Prologue
1792
December 17, 1792
Philadelphia
"The man now in jail who got me into all this trouble says he has enough on the
Treasury Secretary to hang him."
The note from his former clerk startled Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg. Squinting
at the familiar, crabbed handwriting, the member of Congress from Pennsylvania
— about to begin his second term as Speaker of the House of Representatives —
read on: "Reynolds claims to have proof showing that Hamilton secretly engaged
in speculation in government securities."
Alexander Hamilton corrupt? Muhlenberg's well-ordered Germanic mind refused to
entertain the scandalous thought. President Washington's Secretary of the
Treasury had been General Washington's courageous aide-de-camp in the War for
Independence. He gave unity to the Union by having the Federal government assume
the debts of the St ... read full excerpt from Scandalmonger: A Novel ebook
