BOOK V

THE LAST BATTLE OF THE GIANTS AND THE END

I

The sunlight moved along the table and danced on Hamilton's papers, flecking them and slanting into his eyes. He went to the window to draw the shade, and stood laughing, forgetting the grave anxieties which animated his pen this morning. In the garden without, his son Alexander and young Philip Schuyler, his wife's orphan nephew, who lived with him, were pounding each other vigorously, while Philip, Angelica, Theodosia Burr, and Gouverneur Morris sat on the fence and applauded.

"What a blessed provision for letting off steam," he thought, with some envy. "I would I had Burr in front of my fists this moment. I suppose he is nothing but the dupe of Jefferson, but he is a terrible menace, all the same."

The girls saw him, and leaping from the fence ran to the house, followed more leisurely by Morris.

"You are loitering," exclaimed Angelica, triumphantly, as she entered the room without ceremony, followed by Theodosia. "And when you loiter you belong to me."

She had grown tall, and was extremely thin and nervous, moving incessantly. But her face, whether stormy, dreamy, or animated with the pleasure of the moment, was very beautiful. Theodosia Burr was a handsome intellectual girl, with a massive repose; and the two were much in harmony.

"If I snatch a moment to breathe," Hamilton was beginning, when he suddenly caught two right hands and spread them open.

"What on earth does this mean?" he demanded. The little paws of the two most fastidious girls he knew were dyed with ink. Both blushed vividly, but Angelica flung back her head with her father's own action.

"We are writing a novel," she said.

"You are doing what?" gasped Hamilton.

"Yes, sir. All the girls in New York are. Why shouldn't we? I guess we inherit brains enough."

"All the girls in New York are writing novels!" exclaimed Hamilton. "Is this the next result of Jacobinism and unbridled liberty, the next development of the new Americanism as expounded by Thomas Jefferson? Good God! What next?"

"You have the prophetic eye," said Morris, who was seated on the edge of the table, grinning sardonically. (He was bald now, and looked more wicked than ever.) "What of woman in the future?"

"She has given me sufficient occupation in the present," replied Hamilton, drily. "Heaven preserve me from the terrors of anticipation." "Well, finish your novel. If you confine your pens to those subjects of which you know nothing, you will enjoy yourselves; and happiness should be sought in all legitimate channels. But as a favour to me, keep your hands clean."

The girls retired with some hauteur, and Morris said impatiently:--

"I thought I had left that sort of thing behind me in France, where Madame de Staël drove me mad. I return to find all the prettiest women running to lectures on subjects which they never can understand, and scarifying the men's nerves with pedantic allusions. I always believed that our women were the brightest on the planet, but that they should ever have the bad taste to become intellectual--well, I have known but one woman who could do it successfully, and that is Mrs. Croix. What has she to do with this sudden activity of Burr's? Is he handling French money?"

"Are you convinced that she is a French spy?"

"I believe it so firmly that her sudden departure would reconcile me to the Alien law. Where has Burr found the money for this campaign? He is bankrupt; he hasn't a friend among the leaders; I don't believe the Manhattan Bank, for all that he is the father of it, will let him handle a cent, and Jefferson distrusts and despises him. Still, it is just possible that Jefferson is using him, knowing that the result of the Presidential election will turn on New York, and that after himself Burr is the best politician in the country. I doubt if he would trust him with a cent of his own money, but he may have an understanding with the Aspasia of Bowling Green. Certainly she must have the full confidence of France by this time, and she is the cleverest Jacobin in the country."

"I wish that dark system could be extirpated, root and branch," said Hamilton. "I have been too occupied these past two years to watch her, or Burr either, for that matter. Organizing an army, and working for your bread in spare moments, gives your enemies a clear field for operations. I have had enough to do, watching Adams. Burr has stolen a march that certainly does credit to his cunning. That is the most marvellous faculty I know. He is barely on speaking terms with a leader--Jefferson, Clinton, the Livingstons, all turned their backs upon him long since, as a man neither to be trusted nor used. The fraud by which he obtained the charter of the Manhattan Bank has alienated so many of his followers that his entire ticket was beaten at the last elections. Now he will have himself returned for the Assembly from Orange, he is manipulating the lower orders of New York as if they were so much wax, using their secrets, wiping the babies' noses, and hanging upon the words of every carpenter who wants to talk: and has actually got Clinton--who has treated him like a dog for years--to let him use his name as a possible candidate for the Legislature. Doubtless he may thank Mrs. Croix for that conquest. But his whole work is marvellous, and I suppose it would be well if we had a man on our side who would stoop to the same dirty work. I should as soon invite a strumpet to my house. But I am fearful for the result. With this Legislature we should be safe. But Burr has converted hundreds, if not thousands, to a party for which he cares as much as he does for the Federal. If he succeeds, and the next Legislature is Republican, Jefferson will be the third President of the Unites States, and then, God knows what. Not immediate disunion, possibly, for Jefferson is cunning enough to mislead France for his own purposes; nor can he fail to see that Jacobinism is on the wane--but a vast harvest of democracy, of disintegration, and denationalization, which will work the same disaster in the end. If Burr could be taught that he is being made a tool of, he might desist, for he would work for no party without hope of reward. He may ruin us and gain nothing."

"It is a great pity we have not a few less statesmen in our party and a few more politicians. When we began life, only great services were needed; and the Opposition, being engaged in the same battle of ideas, fought us with a merely inferior variety of our own weapons. But the greatest of our work is over, and the day of the politician has dawned. Unfortunately, the party of this damned lag-bellied Virginian has the monopoly. Burr is the natural result and the proudest sample of the French Revolution and its spawn. But your personal influence is tremendous. Who can say how many infuscated minds you will illumine when it comes to speech-making. Don't set your brow in gloom."

"I have not the slightest intention of despairing. The deep and never ceasing methods of the Jacobin Scandal Club have weakened my influence with the masses, however; no doubt of that. Its policy is to iterate and reiterate, pay no attention to denials, but drop the same poison daily until denial is forgotten and men's minds are so accustomed to the detraction, belittling, or accusation, that they accept it as they accept the facts of existence. Jefferson has pursued this policy with my reputation for ten years. During the last eight he has been ably abetted by Mrs. Croix, his other personal agents, and those of France. Now they have enlisted Burr, and there is no better man for their work in the country."

"They know that if you go, the party follows. That is their policy, and may they spend the long evening of time in Hell. But I believe you will be more than a match for them yet; although this is by far the most serious move the enemy has made." "I wish to Heaven I had persisted in the Great Convention until I carried my point in regard to having the electors chosen by the people in districts. Then I should snap my fingers at Burr in this campaign, for he is an indifferent speaker, and political manipulation would count for very little. With C.C. Pinckney in the chair for eight years, I should feel that the country was planted on reasonably sure foundations. It must be Adams and Pinckney, of course, but with proper harmony Pinckney will carry the day. Rather Jefferson in the chair than Adams--an open army that we can fight with a united front, than a Federal dividing the ranks, and forcing us to uphold him for the honour of the party--to say nothing of being responsible for him."

"Jefferson is the less of several evils--Burr, for instance."

"Oh, Burr!" exclaimed Hamilton. "I should be in my dotage if Burr became President of the United States. Personally, I have nothing against him, and he is one of the most agreeable and accomplished of men. Theodosia half lives here. Perhaps no man ever hated another as I hate Jefferson, nor had such cause. He has embittered my life and ruined my health; he has made me feel like a lost soul more than once. But better Jefferson a thousand times than Burr. God knows I hate democracy and fear it, but Jefferson is timid and cautious, and has some principles and patriotism; moreover, a desire for fame. Burr has neither patriotism nor a principle, nor the least regard for his good name. He is bankrupt, profligate--he has been living in the greatest extravagance at Richmond Hill, and his makings at the bar, although large, are far exceeded by his expenses; there is always a story afloat about some dark transaction of his, and never disproved: he challenged Church for talking openly about the story that the Holland Land Company had, for legislative services rendered, cancelled a bond against him for twenty thousand dollars; but the world doubts Burr's bluster as it doubts his word. At present he is in a desperate way because Alexander Baring, in behalf of a friend, I.I. Augustine, is pressing for payment on a bond given to secure the price of land bought by Burr and Greenleaf, and he has been offering worthless land claims in settlement, and resorting to every artifice to avert a crisis. Baring wanted me to take the case, but of course I wouldn't touch it. I sent him to Rinnan. The man is literally at the end of his tether. It is a coup or extinction--failure means flight or debtor's prison. Furthermore, he is a conspirator by nature, and there is no man in the country with such extravagant tastes, who is so unscrupulous as to the means of gratifying them. He is half mad for power and wealth. The reins of state in his hands, and he would stop at nothing which might give him control of the United States Treasury. To be President of the United States would mean nothing to him except as a highway to empire, to unlimited power and plunder. We have been threatened with many disasters since we began our career, but with no such menace as Burr. But unless I die between now and eighteen hundred and one, Burr will lose the great game, although he may give victory to the Republican party."

"I am not surprised at your estimate and revelations," said Morris, "for I have heard much the same from others since my return. It was this certainty that he is bankrupt that led me to believe he was handling French money in this election--and he is flinging it right and left in a manner that must gratify his aspiring soul. Considering his lack of fortune and family influence, he has done wonders in the way of elevating himself. This makes it the more remarkable that with his great cleverness he should not have done better--"

"He is not clever; that is the point. He is cunning. His is wholly the brain of the conspirator. Were he clever, he would, like Thomas Jefferson, fool himself and the world into the belief that he is honest. Intellect and statesmanship he holds in contempt. He would elevate himself by the Catiline system, by the simple method of proclaiming himself emperor, and appropriating the moneybags of the country. There is not one act of statesmanship to his credit. To him alone, of all prominent Americans, the country is indebted for nothing. The other night at a dinner, by the way, he toasted first the French Revolution, then Bonaparte. It is more than possible that you are right, for France, whether Directory or Consulate, is not likely to change her policy regarding this country. Nothing would please either Talleyrand or Bonaparte better than to inflame us into a civil war, then swoop down upon us, under the pretence of coming to the rescue. Burr would be just the man to play into their hands, although with no such intention. Jefferson is quite clever enough to foil them, if he found that more to his interest. Well, neither is elected yet. Let us hope for the best. Go and ask Angelica to play for you. I have letters to write to leaders all over the State."

II

Burr was the author of municipal corruption in New York, the noble grandsire of Tammany Hall. While Hamilton was too absorbed to watch him, he had divided New York, now a city of sixty thousand inhabitants, into districts and sections. Under his systematic management the name of every resident was enrolled, and his politics ascertained. Then Burr and his committees or sub-committees laid siege to the individual. Insignificant men were given place, and young fire-eaters, furious with Adams, were swept in. Hundreds of doubtful men were dined and wined at Richmond Hill, flattered, fascinated, conquered. Burr knew the private history, the income, of every man he purposed to convert, and made dexterous use of his information. He terrified some with his knowledge, fawned upon others, exempted the stingy from contributions provided he would work, and the lazy from work provided he would pay. It is even asserted that he blackmailed the women who had trusted him on paper, and forced them to wring votes from their men. He drafted a catalogue of names for the electoral Legislature, calculated to impose the hesitant, who were not permitted to observe that he smarted and snarled under many a kick. Strong names were essential if the Republicans were to wrest New York from the Federals after twelve years of unbroken rule, but strong men had long since ceased to have aught to do with Burr; although Jefferson, as Hamilton suspected, had recently extended his politic paw. But in spite of snubs, curt dismissals, and reiterated intimations that his exertions were wasting, Burr did at last, by dint of flattery, working upon the weak points of the men he thoroughly understood, convincing them that victory lay in his hands and no other,--some of them that he was working in harmony with Jefferson,--induce Clinton, Brockholst Livingston, General Gates,--each representing a different faction,--and nine other men of little less importance, to compose the city ticket. All manner of Republicans were pleased, and many discontented Federalists. Burr, knowing that his own election in New York was hopeless, was a candidate for the Assembly in the obscure county of Orange; and the Legislature which would elect the next President was threatened with a Republican majority, which alarmed the Federalist party from one end of the Union to the other.

Hamilton had never been more alert. The moment he was awake to the danger his mind closed to every other demand upon it, and he flung himself into the thick of the fight. He would have none of Burr's methods, but he spoke daily, upon every least occasion, and was ready to consult at all hours with the distracted leaders of his party. Morris, Troup, Fish, and other Federalists, accustomed to handling the masses, also spoke repeatedly. But Adams had given the party a terrible blow, scattering many of its voters far and wide. They felt that the country had been humiliated, that it was unsafe in the hands of a man who was too obstinate to be advised, and too jealous to control his personal hatreds for the good of the Union; the portent of tyranny in the Alien and Sedition laws had terrified many, and the promises of the Republicans were very alluring. The prospect of a greater equality, of a universal plebeianism, turned the heads of the shopkeepers, mechanics, and labouring men, who had voted hitherto with the Federalist party through admiration of its leaders and their great achievements. In vain Hamilton reminded them of all they owed to the Federalists: the Constitution, the prosperity, the _peace_. He was in the ironical position of defending John Adams. They had made up their minds before they went to hear him speak, and they went because to hear him was a pleasure they never missed. Upon one occasion a man rushed from the room, crying, "Let me out! Let me out! That man will make me believe anything." Frequently Hamilton and Burr spoke on the same platform, and they were so polite to each other that the audience opened their mouths and wondered at the curious ways of the aristocracy. It was a period of great excitement. Men knocked each other down daily, noses were pulled,--a favourite insult of our ancestors,--and more than one duel was fought in the woods of Weehawken.

The elections began early on the 29th of April and finished at sunset on May 2d. Hamilton and Burr constantly addressed large assemblages. On the first day Hamilton rode up to the poll in his district to vote, and was immediately surrounded by a vociferating crowd. Scurrilous handbills were thrust in his face, and his terrified horse reared before a hundred threatening fists. A big carter forced his way to its side and begged Hamilton to leave, assuring him there was danger of personal violence, and that the men were particularly incensed at his aristocratic manner of approaching the polls.

"Thank you," said Hamilton, "but I have as good a right to vote as any man, and I shall do it in the mode most agreeable to myself."

"Very well, General," said the carter. "I differ with you in politics, but I'll stick by you as long as there is a drop of blood in my body."

Hamilton turned to him with that illumination of feature which was not the least of his gifts, then to the mob with the same smile, and lifted his hat above a profound bow. "I never turned my back upon my enemy," he said, "I certainly shall not flee from those who have always been my friends."

The crowd burst into an electrified roar. "Three cheers for General Hamilton!" cried the carter, promptly, and they responded as one man. Then they lifted him from his horse and bore him on their shoulders to the poll. He deposited his ballot, and after addressing them to the sound of incessant cheering, was permitted to ride away. The incident both amused and disgusted him, but he needed no further illustrations of the instability of the common mind.

The Republicans won. On the night of the 2d it was known that the Federalists had lost the city by a Republican majority of four hundred and ninety votes.

A few weeks before, when uncertainties were thickest, Hamilton had written to William Smith, who was departing for Constantinople: "... You see I am in a humour to laugh. What can we do better in _this best of all possible worlds?_ Should you ever be shut up in the seven towers, or get the plague, if you are a true philosopher you will consider this only as a laughing matter."

