attitude that he had on the home front caused Rachel to flee the Island of St. Croix where they had lived, to the island of St. Kitts, where she quickly fell into a romantic relationship with John Hamilton. 

John Hamilton seemed to her to be a gentleman, whose aristocratic lineage from Scotland would be a great advantage in the tropics. The two settled into a common law live in arrangement, as moral standards were not as strictly enforced in the New World as they were back in Europe. Gentle as he was, however, John Hamilton was not as privileged as he appeared. Despite his royal lineage, he suffered from what might be called little brother syndrome. His older brothers were making a much easier transition from royalty to capitalism, forming large companies in the cloth trade that eased their smooth transition into the Scottish corporate aristocracy. When John’s early ventures into such economic conquests did not pan out, his older brothers made up for his deficiencies, covering his debts before taking him into their employ. When his financial status was lowered into such a subservient position, John resented his inferior status, where the economic decisions were no longer left to him, leaving the jilted royal family member to feel that his noble position in life had been unfairly taken away. When he heard tales of men who ventured off to the New World and then came back with impressive fortunes, such a possibility seemed to him a much needed oasis from his economic difficulties. Feeling that he could do the same, and longing to be freed from the restraint of the overbearing influence those darn older brothers, he decided to set off for the New World. They lent him some capital to start his adventure, and John knew quite well that this was his last chance, for surely he could not again bear the shame of returning to be enslaved, as he saw it, helping to maintain their fortunes without one of his own.

The New World, however, presented the same seemingly insurmountable challenges to John Hamilton as it had to Rachel’s first husband, and John found that he could not become a nuevo aristocrat in the New World anymore than he could in Scotland, with the added penalty that those pesky brothers were no longer there to help him out when it became obvious that his meager capital stake was not nearly enough to make the investments needed to become a wealthy slave-holding plantation owner. And so poor Rachel’s fate seemed again to be tied to a man whose destiny was not as she had wished.   

Recently, however, there seemed to be hope on the horizon, for her mother had died, leaving her the remains of her family fortune, which she was soon to inherit, and she was determined this time to not let the feckless John Hamilton invest her nest egg on some ill-conceived get rich quick scheme that would squander her inheritance. For all his other faults, John Hamilton was not the dominant type of fellow that Lavien was, so Rachel felt secure.  It was she who had engineered the small family’s setting up a dry goods store which was a minor success and saved the family from poverty. There on the main thoroughfare it was Rachel whose vibrant personality that attracted customers to the store and kept the enterprise afloat. John Hamilton seemed like a hired man, and she preferred it that way. When new capital came it, with the added power of her new inheritance, would become more successful and perhaps expand, for she would control her own capital.

But then, unfortunately for Rachel, fate reared its ugly head again in the form of Philip Lavien. Rachel thought that this pig headed man had long forgotten her, but she was wrong. Though his interest had flagged, he had kept track of her doings, and so much so that he became aware of her upcoming inheritance, and had brought suit in court to claim it.

Rachel was due to appear there the next day.

* * * * * * * *

               Appear she did, but not in the best of humors, of course, having come to feel that it seemed unconscionable that the sad winds of fate that seemed to be so strongly aligned against her could suddenly be compounded by the authority of the courts. Rachel stood alone in the dingy courtroom, accompanied my neither John Hamilton nor the benefit of counsel, and simmered in her resentment against Lavien, who stood on the opposite side of the courtroom with a lawyer.   She listened to the poison of her ex’s entreaties to the Judge, having trouble restraining herself.

               “She’s been living with a man out of wedlock, Your Honor, since that time, and she has had a child. Never once has she done anything to help me raise or support the child from her only legal marriage.”

               “What do you want, Mr. Lavien?” the Judge inquired.

               Here Lavien’s lawyer intervened.

               “Mr. Lavien is motioning for a divorce on the basis of desertion and unfaithful conduct, and furthermore-“

               “I want my money!” exclaimed Lavien, simplifying this discourse with his coarse view of the situation.

               “Mr. Lavien’s wife, Your Honor,” his lawyer continued, “is about to receive an inheritance from her now dead mother, and we want you to declare…”

               Rachel could no longer restrain herself.

               “You bastard!” she exclaimed.

