THE BADGER GAME - Alexander Hamilton

I have always admired Alexander Hamilton (above). How could you not admire a man who could write, “A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous” That kind of self knowledge belies the life of a boy who was abandoned by his father at the age of ten, at twelve watched his mother die next to him the same bed, was then adopted by a cousin who shortly thereafter committed suicide. 

Hamilton not only survived this horror show but within ten years became one of the most successful and powerful men in America, the man who invented the American economic system. But that childhood also goes a long way to explaining how such a smart man, a happily married man and a devoted father could fall for something as old and obvious as the Badger Game.

In 1791 in Philadelphia, twenty-three year old Maria Reynolds (above), a lovely and avaricious mental midget, approached the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.  She told Hamilton that her husband, James Reynolds, had abandoned her and their daughter in their rented room at 154 South Fourth Street,  

The address was convenient, as it was directly behind the United States Bank building (above), in which Mister Hamilton and the lovely lady were then speaking.  Could the noble and handsome Secretary Hamilton provide Marie and her child  with the funds to return to New York?  Smitten and horny, with his own wife living in far off Connecticut, Hamilton agreed to deliver $30 to her rooms that evening. Let the games began.

The original badger game, or badger baiting,  was one of Georgian England's many "blood sports". This one involved sticking a live wild badger (above) in a box and then sending in a dog, usually a terrier.   

After a few seconds the owner would pull the dog out. If the dog held the badger in its jaws, it was marked as a plus. Then animals would be separated, the badger would be returned to the box and the dog would be sent in again. 

This was repeated several times in front of a crowd of Neanderthals, with the shouting and betting building to a crescendo until the badger or the dog was dead. Usually the poor badger.

The similarity between the original sport (outlawed in England in 1835) and the blackmail sting about to be performed on Hamilton is that the dog could be counted on to grab the badger every time, even though the pooch might be never allowed to actually eat  the badger. The same goes for The Mark in the human version of the game.

As Hamilton himself described their first assignation: " “I inquired for Mrs. Reynolds (above) and was shewn upstairs, at the head of which she met me and conducted me into a bedroom...Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable.”  He offered, and the deal was closed.

Once the hound had the first taste of the badger, the games men moved in to separate the two. Mister James Reynolds, playing the role of the wronged husband, now wrote to Hamilton: “You have deprived me of every thing that’s near and dear to me. … You have made a whole family miserable.”

James was a born con-man,  who had been one of Hamilton’s commissariats during the revolution, scrounging food, clothing and ammunition for the Continental Army despite the penury of Congress. But he was also a wife beater – if we believe Maria. Although why we should do that I have no idea.

Eventually James got to the point. “…give me the sum of (a) thousand dollars and I will leave town and take my daughter with me…”. Hamilton paid, and James then wrote, “I have not the least objections to your calling (on my wife), as a friend to both of us”. The dog now had the taste,  and Hamilton continued to visit Maria and pay James regularly – in April, $135, in May and June, $50, in August, $200.

The game went on for two years, with Hamilton enjoying the nubile Maria in Philadelphia, while urging his wife (above)  to stay in Connecticut. Hamilton even borrowed from friends in order to keep James silent. But the end of the game was predictable, given James’ character.  Or lack of it.

James Reynolds and his partner Jacob Clingman were arrested for cheating revolutionary war veterans out of their back pay, something which Congress had been cheating them out of for years. Naturally James expected his “friend” Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, to rescue him. Hamilton, however, was not willing to use his official office to cover up his personal peccadilloes. He refused to help the crook. Angry, James started singing to anybody who would listen that Hamilton had given him inside information on Government bond sales. In particular Jacob Clingman sang to Hamilton’s arch enemy, Thomas Jefferson.

Vice President Thomas Jefferson (above) thought it was Christmas. Hamilton was his political enemy. He gleefully dispatched Congressmen James Monroe and Fredrick Muhlenberg to confront Hamilton in person, and force him to beg for Jefferson's protection. 

To Monroe and Muhenberg's  stunned surprise Hamilton admitted to an affair (above)  but he denied everything else. He even provided proof in the form of letters between himself and both of the enterprising Reynolds’, James and Maria. Muhlenberg and Monroe were so nonplussed they agreed to keep the affair secret. Needless to say, Jefferson was not happy that his Christmas had been canceled.

Anticipating Jefferson's wraith,  Hamilton resigned from Washington’s cabinet in January of 1795, right after putting down the Whiskey Rebellion.  But Jefferson, who had left the cabinet a month earlier, had made no promise of secrecy, and he filed the scandal away for use at an future opportune moment, which came in 1797, which is how we know of the entire sordid tale.  But Jefferson's version was heavy on the charge that Hamilton had profited from graft along with James Reynolds, who was still in jail. 

But Hamilton responded by self publishing a pamphlet called, "Observation on Certain Documents", in which again he openly admitted the affair but detailed his refusals to go along with Reynold's demands.

Hamilton lost a degree of respect, but over the long haul, his reputation for honesty looked even better than it had, before the scandal.  While Jefferson had tainted himself with a whiff of vindictiveness. 

Shortly after Jefferson leaked his version of the affair.  the lovely Maria (above) divorced her imprisoned husband James, and immediately married his partner in crime, the currently free Mr. Clingman.  The newlyweds then moved to Alexandria, Virginia and dropped out of history. 

Maria's divorce attorney back in New York was Aaron Burr (above), who would in 1804 shoot and kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel. And that, one way or another, is the way most badger games end.

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