He laughed--though not with the gaiety of his youth--as he walked home to-night through the drunken yelling crowds of William Street, more than one fist thrust in his face. His son Philip was with him, and his cousin, Robert Hamilton of Grange, who had come over two years before to enlist under the command of the American relative of whom his family were vastly proud. A berth had been found for him in the navy, as better suited to his talents, and he spent his leisure at 26 Broadway. Both the younger men looked crestfallen and anxious. Philip, who resembled his father so closely that Morris called him "his heir indubitate," looked, at the moment, the older of the two. Ill health had routed the robust appearance of Hamilton's early maturity, and his slender form, which had lost none of its activity or command, his thin face, mobile, piercing, fiery, as ever, made him appear many years younger than his age.

"Why do you laugh, sir?" asked Philip, as they turned into Wall Street, "I feel as if the end of the world had come."

"That is the time to laugh, my dear boy. When you see the world you have educated scampering off through space, the retreat led by the greatest rascal in the country, your humour, if you have any, is bound to respond. Moreover, there is always something humorous in one's downfall, and a certain relief. The worst is over."

"But, Cousin Alexander," said Robert Hamilton, "surely this is not ultimate defeat for you? You will not give up the fight after the first engagement--you!"

"Oh, no! not I!" cried Hamilton. "I shall fight on until I have made Thomas Jefferson President of the United States. Should I not laugh? Was any man ever in so ironical a situation before? I shall move heaven and America to put Pinckney in the chair, and I shall fail; and to save the United States from Burr I shall turn over the country I have made to my bitterest enemy."

"That would not be my way of doing, sir," said Robert. "I'd fight the rival chieftain to his death. Perhaps this Burr is not so real a Catiline as you think him. Nobody has a good word for him, but I mean he may not have the courage for so dangerous an act as usurpation."

"Courage is just the one estimable if misdirected quality possessed by Burr, and, whetted by his desperate plight, no length would daunt him. A year or two ago he hinted to me that I had thrown away my opportunities. Pressed, he admitted that I was a fool not to have changed the government when I could. When I reminded him that I could only have done such a thing by turning traitor, he replied, 'Les grands âmes se soucient peu des petits moraux.' It was not worth while to reason with a man who had neither little morals nor great ones, so I merely replied that from the genius and situation of the country the thing was impracticable; and he answered, 'That depends on the estimate we form of the human passions, and of the means of influencing them.' Burr would neither regard a scheme of usurpation as visionary,--he is sanguine and visionary to a degree that will be his ruin,--nor be restrained by any reluctance to occupy an infamous place in history."

They had reached his doorstep in the Broadway. The house was lighted. Through the open windows of the drawing-room poured a musical torrent. Angelica, although but sixteen, shook life and soul from the cold keys of the piano, and was already ambitious to win fame as a composer. To-night she was playing extemporaneously, and Hamilton caught his breath. In the music was the thunder of the hurricane he so often had described to his children, the piercing rattle of the giant castinets [sic], the roar and crash of artillery, the screaming of the trees, the furious rush of the rain. Robert Hamilton thought it was a battlepiece, but involuntarily he lifted his hat. As the wonderful music finished with the distant roar of the storm's last revolutions, Hamilton turned to his cousin with the cynicism gone from his face and his eyes sparkling with pride and happiness.

"What do I care for Burr?" he exclaimed. "Or for Jefferson? Has any man ever had a home, a family, like mine? Let them do their worst. Beyond that door they cannot go."

"Burr can put a bullet into you, sir," said Robert Hamilton, soberly. "And he is just the man to do it. Jefferson is too great a coward. For God's sake be warned in time."

Hamilton laughed and ran up the stoop. His wife was in the drawing-room with Angelica, who was white and excited after the fever of composition. Mrs. Hamilton, too, was pale, for she had heard the news. But mettle had been bred in her, and her spirits never dropped before public misfortune. She had altered little in the last seven years. In spite of her seven children her figure was as slim as in her girlhood, her hair was as black, her skin retained its old union of amber and claret. The lingering girlishness in her face had departed after a memorable occasion, but her prettiness had gained in intellect and character; piquant and roguish, at times, as it still was. It was seven years since she had applied her clever brain to politics and public affairs generally--finance excepting--and with such unwearied persistence that Hamilton had never had another excuse to seek companionship elsewhere. Moreover, she had returned to her former care of his papers, she encouraged him to read to her whatever he wrote, and was necessary to him in all ways. She loved him to the point of idolatry, but she kept her eye on him, nevertheless, and he wandered no more. When he could not accompany her to Saratoga in summer, she sent the children with one of her sisters, and remained with him, no matter what the temperature, or the age of a baby. But she made herself so charming that if he suspected the surveillance he was indifferent, and grateful for her companionship and the intelligent quality of her sympathy. Elizabeth Hamilton never was a brilliant woman, but she became a remarkably strong-minded and sensible one. Femininely she was always adorable. Although relieved of the heavier social duties since the resignation from the Cabinet, Hamilton's fame and the popularity of both forced them into a prominent position in New York society. They entertained constantly at dinner, and during the past seven years many distinguished men besides Talleyrand had sat at their hospitable board: Louis Philippe d'Orleans,--supported for several years by Gouverneur Morris,--the Duc de Montpensier, the Duke of Kent, John Singleton Copley, subsequently, so eminent as jurist and statesman, Kosciusko, Count Niemcewicz, the novelist, poet, dramatist, and historian, were but a few. All travellers of distinction brought letters to Hamilton, for, not excepting Washington, he was to Europeans the most prosilient of Americans. If there had been little decrease of hard work during these years, there had been social and domestic pleasures, and Hamilton could live in the one or the other with equal thoroughness. He was very proud of his wife's youthful appearance, and to-night he reproached her for losing so many hours of rest.

"Could anyone sleep in this racket?" she demanded, lightly. "You must be worn out. Come into the dining room and have supper."

And they all enjoyed their excellent meal of hot oysters, and dismissed politics until the morrow.

III

But if Hamilton consigned politics to oblivion at midnight and slept for the few hours demanded by outraged nature, he plunged from the crystal of his bath into their reeking blackness early in the morning. He had laughed the night before, but he was in the worst of tempers as he shut his study door behind him. For the first time in his life he was on a battle-ground with no sensation of joy in the coming fight. The business was too ugly and the prospect was almost certain defeat. Were the first battle lost, he knew that a sharper engagement would immediately succeed: his political foresight anticipated the tie, and he alone had a consummate knowledge of the character of Burr. That the Republicans would offer Burr the office of Vice-President was as positive as that Jefferson would be their first and unanimous choice. Clinton and Chancellor Livingston might be more distinguished men than the little politician, but the first was in open opposition to Jefferson, and the second was deaf. Burr's conquest of New York entitled him to reward, and he would accept it and intrigue with every resource of his cunning and address for the larger number of votes, regardless of the will of the people. If the result were a tie, the Federals would incline to anybody rather than Jefferson, and Hamilton would be obliged to throw into the scale his great influence as leader of his party for the benefit of the man he would gladly have attached to a fork and set to toast above the coals of Hell. He had no score to settle with Burr, but to permit him to become President of the United States would be a crime for which the leader of the Federalist party would be held responsible. When the inevitable moment came he should hand over the structure he had created to the man who had desired to rend it from gable to foundation; both because it was the will of the people and because Jefferson was the safer man of the two.

So far his statesmanship triumphed, as it had done in every crisis which he had been called upon to manipulate, and as it would in many more. But for once, and as regarded the first battle, it failed him, and he made no attempt to invoke it. This was the blackest period of his inner life, and there were times when he never expected to emerge from its depths. The threatened loss of the magnificent power he had wielded, the hatreds that possessed and overwhelmed him, the seeming futility of almost a lifetime of labour, sacrifices without end and prodigal dispensing of great gifts, the constant insults of his enemies, and the public ingratitude, had saturated his spirit with a raging bitterness and roused the deadliest passions of his nature. The marah he had passed through while a member of the Cabinet was shallow compared to the depths in which he almost strangled to-day. Not only was this the final accumulation, but the inspiring and sustaining affection, the circumscribing bulwark, of Washington was gone from him. "He was an Aegis very essential to me," he had said sadly, and he felt his loss more every day that he lived.

He knew there was just one chance to save the Presidency to the Federalist party. Did he employ the magic of his pen to recreate the popularity of John Adams, it was more than possible that thousands would gladly permit the leader they had followed for years to persuade them they had judged too hastily the man of whom they had expected too much. But by this time there was one man Hamilton hated more implacably than Jefferson, and that was John Adams. Besides the thorough disapproval of the Administration of Adams, which, as a statesman, he shared with all the eminent Federals in the country, his personal counts with this enemy piled to heaven. Adams had severed the party he had created, endeavoured to humiliate him before the country, refused, after Washington's death, to elevate him to his rightful position as General-in-chief of the army he had organized, alienated from him one of the best of his friends, and primarily was answerable for the crushing defeat of yesterday. With one of the Pinckneys at the helm, Hamilton could have defied Jefferson and kept the Democrats out of power; but the man next in eminence to himself in his own party had given his supremacy its death-blow, and it is little wonder if his depths resembled boiling pitch, if the heights of his character had disappeared from his vision. He was, above all things, intensely human, with all good and all evil in him; and although he conquered himself at no very remote period, he felt, at the present moment, like Lucifer whirling through space.

Troup, now a retired judge of the U.S. District Court of New York, and a man of some fortune, ready as of old to be Hamilton's faithful lieutenant, entered and looked with sympathy and more apprehension at his Chief.

"I've not come to bemoan this bad business," he said, sitting down at a desk and taking up his pen. "What next? It looks hopeless, but of course you'll no more cease from effort than one of your Scotch ancestors would have laid down his arms if a rival chieftain had appeared on the warpath with the world at his back. Is it Adams and C.C.P. to the death?"

"It is Pinckney; Adams only in so far as he is useful. He still has his following in the New England States. The leaders in those States, first and second, must be persuaded to work unanimously for Adams and Pinckney, with the distinct understanding that in other States votes for Adams will be thrown away. This, after I have persuaded them of Adams's absolute unfitness for office. If we carry and it comes to a tie, there is no doubt to whom the House will give the election."

Troup whistled. "This is politics!" he said. "I never believed you'd go down to your neck. I wish you'd throw the whole thing over, and retire to private life."

"I shall retire soon enough," said Hamilton, grimly. "But Adams will go first."

Troup knew that it was useless to remonstrate further. He had followed this Captain to the bitter end too often. Underneath the immense sanity of Hamilton's mind was a curious warp of obstinacy, born of implacability and developed far beyond the normal bounds of determination. When this almost perverted faculty was in possession of the brain, Hamilton would pursue his object, did every guardian in his genius, from foresight to acuteness, rise in warning. His present policy if a failure might be the death of the Federalist party, but the flashing presentiment of that historic disaster did not deter him for a moment.

"It is the time for politics," Hamilton continued. "Statesmanship goes begging. I shall be entirely frank about it, for that matter. There will be no underhand scheming, Adams is welcome to know every step I take. The correspondence must begin at once. I'll make out a list for you. I shall begin with Wolcott."

IV

When the tidings of the New York election reached Philadelphia, the Federals of the House met in alarmed and hurried conference. In their desperation they agreed to ask Hamilton to appeal to the Governor of New York, John Jay, to reconvene the existing legislature that it might enact a law authorizing in that State the choice of Presidential electors in districts. Why they did not send a memorial to Jay themselves, instead of placing Hamilton in a position to incur the full odium of such a suggestion, can only be explained by the facts that during the entire span of the party's existence, their leader had cheerfully assumed the responsibility in every emergency or crisis, and that if the distinguished formalist in the Executive Mansion of New York had a weak spot in him, it was for Hamilton.

When Hamilton read this portentous letter, he flushed deeply and then turned white. The expedient had not occurred to him, but it was too near of kin to his disapproval of a provision which had delivered the State into the hands of an industrious rascal, not to strike an immediate response; especially in his present frame of mind. He was alone with his wife at the moment, and he handed her the letter. She read it twice, then laid it on the table. "It savours very much of fraud, to me," she said. "Why do politics so often go to the head?"

"Sometimes one sort rises as an antidote to another. There comes a time in human affairs when one is forced into a position of choosing between two evils; a time when the scruples of delicacy and propriety, as relative to a common course of things, ought to yield to the extraordinary nature of the crisis."

"Right is right, and wrong is wrong," said Betsey, with her Dutch sturdiness. "This measure--were it adopted by Mr. Jay--would merely mean that the party in power was taking an unconstitutional advantage of its situation to nullify the victories gained by the other."

"The victories you speak of were won by fraud and every unworthy device. I am not arguing that, such being the case, we are justified in turning their weapons upon them, but that for the good of the country the enemy should be suppressed before they are able to accomplish its demoralization, if not its ruin. The triumph of Jefferson and Jacobinism, the flourishing of Democracy upon the ruins of Federalism, too long a taste of power by the States rights fanatics, means, with the weak spots in our Constitution, civil war. Burr has sowed the seeds of municipal corruption, which, if the sower be rewarded by the second office in the gift of the people, will spread all over the Union. That many in the ranks of Democracy are in the pay of France, and design the overthrow of the Government, there is not a shadow of doubt. If Jefferson should die in office, or a tie, in spite of all I could do, should give the Presidency to Burr, there is nothing that man's desperate temper would not drive him to accomplish during the time remaining to him--for he will never be the first choice of the Democrats. Therefore, I shall propose this measure to Jay in the course of the next two or three days, unless upon mature deliberation I alter my present opinion that the grave crisis in national affairs justifies it, or I conceive something better."

"You will violate your higher principles," said his wife, who had matured in a previous era. "And it will be a terrible weapon for your enemies."

"I have now reached that happy point where I am entirely indifferent to the broadsides of my enemies; and I believe that if I conclude to take this step, my conscience--and history--will justify me." "If you succeed," said Betsey, shrewdly. "But Mr. Jay is very rigid, and he lacks your imagination, your terrible gift of seeing the future in a flash."

"It is quite true that I have little hope of persuading Jay; as little as I have of endowing him with the gift of foresight. But, if I think best, I shall make the attempt, and whatever the consequences, I shall not regret it."

Betsey said no more. She knew the exact amount of remonstrance Hamilton would stand, and she never exceeded it. When his fighting armour was on, no human being could influence him beyond a certain point, and she was too wise to risk her happiness. Although he was too careful of her to let her suspect the hideous conflicts which raged in his soul, she was fully aware of his bitter obstinacy, and that he was the best hater in the country. She had many gloomy forebodings, for she anticipated the terrible strain on what was left of his constitution.

