Reminder! You do not have to be from a certain country to spread awareness and use your platform to speak out against something. We all share the same issue, our governments. If you’re not aware of what is happening in the UK at the moment, please try and educate yourself because we are quickly moving in the same direction of the US, if we don’t speak out and educate people, Reform UK will get in. They’re currently leading in the polls, in each country in the UK, Greens are close behind.
That being said, our current government is actively spreading misinformation and lies about marginalised groups in the UK. They’re using an attack on the Jewish community as a tool for their Israeli propaganda, demonising Palestine marches that had NOTHING to do with the attack, they’re actively erasing the Muslim man who was attacked by the same perpetrator just a couple hours earlier, ignoring the rise in Islamophobic, misogynistic and homophobic attacks, multiple of which have been reported in the last couple of days. The newly formed met police force specifically for Jewish individuals and the £25 million going toward the community is arguably marginalising them more and making the wider public more angry. It’s disgusting that they’re so blatant about their use of marginalised communities for propaganda.
Please if you’re from the UK, vote for Green and stop us from moving toward Reform’s take on Trump’s America.
Man who is Totally Fine. Don't even worry about it.
I am in the number of prisoners by Capitulation. It is the greatest and most humiliating misfortune of my life, to be reduced to a state of inactivity at so important a juncture as the present [...] An Exchange would restore me to life.
John Laurens to George Washington, 25 May 1780
Captivity is such an insupportable evil that I am induced to put into practice every plan for a release that affords the least glimmering of hope.
John Laurens to Benjamin Lincoln, 28 August 1780
I am waiting in anxious expectation of an answer from Captain Wallop, a man of great interest and credit among the british, who was indulged with a limited parole to negotiate my exchange by composition [...] I need not inform Your Excellency how I have languished in so long a separation from you
John Laurens to George Washington, 4 October 1780
Your Excellency will be not a little surprised to learn that Congress have determined to send me to France [...] I was assured that there remained no other alternative to my acceptance than the total failure of the business. thus circumstanced I was reduced to submit, and renounce my plan of participating in the southern campaign.
John Laurens to George Washington, 6 November 1780
Actually I think we should study historical queer people for their queerness ONLY. No more investigating their beliefs, actions, ideologies, social roles, cishet relationships, works, deeds, writings, families, mistakes, emotions, attitudes or choices UNLESS ☝️ these contribute to their Gay Trauma™️
Today's prompt for the lams summer 2026 event @lamssummer2026 is the historical period AU, and I chose the Victorian Era (inspired by my love of Dracula and Oscar Wilde lol)! I've always found this time period and the industrial revolution intriguing. It's basically them but a century later, circa 1870s.
There are really some fandoms that stay with you forever because I hadn't thought about Hamilton at least a couple of months and then I see someone posting one of the classic lams misinformation stories on Youtube and suddenly I'm back in the trenches all over again.
I think my issue with a lot of Pride Month queer history content is that there is this desire to make queer history more palatable and I don’t fuck with that.
I’ve working on a few other posts that first require me to make posts about some additional people in AH’s orbit, and I keep coming across funny anecdotes in the letters to/from AH. Let’s discuss AH’s pattern of forgetfulness here:
Forgets to pay:
You may make yourself entirely easy with Respect to your Friseur [barber], I had taken care before I received your letter to convince him that it was entirely forgetfulness that had suffer’d you to quit Newport without discharging his Account but the best argument I made Use of was prompt Payment. - John B. (Carter) Church to AH, 18May1781
Through forgetfulness I left a small tavern Bill at Princeton unpaid—for a few dinners. Do me the favour of paying it for me. I mean the Tavern where we dined together. -AH to James Duane, 5Aug1783
Forgets the sum he owes:
I have recd. your favour of the 20th. with Twenty Dollars. The sum I lent you was Thirty Dollars. Yesterday I sent you a small bill which you forgot to pay. - Oliver Wolcott Jr to AH, 21Dec1798
Forgets legal papers:
I forgot my brief in the cause of Le Guen against Gouverneur which is in a bundle of papers in my armed Chair in the Office. Request one of the Gentlemen to look for it and send it up to me by the post of Tuesday. Beg them not to fail. - AH to EH, 16April1797
On Saturday I took the bond in the Country & forgot to bring it to Town with the calculation; so that ⟨I m⟩ust defer the completion of the arrange⟨ment⟩ to my return from Albany. But you may consider it as done & in⟨form⟩ your correspondents accordingly. - AH to Victor Marie Du Pont de Nemours, 30Jan1804
Forgets his watch:
I left with a Watchmaker at Albany my watch to be put in order & forgot it when I came away. I believe the name of the Watchmaker is Howal. He lives near the Court House, obliquely SouthWest. Do me the favour to get it from him and send it to me by a safe opportunity; paying the expence. - AH to John V. Henry, 31Oct1802
Forgets to be a dinner guest:
Through absolute forgetfulness, a very bad excuse for any other than such a distrait as I am, I lost the pleasure of dining with you yesterday agreeable to my wish and promise. - AH to Anthony Wayne, 1Sept1779
Loses his bank book:
I will thank you to have made out and forwarded to me my account with the Bank from the period the ballance was last struck & forwarded. Having lost my Bank book I am not able to name it but I presume it will appear by the books of the Bank. - AH to Thomas Willing, President of the Bank of the U.S. (and Anne Willing Bingham’s father, and father-in-law to William Bingham and Maj. William Jackson), 3June1795
Forgets people/ conversations:
Mr. Carter [Church] sometime before he left this informed me that he had sent a Bond of Mr. Kinlocks to you to be renewed by him—and which was to be transmitted to me by you. I have some confused idea that he afterwards mentioned something to me on the subject, which however I have forgotten. -AH to Nathanael Greene, 1Oct1783
The frequent callings, by yourself and by your servant, did not, that I recollect, come to my knowledge. It is possible some of them might have been mentioned to me, and, in the hurry of my mind, forgotten. - AH to John De Pontheiu Wilkes, 8Nov1785
AH notes in his letters to others at times that he’s forgotten other names and dates, besides those mentioned above. He also (not infrequently) mis-dates letters.
