Dear, Hamilton

Who Tells Your Story

JULY 12, 1825 - TWENTY-ONE YEARS LATER

I inhale a deep breath of the warm morning air as I gaze out at the city street. Feeling a touch melancholy, I think on how far I've come. From the twenty-first century to the eighteenth century, I've changed a lot whether for better or for worse.

I've lost and gained friends, most importantly my dear, Hamilton.

I feel a subdued flare of pain and grief at the thought of his name, but I push it aside. I try to focus on the positive, happy memories of our limited time together. It was all borrowed time after all.

Didn't I know coming into this life that Hamilton was to die young at the hands of Aaron Burr?

Yet, I couldn't help falling in love with that brave, stubborn Hamilton of mine.

The first few months after he died were the worst.

Our family was left destitute, without a home since The Grange had been taken from us to pay off our debts. Now we live in a small house off of one of New York City's main streets.

I tried to get Hamilton's military pay from years back when he fought in the Revolutionary War because back then he hadn't accepted it for fear that people would see him as two-faced when he advocated for the soldiers to receive their military pay from the war. I pled my case to practically every significant figure and finally, James Madison helped me obtain it.

While this money has helped, my family and I still live pennilessly. I have had to rely on my parents a lot to help me make a living, especially in the beginning, but they've since passed away. The money I obtained from their Will has lasted me this far.

But I've decided to do the greatest undertaking of all; creating a biography of Hamilton's life. I've talked to several people, asking if they would like to write it, but all they did was look at the several crates packed full of thousands of papers, volumes and volumes of writings, and they said no.

But this needed to be done. Hamilton lived too great a life, and he made too much of an impact on our nation to be simply forgotten. I refused it.

My Hamilton would not be forgotten and swept aside.

Every other founding father's story got told.

Every other founding father gets to grow old.

Now, he needed his story to be told, and I was not about to let his enemies change the narrative. It's who gets to live who tells your story and letting Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tell the story was absolutely revolting.

So I told it when I finally recruited my son, John Hamilton to write the biography. Now, the only thing left to fight for is the house, the last piece of Hamilton I have, other than the sonnet he once wrote me when we first met that I have kept in a locket around my neck ever since he died.

But for now, until then, this house in the streets of New York City will settle.

I inhale another breath, the warm wind twining through my hair before I head back inside.

When I enter the house, a servant approaches me and hands me a slip of paper. "Mr. Monroe is here, Mrs. Hamilton."

I flip the card over in my hands to see Mr. Monroe written elegantly upon the paper; a calling card. I look sharply at the servant and ask, "He delivered this, himself?"

Usually, a servant will bring a calling card to a house, but never the actual person themselves, especially someone as prestigious as Monroe. He is a politician now.

The servant nods and tells me, "He's in the parlor, Mrs. Hamilton." I nod once and the servant girl bounds away, her braids flying behind her, before she slips out of the living room's door and vanishes from sight.