There was one person who, through her inherited intuitions, understood Hamilton, and that was Angelica. He had kept her at arm's length, great as the temptation to have a sympathetic confidant had been, particularly after he had withdrawn from the intimate companionship of Washington; she was so highly wrought and sensitive, so prone to hysteria, that he had never yielded for a moment, even when she turned her head slowly toward him and stared at him with eyes that read his very soul. On the evening after the elections he had played and sung with her for an hour, then talked for another with Philip, who was the most promising student of Columbia College, a youth of fine endowments and elevated character. He was the pride and delight of Hamilton, who could throttle both apprehensions and demons while discussing his son's future, and listening to his college trials and triumphs. Upon this particular evening Angelica had suddenly burst into tears and left the room. The next morning Hamilton sent her to Saratoga; and, much as he loved her, it was with profound relief that he arranged her comfortably on the deck of the packet-boat.

On the 7th he wrote to the Governor; but, as he had feared, Jay would take no such audacious leap out of his straight and narrow way. The letter was published in the _Aurora_ before it reached Albany, and Hamilton had reason to believe that Burr had a spy in the post-office.

Hamilton executed the orders for disbanding the army, then made a tour of several of the New England States, holding conferences and speaking continually. He found the first-class leaders at one with him as to the danger of entrusting the Executive office to Adams a second time, and favourably inclined to Pinckney. But the second-rate men of influence were still enthusiastic for the President, and extolling him for saving the country from war. Hamilton listened to them with no attempt to conceal his impatience. He pointed out that if Talleyrand had made up his mind that it was best to avoid a war, he would have made a second and regular overture, which could have been accepted without humiliation to the country, and the severance of the Federalist party.

As if Adams had not done enough to rouse the deadly wrath of Hamilton, he announced right and left that the Federalist defeat in New York had been planned by his arch enemy, with the sole purpose of driving himself from office; that there was a British faction in the country and that Hamilton was its chief. He drove Pickering and M'Henry from his Cabinet with contumely, as the only immediate retaliation he could think of, and Wolcott would have followed, had there been anyone to take his place. Franklin once said of Adams that he was always honest, sometimes great, and often mad. Probably so large an amount of truth has never again been condensed into an epigram. If Adams had not become inflamed with the ambition that has ruined the lives and characters of so many Americans, he would have come down to posterity as a great man, with a record of services to his country which would have scattered his few mistakes into the unswept corners of oblivion. But autocratic, irritable, and jealous, all the infirmities of his temper as brittle with years as the blood-vessels of his brain, the most exacting office in the civilized world taxed him too heavily. It is interesting to speculate upon what he might have been in this final trial of his public career, had Hamilton died as he took the helm of State. If Hamilton's enemies very nearly ruined his own character, there is no denying that he exerted an almost malign influence upon them. To those he loved or who appealed to the highest in him he gave not only strength, but an abundance of sweetness and light, illuminating mind and spirit, and inspiring an affection that was both unselfish and uplifting. But his enemies hated him so frantically that their characters measurably deteriorated; to ruin or even disconcert him they stooped and intrigued and lied; they were betrayed into public acts which lowered them in their own eyes and in those of all students of history. Other hatreds were healthy and stimulating by comparison; but there is no doubt that Adams, Jefferson, and Madison fell far lower than they would have done had Hamilton never shot into the American heavens, holding their fields at his pleasure, and paling the fires of large and ambitious stars.

The political excitement in the country by this time surpassed every previous convulsion to such an extent that no man prominent in the contest could appear on the street without insult. Although he never knew it, Hamilton, every time he left the house, was shadowed by his son Philip, Robert Hamilton, Troup, John Church, or Philip Church. For the Democratic ammunition and public fury alike were centred on Hamilton. Adams came in for his share, but the Democrats regarded his doom as sealed, and Hamilton, as ever, the Colossus to be destroyed. The windows of the bookshops were filled with pamphlets, lampoons, and cartoons. The changes were rung on the aristocratical temper and the monarchical designs of the leader of the Federalists, until Hamilton was sick of the sight of himself with his nose in the air and a crown on his head, his train borne by Jay, Cabot, Sedgwick, and Bayard. The people were warned in every issue of the _Aurora, Chronicle_, and other industrious sheets, that Hamilton was intriguing to drive the Democratic States to secession, that he might annihilate them at once with his army and his navy. The Reynolds affair was retold once a week, with degrading variations, and there was no doubt that spies were nosing the ground in every direction to obtain evidence of another scandal to vary the monotony. Mrs. Croix, being Queen of the Jacobins, was safe, so press and pamphlet indulged in wild generalities of debauchery and rapine. It must be confessed that Jefferson fared no better in the Federalist sheets. He was a huge and hideous spider, spinning in a web full of seduced citizens; he meditated a resort to arms, did he lose the election. As to his private vices, they saddled him with an entire harem, and a black one at that.

When Hamilton heard that Adams had asserted that he was the chief of a British faction, he wrote to the President, demanding an explanation; and his note had that brief and frigid courtesy which indicated that he was in his most dangerous temper. Adams ignored it. Hamilton waited a reasonable time, then wrote again; but Adams was now too infuriated to care whether or not he committed the unpardonable error of insulting the most distinguished man in the country. He was in a humour to insult the shade of Washington, and he delighted in every opportunity to wreak vengeance on Hamilton, and would have died by his hand rather than placate him.

Then Hamilton took the step he had meditated for some time past, one which had received the cordial sanction of Wolcott, and the uneasy and grudging acquiescence of Cabot, Ames, Carroll of Carrollton, Bayard, and a few other devoted but conservative supporters. He wrote, for the benefit of the second-class leaders, who must be persuaded to cast their votes for Pinckney, to vindicate Pickering and M'Henry, and--it would be foolish to ignore it--to gratify his deep personal hatred, the pamphlet called "The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States." His temper did not flash in it for a second. It was written in his most concise and pointed, his most lucid and classic, manner; and nothing so damning ever flowed from mortal brain. He set forth all Adams's virtues and services with judicial impartiality. There they were for all to read. Let no man forget them. Then he counterbalanced and overbalanced them by the weaknesses, jealousies, and other temperamental defects which had arisen in evidence with the beginnings of the President's public career. He drilled holes in poor Adams's intellect which proved its unsoundness and its unfitness for public duty, and he lashed him without mercy for his public mistakes and for his treatment of his Secretaries and himself. It was a life history on ivory, and a masterpiece; and there is no friend of Hamilton's who would not sacrifice the memory of one of his greatest victories for the privilege of unwriting it.

This was one of his creations that he did not read to his wife, but Troup was permitted a glance at the manuscript. He dropped it to the floor, and his face turned white. "Do you intend to publish this thing?" he demanded. "And with your name signed in full?"

"I intend to print it. I had every intention of scattering it broadcast, but I have yielded to the dissuasions of men whose opinions I am bound to respect, and it will go only to them and to the second-class leaders as yet unconvinced. To their entreaties that I would not sign my name I have not listened, because such a work, if anonymous, would be both cowardly and futile. The point is to let those for whom it is intended know that a person in authority is talking; and anonymous performances are legitimate only when published and unmistakable, when given in that form as a concession to the fashion of the age."

Troup groaned. "And if it falls into the enemy's hands?"

"In that case, what a hideous opportunity it would enclose, were it unsigned."

"Oh, sign it!" said Troup, wildly. He set his heel on the manuscript, and looked tentatively at Hamilton. He knew the meaning of the expression he encountered, and removed his heel. It was months since he had seen the gay sparkle in Hamilton's eyes, humour and sweetness curving his mouth. When Hamilton's mouth was not as hard as iron, it relaxed to cynicism or contempt. He was so thin that the prominence of the long line from ear to chin and of the high hard nose, with its almost rigid nostrils, would have made him look more old Roman coin than man, had it not been for eyes like molten steel. "Politics and ambition!" thought Troup. "What might not the world be without them?"

"Let us change the subject," he said. "I hear that Mrs. Croix makes a convert an hour from Federalism to Democracy. That is the estimate. And a small and select band know that she does it in the hope of hastening your ruin. I must say, Hamilton, that as far as women are concerned, you are punished far beyond your deserts. There is hardly a man in public life who has not done as much, or worse, but the world is remarkably uninterested, and the press finds any other news more thrilling. The Reynolds woman is probably responsible for many remorseful twinges in the breasts of eminent patriots, but your name alone is given to the public. As for Mrs. Croix, I don't suppose that any mere mortal has ever resisted her, but if any other man has regretted it, history is silent. What do you suppose is the reason?"

Hamilton would not discuss Mrs. Croix, but he had long since ceased to waste breath in denial. He made no reply.

"Do you know my theory?" said Troup, turning upon him suddenly. "It is this. You are so greatly endowed that more is expected of you than of other men. You were fashioned to make history; to give birth, not for your own personal good, but for the highest good of a nation, to the greatest achievement of which the human mind is capable. Therefore, when you trip and stumble like any fool among us, when you act like a mere mortal with no gigantic will and intellect to lift him to the heights and keep him there, some power in the unseen universe is infuriated, and you pay the price with compound interest. It will be the same with that thing on the floor. If you could be sure that it would never fall into the hands of a Jacobin, even then it would be a mistake to print it, for it is mainly prompted by hatred, and as such is unworthy of you. But if it finds its way to the public, your punishment will be even in excess of your fault. For God's sake think it over."

Hamilton made no reply, and in a moment Troup rose. "Very well," he said, "have your own way and be happy. I'll stand by you if the citadel falls."

Hamilton's eyes softened, and he shook Troup's hands heartily. But as soon as he was alone, he sent the manuscript to the printer.

V

M.L. Davis, the authentic biographer of Burr, tells this interesting anecdote concerning the Adams pamphlet:--'

Colonel Burr ascertained the contents of this pamphlet, and that it was in the press. The immediate publication, he knew, must distract the Federal party, and thus promote the Republican cause in those States where the elections had not taken place. Arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon as the printing of it was completed; and when obtained, John Swartwout, Robert Swartwout, and Matthew L. Davis, by appointment met Colonel Burr at his house. The pamphlet was read, and extracts made for the press. They were immediately published.

When Hamilton read the voluminous extracts in the marked copies of the Democratic papers which he found on the table in his chambers in Garden Street, his first sensation was relief; subterranean methods were little to his liking. He was deeply uneasy, however, when he reflected upon the inevitable consequences to his party, and wondered that his imagination for once had failed him. Everyone who has written with sufficient power to incite antagonism, knows the apprehensive effect of extracts lifted maliciously from a carefully wrought whole. Hamilton felt like a criminal until he plunged into the day's work, when he had no time for an accounting with his conscience. He was in court all day, and after the five o'clock dinner at home, returned to his office and worked on an important brief until eight. Then he paid a short call on a client, and was returning home through Pearl Street, when he saw Troup bearing down upon him. This old comrade's face was haggard and set, and his eyes were almost wild. Hamilton smiled grimly. That expression had stamped the Federal visage since morning.

Troup reached Hamilton in three strides, and seizing him by the arm, pointed to the upper story of Fraunces' Tavern. "Alec," he said hoarsely, "do you remember the vow you made in that room twenty-five years ago? You have kept it until to-day. There is not an instance in your previous career where you have sacrificed the country to yourself. No man in history ever made greater sacrifices, and no man has had a greater reward in the love and loyalty of the best men in a nation. And now, to gratify the worst of your passions, you have betrayed your country into the hands of the basest politicians in it. Moreover, all your enemies could not drag you down, and no man in history has ever been assailed by greater phalanxes than you have been. It took you--yourself--to work your own ruin, to pull your party down on top of you, and send the country we have all worked so hard for to the devil. I love you better than anyone on earth, and I'll stick to you till the bitter end, but I'd have this say if you never spoke to me again."

Hamilton dropped his eyes from the light in the familiar room of Fraunces' Tavern, but the abyss he seemed to see at his feet was not the one yawning before his friend's excited imagination. He did not answer for a moment, and then he almost took away what was left of Troup's breath.

"You are quite right," he said. "And what I have most to be thankful for in life, is that I have never attracted that refuse of mankind who fawn and flatter; or have dismissed them in short order," he added, with his usual regard for facts. "Come and breakfast with me to-morrow. Good night."

He walked home quickly, told the servant at the door that he was not to be disturbed, and locked himself in his study. He lit one candle, then threw himself into his revolving chair, and thought until the lines in his face deepened to the bone, and only his eyes looked alive. He wasted no further regrets on the political consequences of his act. What was done, was done. Nor did he anticipate any such wholesale disaster as had distracted the Federalists since the morning issues. He knew the force of habit and the tenacity of men's minds. His followers would be aghast, harshly critical for a day, then make every excuse that ingenuity could suggest, unite in his defence, and follow his lead with redoubled loyality. His foresight had long since leaped to the end of this conflict, for the Democratic hordes had been augmenting for years; his own party was hopelessly divided and undermined by systematic slander. To fight was second nature, no matter how hopeless the battle; but in those moments of almost terrifying prescience so common to him, he realized the inevitableness of the end, as history does to-day. His only chance had been to placate Adams and recreate his enemy's popularity.

The day never came when he was able to say that he might have done this at the only time when such action would have counted. He had been inexorable until the pamphlet was flung to the public; and then, although he was hardly conscious of it at the moment, he was immediately dispossessed of the intensity of his bitterness toward Adams. The revenge had been so terrible, so abrupt, that his hatred seemed disseminating in the stolen leaves fluttering through the city. Therefore his mind was free for the appalling thought which took possession of it as Troup poured out his diatribe; and this thought was, that he was no longer conscious of any greatness in him. Through all the conflicts, trials, and formidable obstacles of previous years he had been sustained by his consciousness of superlative gifts combined with loftiness of purpose. Had not his greatness been dinned into his ears, he would have been as familiar with it. But he seemed to himself to have shrivelled, his very soul might have been in ashes--incremated in the flames of his passions. He had triumphed over every one of his enemies in turn. Historically he was justified, and had he accomplished the same end impersonally, they would have been the only sufferers, and in the just degree. But he had boiled them in the vitriol of his nature; he had scarred them and warped them and destroyed their self-respect. Had these raging passions been fed with other vitalities? Had they ravaged his soul to nourish his demons? Was that his punishment,--an instance of the inexorable law of give and take?

He recalled the white heat of patriotism with which he had written the revolutionary papers of his boyhood, the numberless pamphlets which had finally roused the States to meet in convention and give the wretched country a Constitutional Government, "_The Federalist_"; which had spurred him to the great creative acts that must immortalize him in history. He contrasted that patriotic fire with the spirit in which he had written the Adams pamphlet. The fire had gone out, and the precipitation was gall and worm-wood. Even the spirit in which he had first attacked Jefferson in print was righteous indignation by comparison.

Had he hated his soul to cinders? Had the bitterness and the implacability he had encouraged for so many years bitten their acids through and through the lofty ideals which once had been the larger part of himself? Had the angel in him fallen to the bottom of the pit in that frightful nethermost region of his, for his cynical brain to mock, until that, too, was in its grave? He thought of the high degree of self-government, almost the perfection, that Washington had attained,--one of the most passionate men that had ever lived. Did that great Chieftain stand alone in the history of souls? He thought of Laurens, with his early despair that self-conquest seemed impossible. Would he have conquered, had he lived? What would he or Washington think, were they present to-night? Would they hate him, or would their love be proof against even this abasement? He passionately wished they were there, whether they came to revile or console. Isolated and terror-stricken, he felt as if thrust for ever from the world of living men.