The passcode episode:
…Col Hamilton, Washington’s secretary, became acquainted with Schuyler’s daughter, was smitten by her personal charms, her vivacity, and her accomplishments, and fell desperately in love with her. He passed almost every evening with her.”
“At length,” said Judge Ford, “a funny event took place. The colonel seemed to think of me, and, by permission of the general, would furnish me with the countersign that I might remain at play in the village and return after dark, when the sentinels were set. One evening I was coming home about nine o’clock, and had given word to the sentinel, when I recognized the voice of Hamilton in reply to the soldier’s demand, ‘Who comes there?’ I stepped aside and waited for the colonel to accompany me to our house. Hamilton came up to the point of the sentinel’s presented bayonet to give the countersign. He had quite forgotten it. He had spent the evening with Miss Schuyler, and thoughts of her undoubtedly expelled the countersign from his mind. The soldier-lover was embarrassed. The sentinel knew him well, but was stern in the performance of his duty. Hamilton pressed his hand to his forehead and tried to summon the important words from their hiding place, but, like the faithful sentinel, they were immoveable. Just then he descried me in the darkness. ‘Ah Master Ford,’ he said in an undertone, ‘is that you?’ and, stepping aside, he called me to him and whispered: ‘Give me the countersign.’ I did so, when Hamilton, stepping in front of the solder, gave it to him. The sentinel, believing that his superior was testing his fidelity, kept his bayonet unmoved. ‘I have given you the countersign, why do you not shoulder your musket?’ asked Hamilton. ‘Will that do, colonel?’ inquired the sentinel, in reply. ‘It will do for this time, let me pass.’ The sentinel reluctantly obeyed the illegal command, and we passed on. The lovers were married the next Christmas.” From an interview with the Hon. Gabriel Ford, who was 14 years old and living with his mother in Morristown that winter of 1779-1780. Gen. Washington set up his HQ at the Ford home; Gabriel and his widowed mother lived in two rooms of the house while Washington took up the rest. Hours with the living men and women of the Revolution : a pilgrimage by Benson Lossing (p 139-141)
And to end this on a sad note, Troup reminding AH that he’s often warned him that he’ll die poor:
I have received your letter in answer to the one I wrote you some time since. I sincerely hope that we shall both save our heads and that you may by some fortunate & unexpected event acquire the means of perfect independence in spite of all your efforts to be poor. I have an interest in an event of this nature which perhaps you have forgotten. I have often said that your friends would be obliged to bury you at their own expence. -Troup to AH, 11May1795
Agony- this land where she’d taken her last steps in freedom before being sold off to him, his unwanted cock and his unavoidable children. Rage- the forests at the edge of the land, through which Fort Christiansvaern loomed, wet and hollow and accusatory. Defeat- the ocean beyond which had, time and time again, failed to drag this whole damned island into its depths as it wretchedly deserved.
Why do you think he had nothing to say in your defense?
The voice was taunting, wispy echoes of it from the corners of the guest bedroom, but Mary Fawcette was dead, and it was this place that was haunted. Not her.
He’s never coming back. He must hate-
The floor creaked. Ann kicked the door open wider then stopped, staring. “You’re hearing her right now, aren’t you?”
Rachel wanted to lie, but her sister’s discerning blue eyes were like ice in moments like this, and a lack of denial was as good as confirmation.
You made his children whore-children.
