(no subject)
"While indifferent to the fate of his wife and daughter, Laurens formed a passionate “romantic friendship” with Alexander Hamilton. In his letters to Laurens, Hamilton was frank in expressing his devotion. The biographer [Gregory Massey] quotes a few of the less steamy passages from the extant correspondence held by the Library of Congress (some of which is now unreadable because it was censored by John C. Hamilton, an early editor of the manuscripts.) “I wish, my Dear Laurens…to convince you that I love you.” (The ellipsis inserted by the biographer refers to the omitted words “by action rather than words” - perhaps a troubling concept.) “You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.” Hamilton assured Laurens that Hamilton’s marriage to the plain but rich Elizabeth Schuyler would have no effect at all on their continued intimacy. He wrote bawdy passages referring to, among other things, the size of his penis and signed off his letters with an affectionate, “Adieu my Dear.” The biographer concedes that the Laurens-Hamilton letters “appear to contain homosexual overtones” if the passages are “taken out of context,” but he dismisses the language as merely an epistolary convention. “Their relationship was platonic,” he pronounces with assurance, “a bond formed by their devotion to the Revolution and mutual ambition for fame.”"
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William Benemann, Male-Male Intimacy in Early America