His mind had been turned in, every faculty bent introspectively, but for some moments past his consciousness had vibrated mechanically to an external influence. It flew open suddenly, as he realized that someone was watching him, and he wheeled his chair opposite the dusk in the lower end of the room. For a moment it, seemed to him that every function in him ceased and was enveloped in ice. A face rested lightly on the farther end of the long table, the fair hair floating on either side of it, the eyes fixed upon him with an expression that flashed him back to St. Croix and the last weeks of his mother's life. He fancied in that moment that he could even discern the earthen hue of the skin. When he realized that it was Angelica, he was hardly less startled, but he found his voice.

"When did you return?" he asked, in as calm a tone as he could command. "And why did you hide in here?"

"I came down with Grandpa, who made up his mind in a minute. And I came in here to be sure to have a little talk with you alone. I was going to surprise you as soon as you lit the candle, and then your face frightened me. It is worse now."

Her voice was hardly audible, and she did not move. Hamilton went down and lifted her to her feet, then supported her to a chair opposite his own. He made no search for an excuse, for he would not have dared to offer it to this girl, whose spiritual recesses he suddenly determined to probe. Between her and the dead woman there was a similarity that was something more than superficially atavistic. His practical brain refused to speculate even upon the doctrine of metempsychosis. He was like his mother in many ways. That unique and powerful personality had stamped his brain cells when he was wholly hers. He recalled that his own soul had echoed faintly with memories in his youth. What wonder that he had given this inheritance to the most sensitively constituted of his children, whose musical genius, the least sane of all gifts, put her in touch with the greater mysteries of the Universe? That nebulous memories moved like ghosts in her soul he did not doubt, nor that at such moments she was tormented with vague maternal pangs. He conquered his first impulse to confess himself to her; doubtless she needed more help than he. She was staring at him in mingled terror and agony.

"Why do you suffer so when I suffer?" he asked gently; then bluntly, "do you yearn over me as if I were your child, and in peril?"

"Yes," she answered, without betraying any surprise; "that is it. I have a terrible feeling of responsibility and helplessness, of understanding and knowing nothing. I feel sometimes as if I had done you a great wrong, for which I suffer when you are in trouble, and I am no more use to you than John or little Eliza. If you would tell me. If you would let me share it with you. You remember I begged as a child. You have made believe to tell me secrets many times, but you have told me nothing. My imagination has nearly shattered me."

"Do you wish to know?" he asked. "Are you strong enough to see me as I see myself to-night? I warn you it will be a glimpse into Hell."

"I don't care what it is," she answered, "so long as it is the reality, and you let me know you as I do underneath my blindness and ignorance."

Then he told her. He talked to her as he would have talked to the dead had she risen, although without losing his sense of her identity for a moment, or the consciousness of the danger of the experiment. He showed her what few mortals have seen, a naked soul with its scars, its stains, and its ravages from flame and convulsion. He need not have apprehended a disastrous result. She was compounded of his essences, and her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius. She listened intently, the expression of torment displaced by normal if profound sympathy. He had begun with the passions inspired by Jefferson; he finished with the climax of deterioration in the revenge he had taken on Adams, and the abyss of despair into which it had plunged him. He drew a long breath of relief, and regarded his little judge with some defiance. She nodded.

"I feel old and wise," she said, "and at the same time much younger, because I no longer shrink from a load on my mind I cannot understand. And you--it has all gone." She darted at the candle and held it to his face. "You look twenty years younger than when you sat there and thought. I believed you were dying of old age."

"I feel better," he admitted, "But nothing can obliterate the scars. And although I shall always be young at intervals, remember that I have crowded three lifetimes into one, and that I must pay the penalty spiritually and physically, although mentally I believe I shall hold my own until the end." He leaned forward on a sudden impulse and took both her hands. "I make you a vow," he said, "and I have never broken even a promise--or only one," he added, remembering Troup's accusation. "I will drive the bitterness out of myself and I will hate no more. My public acts shall be unaccompanied by personal bitterness henceforth. Not a vengeance that I have accomplished has been worth the hideous experience of to-night, and so long as I live I shall have no cause to repeat it."

"If you ever broke that vow," said Angelica, "I should either die or go crazy, for you would sink and never rise again."

VI

As Hamilton had anticipated, the Jacobin press shouted and laughed itself hoarse, vowed that it never could have concocted so effective a bit of campaign literature, and that the ursine roars of Adams could be heard from Dan to Beersheba. Burr, as yet undetected, almost danced as he walked. The windows were filled with parodies of the pamphlet, entitled, "The Last Speech and Dying Words of Alexander Hamilton," "Hamilton's Last Letter and His Amorous Vindication," "A Free Examination of the Morals, Political and Literary Characters of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton." One cartoon displayed the sinking ship _Administration_, with the Federal rats scuttling out of her, and Hamilton standing alone on the deck; another, "The Little Lion" sitting, dejected and forlorn, outside the barred gates of "Hamiltonopolis." The deep, silent laughter of Jefferson shook the continent.

The Federalist leaders were furious and aghast. But they recovered, and when the time came, every Federalist delegate to the Electoral College, with one exception, voted precisely as Hamilton had counselled. South Carolina deserted Pinckney because he would not desert Adams, but she would have pursued that policy had the pamphlet never been written; and whether it affected the defeat of the Federalists in Pennsylvania and other States is doubtful. The publication in August of Adams's letter to Tench Coxe, written in 1792, when he was bitterly disappointed at Washington's refusal to send him as minister to England, and asserting that the appointment of Pinckney was due to British influence, thus casting opprobrium upon the integrity of Washington, had done as much as Hamilton's pamphlet, if not more, to damn him finally with the Federalists. Hamilton's chief punishment for his thunderbolt was in his conscience, and his leadership of his party was not questioned for a moment. He expected a paternal rebuke from General Schuyler, but that old warrior, severe always with the delinquencies of his own children, had found few faults in his favourite son-in-law; and he took a greater pride in his career than he had taken in his own. Now that gout and failing sight had forced him from public life, he found his chief enjoyment in Hamilton's society. General Schuyler survived the death of several of his children and of his wife, but Hamilton's death killed him. Assuredly, life dealt generously with our hero in the matter of fathers, despite or because of an early oversight. James Hamilton had never made the long and dangerous journey to the North, and he had died on St. Vincent, in 1799, but what filial regret his son might have dutifully experienced was swept away on the current of the overwhelming grief for Washington. And as for mothers, charming elder sisters, and big brothers, eager to fight his battles, no man was ever so blest. In December Hamilton received the following letter from William Vans Murray:--

Paris, Oct. 9th, 1800.

Dear Sir: I was extremely flattered by the confidence which your letter by Mr. Colbert proved you have in my disposition to follow your wishes. A letter from you is no affair of ceremony. It is an obligation on any man who flatters himself with the hope of your personal esteem. Mr. Colbert gave it to me yesterday. I immediately, in particular, addressed a letter to Bonaparte, and made use of your name, which I was sure would be pleasing to him. To-day I dined with him. The Secretary of State assured me that he received it kindly, and I can hope something good from him. If any come it will be your work. I never before spoke or wrote to Bonaparte on any affair other than public business. It will be very pleasing to you if we succeed, that your silent agency works good to the unhappy and meritorious at such a distance. I know nothing better belonging to reputation.

Poor Adams!

General Davie arrived by the next ship, bringing with him a convention concluded with France on the 30th of October. He also brought a letter to Hamilton from one of the commission, with a copy of the document and a journal of the proceedings of the negotiators. The writer was Oliver Ellsworth, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Adams might occupy the chair of State, but to the Federals Hamilton was President in all but name.

Sedgwick and Gouverneur Morris, now a member of the Senate, not knowing of the communication, wrote immediately to Hamilton, acquainting him with the contents of the treaty.

It contains no stipulation for satisfaction of the injuries we have received [Sedgwick wrote in wrath]. It makes the treaty of '78 a subject for future negotiation. It engages that we shall return, in the condition they now are, all our captures. It makes neutral bottoms a protection to their cargoes, and it contains a stipulation directly in violation of the 25th article of our treaty with Great Britain. Such are the blessed effects of our mission! These are the ripened fruits of this independent Administration! Our friends in the Senate are not enough recovered from their astonishment to begin to reflect on the course they shall pursue.

This treaty was a far more deadly weapon in Hamilton's hands than the entire arsenal he had manipulated in his pamphlet, for campaign literature is often pickled and retired with the salt of its readers. But did this mission fail, did Adams lose his only chance of justification for sending the commission at all, did the Senate refuse to ratify, and war break out, or honourable terms of peace be left to the next President, then Adams's Administration must be stamped in history as a failure, and he himself retire from office covered with ignominy. But had Hamilton not recovered his balance and trimmed to their old steady duty the wicks of those lamps whose brilliance had dimmed in a stormy hour, his statesmanship would have controlled him in such a crisis as this. He knew that the rejection of the treaty would shatter the Federal party and cause national schisms and discords; that, if left over to a Jacobin administration, the result would be still worse for the United States. It was a poor thing, but no doubt the best that could have been extracted from triumphant France; nor was it as bad in some respects as the irritated Senate would have it. Such as it was, it must be ratified, peace placed to the credit of the Federalists, and the act of the man they had made President justified. Hamilton was obliged to write a great many letters on the subject, for the Federalists found it a bitter pill to swallow; but he prevailed and they swallowed it.

Meanwhile, the Electoral College had met. Adams had received sixty-five votes, Pinckney sixty-four, Jefferson and Burr seventy-three each. That threw the decision upon the House of Representatives, for Burr refused to recognize the will of the people, and withdraw in favour of the man whom the Democratic hemisphere of American politics had unanimously elected. Burr had already lost caste with the party by his attempts to secure more votes than the leaders were willing to give him, and had alarmed Jefferson into strenuous and diplomatic effort, the while he piously folded his visible hands or discoursed upon the bones of the mammoth. When Burr, therefore, permitted the election to go to the House, he was flung out of the Democratic party neck and crop, and Jefferson treated him like a dog until he killed Hamilton, when he gave a banquet in his honour. Burr's only chance for election lay with the Federalists, who would rather have seen horns and a tail in the Executive Chair than Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton had anticipated their hesitation and disposition to bargain with Burr, and he bombarded them with letters from the moment the Electoral College announced the result, until the House decided the question on the 17th of February. He analyzed Burr for the benefit of the anxious members until the dark and poisonous little man must have haunted their dreams at night. Whether they approached Burr or not will never be known; but they were finally convinced that to bargain with a man as unfigurable as water would be throwing away time which had far better be employed in extracting pledges from Jefferson.

One of Hamilton's letters to Gouverneur Morris, who wielded much influence in the House, is typical of many.

... Another subject. _Jefferson or Burr_? The former beyond a doubt. The latter in my judgement has no principle, public or private; could be bound by no agreement; will listen to no monitor but his ambition; and for this purpose will use the worst portion of the community as a ladder to climb to permanent power, and an instrument to crush the better part. He is bankrupt beyond redemption, except by the resources that grow out of war and disorder; or by a sale to a foreign power, or by great peculation. War with Great Britain would be the immediate instrument. He is sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to attempt everything, wicked enough to scruple nothing. From the elevation of such a man may heaven preserve the country.

Let our situation be improved to obtain from Jefferson assurances on certain points: the maintenance of the present system, especially on the cardinal articles of public credit--a navy, neutrality. Make any discreet use you may think fit of this letter.

He was deeply alarmed at the tendency of the excited House, which sat in continuous session from the 11th to the 17th, members sleeping on the floor and sick men brought thither on cots, one with his wife in attendance. The South was threatening civil war, and Burr's subsequent career justified his alarm and his warnings; but in spite of his great influence he won his case with his followers by a very small margin. They were under no delusions regarding the character of Burr, their letters to Hamilton abound in strictures almost as severe as his own, but their argument was that he was the less of two evils, that every move he made could be sharply watched. It is quite true that he would have had Federalists and Democrats in both Houses to frustrate him; but it does not seem to have occurred to the former that impeachment would have been inevitable, and Jefferson President but a year or two later than the will of the people decreed. But it was a time of terrible excitement, and for the matter of that their brains must have been a trifle clouded by the unvarying excitement of their lives. Bayard of Delaware, with whom Hamilton had fought over point by point, winning one or more with each letter, changed his vote on the last ballot from Burr to a blank. Hamilton's friends knew that Burr would kill him sooner or later, for the ambitious man had lost his one chance of the great office; but Hamilton chose to see only the humour of the present he had made Thomas Jefferson. That sensible politician had tacitly agreed to the terms suggested by the Federalists, when they debated the possibility of accepting him, and Hamilton knew that he was far too clever to break his word at once. What Hamilton hoped for was what came to pass: Jefferson found the machinery of his new possession more to his taste than he could have imagined while sitting out in the cold, and he let it alone.

VII

Hamilton was now free to devote himself to the practice of law, with but an occasional interruption. It hardly need be stated that he kept a sharp eye on Jefferson, but for the sake of the country he supported him when he could do so consistently with his principles. More than once the President found in him an invaluable ally; and as often, perhaps, he writhed as on a hot gridiron. Hamilton came forth in the pamphlet upon extreme occasions only, but he was still the first political philosopher and writer of his time, and the Federalists would have demanded his pen upon these occasions had he been disposed to retire it. Although out of the active field of politics, he kept the best of the demoralized Federalists together, warning them constantly that the day might come when they would be called upon to reorganize a disintegrated union, and responding to the demands of his followers in Congress for advice. In local politics he continued to make himself felt in spite of the fattening ranks of Democracy. His most powerful instrument was the _New York Evening Post_, which he founded for the purpose of keeping the Federalist cause alive, and holding the enemy in check. He selected an able man as editor, William Coleman of Massachusetts, but he directed the policy of the paper, dictating many of the editorials in the late hours of night. This journal took its position at once as the most respectable and brilliant in the country.

He also founded the Society for the Manumission of Slaves, securing as honorary member the name of Lafayette--now a nobleman at large once more. But all these duties weighed lightly. For the first time in his life he felt himself at liberty to devote himself almost wholly to his practice, and it was not long before he was making fifteen thousand dollars a year. It was an immense income to make in that time, and he could have doubled it had he been less erratic in the matter of fees. Upon one occasion he was sent eight thousand dollars for winning a suit, and returned seven. He invariably placed his own valuation upon a case, and frequently refused large fees that would have been paid with gratitude. If a case interested him and the man who asked his services were poorer than himself, he would accept nothing. If he were convinced that a man was in the wrong, he would not take his case at any price. He was delighted to be able to shower benefits upon his little family, and he would have ceased to be Alexander Hamilton had he been content to occupy a second place at the bar, or in any other pursuit which engaged his faculties; but for money itself, he had only contempt. Perhaps that is the reason why he is so out of tune with the present day, and unknown to the average American.

Washington, after the retirement of John Jay, had offered Hamilton the office of Chief Justice of the United States; but Hamilton felt that the bar was more suited to his activities than the bench, and declined the gift. His legal career was as brilliant and successful as his political, but although none is more familiar to ambitious lawyers, and his position as the highest authority on constitutional law has never been rivalled, his achievements of greater value to the Nation have reduced it in history to the position of an incident. There is little space left, and somewhat of his personal life still to tell, but no story of Hamilton would be complete without at least a glimpse of this particular shuttle in the tireless loom of his brain. Such glimpses have by no one been so sharply given as by his great contemporary, Chancellor Kent.

