Alexander Hamilton

2 pages (12 7/8 x 8 1/8 in.; 327 x 207 mm) on one sheet, [Preakness, New Jersey], 20 July [1780]; restored at fore-edge costing all or part of about 20 words on the recto (conjecturally supplied below within brackets), lightly stained, silked, closing a number of short tears.

The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Syrett, 2:361–362

2 pages (12 7/8 x 8 1/8 in.; 327 x 207 mm) on one sheet, [Preakness, New Jersey], 20 July [1780]; restored at fore-edge costing all or part of about 20 words on the recto (conjecturally supplied below within brackets), lightly stained, silked, closing a number of short tears.
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"For god’s sake My Dear Betsey try to write me oftener and give me the picture of your heart in all its varieties of light and shade. Tell me whether it feels the same for me or did when we were together, or whether what seemed to be love was nothing more than a generous sympathy."

Alone in camp, Hamilton gives words to his worst fears about a dissolution of his relationship with Eliza. "It is an age my dearest since I have received a letter from you; the post is arrived and not a line. I know not to what to impute your silence; so it is I am alarmed with an apprehension [of your] being ill. Sometimes I suspect a [—] of your letters. Sometimes my anx[iety accuses] you of negligence but I chide my[self] whenever it does. You know [very well] how precious your letters are to m[e and] you know the tender, apprehensive [amia]ble nature of my love. You know the pleasure that hearing from you gives [me.] You know it is the only one I am now capable of enjoying. After all you certainly would not neglect [me] if you possibly could. Here am [I] immersed in business, yet every d[ay or] two I find leisure to write to my a[ngel;] the reason is you are never out [of] my thoughts, and if I had but one hour in the four and twenty to rest [all] of it would be devoted to you. I do not say this to reproach you with unkindness. I cannot suppose you ca[n,] in so short an absence, have abated [your] affection; and if you even found any change, I have too good an opin[ion] of your candour to imagine you would not instantly tell me of it.

"Pardon me my lovely girl for any thing I may have said that has the remotest semblance of complaining. If you knew my heart thoroughly you would see it so full of tenderness for you that you would not only pardon, but you would even love my weaknesses. For god’s sake My Dear Betsey try to write me oftener and give me the picture of your heart in all its varieties of light and shade. Tell me whether it feels the same for me or did when we were together, or whether what seemed to be love was nothing more than a generous sympathy. The possibility of this frequently torments me."

Even the momentous news that, ten days before this letter was written, the comte de Rochambeau had landed at Newport with 7,000 French troops to join the American cause could not alleviate Hamilton's distress: "The French fleet and army, that is the first division of them, is arrived at New Port; another division is shortly expected. [British Admiral Thomas] Graves with six ships of the line is arrived at New York, which makes the British for the present superior. They are gone to Rhode Island; but if our friends there take proper measures they can effect nothing and the tables will soon turn. I hope for a decisive campaign. No one will desire it more than me; for a military life is now grown insupportable to me because it keeps me from all my soul holds dear. Adieu My love. Write to me often I entreat you, and do not suffer any part of my treasure, your sweet love, to be lost or stolen from me."

Rochambeau remained at Newport for a full year because the French fleet was blockaded by the British in Narragansett Bay. But his arrival did eventually provoke the decisive campaign that Hamilton wished for when his troops eventually rendezvoused with Washington's Continentals in Mount Kisco, New York, and began the long march to Yorktown, Virginia. Arriving on 22 September 1781, Washington and Rochambeau joined with Lafayette and Admiral de Grasse in putting the British army under a harrowing siege, leading to the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and the effective end of the Revolutionary War, on 19 October.