               “You’re the one with a bastard!” Lavien retorted.

               The Judge banged his gavel.

               “Order in the Court,” he declared.

               “We want to claim our just right to the inheritance for the support of her legal child, Your Honor.”

               “You’re the one with no legal right! You come here bankrupt again, and want to squander my final inheritance just like you did with the first one, you stupid clod! You want to come and take advantage of me like the swine you have always been!”

               “Living out of wedlock with a bastard child and you call me a swine?”

               The Judge banged his gavel again.

               “Submit your motion in writing, Mr. Lavien,” declared the Judge perfunctorily. “Rachel Lavien- I assume that is still your legal name?”

               “Damn right, Your Honor!” sputtered Lavien.

               “Will be held in the city jail until the matter is resolved.”

               “He’s the crook, Your Honor!” Rachel protested.

               Down came the gavel, and the wheels of justice, unfortunately for her, ground Rachel under their path, as the Judge exited the courtroom with a dispassionate take it or leave it glance in her direction, as though the legality of her fate were but a minor annoyance.  Two officers of the court firmly grasped the tempestuous Rachel by the biceps and led her downstairs to the women’s cell in the fetid basement. Alexander, who sat without company in the rear of the courtroom during this heated encounter, watched helplessly as his mother was led away.

* * * * * * * *

               Rachel’s cell was alone and separated from those of the male inmates, and was graced with a small rectangular barred glassless window which she could stand up on her tip-toes and look out of her confinement. Alexander stood outside in a late afternoon to talk to his mother, unsuccessfully trying to restrain his tears, pleading for comfort at this seemingly unimaginable injustice. The courthouse building cut into a hill, so Alexander could stand up comfortably to look into the window

              His mother had earlier tried to prepare him for the rigors of their courtroom appearance, preaching to him that it was sometimes difficult to stand up tall against things that seemed unfair, but doing it, of course, was easier to imagine than to practice, especially when the hand of fate seemed so insensitive as it did that awful day. Yet that courtroom charade was not the only problem that Rachel and Alexander faced.

               “Where is Daddy?” pleaded Alexander, feeling the absence of his presence at this most crucial juncture very difficult to understand.

               “He has gone away, Alexander,” his mother replied, “and we are not going to see him for a while.”

               Alexander’s tears increased at this bleak revelation.

               “When is he going to come back?”

               “I don’t know, Alexander. He may not come back at all.”

               “Never?”

               Never indeed was the correct response, for Rachel’s former live in mate had fled the scene. On the surface, the fear of legal persecution for their informal live in arrangement was a good excuse, but deeper emotions had been rising in John Hamilton for other reasons. From his perspective, it seemed clear that Lavien would succeed in wrenching away Rachel’s final inheritance, which diminished the couple’s economic prospects. Even if she got the inheritance, on the other hand, he felt sure that Rachel would not give him much of a free hand in how it should be invested. But this, to him, was merely a symptom of how he felt that Rachel was pushing him further and further to the sidelines. As time had gone on, it had become increasingly apparent to him that Alexander was not his child, for he looked nothing like him. Rachel would not come clean on that, but John Hamilton felt that she was not putting all of her cards on the table, and never really had. Hence the courtroom contretemps with Lavien was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back, and he felt that it was time to move on to other pastures. Without so much as a goodbye to his live in son he was off, and this, of course, to eleven year old Alexander Hamilton, was very difficult, of which Rachel was very well aware.  

               “Alexander, please, I know this is most difficult, but we must stand up to it. The Court, whatever it decides, will not take long, and we are going to get off of this awful island and go somewhere else.”

               Alexander stayed silent, tears dripping down with low sobs, and the boy seemed over whelmed by the catastrophes coming down upon him.  

               “Alexander, buck up, you don’t have to cry. Listen, I want to tell you something that I want you to always to remember. Are you listening to me?”

               “Yes, Mommy.”

               “Don’t ever let anyone else control your life. It might seem like Lavien is in control, but he is not. I ran away from him so he couldn’t control me, but he’s trying anyway. We’ll go to St. Croix, and things will be better. Now, Alexander, are you going to remember?”

               “Yes.”

               “Never, ever, let anyone control you.”