He never made any argument in court [Kent relates] without displaying his habits of thinking, resorting at once to some well-founded principle of law, and drawing his deductions logically from his premises. Law was always treated by him as a science, founded on established principles.... He rose at once to the loftiest heights of professional eminence, by his profound penetration, his power of analysis, the comprehensive grasp and strength of his understanding, and the firmness, frankness and integrity of his character.... His manners were affable, gentle and kind; and he appeared to be frank, liberal and courteous in all his professional intercourse. [Referring to a particular case the Chancellor continues.] Hamilton by means of his fine melodious voice, and dignified deportment, his reasoning powers and persuasive address, soared far above all competition. His preeminence was at once and universally conceded.... Hamilton returned to private life and to the practice of the law in '95. He was cordially welcomed and cheered on his return, by his fellow citizens. Between this year and 1798, he took his station as the leading counsel at the bar. He was employed in every important and every commercial case. He was a very great favourite with the merchants of New York and he most justly deserved to be, for he had shown himself to be one of the most enlightened, intrepid and persevering friends to the commercial prosperity of this country. Insurance questions, both upon the law and fact, constituted a large portion of the litigated business in the courts, and much of the intense study and discussion at the bar. Hamilton had an overwhelming share of this business.... His mighty mind would at times bear down all opposition by its comprehensive grasp and the strength of his reasoning powers. He taught us all how to probe deeply into the hidden recesses of the science, and to follow up principles to their far distant sources. He ransacked cases and precedents to their very foundations; and we learned from him to carry our inquiries into the commercial codes of the nations of the European continent; and in a special manner to illustrate the law of Insurance by the secure judgement of Emerigon and the luminous commentaries of Valin.... My judicial station in 1798 brought Hamilton before me in a new relation.... I was called to listen with lively interest and high admiration to the rapid exercise of his reasoning powers, the intensity and sagacity with which he pursued his investigations, his piercing criticisms, his masterly analysis, and the energy and fervour of his appeals to the judgement and conscience of the tribunal which he addressed. [In regard to the celebrated case of Croswell vs. the People, in the course of which Hamilton reversed the law of libel, declaring the British interpretation to be inconsistent with the genius of the American people, Kent remarks.] I have always considered General Hamilton's argument in this cause as the greatest forensic effort he ever made. He had come prepared to discuss the points of law with a perfect mastery of the subject. He believed that the rights and liberties of the people were essentially concerned.... There was an unusual solemnity and earnestness on his part in this discussion. He was at times highly impassioned and pathetic. His whole soul was enlisted in the cause, and in contending for the rights of the Jury and a free Press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression.... He never before in my hearing made any effort in which he commanded higher reverence for his principles, nor equal admiration of the power and pathos of his eloquence.... I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer, he would have rivalled Socrates or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times, in researches after truth and in benevolence to mankind. The active and profound statesman, the learned and eloquent lawyer, would probably have disappeared in a great degree before the character of the sage and philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom, and elevating the country by his example.

[Ambrose Spencer, Attorney General of the State,--afterward Chief Justice,--who did not love him, having received the benefit of Hamilton's scathing sarcasm more than once, has this to say.] Alexander Hamilton was the greatest man this country ever produced. I knew him well. I was in situations to observe and study him. He argued cases before me while I sat as judge on the bench. Webster has done the same. In power of reasoning, Hamilton was the equal of Webster; and more than this can be said of no man. In creative power, Hamilton was infinitely Webster's superior, and in this respect he was endowed as God endows the most gifted of our race. If we call Shakspeare a genius or creator, because he evoked plays and character from the great chaos of thought, Hamilton merits the same appellation; for it was he, more than any other man, who thought out the Constitution of the United States and the details of the Government of the Union; and out of the chaos that existed after the Revolution, raised a fabric, every part of which is instinct with his thought. I can truly say that hundreds of politicians and statesmen of the day get both the web and woof of their thoughts from Hamilton's brains. He, more than any man, did the thinking of the time.

His fooling was as inimitable as his use of passion and logic, and on one occasion he treated Gouverneur Morris, who was his opposing counsel, to such a prolonged attack of raillery that his momentary rival sat with the perspiration pouring from his brow, and was acid for some time after. During his earlier years of practice, while listening to Chancellor Livingston summing up a case in which eloquence was made to disguise the poverty of the cause, Hamilton scribbled on the margin of his brief: "Recipe for obtaining good title for ejectment: two or three void patents, several _ex parte_ surveys, one or two acts of usurpation acquiesced in for the time but afterwards proved such. Mix well with half a dozen scriptural allusions, some ghosts, fairies, elves, hobgoblins, and a _quantum suff_. of eloquence." Hamilton also originated the practice of preparing "Points," now in general use.

VIII

Hamilton, after the conclusion of the great libel case in the spring of 1804, returned from Albany to New York to receive honours almost as great, if less vociferous, than those which had hailed him after the momentous Convention of 1788. Banquets were given in his honour, the bar extolled him, and the large body of his personal friends were triumphant at this new proof of his fecundity and his power over the minds of men. They were deeply disturbed on another point, however, and several days after his arrival, Troup rode out to The Grange, Hamilton's country-seat, to remonstrate.

Hamilton, several years since, had bought a large tract of wooded land on Harlem Heights and built him a house on the ridge. It commanded a view of the city, the Hudson, and the Sound. The house was spacious and strong, built to withstand the winds of the Atlantic, and to shelter commodiously not only his family, but his many guests. The garden and the woods were the one hobby of his life, and with his own hands he had planted thirteen gum trees to commemorate the thirteen original States of the Union. Fortunately his deepest sorrow was not associated with this estate; Philip had fallen before the house was finished. This brilliant youth, who had left Columbia with flying honours, had brooded over the constant attacks upon his father,--still the Colossus in the path of the Democrats, to be destroyed before they could feel secure in their new possessions,--until he had deliberately insulted the most recent offender, received his challenge, and been shot to death close to the spot where Hamilton was to fall a few years later. That was in the autumn of 1801. Hamilton's strong brain and buoyant temperament had delivered him from the intolerable suffering of that heaviest of his afflictions, and the severe and unremitting work of his life gave him little time to brood. If he rarely lost consciousness of his bereavement, the sharpness passed, and he was even grateful at times that his son, whose gifts would have urged him into public life, was spared the crucifying rewards of patriotism.

As Troup rode up the avenue and glanced from right to left into the heavy shades of the forest, with its boulders and ravines, its streams and mosses and ferns, then to the brilliant mass of colour at the end of the avenue, out of which rose the stately house, he sighed heavily.

"May the devil get the lot of them!" he said.

It was Saturday, and he found Hamilton on his back under a tree, the last number of the _Moniteur_ close to his hand, his wife and Angelica looking down upon him from a rustic seat. Both the women were in mourning, and Betsey's piquant charming face was aging; her sister Peggy and her mother had followed her son.

Hamilton had never recovered his health, and he paid for the prolonged strains upon his delicate system with a languor to which at times he was forced to yield. To-day, although he greeted the welcome visitor gaily, he did not rise, and Troup sat down on the ground with his back to the tree. As he looked very solemn, Mrs. Hamilton and Angelica inferred they were not wanted, and retired.

"Well?" said Hamilton, laughing. "What is it? What have I done now?"

"Put another nail into your coffin, we are all afraid. The story of the paper you read before the Federalist Conference in Albany is common talk; and if Burr is defeated, it will be owing to your influence, whether you hold yourself aloof from this election or not. Why do you jeopardize your life? I'd rather give him his plum and choke him with it--"

"What?" cried Hamilton, erect and alert. "Permit Burr to become Governor of New York? Do you realize that the New England States are talking of secession, that even the Democrats of the North are disgusted and alarmed at the influence and arrogance of Virginia? Burr has a certain prestige in New England on account of his father and Jonathan Edwards, and his agents have been promoting discussion of this ancestry for some time past. Do the Federalists of New York endorse him, this prestige will have received its fine finish; and New Englanders have winked his vices out of sight because Jefferson's treatment of him makes him almost virtuous in their eyes. The moment he is Governor he will foment the unrest of New England until it secedes, and then, being the first officer of the leading State of the North, he will claim a higher office that will end in sovereignty. He fancies himself another Bonaparte, he who is utterly devoid of even that desire for fame, and that magnificence, which would make the Corsican a great man without his genius. That he is in communication with his idol, I happen to know, for he has been seen in secret conversation with fresh Jacobin spies. Now is the time to crush Burr once for all. Jefferson has intrigued the Livingstons and Clinton away from him again; the party he patched together out of hating factions is in a state of incohesion. If the Federals--"

"That is just it," interrupted Troup; "the man is desperate. So are his followers, his 'little band.' They were sick and gasping after Burr's failure to receive one vote in the Republican caucus for even the Vice-Presidency, and they know that the Louisiana Purchase has made Jefferson invincible with the Democrats--or the Republicans, as Jefferson still persists in calling them. They know that Burr's chance for the Presidency has gone for ever. So New York is their only hope. Secession and empire or not, their hope, like his, is in the spoils of office; they are lean and desperate. If you balk them--"

"What a spectacle is this!" cried Hamilton, gaily. He threw himself back on the grass, and clasped his hands behind his head. "Troup, of all men, reproaching me for keeping a vow he once was ready to annihilate me for having broken. That offence was insignificant to the crime of supinely permitting our Catiline to accomplish his designs."

"If I could agree with you, I should be the last to counsel indifference; no, not if your life were the forfeit. But I never believed in Burr's talent for conspiracy. He is too sanguine and visionary. He desires power, office, and emolument--rewards for his henchmen before they desert him; but I believe he'd go--or get--no farther, and the country is strong enough to stand a quack or two; while, if we lose you--"

"You will live to see every prophecy I have made in regard to Burr fulfilled. I will not, because so long as I am alive he shall not even attempt to split the Union, to whose accomplishment and maintenance I pledged every faculty and my last vital spark. Sanguine and visionary he may be, but he is also cunning and quick, and there is a condition ready to his hand at the present moment. Jefferson is bad enough, Heaven knows. He has retained our machinery, but I sometimes fancy I can hear the crumbling of the foundations; the demoralizing and the disintegrating process began even sooner than I expected. He is appealing to the meanest passion of mankind, vanity; and the United States, which we tried to make the ideal Republic, is galloping toward the most mischievous of all establishments, Democracy. Every cowherd hopes to be President. What is the meaning of civilization, pray, if the educated, enlightened, broad-minded, are not to rule? Is man permitted to advance, progress, embellish his understanding, for his own selfish benefit, or for the benefit of mankind? And how can his superiority avail his fellows unless he be permitted to occupy the high offices of responsibility? God knows, he is not happy in his power; he is, indeed, a sacrifice to the mass. But so it was intended. He is the only sufferer, and mankind is happier."

"Jefferson and Burr both have a consummate knowledge of the limited understanding; they know how to tickle it with painted straws and bait it with lies. Bonaparte is not a greater autocrat than Jefferson, but our tyrant fools the world with his dirty old clothes and his familiarities. But I am not to be diverted. I want to keep you for my old age. I believe that you have done your part. It has been a magnificent part; there is no greater in history. Your friends are satisfied. So should you be. I want you to give up politics before it is too late. I fear more than one evil, and it has kept me awake many nights. Burr is not the only one who wishes you under ground. His 'little band' is composed of men who are worse than himself without one of his talents. Any one of them is capable of stabbing you in the dark. The Virginia Junta know that the Federalist party will exist as long as you do, and that some external menace might cohere and augment it again under your leadership. At every Federalist banquet last Fourth you were toasted as the greatest man in America; and I know this undiminished enthusiasm--as well as the influence of the _Evening Post_--alarms them deeply. They are neither great enough nor bad enough to murder you, nor even to employ someone to do it; but more than one needy rascal knows that he has only to call you out and kill you according to the code, to be rewarded with an office as soon as decency permits. There is another menace. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Croix married a Frenchman named Stephen Jumel while you were in Albany?"

"Yes!" exclaimed Hamilton, with interest; "who is he?"

"A Parisian diamond merchant and banker, a personal friend of Bonaparte. The belief is that he came over here as a special emissary of the Consulate. Of course he brought a letter to that other illustrious agent, and to the amazement of everybody he married her. They must handle thousands of French money between them. France would be something more than glad to hear of your elimination from this complicated American problem; particularly, if you demonstrate your power by crushing this last hope of Burr's. I doubt if Burr would call you out with no stronger motive than a desire for personal revenge. He is no fool, and he knows that if he kills you, he had better put a bullet through his own brain at once. He is a sanguine man, but not so sanguine as not to know that if he compassed your death, he would be hounded into exile. But he is in a more desperate way financially than ever. He can borrow no more, and his debtors are clamouring. If he is defeated in this election, and the Jumels are sharp enough to take advantage of his fury and despair,--I think she has been watching her chance for years; and the talk is, she is anxious, for her own reasons, to get rid of Burr, besides,--I believe that a large enough sum would tempt Burr to call you out--"

"He certainly is hard up," interrupted Hamilton, "for he rang my front door bell at five o'clock this morning, and when I let him in he went on like a madman and begged me to let him have several thousands, or Richmond Hill would be sold over his head."

"And you gave them to him, I suppose? How much have you lent him altogether? I know from Washington Morton that Burr borrowed six hundred dollars of you through him."

"I lent him the six hundred, partly because his desperate plight appeals to me--I believe him to be the unhappiest wretch in America--and more because I don't want Europe laughing at the spectacle of a Vice-President of the United States in Debtor's prison. Of course I can't lend him this last sum myself, but I have promised to raise it for him."

"Well, I argue with you no more about throwing away money. Did you listen to what I said about Madame Jumel?"

"With the deepest interest. It was most ingenious, and does honour to your imagination." Troup, with an angry exclamation, sprang to his feet. Hamilton deftly caught him by the ankle and his great form sprawled on the grass. He arose in wrath.

"You are no older than one of your own young ones!" he began; then recovered, and resumed his seat. "This is the latest story I have heard of you," he continued: "Some man from New England came here recently with a letter to you. When he returned to his rural home he was asked if he had seen the great man. 'I don't know about the _great_' he replied; 'but he was as playful as a kitten.'"

Hamilton laughed heartily. "Well, let me frolic while I may," he said. "I shall die by Burr's hand, no doubt of that. Whether he kills me for revenge or money, that is my destiny, and I have known it for years. And it does not matter in the least, my dear Bob. I have not three years of life left in me."

