john-laurens:

One aspect of the Hamilton-Laurens relationship that doesn’t seem to get discussed very much is the amount of trust that Hamilton and Laurens had in each other – and this trust was so crucial.

For Hamilton, almost everyone he loved or had a close relationship with either died or left him.  As a result, Hamilton closed much of himself off.  He didn’t trust or form relationships easily out of fear (or rather expectation) that the relationship would eventually fall apart.  It was easier to close himself off from close relationships and avoid significant emotional attachment so that he would not have to suffer the losses later.  Laurens was one of the few exceptions.  Hamilton’s letters to Laurens (and even other people’s descriptions of Hamilton and Laurens) exhibit, yes, a romantic attachment, but they also exhibit an emotional attachment and trust that went beyond the level of many of Hamilton’s other relationships.  Some of Hamilton’s letters even hint at Laurens having a knowledge of Hamilton’s life from the West Indies.  This is unusual, as that history was not something Hamilton readily shared – this again speaks to the level of trust Hamilton had with Laurens.  Hamilton opened himself up to Laurens and trusted Laurens with his most vulnerable parts.  When Laurens died, Hamilton’s fear that all close relationships would end in abandonment or death was unfortunately reaffirmed, and Hamilton never again formed a relationship (outside of his family) on par with his relationship with Laurens.

And then we have Laurens.  His father was a strict Christian and the president of Congress, and the Laurens family had already been rocked by the Egerton Leigh sex scandal.  As a queer man, Laurens likely feared any threat of rumor or blackmail that could have destroyed his family’s reputation or his relationship with his father.  He also seems to have suffered from depression and from self-loathing over his sexuality.  Laurens forming such a close emotional and romantic relationship with Hamilton speaks to the level of trust that Laurens had in Hamilton.  He had to believe that Hamilton would never expose the true depth of their relationship and had to allow himself to love another man.  I’ve mentioned before that Laurens’s letters to Hamilton, while less passionate than Hamilton’s letters to him, were some of the most emotionally expressive letters he ever wrote.  This again demonstrates the level of love and trust that these two men had for each other.  But one thing I’ve never compared are the letters from Laurens to Hamilton and the letters from Laurens to Kinloch.  In all honesty, I would argue that Laurens’s letters to Kinloch were more passionate than Laurens’s letters to Hamilton.  This may be an unfair comparison as many of Laurens’s letters to Hamilton were either destroyed or are missing, so we will never fully know all the language that Laurens used to express his love for Hamilton.  However, from the evidence we have, it seems that Laurens was willing to be more open about his emotions and affection in his relationship with Kinloch.  While the differences between the Laurens-Hamilton letters and the Laurens-Kinloch letters are not stark, Laurens’s letters to Kinloch seem to have a more lighthearted feel about them and occasionally contain some more overt declarations of love.  The best example of the latter would be in Laurens’s April 12, 1776 letter to Kinloch:

You and I may differ my Dear Kinloch in our political Sentiments but I
shall always love you from the Knowledge I have of your Heart.

In Laurens’s letters we Hamilton, the most similar statement that he uses is “My love as usual.”  Because Laurens seems to have become more closed off to same-gendered relationships after his breakup with Kinloch, I think it’s very likely that this breakup significantly impacted Laurens and caused him to fear trusting others with his heart (Laurens’s response to Kinloch’s “breakup letter” is overflowing with rage and hurt that really speaks to how much Laurens mourned the loss of his friend and lover).  I think this change in Laurens’s letters can also be explained by Laurens losing his boyhood naïveté as he grew older and transitioned from a student to a soldier, but I don’t think we should disregard the impact that Laurens’s relationship with Kinloch (likely Laurens’s first same-gendered romantic relationship) and the subsequent breakup had on him.  Laurens being willing to open himself up to another man in a romantic and emotional sense shows how much he trusted Hamilton with his true feelings and true self.