Tag: hamilton

john-laurens:

This message will probably catch you by surprise, but a while back I was Googling, using search terms like “Laurens,” “Hamilton,” and “Massey,” my last name, just to see if my work was making an impact in the historical literature, and I came across several blogs that deal quite a lot with Laurens and Hamilton, and, by implication, sometimes cite my book on John Laurens. Your blog is the best of the ones I’ve seen, and you’ve done some thorough research and nice writing on Laurens.

I appreciate your work and respect your views on the Laurens-Hamilton relationship and on JL’s sexual orientation. I do hope, however, that you won’t assume that in drawing a different interpretation from you and other bloggers that I selectively used evidence to prove my points. For example, on p. 45 of my book, I left out part of Hamilton’s famous first letter to JL, putting in an ellipsis. I wasn’t purposely omitting evidence that would go against my argument; I was trying to shorten a quotation and blend Hamilton’s words with the text. The section I omitted, where Hamilton wishes it were in his “power, by action rather than words” to convince JL of his love, doesn’t cinch the case that their relationship was sexual. But I can see how some readers think that these words lend strong support to that conclusion. I wish now I’d included the omitted words, so there would have been no later questions about my motives, but at the time I was simply making a stylistic choice to shorten the quotation.

When I wrote the JL biography twenty years ago, I considered the question of his sexuality. I did see how the evidence could be read either way, but I believed the context of their time, particularly the way younger men expressed themselves to each other with such emotion and love, supported an interpretation that the JL-Hamilton relationship was platonic. A French translator who helped me translate into English the letters of L. de Vegrobre, a friend JL made in Geneva, remarked that “these men sure spend a lot of time writing about how much they love each other.” Were all or most of them gay? Or were they employing the conventions of sensibility? Or is it possible that the answer to both questions is yes or a partial yes?

In drawing conclusions on JL and Hamilton, I opted to write a decisive statement that they were platonic. It fit what I was doing throughout the book, since I was making similar decisive statements about what motivated JL’s recklessness in public life, areas of his interior life that none of us can be certain about and about which we can only speculate. Bill Benemann, author of the fine book, Male-Male Intimacy in Early America, rightly took me to task for making such a confident assertion without sufficient evidence to back it up. Benemann, however, made the mistake of imputing motive to me and also questioned the ellipsis I mentioned above. He asserted that I shied away from the possibility of a sexual relationship between JL and Hamilton because I was afraid to go there. After his book was published, he and I exchanged some cordial emails and he admitted that he shouldn’t have made that assertion without consulting me first. I assured him that if I could’ve made a definite case that the JL and Hamilton were gay that I would’ve sold a lot more books. It wasn’t something I was afraid of. I just saw their relationship differently, based on the eighteenth-century context of the letters. I also told Benemann that he was right to call me out on my definite statement that the relationship was platonic. I shouldn’t have done so and I used the Preface to the new paperback edition of the JL bio to say that publicly.

I go into all this detail just to say that I still think people can read the evidence and either draw the conclusions I made in my research or the conclusions you make in yours. There’s evidence that JL was attracted to women on a superficial, physical level: You’re already aware of the reference on p. 44 of the book, when JL asked Francis Kinloch “to kiss all the pretty Genevoise for me.” Also I encourage you to take another look at pp.47-48, and p. 250, n. 5, which suggests that the JL-Martha Manning relationship was far from platonic. I don’t expect those references to change your judgment on this issue, but I hope you’ll see that I didn’t draw my conclusions lightly. Although I still lean toward the JL-Hamilton relationship being platonic, I could be wrong. That’s the risk all historians take. Our knowledge of the past is provisional and we may be wrong on some of our assertions. We also bring our biases to our work, which doesn’t negate our research, but it does create the arguments about the past that are what history is all about. History matters greatly and I appreciate blogs like yours that take it seriously and also promote more understanding and discussion of unsung individuals like John Laurens.

Best regards,

Greg Massey

Hello Dr. Massey.  You are quite correct in assuming that your message surprised me.  I must say that I never expected to receive a message from you, nor did I ever expect my blog to be as popular as it has become over the past few months.  When I began this blog a little over two years ago, I could not have imagined how this blog would transform into my own way of informally publishing my research on Laurens, and I certainly never expected to see my blog on the first few pages of search results when one googles John Laurens.  I thank you for your kind words and am pleased that you find my blog to be a thorough source for John Laurens information.  Likewise, I also appreciate the research you have done on John Laurens and often refer to your biography on Laurens when I need to fact-check.

We do have differing opinions in regards to Laurens’s sexuality, and I agree with you that we probably won’t be able to change each other’s views.  When I read through your biography on Laurens, it did seem to me that your selection of quotes and use of ellipses was done to withhold evidence that suggested a relationship between Hamilton and Laurens that went beyond platonic friendship.  I don’t think that the inclusion of “by actions rather than words” would have confirmed that Hamilton and Laurens loved each other in a romantic sense, but I do think it can be used to support that argument, especially when considered with the other evidence I have compiled.  Upon reading this message, I appreciate the explanation you have offered regarding your use of ellipses, and I agree that you should have included the omitted words.  They add extra meaning to the quotation, and it would have been better to include them and let the reader make their own interpretations from the complete passage.  I also appreciate your admission in your new preface that it would have been better to leave the Hamilton/Laurens relationship up for interpretation rather than definitively claim that the relationship could only have been platonic.