IX

Burr was defeated by a majority of seven thousand votes; and New England, which had hoped, with the help of a man who was at war with all the powerful families of New York,--Schuylers, Livingstons, and Clintons at the head of them,--to break down the oligarchy of which it had been jealous for nearly a century, deserted the politician promptly. Incidentally, Hamilton had quenched its best hope of secession, for the elected Governor of New York, Judge Lewis, was a member of the Livingston family. Burr was in a desperate plight. Debtor's prison and disgrace yawned before him; his only followers left were a handful of disappointed politicians, and these deserted him daily. But although his hatred of Hamilton, by now, was a foaming beast within him, he was wary and coolheaded, and history knows no better than he did that if he killed the man who was still the most brilliant figure in America, as well as the idol of the best men in it, cunning, and skill, and mastery of every political art would avail him nothing in the future; every avenue but that frequented by the avowed adventurer would be closed to him. Moreover, he must have known that Hamilton's life was almost over, that in a very few years he could intrigue undisturbed. Nor could he have felt a keen interest in presenting to Jefferson so welcome a gift as his own political corpse. But desperate for money, crushed to the earth, his hatred for Hamilton cursing and raging afresh, the only conspicuous enemy who might be bought with gold of the man who was still a bristling rampart in the path of successful Jacobinism, he was in a situation to fall an easy victim to greater plotters than himself. His act, did he challenge Hamilton, would be ascribed to revenge, and the towering figures in the background of the tragedy would pass unnoticed by the horrified spectators in front.

On June 18th William Van Ness, Burr's intimate friend, waited upon Hamilton with a studiously impertinent note, demanding an acknowledgment or denial of the essence of certain newspaper paragraphs, which stated that the leader of the Federalists had, upon various occasions, expressed his low opinion of the New York politician, and in no measured terms. Hamilton replied, pointing out the impossibility of either acknowledging or denying an accusation so vague, and analyzed at length the weakness of Burr's position in endeavouring to pick a quarrel out of such raw material. He said, in conclusion:--

I stand ready to avow or disavow promptly and explicitly any precise or definite opinion which I may be charged with having declared of any gentleman. More than this cannot fitly be expected from me; and especially, it cannot reasonably be expected that I shall enter into an explanation upon a basis so vague as that which you have adopted. I trust on more reflection you will see the matter in the same light with me. If not I can only regret the circumstance and must abide the consequences.

Hamilton foresaw the inevitable end, and commenced putting his affairs in order at once; but, for both personal and abstract reasons, holding the practice of duelling in abhorrence, he was determined to give Burr any chance to retreat, consistent with his own self-respect. Burr replied in a manner both venomous and insulting, and Hamilton called upon Colonel Pendleton, General Greene's aide during the Revolution, and asked him to act as his second. On the 23d he received a note from Van Ness, inquiring when and where it would be most convenient for him to receive a communication, and the correspondence thereafter was conducted by the seconds.

It was Sunday, and Hamilton was at The Grange, when the note from Van Ness arrived. He was swinging in a hammock, and he put the missive in his pocket, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted himself on his elbow. His entire family, with the exception of his wife and Angelica, were shouting in the woods. The baby, a sturdy youngster of two, named for the brother who had died shortly before his birth, emerged in a state of fury. He had eighty-two years of vitality in him, and he roared like a young bull. Hamilton's children inherited the tough fibre and the longevity of the Schuylers. Of the seven who survived him all lived to old age, and several were close to being centenarians.

Angelica was busy in her aviary, close by. She was now twenty, and one of the most beautiful girls in the country, but successive deaths had kept her in seclusion; and the world in which her parents were such familiar figures was to remember nothing of her but her tragedy. Betsey, still as slim as her daughter, ran from the house at the familiar roar, and Gouverneur Morris came dashing through the woods with a half-dozen guests, self-invited for dinner. It was an animated day, and Hamilton was the life of the company. He had no time for thought until night. His wife retired early, with a headache; the boys had subsided even earlier. At ten o'clock Angelica went to the piano, and Hamilton threw himself into a long chair on the terrace and clasped his hands behind his head.

"So," he thought, "the end has come. My work is over, I suppose. Personally, I am of no account. All I would have demanded, by way of reward for services faithfully executed, was the health to make a decent living and ten or fifteen years of peaceful and uninterrupted intimacy with my family. For fame, or public honours, or brilliant successes of any sort, I have ceased to care. Nothing would tempt me to touch the reins of public life again unless in the event of a revolution. I believe I have crushed that possibility with this election; otherwise, I doubt if my knell would have sounded. On the bare possibility that such is not the case, and that my usefulness may not be neutralized by public doubt of my courage, I must accept this challenge, whether or not I have sufficient moral courage to refuse it. I believe I have; but that is neither here nor there, and I shall fall. Should I survive, the sole reason would be danger ahead. For the last two years I have felt myself moving steadily deathward. By this abrupt exit I but anticipate the inevitable a year or two, and doubtless it seems to the destiny that controls my affairs as the swiftest way to dispose of Burr, and awaken the country to the other dangers that menace it. To the last I am but a tool. No man was ever so little his own master, so thrust upon a planet for the accomplishment of public and impersonal ends alone. I have been permitted a certain amount of domestic felicity as my strength was best conserved thereby, my mind free to concentrate upon public duties. I was endowed with the gift of fascination, that men should follow me without question, and this country be served with immediate effectiveness, I have received deep and profound satisfaction from both these concessions, but it would not matter in the least if I had not. They were inevitable with the equipment for the part I had to play. I have had an astonishing and conquering career against the mightiest obstacles, and I may as a further concession, be permitted an enduring place in history; but that, also, is by the way. I conquered, not to gratify my love of power and to win immortal fame, but that I might accomplish the part for which I was whirled here from an almost inaccessible island fifteen hundred miles away--to play my part in the creation of this American empire. It has been a great part, creatively the greatest part. The proof that no native-born American could have played it lies in the fact that he did not. The greatest of her men have abetted me; not one has sought to push me aside and do my work. My only enemies have been those who would pull my structure down; the most ambitious and individual men in the Union, of the higher sort, are my willing followers. To win them I never plotted, nor did I ever seek to dazzle and blind them. Part of my equipment was the power to convince them without effort of my superior usefulness; there was no time to lose. I am nothing but a genius, encased in such human form as would best serve its purpose; an atom of the vast creative Being beyond the Universe, loaned for an infinitesimal part of time to the excrescence calling itself The United States of North America, on the dot called Earth. Now the part is played, and I am to be withdrawn. That my human heart is torn with insupportable anguish, matters not at all. I leave that behind."

Hamilton had been bred in the orthodox religion of his time, and its picturesqueness, including its ultimates of heaven and hell, had taken firm hold of his ardent imagination. But in his cosmic moments the formulations of this planet played no part.

"I have not even a mother-country," he thought. "I am a parent, not a child. My patriotism has been that of a tigress for her young, not of a man for his fatherland. God knows I am willing, and always have been, to die for this country, which is so much my own, but why--why--need I have been made so human? Could I not have understood men as well? Could I not have performed my various part without loving my wife and children, my friends, with the deepest tenderness and passion of which the human heart is capable? Then I would go without a pang, for I am tired, and death would be a relief. But, since all humanity was forced into me, why should not I, now that I have faithfully done my part, be permitted a few years of happiness by my hearthstone?"

He raised his hands as if to shut out the cold high stars. He had had few bitter moments since the night, four years before, when he had deliberately exorcised bitterness and hate; and that mellowness had come to him which came to his great rivals in their old age. But to-night he let the deeps rise. He ached with human wants, and he was bidden to work out his last act of service to the country for whose sole use he had been sent to Earth.

He dropped his hands and stared at the worlds above. "Must I go on?" he thought. "Is that it? Does other work await me elsewhere? Has the Almighty detached from himself a few creative egos, who go from world to world and do their part; removed the day their usefulness is over, that they shall not dissipate their energy, nor live until men regard with slighting wonder the work of the useless old creature in their midst, withdraw from it their first reverence? I go in the fulness of my maturity and the high tide of respect and affection; I go in the dramatic manner of my advent, and my work will be a sacred thing;--even my enemies will not dare to pull it down until such time as they are calm enough to see it as it is; and then the desire will have passed. Doubtless all things are best and right.... Maturity? I feel as old as time and as young as laughter."

He sat up suddenly and bent his head. Millions of tiny bells were ringing through the forest. So low, so golden, so remote they sounded, that they might have hung in the stars above or in the deeps of the earth. He listened so intently for a moment that life seemed suspended, and he saw neither the cool dark forest nor the silver ripple of the Hudson, but a torn and desolate land, and a gravestone at his feet. Then he passed his hand over his forehead with a long breath, and went softly into the drawing-room.

Angelica sat at the piano, with her head thrown back, her long fair hair hanging to the floor. Her dark eyes were blank, but her fingers shook from the keys the music of a Tropic night. It was a music that Hamilton had not sent a thought after since the day he landed in America, thirty-one years ago. It had come to her, with other memories, by direct inheritance.

He went to the dining room hastily and poured out a glass of wine. When he returned, Angelica, as he expected, was half lying in a chair, white and limp.

"Drink this," he said, in the bright peremptory manner to which his children were accustomed. "I think you are not strong enough yet to indulge in composition. You have grown too fast, and creation needs a great deal of physical vigour. Now run to bed, and forget that you can play a note."

Angelica sipped the wine obediently, and bade him good night. As she toiled up the stairs she prayed for the physical strength that would permit her to become the great musician of her ambitious dreams. Her prayer was answered; the great strength came to her, and her music was the wonder of those who listened; but they were very few.

Hamilton went into his library, prepared to write until morning. Bitterness and cosmic curiosity had vanished; he was the practical man, with a mass of affairs to arrange during the few days that were left to him. But he did no work that night. The door-knocker pounded loudly. The servants had gone to bed. He took a lamp, and unchained and unlocked the front door, wondering what the summons meant, for visitors in that lonely spot were rare after nightfall. A woman stood in the heavy shade of the porch, and behind her was a carriage. She wore a long thin pelisse; and the hood was drawn over her face. Nevertheless, she hesitated but a moment. She lifted her head with a motion of haughty defiance that Hamilton well remembered, and stepped forward.

"It is I, Hamilton," she said. "I have come to have a few words with you alone, and I shall not leave until--"

"Come in, by all means," said Hamilton, politely. "You were imprudent to choose such a dark night, for the roads are dangerous. When you return I will send a servant ahead of you with a lantern."

He led the way to the library and closed the door behind them. Madame Jumel threw off her cloak, and stood before him in the magnificence of cloth of gold and many diamonds. Her neck blazed, and the glittering tower of her hair was a jewel garden. She was one of the women for whom splendour of attire was conceived, and had always looked her best when in full regalia. To-night she was the most superb creature that man had ever seen or dreamed of. Even her great eyes looked like jewels, deep and burning as that blue jewel of the West Indies, the Caribbean Sea; but her lips and cheeks were like soft pink roses. Hamilton had seen her many times since the day of parting, for she went constantly to the theatre, and had been invited to the larger receptions until her reckless Jacobinism had put the final touch to the disapproval of Federal dames; but he had never seen her in such beauty as she was to-night. Eleven years had perfected this beauty, taken from it nothing. He sighed, and the past rose for a moment; but it seemed a century behind him.

"Will you not sit down?" he asked. "Can I fetch you a glass of wine? I remember you never liked it, but perhaps, after so long a drive--"

"I do not wish any wine," said Madame Jumel, shortly. She was nonplussed by this matter-of-fact acceptance of a situation which she had intended should be intensely dramatic. She was not yet gone, however.

"No one ever could get the best of you, Hamilton," she exclaimed. "I have come here to-night--how terribly delicate you look," she faltered, with a sudden pallor. "I have not seen you for so long--"

"My health does not give me the least concern," said Hamilton, hurriedly, wondering if he could lay his hand on a bottle of smelling-salts without awaking his wife. "Pray go on. To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

Madame Jumel rose and swept up and down the long room twice. "Can there be anything in that tale of royal blood?" thought Hamilton. "Or in that other tale of equally distinguished parentage?"

She had paused with her back to him, facing one of the bookcases.

"Classics, classics, classics!" she exclaimed, in a voice which grew steadier as she proceeded. "That was the only taste we did not share. Don Quixote in Spanish, Dante and Alfieri in Italian; and all the German brutes. Ah! Voltaire! Rousseau! What superb editions! No one can bind but the French. And the dear old _Moniteur_--all bound for posterity, which will never look at it."

She returned and stood before him, and she was quite composed.

"I came to tell you," she said, "that when you die, it will be by the hand of my deputy. I tell you because I am determined that your last earthly thought shall be of me."

"_Cherchez la femme--toujours!_ Why are you doing this?" he asked curiously. "You no longer love me, and your hate should have worn out long since."

"Neither my hate nor my love has ceased for a second. I married Jumel for these jewels, for the courts of Europe, for a position in this country which the mighty Schuylers cannot take from me again. But I would fly with you to-morrow, and live with you in a hole under ground. I came to make no such proposal, however; I know that you would sacrifice even your family to your honour, and everything else in life to them. For years I waited, hoping that you would suddenly come back to me, hating you and injuring you in every way my Jacobinism could devise, but ready to wipe your shoes with my hair the moment you appeared. Now the hard work of your life is over. You look forward to years of happiness with your family on this beautiful estate, while I am married to a silly old Frenchman--who, however, has brought me my final means of revenge. I know you well. You would rather be alive now than at any time of your life. Well, you shall go. And I would pray, if that were my habit, that into these last days you may condense all the agonies of parting from those you love that I have ached and raged through in these eleven long years."

"God knows I have bitterly regretted that you should suffer for my passions. And, if it is any satisfaction to you, I go unwillingly, and the parting will be very bitter."

She drew a sharp breath, and flung her head about. "One cannot triumph over you!" she cried. "Why was I such a fool as to come here to-night? My imagination would have served me better."

"Is it French money?" asked Hamilton.

"Yes, but I alone am responsible. We handle immense sums, and its disposal is left to our discretion. This will be distasteful neither to France nor Virginia,--I suppose I may have Louisiana, if I want it!--but I am no man's agent in this matter."

"You are magnificent! It is quite like you to disdain to share your terrible responsibility. I can lighten it a little. I shall not shoot Burr."

"I should rather you did. Still, it does not matter. He will be disposed of, and I shall lead the hue and cry."

"You are young to be so brutal. Will your conscience never torment you?"

"I have too much brain to submit to conscience, and you know it. I shall suffer the torments of the damned, but not from conscience. But I would rather suffer with you out of the world than in it. I have stood that as long as a mere mortal can stand anything. Revenge is not my only motive. Either you or I must go, and as I have now found the means of boundless distraction, I live. I have been on the point of killing myself and you more than once. But my power to injure you gave me an exquisite satisfaction; and then, I always hoped. Now the time for the _period_ has come." Her chin sank to her neck, and she stared at him until her eyes filled. "Do you love them so much more than you ever loved me?" she asked wistfully.

Hamilton turned away his head. "Yes," he said.

She drew a long shivering breath. "Ah!" she said. "You are a frail shadow of yourself. You have no passion in you. And yet, even as you are, I would fling these jewels into the river, and live with you until you died in my arms. You may think me a monster, if you like, but you shall die knowing that your wife does not love you as I do."

Hamilton leaned forward and dried her tears. "Say that you forgive me," she said; for audacity was ever a part of genius.

"Yes," he said grimly, "I forgive you. You and Bonaparte are the two magnificent products of the French Revolution. I am sorry you are not more of a philosopher, but, so far as I alone am concerned, I regret nothing."