“Fuck that retched old hag,” Ann pushed inside with a basin of water cocked on her hip. “You listen to me. You’ve done the best you could by your boys- all three of them, and you’ve done more right by that man than he could begin to deserve- even if his pride’s too rankled to see it right now.” She dabbed the cloth over Rachel’s collar and wiped away the dribble of water that snuck towards her aching breast.
A raucous fight in front of their sons and her sister’s whole family, and suddenly, pregnant for the sixth time and officially-divorced at last, Rachel was once again the little girl who’d kicked a boy’s shins for tugging her skirt. Ann stepping in to save her and break up the brawl when no one else would.
Ann was the real mother among them.
Rachel didn’t deserve any of the blessings motherhood conveyed.
Motherhood was her consequence. The by-product of the only cure she could find to the sickness in her that everyone here in St. Croix spoke of, and yet none of them deigned to understand. How could they? The aching emptiness. The sinkhole that was her body. How it collapsed in on itself until her mind was a muddle of violence and desire and need that could only be sated through feeding her worst impulses. With Lavien, she picked fights that she knew she could not win, drove him to beat and ravage her into the black of elusive sleep. Without him, she found gentler cocks attached to gentler men and she worked out the excess in their sympathetic- or at least complicit- arms. How could anyone who did not experience such a thing understand that, in the throes of it, Rachel was less than half herself.
Whore.
Even with James who sated her curse better than anyone had before, whose children were her greatest joy. Rachel still hated being pregnant. She hated the illness, the dependency, the delirium. She hated the emotions and how men would blame them on her condition as if that discredited or diminished the truth of them.
Her only solace right now was that her current condition wasn’t visible enough for Lavien to have noticed- and bring it up in the courthouse. The divorce had gone about as badly as it could have, but at least they’d arrived to settle this before there were three whore-children to drag across the sea and stow away at her sister’s home as if that would stop Lavien from showing up at the doorstep with her only ‘legitimate’ son to harass them.
Despite being her first birth, or perhaps because of it- how badly she wanted the ordeal over with- Peter had been the easiest to push out. But, Rachel was sure that, when James Jr. and Alexander grew up and inevitably found their own ways in the world, Peter would still be the hardest to have let go of, even if leaving had made him safer.
When Lavine raged, he was dangerous to everyone.
When James Hamilton was angry, he flustered. It made him incoherent and nonsensical.
As he had been tonight.
Rachel had to assume it was the sight of Peter in his tiny waistcoat and finery that made him so adamant that their boys were gentlemen too. Still, “Dancing lessons…” she muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. To say that their son’s dancing lessons were a necessary expense even after she had explained their budget. To pretend that the graces of society were a priority- were still available- after he had learned about the corners she’d turned to in the absence of his income.
Ann’s mouth pinched and she took the rag to dip it back in the water and wring it out. She dabbed Rachel’s face with it, then flattened her palm to her sister’s cheek and held her face up to keep her gaze, “We’re fortunate if romanticism is the worst of his vices.”
There was a question in that, so Rachel covered the back of her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “It is.”
A slow nod and Ann released her cheek, wiping away the heat her hand left behind.
After the horrors that Rachel had fled from with Lavien, it felt silly to complain about James Hamilton at all, least of all to Ann who had risked everything to help her escape in the first place, but with no other place to take these worries, Rachel had to say, “I just pray his flights of fancy either cease or find some fruition before the boys begin to understand them and believe him. I can’t stand to see their hopes shattered. I’d prefer they never formed at all.”
Ann laughed wryly under her breath, a soft sort of agreement that her sister had an unenviable task. But, “I know you can manage that part,” she said. “Or perhaps…well, I know that being here is the last thing you want, but you are sorely missed- if you ever wanted to give them a taste of their status...”
“Status which they can’t claim- by law,” Rachel said. It was the easier reason to reject this offer than admitting how humiliating it would be for her boys to learn what happened to her here- how helpless she had been. As much as she wanted to be with her sister, shame in their eyes was one of the few things she was sure she could not endure. “Besides, if he wants them to have status, he’d appeal to his family, not ours.”
His family will hate you too.
Ann chuckled for real, then nodded. “I can only imagine the havoc they’d wreak on the Grange.” She dropped the rag in the basin and set it by the nightstand then turned and stroked Rachel’s hair back soothingly, tucked it behind her ears. “They’d turn the whole Hamilton clan in on itself, trying to account for these West Indian interlopers outshining their little lords and ladies.”
That earned a snort, “I’m sure James would love to imagine it.”
Ann hummed. “Jim’s gone after him,” she said. “He’ll take him out to town, buy him a few drinks and give him a place to air out the embarrassment. Worst case, they’ll rent a room for the night and he’ll meet you at the docks tomorrow.”
Rachel nodded, tight-chested with gratitude, but before she could voice it, a soft knock at the door interrupted.
