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Welcome to History that doesn't suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story.

It's a summer evening in the year of 1791. The day's oppressive heat is just beginning to relinquish its hold on America's

temporary capital city of Philly as the well-dressed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton walks its streets.

I imagine him occasionally glancing at the addresses as he draws closer to his destination, until finally he sees it.

We're just around the corner from Independence Hall, where the Caribbean-born founding father argued over and eventually signed the US Constitution four years ago.

Our location is 154 South Fourth Street, Philadelphia.

Now, Alexander gives us no account of the dialogue to follow, so I can't narrate the salacious details of the conversation directly preceding the greatest moral failing in his life.

But I can tell you that, upon walking up to the nondescript address, Alex does later account, quote,

I inquired from Mrs. Reynolds, close quote, I'm guessing we're at a boarding house, but again, he never says that explicitly.

Well, Mrs. Reynolds is in. Alex has now shown upstairs where she meets the constitutional genius and quote, conducts me into a bedroom.

Now, before this goes any further, let me tell you that Mariah Reynolds stopped at Alexander's home earlier.

She told Alex that her husband is a cruel man who'd run off with another woman, leaving her destitute in Philly.

Now, she only wants to return to her friends in life in New York, and, oh, she laid it on thick here while at the Hamilton home.

Knowing that Alex is a citizen of New York, she, quote, had taken the liberty to apply to my humanity for assistance.

Close quote. So that's why Alex is here, or so he says, in an effort to help her, Alex tells us to quote again, in the evening, I put a bank bill in my pocket and went to her house.

Oh, and by the way, Alexander has always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. Everyone who knows him knows that.

If I can play armchair psychologist, maybe it's because his own mother, who literally died laying next to him in the same fever-ridden bed when he was only a child, could have so desperately benefited from a knight in shining armor.

...