"Oh, men!" she exclaimed, with scorn. "They are always philosophers when they are no longer in love with a woman. But you will give me your last conscious moment?"

"No," he said deliberately, "I shall not."

She sprang to her feet. "You will! Thank you for saying that, though! I was about to grovel at your feet. Take me to my coach! What a fool I was to come here!" She seized her pelisse, and wound it about her as she ran down the hall. Hamilton followed, insisting that she give him time to awaken a servant. But she would not heed. She flung herself into her coach, and called to the driver to gallop his horses, unless he wished to lose his place on the morrow. Hamilton stood on the porch, listening to the wild flight down the rough hill through the forest But it was unbroken, so long as he could hear anything, and he laughed suddenly and entered the house.

"The high farce of tragedy," he thought. "Probably a mosquito will settle on Burr's nose as he fires, and my life be spared."

X

The challenge was delivered on Wednesday. Hamilton refused to withdraw his services from his clients in the midst of the Circuit Court, and July 11th, a fortnight later, was appointed for the meeting. When Hamilton was not busy with the important interests confided to him by his clients, he arranged his own affairs, and drew up a document for publication, in the event of his death, in which he stated that he had criticised Burr freely for years, but added that he bore him no ill-will, that his opposition had been for public reasons only, that his impressions of Burr were entertained with sincerity, and had been uttered with motives and for purposes which appeared to himself commendable. He announced his intention to throw away his fire, and gave this reason for yielding to a custom which he had held in avowed abhorrence: "The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular."

Burr spent several hours of each day in pistol practice, using the cherry trees of Richmond Hill as targets. Thurlow Weed, in his "Autobiography," has told of Burr's testament, written on the night before the duel. Having neither money nor lands, but an infinitude of debts, to bequeath his daughter, he left her a bundle of compromising letters from women. The writers moved in circles where virtue was held in esteem, and several were of the world of fashion. They had, with the instinct of self-defence, which animates women even in that stage where they idealize the man, omitted to sign their names. Burr supplied the omission in every case and added the present address. That Hamilton would throw away his fire was a possibility remote from the best effort of Burr's imagination, and although he knew that no one could fire more quickly than himself, he was not the man to go to the ground unprepared for emergencies: if his daughter, now Mrs. Alston, would obey his hint and blackmail, she might realize a pretty fortune. That Theodosia Burr, even with the incentive of poverty, would have sunk to such ignominy, no one who knows the open history of her short life will believe; but the father, whose idol she was, insulted her and stained her memory, too depraved and warped to understand nobility in anyone, least of all in one of his own blood. In the study of lost souls Burr has appealed to many analysts, and by no one has been made so attractive as by Harriet Beecher Stowe; who, knowing naught by experience of men of the world, either idealized them as interesting villains or transformed them into beasts. In Burr she saw the fallen angel, and bedewed him with many Christian tears. But I doubt if Burr, the inner and real Burr, had far to fall. His visible divergence from first conditions was as striking as, no doubt, it was natural. As the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the son of the Reverend Aaron Burr, and reared by relatives of that same morbid, hideous, unhuman school of early New England theology, it only needed a wayward nature in addition to brain and spirit to send him flying on his own tangent as soon as he was old enough to think. After that his congenital selfishness did the rest. For a time he climbed the hill of prizes very steadily, taking, once in a way, a flight, swift as an arrow: in addition to great ability at the bar, and a cunning which rose to the dignity of a talent, he was handsome, magnetic, well-bred, and polished, studied women with the precision of a vivisectionist, assumed emotions and impulses he could not feel with such dexterity that even men yielded to his fascination until they plumbed him; had in fact many of the fleeting kindly instincts to which every mortal is subject who is made of flesh and blood, or comes of a stock that has been bred to certain ideals. Every wretch has a modicum of good in him, and in spite of the preponderance of evil in Burr, had he been born under kindly Southern skies with a gold spoon in his mouth, if, when ambitions developed, he had had but to stretch out his hand to pluck the prizes of life, instead of exercising the basest talents of his brain to overreach more fortunate men, why it is possible that his nature might not have hardened into a glacier: its visible third dazzling and symmetrical, its deadly bulk skulking below the surface of the waters which divided the two parts of him from his victims; might have died in the chaste reclusion of an ancestral four-poster, beneficiaries at his side. But that immalleable mind lacked the strong fibre of logic and foresight--which is all that moral force amounts to--that lifts a man triumphant above his worst temptations; and he paid the bitter and hideous penalty in a poverty, loneliness, and living death that would have moved the theologians of his blood to the uneasy suspicion that punishment is of this earth, a logical sequence of foolish and short-sighted acts. Both men and women are allowed a great latitude in this world; they have little to complain of. It is only when the brain fails in its part, or the character is gradually undermined by lying and dishonour, that the inevitable sequence is some act which arouses the indignation of society or jerks down the iron fist of the law. When Burr took to the slope he slid with few haltings. In his long life of plottings and failures, from his sympathy with the Conway Cabal to his desperate old age, there were no depths of blackguardism that he did not touch. Whether Madame Jumel spoke the truth or not to Hamilton on that night of their last interview, it was entirely in keeping with his life and character that he should kill for hire.

On the Fourth of July, the Society of the Cincinnati gave its annual dinner. This society, then the most distinguished in the Union, and membered by men who had fought in the War of Independence, had, upon the death of Washington, their first President, elected Hamilton to the vacant office. He presided at this banquet, and never had appeared nor felt happier. Not only did that peculiar exaltation which precedes certain death possess him, as it possesses all men of mettle and brain in a like condition, but the philosophy which had been born in him and ruled his imagination through life had shrugged its shoulders and accepted the inevitable. Hamilton knew that his death warrant had been signed above, and he no longer experienced a regret, although he had often felt depressed and martyred when obliged to go to the courts of Albany and leave his family behind him. He had lost interest in his body; his spirit, ever, by far, the strongest and the dominant part of him, seemed already struggling for its freedom, arrogant and blithe as it approached its final triumph. There is nothing in all life so selfish as death; and the colossal ego which genius breeds or is bred out of, isolated Hamilton even more completely than imminent death isolates most men. The while he gave every moment he could spare to planning the future comfort and welfare of his family, he felt as if he had already bade them farewell, and wondered when and how he should meet them again.

At this gathering he was so gay and sportive that he infected the great company, and it was the most hilarious banquet in the society's history. The old warriors sighed, and wondered at his eternal youth. When he sprang upon the table and sang his old camp-song, "The Drum," he looked the boy they remembered at Valley Forge and Morristown. There was only one member of the company who was unelectrified by the gay abandon of the evening, and his sombre appearance was so marked in contrast that it was widely commented on afterward. Burr frequently leaned forward and stared at Hamilton in amazement. As the hilarity waxed, his taciturnity deepened, and he finally withdrew.

The secret was well kept. Few knew of the projected meeting, and none suspected it, although Burr's pistol practice aroused some curiosity. He had been a principal in a number of duels, and killed no one. But he was known to have more than one bitter score to pay, for this last campaign had exceeded every other in heat and fury. So many duels had studded it, and so many more impended, that the thinking men of the community were roused to a deep disapproval of the custom. The excitement and horror over the sacrifice of Hamilton, full-blew this sentiment.

On Saturday, Hamilton gave a dinner at the Grange, and a guest was one of Washington's first aides, Colonel Trumbull. As he was leaving, Hamilton took him aside and said, with an emphasis which impressed Trumbull even at the moment: "You are going to Boston. You will see the principal men there. Tell them from me, as my request, for God's sake to cease these conversations and threatings about a separation of the Union. It must hang together as long as it can be made to. If this Union were to be broken, it would break my heart."

The following day preceded the duel. Hamilton attended an entertainment given by Oliver Wolcott, whose fortunes he had made, raising the capital of a business that could be presided over by no one so well as a former Secretary of the Treasury. It was a large reception, and he met many of his old friends. Lady Kitty Duer, widowed, but pleasantly circumstanced, was there, and Kitty Livingston, once more bearing her old name in a second marriage. Bitter as the feeling between her house and Hamilton still was, she had declared long since that she would not cut him again; and although they never met in private, they often retired to a secluded corner at gatherings and talked for an hour. His first reason for attending this reception was to shake her hand as they parted. Madame Jumel was there, paling the loveliness of even the young daughters of Mrs. Jay and Lady Kitty Duer. Those who did not mob about Hamilton surrounded her, and although her cheek was without colour, she looked serene and scornful.

After the reception Hamilton spent an hour with Troup. This oldest of his friends, and Angelica, were the only people whose suspicion he feared. Troup was quite capable of wringing Burr's neck, and his daughter of taking some other desperate measure. But it was long now since he had given Angelica reason for anxiety, and she had ceased to watch him; and to-day, Troup, whom he had avoided hitherto, was treated to such a flow of spirits that he not only suspected nothing, but allowed himself to hope that Hamilton's health was mending. Hamilton dared not even hold his hand longer than usual at parting, although he longed to embrace him.

That night, in the late seclusion of his library, Hamilton wrote two letters to his wife, in one of which he recommended Mrs. Mitchell to her care; then the following to Sedgwick, still a close friend, and probably the most influential man in New England:--

NEW YORK, July 10th, 1804.

MY DEAR SIR: I have received two letters from you since we last saw each other--that of the latest date being the twenty-fourth of May. I have had on hand for some time a long letter to you, explaining my view of the course and tendency of our politics, and my intentions as to my own future conduct. But my plan embraced so large a range, that, owing to much avocation, some indifferent health, and a growing distaste for politics, the letter is still considerably short of being finished. I write this now to satisfy you that want of regard for you has not been the cause of my silence.

I will here express but one sentiment, which is, that DISMEMBERMENT of our EMPIRE will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages, without any counterbalancing good; administering no relief to our real disease, which is DEMOCRACY; the poison of which, by a subdivision, will only be the more concentrated in each part, and consequently the more virulent. King is on his way to Boston where you may chance to see him and hear from himself his sentiments. God bless you.

A.H.

As he folded and sealed the letter he suddenly realized that the act was the final touch to the order of his earthly affairs, and he lifted his hand as though to see if it were still alive. "To-morrow night!" he thought. "Well, now that the hour has come, I go willingly enough. I have been permitted to live my life; why should I murmur? There has been sufficient crowded into my forty-seven years to cover a century. I have been permitted to play a great part in history, to patch together a nation out of broken limbs and inform it with a brain. It is right that I should regard myself in this final hour as a statesman and nothing more, and that I should go without protest, now that I have no more to do. I can only be deeply and profoundly thankful that out of three millions of Americans I was selected, that I have conquered in spite of all obstacles, and remained until I have nothing more to give. It is entirely right and fitting that I should die as I have lived, in the service of this country. Only a sacrifice can bring these distracted States to reason and eliminate the man most dangerous to their peace. If I have been chosen for this great part, I should be unworthy indeed if I rebelled."

XI

Hamilton crossed the river to Weehawken at seven the next morning. He was accompanied by Pendleton, and his surgeon, Dr. Hosack. It was already very hot. The river and the woods of the Jersey palisades were dim under a sultry blue haze. There was a swell on the river, and Pendleton was very sick. Hamilton held his head with some humour, then pointed out the great beauty of the Hudson and its high rugged banks, to distract the unhappy second's mind.

"The majesty of this river," he said, "its suggestion of a vast wild country almost unknown to the older civilizations, and yet peopled with the unembodied spirits of a new and mighty race, quicked my unborn patriotism, unconsciously nourished it until its delivery in Boston."

"It would have curdled mine," said Pendleton. "Who knows--if you had been of a bilious temperament, the face of our history might wear a pug nose and a weak chin."

Hamilton laughed. "It never could have done that while Washington's profile was stamped on the popular fancy. But lesser causes than seasickness have determined a man's career. Perhaps to my immunity I owe the fact that I am not a book-worm on St. Croix. If I had even once felt as you did just now, my dear Pendleton, I should never have set sail for America."

"Thank God!" said Pendleton. They were beaching. A moment later he and Hamilton had climbed to the ledge where Burr and Van Ness awaited them. It was the core of a thick grove, secluded from the opposite shore and from the high summit of the great palisade.

Hamilton and Burr nodded pleasantly. The men were dressed in the silken finery of their time, and looked like a pleasuring quartette in that green and lovely spot. Through leafy windows they saw the blue Hudson, the spires and manor-houses, the young city, on the Island. The image of Philip rose to Hamilton, but he commanded it aside.

Pendleton had the choice of position and was to give the word. He had brought with him John Church's pistols, now in their fourth duel. Their first adventure caused the flight of Church to America. Since then, they had been used in his duel with Burr and by Philip Hamilton.

He handed one of the pistols to Hamilton, and asked him if he should set the hair-spring.

"No, not this time," said Hamilton.

Pendleton gave the word. Burr raised his arm, deliberately took aim, and fired, Hamilton lifted himself mechanically to the tips of his feet, turned sideways, and fell on his face. His pistol went off, and Pendleton's eye involuntarily followed the direction of the ball, which severed a leaf in its flight. Often afterward he spoke of the impression the cloven leaf made on him, a second of distraction at which he caught eagerly before he bent over Hamilton. Hosack scrambled up the bank, and Burr, covered with an umbrella by Van Ness, hastily withdrew.

Hamilton was half sitting, encircled by Pendleton's arm, when the surgeon reached the spot. His face was gray. He muttered, "This is a mortal wound," then lost consciousness. Hosack ascertained, after a slight examination, that the ball was in a vital part, and for a few moments he thought that Hamilton was dead; he did not breathe, nor was any motion of heart or pulse perceptible. With Pendleton's assistance, Hosack carried him down the bank and placed him in the barge. William Bayard had offered his house in case of disaster, and the boat was propelled over to the foot of Grand Street as rapidly as possible. Before reaching the shore the surgeon succeeded in reviving Hamilton, who suddenly opened his eyes.

"My vision is indistinct," he said. In a moment it grew stronger, and his eye fell on the case of pistols. His own was lying on the top. "Take care of that pistol," he said. "It is undischarged and still cocked. Pendleton knows that I did not intend to fire at him." He closed his eyes, and said nothing further except to enquire the state of his pulse, and to remark that his lower extremities had lost all feeling. As the boat reached the pier, he directed that his wife and children be sent for at once, and that hope be given them. Bayard was standing on the shore in a state of violent agitation. It was in these pleasant grounds of his that the great banquet had been given to Hamilton after the Federalists had celebrated their leader's victory at Poughkeepsie, and he had been his friend and supporter during the sixteen years that had followed.

Hamilton was placed in bed on the lower floor of Bayard's house; and, in spite of the laudanum that was liberally administered, his sufferings were almost intolerable. His children were not admitted to the room for some time, but his wife could not be kept from him. She knew nothing of the duel, but she saw that he was dying; and the suddenness and horror, the end of her earthly happiness, drove her frantic. She shrieked and raved until Hamilton was obliged to rouse himself and attempt to calm her. The children were huddled in the next room, and when the pain subsided for a time, they were brought in. Hamilton's eyes were closed. When he was told that his children were beside his bed, he did not open them at once. In those moments he forgot everything but the agony of parting. Finally, he lifted his heavy eyelids. The children stood there, the younger clinging to the older, shivering and staring in terror. Hamilton gave them one look, then closed his eyes and did not open them again for several moments. As the children were led from the room, one of the boys fainted.