It creaked open slowly, two sets of eyes peaking through below the doorknob. Alexander was tucked under James’s arm, hunched over to see inside, but as soon as James said, “Alex wouldn’t stop crying until we came to see you,” Alex pushed out from beneath him and charged into the bedroom.
“He’s the one that was crying - because papa left!”
Both boys were obviously distraught, pink-eyed and with rosy-cheeks their pale complexions could not hide, even in the low lamplight. Rachel knew that James’s delicate strength needed the deflection of pointing at his little brother’s distress and that Alex’s pride needed the chance to defend itself. So, she opened her arms to her youngest and cooed, “Come here, my sweet.”
Alex eyed her warily as he came, already cautious that he was going to be teased, but ready to allow it if it meant being wrapped up in her arms. Jem followed, obviously relieved that the offer had gone to Alex instead.
Rachel squeezed her tiny boy tight. “I’m alright, darling, but I’m very happy you wanted to see me.”
Alex gave a little, muted huff. “Jem was worried.”
Whore children.
“I know,” she said, reaching a hand out for her Jemmy to hold. One day, his little hands would dwarf hers, and she stifled the intrusive fear that all mothers of men must have, of making the future’s monsters. Her sweet boys would never harm a soul.
As we all say.
“Papa is just taking a walk with uncle Jim,” Rachel said, holding the back of Alex’s little head and gently stroking her thumb through his unruly curls. “This isn’t like his business trips. He’ll be back with us by tomorrow before we go home.”
Alex was content to keep his face pressed into his mother’s chest, hiding himself. It unfortunately contributed to her discomfort there, but she was confident that the padding in her gown would prevent any leaking.
Jem was a harder soul to placate. “Peter said we would hate you…” his lip wobbled at the thought even as it left his mouth.
As they should.
Rachel couldn’t breathe to respond. She knew what Peter must have heard of her from his father- what he must think of her, and when Lavien showed up to make his threats and the boys ran off together, she feared what he might say. She was aware she was clutching Alex too tight, heard his little muffled whine of protest, but he didn’t pull away and she didn’t let him.
“Peter’s father is a cruel man,” Ann said for her, lingering at the foot of the bed. “He’s nothing like your papa. He treated your mother very badly and she fought back. It made him an angry man. So, she left him when Peter was very young. She couldn’t bring Peter with her, but she hoped that leaving might make his father kinder.”
It was too much for Jem to understand, but he could understand the tears streaming down his mother’s face, and he threw himself onto her alongside his brother and wept and apologized.
If she could speak, Rachel would have explained-
“This has been a difficult week for your parents.” Ann rubbed a gentle hand up and down Jem’s back. “But, your father isn’t going anywhere.” She wiped a silent teartrack off Alex’s plump cheek and gently unwound his little fingers from where they were clutching at her dress. “And, no one can ever tell you how to feel about your own mother, hm?”
Rachel was already crying, but the sorrow had turned back to gratitude. She reached a hand out for her sister to join them in the blankets, and she did, wrapping herself alongside Rachel just as she had done when Rachel was a girl and she a young woman- two small important additions to their little family with a third en route.
When the divorce summons had come, it had been a race to appear here in answer before Rachel's latest pregnancy began to show. They had not told the boys for fear of exactly what had happened yesterday when Lavien made his visit.
Now, with things as far along as they were, there was no reason not to say it. "Your mother also has something very important to tell you," Rachel said. "We were waiting until this trip was over to keep it a surprise, but..."
Ann looked at her, both brows raised as if to check that her sister was sure about this, but Rachel just nodded and ran her fingers up against a knot in Alex's hair.
He lifted his head to look at her.
"You're going to be a big brother."
Alex's dark eyes were luminescent. His whole face burst into a grin. The fact that he was missing two teeth made it all the more endearing. "I'll have a little sister?!"
"You don't know that it's a girl," Jem huffed.
A whore-girl to emulate her whore-mother.
It was everything Rachel could do to keep her boys from squirming on top of her and kneeing her in the thighs.
"It's a girl," Alex insisted. "And, she'll be the prettiest girl in Saint Kitts, just like mama. I'll dress her up and help with her hair and I'll always let her play with us. Not like Isabella's brothers."
Of course, she'll play with all the boys.
Rachel forced the voice into the periphery, forced it into silence. After the events of the last few days, she needed this moment of joy with her beautiful, sweet sons and her dear sister. She needed this.
Ann was hugging Jemmy to keep him from kicking at Alex, laughing at their debate over the merits of little sisters over brothers. Jem considered himself the expert on the subject, and in truth, Alex should consider it a compliment to have made a positive impression on his brother in favor of his sex.
Still, Rachel had to admit, that she agreed with Alex in this case. "Little Ann will be the most well-protected girl in all the New World," she said, grasping her sister's hand and holding tight.
