Legend has it that at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, young Alexander Hamilton dared Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania to do the unthinkable. This is how it should have happened.
Truth or Dare
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It was a depraved and often brutal practice—so, naturally, everyone halfway drunk in the immediate area had to participate. The convention had adjourned for a simple, short break to relieve brittle tensions.
"So what will it be, Mr. Morris?" Alexander Hamilton smirked. "Verbal or physical abuse?"
Gouverneur Morris paused, contemplating his options carefully.
The weight of the Constitutional Convention had taken its toll on the good-humored thirty-five year old lawyer. He had found not a few grey hairs scattered throughout his copper locks. His voice was beginning to go hoarse from all of his eloquent speeches. The stump of his severed leg rubbed painfully against his wooden prosthetic.
(He still ogled any woman who crossed his path, however; bachelordom was something he proudly held over men like Hamilton and other delegates chained to the institution of matrimony.)
"Physical abuse," Morris said, nodding. "I'm no coward."
"We'll see, won't we?" Hamilton sneered, eyes darting across the room, looking for the most absurd, humiliating task to assign his comrade. When his eyes fell upon the legendary Washington, who headed the room, mischief coated his features. Morris braced himself.
"I dare you—no. Rather, I'll buy you dinner," Hamilton said, grin alight with wayward thought, "if you approach the hero of the republic and slap him on the back."
Morris pursed his lips, and Hamilton added, "And tell him he looks well, too. That ought to do it."
Still, Morris said nothing. He glanced nervously at the general once, twice, three times.
"You have the gall to dispute religion amongst the most faithful of men and to criticize the dreadful reality of southern slavery before believers in the peculiar institution, and yet you freeze like a woman before something so small?" Hamilton said, playfully, mockingly, like a child.
Morris ignored him a moment, shrugging off his outer jacket and adjusting his peg leg. He ran a shaky hand through the end of his queue, making sure it hung respectably straight and the ribbon that held it together, tied.
Irked, Hamilton clucked his tongue, a noise teeming with impatience. He spotted another friend, James Madison, in the crowd, notes in his frail, young hands. He was pale; Hamilton thought he looked a little under the weather, but he said nothing of it. He knew he wasn't the picture of health, either.
"Mr. Madison, my acquaintance and I," Hamilton began, gesturing to Morris and to himself, "were in the midst of a game. I'd like to request an opinion from you. You have decent judgment."
"Thanks," muttered Madison in his quiet voice.
"We were playing a game of verbal or physical abuse, and Morris here elected to pursue a physical abuse, and—"
Morris shoved his coat into Hamilton's scrawny arms. "Watch, m'boy. You will see."
Madison stared. Hamilton sniffed, a little disappointed. They watched Morris half-limp-half-skip his way to the general who was busy in what appeared to be a deep political conversation with his neighbor and fellow Virginian George Mason. Washington's imposing figure swiveled in attention to Morris, who, in turn, patted the significantly taller man on the back and cried, "My dear General, I am glad to see you looking so well!"
What he received in return was the epitome of death glares, one that would live in infamy. Madison never scratched it into his notes out of sympathy for Morris. And Morris, like a sad puppy with tail between its legs, trudged back over to Hamilton and Madison, yanking his jacket from the former.
"That," he grumbled, "was the worst moment of my life." He swore under his breath, then poked a finger in Hamilton's direction, "You, sir, owe me an exquisite dinner."
Hamilton's expression soured, and Madison cracked a weak smile. "That might've proved worse. At the very least, he didn't suggest a life-time monarch like one poor fellow I know," he said.
Hamilton merely seethed.
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end.
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