#And the destruction of the letters was not a reaction to the Reynolds affair

[john-laurens]

I've been seeing a claim circulate that Hamilton's family burned all of the Hamilton-Laurens letters after their deaths due to the romantic content of those letters. This is not true. Many of the letters have survived to this day, with the original versions being maintained in the Library of Congress and other libraries. Some microfilm scans are available to view online, and the transcripts of most of these letters are available on Founders Online. I'm not quite sure where this belief is coming from. My best guess is that people are confusing two things: 1) the scene in Hamilton where Eliza burns all of her letters to Hamilton, and 2) the line "I must not publish the whole of this" written on the April 1779 letter from Hamilton to Laurens. In regards to the latter, it is true that some future editor (presumably John Church Hamilton) wrote that line at the top of the April 1779 letter. This was likely due to the very romantic (and in some places, overtly sexual) nature of the letter. However, there is no evidence that anyone proceeded to burn the Hamilton-Laurens correspondence in order to cover up their relationship. In fact, much of their correspondence was published in collections of Hamilton's writings, as compiled by his son John Church Hamilton. While some of the Hamilton-Laurens letters are missing, we cannot say that they were purposefully destroyed. It's possible that they were simply lost to time (misplaced, damaged, etc.).