Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, 1779-1782, by Jonathan Ned Katz

An exhibit on eighteenth century U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and his relationship with John Laurens. Multiple historians consider how to interpret the intimacy between Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens during the American Revolution. In 1976, Jonathan Ned Katz, in a first book documenting what he then called "Gay American History," presented letters between Hamilton and Laurens. Those letters are presented on OutHistory as Katz presented them in 1976. Since then Katz has studied what other historians have said about Hamilton's and Laurens' relationship and he presents excerpts from those historians here on OutHistory, along with his own later essay "Alexander Hamilton's Nose."

Jonathan Ned Katz, Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens: 1976

Katz's reprinting of the excerpts here of Hamilton's and Laurens' letters appeared in a section on "Love" in his book Gay American History (1976). This section began with the declaration: "The subject is intimate, deep-felt, often passionate relations between persons of the same-sex -- love." Katz added that this love was "documented in a variety of sources," among them the letters of Hamilton to Laurens. Katz explained: "These sources record and express a great variety of intimate same-sex relations," including "the bold, though mannered, seductive teasing in Hamilton's love letters to Laurens." Katz added: "The documents here present same-sex intimacy within a variety of social institutions, movements, and occupations: the American Revolutionary army is the setting of Hamilton's love for Laurens . . . ." In 1988, in "Alexander Hamilton's Nose," (see), writing again about Hamilton's and Lauren's letters, Katz stressed a specifically sexual reference of Hamilton's that he had missed in his first analysis of the letters.

Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, in Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976, p. 452-456).