- IntroductionMaria Reynolds
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Maria Reynolds
Wife of James Reynolds and Alexander Hamilton's mistress (1768–1828) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maria Reynolds was a woman who lived in the 1700s. She is famous for having an affair with Alexander Hamilton.[1]
In 1791, when Maria Reynolds was 23, she went to Alexander Hamilton's house in Philadelphia. She said her husband had left and she wanted to go back to New York, where she was from. He offered to lend her money so she could go. Instead, the two of them began a sexual relationship. Later, Maria Reynolds' husband, James Reynolds, blackmailed Alexander Hamilton: He told Hamilton to give him money or else he would tell Hamilton's wife that he had slept with Maria. Hamilton paid James Reynolds and continued to visit Maria Reynolds.[1]
James Reynolds continued to write letters to Hamilton asking for money, and Hamilton paid. When James Reynolds was arrested for forgery, he asked Hamilton for help. Hamilton did not help. James Reynolds told Hamilton's political enemies, Democratic Republicans James Monroe, Frederick Muhlenberg, and Abraham Venable about the affair. He also said Hamilton had committed other crimes. Monroe, Muhlenberg and Venable talked to Hamilton. They believed he had had an affair but had not committed other crimes. But Monroe made a copy of letters Hamilton's had written to Maria Reynolds and gave it to Thomas Jefferson.[1]
In 1796, James Callendar wrote a book called The History of the United States for 1796. In that book, he accused Hamilton of speculation and of the affair. Hamilton wrote a pamphlet called Observations on Certain Documents in 1797. He said in the pamphlet that he had had the affair but had not done any speculation. The public believed him.[1]
Later, Maria Reynolds sued her husband for divorce. Aaron Burr was her lawyer.[1]
A fictional Maria Reynolds appears in act II of the Broadway musical Hamilton.
Maria and Hamilton had a realation ship that was very inapropriate.
Maria Reynolds was a woman who lived in the 1700s. She is famous for having an affair with Alexander Hamilton.[1]
In 1791, when Maria Reynolds was 23, she went to Alexander Hamilton's house in Philadelphia. She said her husband had left and she wanted to go back to New York, where she was from. He offered to lend her money so she could go. Instead, the two of them began a sexual relationship. Later, Maria Reynolds' husband, James Reynolds, blackmailed Alexander Hamilton: He told Hamilton to give him money or else he would tell Hamilton's wife that he had slept with Maria. Hamilton paid James Reynolds and continued to visit Maria Reynolds.[1]
James Reynolds continued to write letters to Hamilton asking for money, and Hamilton paid. When James Reynolds was arrested for forgery, he asked Hamilton for help. Hamilton did not help. James Reynolds told Hamilton's political enemies, Democratic Republicans James Monroe, Frederick Muhlenberg, and Abraham Venable about the affair. He also said Hamilton had committed other crimes. Monroe, Muhlenberg and Venable talked to Hamilton. They believed he had had an affair but had not committed other crimes. But Monroe made a copy of letters Hamilton's had written to Maria Reynolds and gave it to Thomas Jefferson.[1]
In 1796, James Callendar wrote a book called The History of the United States for 1796. In that book, he accused Hamilton of speculation and of the affair. Hamilton wrote a pamphlet called Observations on Certain Documents in 1797. He said in the pamphlet that he had had the affair but had not done any speculation. The public believed him.[1]
Later, Maria Reynolds sued her husband for divorce. Aaron Burr was her lawyer.[1]
A fictional Maria Reynolds appears in act II of the Broadway musical Hamilton.
Maria and Hamilton had a realation ship that was very inapropriate.