Please know that I by no means mean to suggest that all use of emotional language between 18th-century men was indicative of a romantic or sexual relationship.  I understand that such language was quite commonplace between men in platonic relationships.  However, I do believe that men who experienced same-gender attraction could have used this practice to safely express their feelings for one another without revealing the true romantic or sexual nature of their relationship.  This is what I believe Hamilton and Laurens did with their correspondence – and I believe that in some instances their correspondence went beyond the bounds of propriety as dictated by their society.  This is perhaps best illustrated in the April 1779 letter from Hamilton to Laurens that you mentioned.  In it, Hamilton fills a paragraph with multiple sexual innuendos, and five words were scratched out by (presumably) John Church Hamilton.  Said editor also wrote at the top of the page, “I must not publish the whole of this.”  (Again, I think it is odd that you did not include this in your book – it once again seems like an attempt to withhold some information about the nature of their relationship.)  Furthermore, as the editor’s quote implies, most of this letter was not published – in his publication of his father’s papers, JC Hamilton omitted everything in the letter from the paragraph about Martha Manning Laurens onward (the postscript, however, was included).  This means that the paragraphs wherein Hamilton wrote to Laurens about the size of his penis were omitted.  If this was just an example of “bawdy humor,” as you suggested in your book, and was common language between male friends, why did JC Hamilton feel so compelled to exclude it and permanently etch out five words?  Why did he seem to fear for his father’s reputation because of this letter?

I must say that I take issue with your comment that writing the Hamilton-Laurens relationship as a romantic one rather than a platonic one “would’ve sold a lot more books.”  While possibly true, I can tell you that the readers who have been upset with the way you wrote the Hamilton-Laurens relationship were not upset because a heterosexual Laurens wasn’t very interesting or controversial enough.  I know that many people who follow my blog and agree with my interpretations of the Hamilton-Laurens relationship are queer.  One could claim that we are biased and view Laurens as gay simply because of our own queerness.  Perhaps.  Or perhaps we can view Laurens as a gay man because we see his struggles and his relationship with Hamilton and can identify with them.  We know what it’s like to grow up in heteronormative societies and be forced by societal norms and religious beliefs to seek romantic and sexual relationships with someone of the opposite gender.  We know what it’s like to feel confused about one’s feelings for a close (same-gender) friend.  We pick up on the language and phrasing and actions that are used to convey romantic feelings to one’s partner while giving off the appearance of a close, platonic friendship to the rest of the world.  Queer history has been erased for so long, but when we try to reclaim it and suggest that a historical figure was queer, we are all too often met with outright rejections of our claims.  We are told time and time again that our favorite historical figures were heterosexual because “queer people didn’t exist in that time period” or “that’s just how they wrote to each other back then.”  Many historians seem to follow a “heterosexual until proven otherwise” rule and set heterosexuality as the “normal” or “correct” sexuality.  I don’t know if that is in line with your beliefs, but your writing of the Hamilton-Laurens relationship did come across this way.  And honestly, this viewpoint is offensive to anyone who is not heterosexual – it just reinforces the idea that being queer is somehow wrong.  So writing Laurens as a potentially gay man isn’t about selling more books.  It’s about identifying with a man that could represent us and our history.

Additionally, I also take issue with the way you use Laurens’s possible attraction to women to prove that he couldn’t have been gay.  This implies that liking men and women are mutually exclusive and ignores the existence of bisexual and pansexual people.  (I realize that it may seem like I try to do the opposite – that is, use Laurens’s possible attraction to men to prove that he wasn’t straight.  When I try to show Laurens as a gay man, I do try to find instances that exhibit his lack of attraction to women and instances that exhibit his attraction to men to show that he was likely not straight and likely not bisexual/pansexual.)  That being said, I do agree with you that Laurens and Martha Manning were friendly with each other – at least before their marriage.  I do see how their interactions can be interpreted as romantic, though my interpretation is different.  Laurens lived in a heteronormative society that encouraged people to seek out romantic and sexual relationships with people of the opposite gender.  This likely was reinforced by Henry Laurens, as he was a strict Christian father.  I believe that Laurens was likely gay and that his interactions with Martha Manning were born out of these religious and societal pressures.  I do believe that the two got along as good friends (and I do take note of your three references), but I think it is possible that Laurens felt pressured to pursue a sexual relationship with Martha – even if he did not desire it – to both follow what society/his father expected of him and possibly to prove to himself that he was capable of loving a woman (that is to say, to prove to himself that he wasn’t gay).  If Laurens did love Martha in a romantic sense, why did he leave before his child was born?  I understand that Laurens was very eager to return home and fight in the war, but for a man who had to live through seven of his siblings dying (most in infancy/toddler years) and had to watch his mother die after a difficult childbirth, it seems a bit odd that he did not want to stay at least until his child was born to be sure that both mother and child were well.  He also failed to communicate with Martha while he was in France despite the fact that only a channel of water separated them, making meeting much easier than it had been while he was in America.  If he truly loved Martha, why was he not eager to reunite with his wife after four years or see his daughter for the first time?  I see that Laurens and Martha Manning got along quite well before they had sex, but after having sex, Laurens seemed to want to distance himself from Martha as much as possible.  To me, this suggests that their sexual encounter was a negative experience for Laurens and could be explained as him lacking a sexual attraction to women.  I do understand how you can interpret this as a romantic relationship, but this is my interpretation of the events.

As I said earlier, it seems like we will have to agree to disagree.  We both have our own interpretations and supporting facts, and I don’t think either of us is likely to be swayed anytime soon.  I do appreciate you coming to my blog and offering an explanation for your views, and I hope that through my response you can understand how I have formed my opinions.