XI. CHAPTER ise of what, indeed, without any promise, might have been expected of men making any pretensions to justice 1797. or honor-that the papers should be so disposed of as to be no longer in any danger of being used to trump up false charges against Hamilton. Yet it was these very papers which were now published in Callender's book, and along with them two others, drawn up about the same time, but of which no copies were ever furnished to Hamilton, and which can not but throw a cloud of suspicion over the parties concerned in making them—in the case of Monroe a very deep one indeed. It appeared that after their return from the visit to Hamilton above mentioned, Monroe and his two friends had signed a memorandum, in which, after stating the fact of the visit, with a brief account of Hamilton's explanations, they ambiguously added, "We left him under an impression our suspicions were removed." The other memorandum, of a still more equivocal character, signed by Monroe alone, and dated a fortnight after the first one, purported to state a conversation with Clingman, who was represented to have said that he had communicated the substance of Hamilton's explanations to Reynolds's wife, who wept immoderately, denied the imputation, and declared that her husband had confessed to her that the whole had been a fabrication got up between him and Hamilton, he having written letters and given receipts for money so as to countenance Hamilton's pretenses; and that he, Clingman, was of opinion that she was innocent, and the defense an imposition. Of the spirit in which this memorandum was made and preserved we can only judge from the use ultimately made of it, from the circumstance that no copy of it was communicated to Hamilton, and from Monroe's general conduct in the affair both before and after Callender's publication. All the pa XI. pers, the two secret memoranda included, remained in CHAPTER Monroe's hands till his departure for France, when, according to his account, he deposited them in the hands 1797. of a friend, "a respectable character in Virginia," with whom they were said still to remain. The originals, then, were not stolen. Copies must have been furnished to Callender; and by whom? Callender declared in his pamphlet that he made the publication in revenge for the recent attacks on the patriotism and honesty of Monroe; and the statements which he gave respecting the copies furnished to Hamilton were such as could hardly have been derived except from Monroe and his associates, either at first or second hand. It would seem, then, that Callender must have been furnished with copies either by Monroe himself, or by "the respectable character in Virginia" to whom the originals had been intrusted. Monroe expressly denied any agency in the publication, or knowledge of it till after it had taken place—a denial to which additional force was given by the fact that the printing must have been finished prior to his arrival from France. It would seem, then, that the copies must have been furnished, directly or indirectly, by "the respectable character in Virginia," and it deserves to be noticed that in none of Monroe's numerous letters upon the subject is there any denial that such was the case. Who was this "respectable character?" That also is a subject upon which Monroe's letters afford no light. Hamilton appears to have suspected Jefferson, and certainly there was nobody with whom Monroe would have been more likely to make such a deposit. What a relishing tit-bit these papers would have furnished for Jefferson's Ana! Indeed, Jefferson's relations to some of Callender's subsequent publications were such as may serve to strengthen the suspicion. If, in fact, these papers had been put 1 CHAPTER into Jefferson's hands, it was a very fortunate circum XI. stance that the publication was made while Hamilton 1797. still lived to explain and refute the imputation intended to be founded upon them. It was not Callender's object, in publishing these papers, to show that Hamilton had been guilty of an adul terous amour. The far more aggravated charge urged against him was that, having been concerned with Reynolds in illicit speculations, he had attempted to avoid detection by forging letters and receipts, falsely implicating his own chastity and that of Reynolds's wife; and this charge rested not alone on Clingman's alleged assertions and the argument of Callender, but seemed to receive a certain countenance from the two ambiguous memoranda, the one signed by Monroe and his associates, the other by Monroe alone. Though it would have been a thing hardly to be supposed that, really believing or seriously suspecting the truth of such a charge, Venable, Monroe, and Muhlenburg had suffered the matter to rest quietly for four years or more, to be at last surreptitiously brought out in a libelous pamphlet, Hamilton still deemed it proper, immediately on the appearance of Callender's "History," to address to each of the three persons thus apparently July 5. vouched in to substantiate the charge, a separate letter, reminding them of what had passed at their interviews with him, and requesting from them declarations equiv. alent to those made at that time, "especially as you must be sensible," he added, "that the present appearance of the papers is contrary to the course which was understood between us to be proper, and includes a dishonorable infidelity somewhere." This infidelity he did not at tribute to either of the three, yet suspicion, he remarked, must naturally fall on some agent of theirs. His atten XI. tion being shortly after called to the ambiguity of expres- CHAPTER sion in the memorandum signed by the three, giving an account of their interviews with Hamilton, and which 1797. he had seen for the first time in print, he wrote a second time to inquire if that memorandum were authentic, and what its intention and proper interpretation might be. Muhlenburg and Venable denied any concern in or knowledge of the publication, or that they had ever had copies of the papers. "I avoided taking copies," wrote. Venable, in the true spirit of an honorable man, "because I feared that the greatest care I could exercise in keeping them safely might be defeated by some accident, and that some person or other might improperly obtain an inspection of them." Both declared that at the interview in question they had been entirely satisfied with Hamilton's explanations. In answer to Hamilton's second note in reference to the joint memorandum, Muhlenburg and Monroe, Venable having previously left Philadelphia on his return to Virginia, stated, in a joint letter, that the impression left on their minds by the interview corresponded with that which the memorandum stated. them to have left on his, namely, that their suspicions were unfounded. Hamilton judged it, however, to be still necessary to demand of Monroe an explanation of the memorandum signed by him alone, the tendency of which was, and for that purpose it had been used by Callender, to countenance a suspicion that the papers exhibited by him were forgeries, in which he falsely charged himself with a breach of matrimonial duty in order to ward off a charge of official misconduct. This demand placed Monroe in a very awkward position. He could not say that he recorded the alleged statement of Clingman because he believed or thought it might be true, since, in that case, to have confined it XI. CHAPTER to his own private repository or to that of his "respectable friend in Virginia" would have been a scandalous 1797. dereliction of duty, wholly inconsistent with that patriotic zeal by which the original investigation purported to have been prompted. To have admitted, on the other hand, that he recorded Clingman's statement believing it to be false, and yet without any intimation on his part to that effect, would be to confess himself an accessory to an outrageous and wicked slander, reduced to writing, thus preserved, and finally published through his means, if, indeed, it had not been entirely manufactured by him. Vainly struggling to escape from this most discreditable dilemma, Monroe replied to Hamilton's demand in the following terms: "Although I was sur prised at the communication given, I meant neither to give nor to imply any opinion of my own as to its contents. I simply entered the communication as I received it, reserving to myself the liberty of forming an opinion upon it at such future time as I found convenient, paying due regard to all the circumstances connected with it." Hamilton, however, was not to be put off with so poor an evasion; and after another letter, giving Monroe a second chance to explain himself, which drew out another answer, substantially the same with that just July 20. quoted, he thus expressed his opinion of Monroe's behav ior. "The having any communication with Clingman after that with me; receiving from him and recording information depending on the mere veracity of a man undeniably guilty of subornation of perjury, and whom the very documents which he himself produced showed sufficiently to be the accomplice of a vindictive attempt upon me; the leaving it in a situation where it might rise up at a future and remote day to inculpate me, without the possibility, perhaps, from the lapse of time, of |