Hamilton was extraordinarily busy in the summer and fall of 1791, in the early years of Washington’s first term. He was administering the Treasury Department and the Customs. He was starting up the Bank of the United States. He was working to drive Thomas Jefferson (an “intriguing incendiary”) out of the Cabinet and was attacking his followers—“the Jacobins”—in scathing articles under various pseudonyms. And he was preparing his Report on Manufactures , the fourth of the five great Treasury papers that, enacted into law against the bitter opposition of Jefferson’s party, replaced a near-worthless currency, funded a staggering debt of approximately $75 million, restored public credit at home and abroad, created a national banking system, and laid the groundwork for an industrial economy and a powerful centralized government. Despite these activities, he found time to meet frequently with Maria Reynolds, generally receiving her in his house at 79 South Third Street, his wife, Elizabeth, having taken the children on a visit to her father in Albany. During this time he also saw James Reynolds, whom he had already met regarding information Reynolds had about misconduct in the Treasury—misconduct that Hamilton found to be of minor importance. This time Reynolds came to Hamilton’s office to apply (unsuccessfully) for a clerkship in the Treasury Department.In what was now to become an extremely complicated series of comings, goings, interviews, and recorded minutes of meetings, the three men questioned Reynolds in jail. He said he would expose Colonel Hamilton after he had been freed, as had been promised for that evening; but when Monroe and Muhlenberg called at his home, Reynolds was not there. From Mrs. Reynolds they obtained “with difficulty” information that fed their suspicions that he had fled. She showed them several letters from Colonel Hamilton to her husband that seemed to prove Hamilton was using public funds for private gain, and she said she had just burned a considerable number of others. Colonel Hamilton, she said, had advised her husband to “leave these parts, not to be seen here again, and in which case he would give something clever.” She felt that Colonel Hamilton had given that advice, not in friendship, but on account of her husband’s threat that he could reveal information “that would make some of the heads of departments tremble.” A friend of Mr. Hamilton, Jeremiah Wadsworth of Connecticut, had called on her yesterday, she said, to tell her that Mr. Hamilton was innocent of speculation, and she had replied that she rather doubted it.Hamilton, in the meantime, had publicly announced that he would defend his honor as an officer of state by explaining the whole affair in a pamphlet. His friends pleaded with him, insisting that he could only harm his party, his family, and himself by such a course. Major Jackson advised him that a controversy with Callender “would only furnish fresh pabulum for the virulent invective and abuse of faction to feed on. … your friends and every impartial Man are convinced of your purity as a public Officer, and no one among them can suppose that you are called on to furnish the Presbyterian pulpits with subject matter of declamation, however irrelevant, against the best political interests of our country.” Hamilton was obdurate; nothing was more important than his reputation as an incorruptible public servant. He was clearly in the frame of mind of a type of defendant familiar to all trial lawyers: one who, egocentric to the point of arrogance, insists on testifying when it is clearly in his best interest to remain silent, feeling that if only permitted to take the stand and speak out, he will destroy the charges against him and confound his persecutors.The charge against him, he said, was “a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection 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.” Reynolds, he said, was “an obscure, unimportant, and profligate man.” … It [was] morally impossible I should have been foolish as well as depraved enough to employ so vile an instrument … for such insignificant ends . … Nothing could be more weak, because nothing could be more unsafe than to make use of such an instrument; to use him, too, without any intermediate agent more worthy of confidence who might keep me out of sight; to write him numerous letters recording the objects of the improper connection. … It is very extraordinary, if the head of the money department of a country, being unprincipled enough to sacrifice his trust and his integrity, could not have contrived objects of profit sufficiently large to have engaged the co-operation of men of far greater importance than Reynolds, and with whom there could have been due safety, and should have been driven to the necessity of unkennelling such a reptile to be the instrument of his cupidity. …Hamilton’s enemies, of course, were delighted. They simply ignored his points of defense, continued their charges of speculation in public funds, and now bore in on all the new openings Hamilton had given them. Madison, writing to Jefferson, called the publication “a curious specimen of the ingenious folly of its Author.” Callender wrote Jefferson, “If you have not seen it, no anticipation can equal the infamy of this piece. It is worth all that fifty of the best pens in America could have said against him. …” Jefferson observed that Hamilton’s admission of adultery seemed “rather to have strengthened than weakened the suspicions that he was in truth guilty of the speculations.” Some people considered MariaReynolds “an amiable and virtuous wife, seduced from the affections of her husband by artifice and intrigue”; others called her a fallen woman; Hamilton was condemned either way. One reviewer, possibly Beckley, said that Hamilton “holds himself out as trotting from one lodging in Philadelphia to another after … a prostitute!” Another said that he had “rambled for 18 months in this scene of pollution, and squandered … above $1,200 to conceal the intrigue from his loving spouse.” Another declared that any man who used his own home as “the rendezvous of his whoredom, taking advantage of the absence of his wife and children to introduce a prostitute to those sacred abodes of conjugal, and filial retirement, to gratify his wicked purposes” could not boast of anything except, possibly, virility. As an ultimate insult the Antifederalists printed a second edition of Hamilton’s pamphlet, without alteration or addition, at their own expense.