![]() ![]() ![]() On July 5, he wrote to Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venable asking them to dispute the charges in Callender’s pamphlets. One Federalist congressman said the pamphlets would “gratify the diabolical malice of a detestable faction.” Included in the pamphlets were the secret documents Monroe’s committee had collected. It's unclear why Callender chose this moment to publish the attack, but Hamilton and his wife Elizabeth were convinced it was at Monroe's instigation to avenge his humiliating recall from France. In June and July 1797, Callender published a series of pamphlets that included accusations against Hamilton for financial speculation and adultery. What Monroe did not expect, however, was that the clerk who had worked with the investigators would make extra copies and pass them off to James Callender, a gossipy journalist who made his name spreading political scandal, including the revelations of Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings. Monroe recorded a paragraph of notes of his conversation with Clingman, bundled together all of the papers relating to the investigation, and sent them for safekeeping to a friend in Virginia (likely Thomas Jefferson). ![]() On the evening of January 2, 1793, Clingman called on Monroe with the news about the revelations from Maria. When Clingman told Maria Reynolds that he had heard no charges would be pursued against Hamilton, she was “much shocked” and “wept immoderately.” Maria claimed that Hamilton and her husband had forged the correspondence offering proof of the affair. Even in the 18th century, sexual intrigue could rock the Capitol. The congressmen dropped the investigation and Monroe pledged to Hamilton that he would not return copies of any of the letters from the investigation to Clingman or Reynolds. What Hamilton told the men on December 15 shocked them: the payments to James Reynolds were all part of a blackmail scheme to cover up Hamilton’s illicit love affair with Maria, and he had letters to prove it. The team drafted a letter to President George Washington enclosing transcripts of their interviews on December 13, but waited until meeting with Hamilton to send it. Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venable interviewed Clingman, Reynolds and his wife Maria and discovered that Hamilton had occasionally provided James with money. If the charges against Hamilton were true, it would be the end of his career. Clingman fingered Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, as a co-conspirator who had taken advantage of his position. A former clerk of Muhlenberg’s, Jacob Clingman, and an associate, James Reynolds, had been jailed for their involvement in a financial scheme that involved government funds. senator from Virginia, with his Republican colleagues Frederick Muhlenberg and Abraham Venable, had undertaken in December 1792. It all went back to an investigation Monroe, as a U.S. Hamilton, yet another Federalist who opposed Monroe’s fledgling Republican party, was on the offensive about an incident Monroe thought had been resolved: the so-called Reynolds Affair. Getting an angry letter from Hamilton regarding events that took place more than four years earlier did not improve his state of mind. In the heat of July 1797, Monroe was not in the best mood, having just been recalled from his post as ambassador to France amidst attacks by Federalist opponents. Most of these challenges never came to firing shots, but one came especially close: a messy affair of honor with future president James Monroe. But apart from one short scene, unmentioned in the musical are the many other (nearly a dozen) challenges to duels that Hamilton meted out or received. Inspired by Ron Chernow’s best selling biography, the musical has revived interest in its subject, including his tragic end in an 1804 duel with Aaron Burr. As Hamilton, the hit Broadway musical, tells it, Alexander Hamilton, “the ten-dollar Founding Father without a father” was a feisty, brilliant immigrant who was central to the founding of the nation.
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