This series of posts is available as a video playlist at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9eyRnt5W114bs8_CJNvlcLfIB4NW_YTB.

For the background on this post, including the distinction between certain, probable, and possible, see the first post in this series. Working through evidence that the affair was possible, we looked last week at two letters to Kitty Livingston from 1777 (one of them the “goddess letter”) that have been interpreted as showing that Alexander Hamilton was promiscuous.

This week: an anecdote that has also been used to suggest that Hamilton was promiscuous.

The tomcat story

The “tom-cat story” appears in the journal of Captain Smythe, a British officer, on January 1, 1780. He wrote it in New York City, which the British had been occupying since 1776. Smythe’s journal entry reads, in part:

Mrs. Washington has a mottled tom-cat, (which she calls, in a complimentary way, ‘Hamilton,’) with thirteen yellow rings around his tail, and his flaunting it suggested to the Congress the adoption of the same number of stripes for the rebel flag.[1]

Michael Newton did a brilliant job debunking the “tomcat story” back in 2018.[2] He makes two main points, which I’m summarizing below.

First: the quote comes from a journal entry that’s full of completely fictitious comments on how much Americans love the number thirteen. For example:

Mr. Washington has thirteen toes on his feet (the extra ones having grown since the Declaration of Independence). …

[A] well-organized rebel household has thirteen children, all of whom expect to be generals and members of the High and Mighty Congress of the “thirteen United States” when they attain thirteen years …[3]

Given the context, Smythe is obviously not giving a factual narrative. It’s quite possible Mrs. Washington didn’t even have a cat, never mind one named “Hamilton”. Smythe also got his chronology wrong: the rebel flag, with its thirteen stripes, was adopted in December 1775 – at which time George and Martha Washington hadn’t met Alexander Hamilton.

The second point Michael Newton makes – and it’s even more telling than the fact that Smythe is making things up – is that in the eighteenth century, “tomcat” simply referred to a male cat. The earliest known use of “tomcat” to mean “a sexually promiscuous man” dates to 1927. So in 1780, when Smythe mentioned a tomcat named Hamilton, he wasn’t making suggestive remarks about Hamilton’s sex life.

My take on Smythe: he was an educated officer on duty in a provincial town, bored out of his mind on a holiday, amusing himself by making up stories to belittle the enemy.

Next week: an anecdote often cited to prove Alexander and Angelica were having an affair, and being blatant about it.

[1] Captain Smythe, quoted in Frank Moore, Diary of the American Revolution from Newspapers and Original Documents vol. 2, p. 250. Smythe’s full entry on “thirteen”: Thirteen is a number peculiarly belonging to the rebels. A party of naval prisoners lately returned from Jersey, say, that the rations among the rebels are thirteen dried clams per day; that the titular Lord Stirling takes thirteen glasses of grog every morning, has thirteen enormous rum-bunches on his nose, and that (when duly impregnated) he always makes thirteen attempts before he can walk; that Mr. Washington has thirteen toes on his feet, (the extra ones having grown since the Declaration of Independence,) and the same number of teeth in each jaw; that the Sachem Schuyler has a top-knot of thirteen stiff hairs, which erect themselves on the crown of his head when he grows mad; that Old Putnam had thirteen pounds of his posteriors bit off in an encounter with a Connecticut bear, (’twas then he lost the balance of his mind;) that it takes thirteen Congress paper dollars to equal one penny sterling; that Polly Wayne was just thirteen hours in subduing Stony Point, and as many seconds leaving it; that a well-organized rebel household has thirteen children, all of whom expect to be generals and members of the High and Mighty Congress of the “thirteen United States” when they attain thirteen years; that Mrs. Washington has a mottled tom-cat, (which she calls, in a complimentary way, ‘Hamilton,’) with thirteen yellow rings around his tail, and that his flaunting it suggested to the Congress the adoption of the same number of strips for the rebel flag.”

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diary_of_the_American_Revolution/E7cTAAAAYAAJ?q=%22Washington+has+a+mottled%22&gbpv=1#f=false  ==

[2] https://discoveringhamilton.com/alexander-hamilton-tomcat-fully-refuted/

[3] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diary_of_the_American_Revolution/E7cTAAAAYAAJ?q=%22Washington+has+a+mottled%22&gbpv=1#f=false

More

• This series of posts is an elaboration of a six-page appendix on this subject that appears in Alexander Hamilton and the Reynolds Affair.
• For my books on Alexander Hamilton, see this page; for blog posts, see the Hamilton tag.
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