Through Hamilton's heavy brain an idea forced itself, and finally took possession. Angelica had not stood in that little group. He opened his eyes, half expecting that which he saw--Angelica leaning over the foot-board, her face gray and shrunken, her eyes full of astonishment and horror.

"Are you going to die--to die?" she asked him.

"Yes," said Hamilton. He was too exhausted to console or counsel submission.

"To die!" she repeated. "To die!" She reiterated the words until her voice died away in a mumble. Hamilton was insensible for the moment to the physical torments which were sending out their criers again, and watched her changed face with an apprehension, which, mercifully, his mind was too confused by pain and laudanum to formulate. Angelica suddenly gripped the foot-board with such force that the bed shook; her eyes expanded with horror only, and she cowered as if a whip cracked above her neck. Then she straightened herself, laughed aloud, and ran out of the room. Hamilton, at the moment, was in the throes of an excruciating spasm, and was spared this final agony in his harsh and untimely death. Angelica was hurried from the house to a private asylum. She lived to be seventy-eight, but she never recovered her reason.

Meanwhile, the grounds without were crowded with the friends of the dying man,--many of them old soldiers,--who stood through the night awaiting the end. Business in New York was entirely suspended. The populace had arisen in fury at the first announcement on the bulletin boards, and Burr was in hiding lest he be torn to pieces.

Hamilton slept little, and talked to his wife whenever he succeeded in calming her. Her mental sufferings nearly deprived her of health and reason; but she lived a half a century longer, attaining the great age of ninety-seven. It was a sheltered and placid old age, warm with much devotion; her mind remained firm until the end. Did the time come when she thought of Hamilton as one of the buried children of her youth?

Troup, Fish, Wolcott, Gouverneur Morris, Rufus King, Bayard, Matthew Clarkson, some twenty of Hamilton's old friends, were admitted to the death room for a moment. He could not speak, but he smiled faintly. Then his eyes wandered to the space behind them. He fancied he saw the shadowy forms of the many friends who had preceded him: Laurens, Tilghman, Harrison, Greene, André, Sterling, Duane, Duer, Steuben,--Washington. They looked at him as affectionately as the living, but without tears or the rigid features of extremest grief. It is a terrible expression to see on the faces of men long intimate with life, and Hamilton closed his eyes, withdrawing his last glance from Morris and Troup.

Of whom did Hamilton think in those final moments? Not of Eliza Croix, we may be sure. Her hold had been too superficial. Perhaps not even of Elizabeth Schuyler, although he had loved her long and deeply. What more probable than that his last hour was filled with a profound consciousness of the isolation in which his soul had passed its mortal tarrying? Surrounded, worshipped, counting more intimate friends sincerely loved than any man of his time, gay, convivial, too active for many hours of introspection, no mortal could ever have stood more utterly alone than Hamilton. Whether or not the soul is given a sentient immortality we have no means of discovering, but the most commonplace being is aware of that ego which has its separate existence in his brain, and is like to no other ego on earth; and those who think realize its inability to mingle with another. Hamilton, with his unmortal gifts, his unsounded depths, must have felt this isolation in all its tragic completeness. There may have been moments when the soul of Washington or Laurens brushed his own. Assuredly no woman companioned it for a fraction of a second. Whatever his last thoughts, no man has met his end with more composure.

He died at two o'clock in the afternoon.

XII

The humour and vivacity which had seldom been absent from Hamilton's face in life withdrew its very impress with his spirit. His features had something more than the noble repose, the baffling peace, of death; they looked as if they had been cast long ago with the heads of the Caesars. Gouverneur Morris, staring at him through blistered eyeballs as he lay in his coffin, recalled the history of the House of Hamilton, of its direct and unbroken descent--through the fortunate, and famed, and crowned of the centuries--from the Great Constantine, from "The Macedonian," founder of a dynasty of Roman Emperors, and from the first of the Russian monarchs. Throughout that history great spirits had appeared from time to time, hewed the foundations of an epoch, and disappeared. What long-withdrawn creators had met in this exceptionally begotten brain? Did those great makers of empire, whose very granite tombs were dust, return to earth when their immortal energies were invoked to create a soul for a nation in embryo? Morris reviewed the dead man's almost unhuman gift for inspiring confidence, exerted from the moment he first showed his boyish face to the multitude; for triumphing to his many goals as if jagged ramparts had been grass under his feet. He had been the brain of the American army in his boyhood; he had conceived an empire in his young twenties; he had poured his genius into a sickly infant, and set it, a young giant, on its legs, when he was long under twoscore. Almost all things had come to him by intuition, for he had lived in advance of much knowledge.

He communicated these thoughts to Troup, who left the room with him, his head bent, his arms hanging listlessly. "He might have come in some less human form," added Morris, bitterly. "This is the worst time of _my_ life. I am not ashamed to say I've cried my eyes out."

"I have cried my heart out," said Troup.

The funeral took place from the house of John Church, in Robinson Street, near the upper Park. Express messengers had dashed out from New York the moment Hamilton breathed his last, and every city tolled its bells as it received the news. People flocked into the streets, weeping and indignant to the point of fury. Washington's death had been followed by sadness and grief, but was unaccompanied by anger, and a loud desire for vengeance. Moreover, Hamilton was still a young man. Few knew of his feeble health; and that dauntless resourceful figure dwelt in the high light of the public imagination, ever ready to deliver the young country in its many times of peril. His death was lamented as a national calamity.

On the day of the funeral, New York was black. Every place of business was closed. The world was in the windows, on the housetops, on the pavements of the streets through which the cortège was to pass: Robinson, Beekman, Peal, and Broadway to Trinity Church. Those who were to walk in the funeral procession waited, the Sixth Regiment, with the colours and music of the several corps, paraded, in Robinson Street, until the standard of the Cincinnati, shrouded in crêpe, was waved before the open door of Mr. Church's house. The regiment immediately halted and rested on its reversed arms, until the bier had been carried from the house to the centre of the street, when the procession immediately formed. This was the order of it:--

The Military Corps The Society of the Cincinnati Clergy of all Denominations The Body of Hamilton The General's Horse The Family Physicians The Judges of the Supreme Court (in deep mourning) Mr. Gouverneur Morris in his carriage Gentlemen of the Bar and students at law (in deep mourning) Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the State Mayor and Corporation of the City Members of Congress and Civil Officers of the United States The Minister, Consuls, and Residents of Foreign Powers The Officers of the Army and Navy of the United States Military and Naval Officers of the Foreign Powers Militia Officers of States Presidents, Directors, and Officers of the respective Banks Chamber of Commerce and Merchants Marine Society, Wardens of the Port, and Masters and Officers of the Harbour The President, Professors, and students of Columbia College The different Societies The Citizens in general, including the partisans of Burr

On the coffin were Hamilton's hat and sword. His boots and spurs were reversed across his horse. The fine gray charger, caparisoned in mourning, was led by two black servants, dressed in white, their turbans trimmed with black.

The military escorted him in single file, with trailing arms, the band playing "The Dead March in Saul," minute guns from the Artillery in the Park answered by the British and French warships in the harbour. But for the solemn music, its still more solemn accompaniment, the tolling of muffled bells, and the heavy tramp of many feet, there was no sound; even women of an hysterical habit either controlled themselves or were too impressed to give way to superficial emotion. When the procession after its long march reached Trinity Church the military formed in two columns, extending from the gate to the corners of Wall Street, and the bier was deposited before the entrance. Morris, surrounded by Hamilton's boys, stood over it, and delivered the most impassioned address which had ever leapt from that brilliant but erratic mind. It was brief, both because he hardly was able to control himself, and because he feared to incite the people to violence, but it was profoundly moving. "He never lost sight of your interests!" he reiterated; "I declare to you before that God in whose presence we are now so especially assembled, that in his most private and confidential conversations, his sole subject of discussion was your freedom and happiness. Although he was compelled to abandon public life, never for a moment did he abandon the public service. He never lost sight of your interests. For himself he feared nothing; but he feared that bad men might, by false professions, acquire your confidence and abuse it to your ruin. He was ambitious only of glory, but he was deeply solicitous for you."

The troops formed an extensive hollow square in the churchyard, and terminated the solemnities with three volleys over the coffin in its grave. The immense throng, white, still aghast, and unreconciled, dispersed. The bells tolled until sundown. The city and the people wore mourning for a month, the bar for six weeks. In due time the leading men of the parish decided upon the monument which should mark to future generations the cold and narrow home of him who had been so warm in life, loving as few men had loved, exulted in the wide greatness of the empire he had created.

It bears this inscription:

TO THE MEMORY OF

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

THE CORPORATION OF TRINITY HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT IN TESTIMONY OF THEIR RESPECT FOR THE PATRIOT OF INCORRUPTIBLE INTEGRITY THE SOLDIER OF APPROVED VALOUR THE STATESMAN OF CONSUMMATE WISDOM

WHOSE TALENTS AND VIRTUES WILL BE ADMIRED BY GRATEFUL POSTERITY LONG AFTER THIS MARBLE SHALL HAVE MOULDERED TO DUST

HE DIED JULY 12TH 1804, AGED 47

NOTES

PAGE XI. "Nevis" is pronounced Neevis.

PAGE 3. Of the Gingerland estate nothing remains to-day but a negro hamlet named Fawcett. Its inhabitants are, beyond a doubt, the descendants of slaves belonging to Hamilton's grandparents, for there is no trace of any other family named Fawcett in the Common Records of Nevis.

PAGE 6. This deed of separation is entered in the Common Records of Nevis, 1725-1746, page 429, and is dated the fifth day of February, 1740.

PAGE 11. I have hesitated over the spelling of the name Levine. John Church Hamilton, in his life of Hamilton, spells it Lavine, and in one of Hamilton's letters, page 7, Vol. 11, of this same Life, it is spelt in the same manner. But four times in the Records of St. Croix it is spelt Levine. The half-brother to whom Hamilton refers in his letter had himself baptized in Christianstadt in the year 1769, and the entry reads: Peter, son of John Michael and Rachael Levine. In the interment entry of Rachael Levine it is spelt in this fashion, and in the government records of Levine's business transactions. It seems to me probable that in copying Hamilton's letter the name was misspelled, and although he no doubt mentioned the name freely to his family, it is possible that he did not write it upon any other occasion. I have, therefore, used the method for which there is a considerable authority.

PAGE 29. James Hamilton was the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, Laird of Grange, and his wife, Elizabeth (eldest daughter of Sir Robert Pollock), who were married about 1730. The Hamiltons of Grange belonged to the Cambuskeith branch of the great house of Hamilton, and the founder of this branch, in the fourteenth century, was Walter de Hamilton, a son of Sir Gilbert de Hamilton, who was the common ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton, the Dukes of Abercorn, Earls of Haddington, Viscounts Boyne, Barons Belhaven, several extinct peerages, and of all the Scotch and Irish Hamilton families. He was fifth in descent from Robert, Earl of Mellent, created by Henry I, Earl of Leicester, who married a granddaughter of King Henry I of France and his Queen, who was a daughter of Jeroslaus, Czar of Russia. See "The Lineage of Alexander Hamilton," in the _New York Genealogical and Biographical Review_, for April, 1889, or "The Historical and Genealogical Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, with Genealogical Memoirs of Several Branches of the Family," by John Anderson, Edinburgh, 1825, a copy of which is to be found in the British Museum. In the latter work, against the name of James Hamilton, is the following statement: A proprietor in the West Indies, and father of Alexander Hamilton, the celebrated statesman and patriot in the United States of America, who fell, greatly regretted, in a duel with a Mr. Burr.

PAGE 35. There is still so widespread misconception of the term "creole," that it is necessary, even at this late date, to reiterate that it was not invented as a euphemism for coloured blood. In the United States creoles are Southerners of French or Spanish extraction; in the West Indies any person born on one of the islands is a creole, even if he be an undiluted Dane.

PAGE 49. This deed of trust was entered in Vol. X, No. 1, page 180, of the Common Records of St. Christopher, on the fifth day of May, 1756, eight months before the birth of Alexander Hamilton.

PAGE 60. This dialect, or rather this curious mispronunciation of words, and inability to make use of certain letters and more than one or two personal pronouns, is gathered from old books on the islands, for the coloured people of the present generation in the Caribbees, even those of the lower class, now speak, save for their singsong inflection, much like any one else. But in those days there was no education for the blacks, and they spoke the barbarous lingo I have transcribed without embellishment.

PAGE 65. Dr. Hamilton died in June, 1764.

PAGE 68. A piece of eight, then the principal coin in the Danish West Indies, was worth sixty-four cents.

PAGE 69. Hugh Knox married and left two children, Ann Knox, who married James Towers, and John Knox, who, I think, became a clergyman on St. Thomas.

PAGE 79. The lower story of this fine building, built by Mr. Mitchell, is in a state of entire preservation, and is now one of the largest stores in Christiansted.

PAGE 87. The private burying-ground of the Lyttons was on the Grange estate, owned, at the time of Rachael's death, by Chamberlain Robert Tuite.

PAGE 88. Two candlesticks of this fashion have been preserved in Frederiksted, and are said to have been used by Hamilton while there.

PAGE 91. I am convinced that Hugh Knox baptized Hamilton, and have had the old records of St. Croix, deposited in the archives of Copenhagen, thoroughly searched. But they are in so dilapidated a condition that one might as profitably appeal to the recording angel. In 1782 the French destroyed the church registers of Nevis, but it is hardly likely that Rachael Levine had Hamilton baptized. The islanders were indifferent to baptism under the most amiable conditions, usually waiting until it was reasonable to suppose that their brood was complete, when they took it to the font _en bloc_. But Hugh Knox would have attached great importance to this ceremony.

PAGE 120. There is no doubt in my mind that Hamilton and young Stevens were either first or second cousins, and that the resemblance between them which subsequently, in the United States, gave rise to the gossip that they were brothers, was due to this fact. I was not able to discover that Mrs. Stevens was a daughter of John and Mary Fawcett, but she or her husband might well have been closely related to Hamilton's grandparents, for the few prominent families of Nevis and St. Christopher intermarried again and again. The Fawcetts were married at least twenty-two years before Rachael was born, and doubtless had one of the large families of that time.

PAGE 131. "The Fields" was the old name for the City Hall Park.

PAGE 133. I have inferred that the speech Hamilton made on this occasion was a spontaneous outburst of the same thought which he elaborated a few weeks later in his history-making pamphlets. Wherever it has been possible, I have used his own words, for he must have talked much as he wrote.

PAGE 136. "Indeed he was the first to perceive and develop the idea of a real union of the people of the United States"--"History of the Constitution of the United States" by George Ticknor Curtis, who also comments at length upon his having been the chief force in bringing the discontent of the colonists to a head and precipitating the Revolution.

PAGE 145. There is space only for Hamilton's share in these battles. I am obliged to assume that the reader knows his Revolutionary history.

PAGE 165. Nothing can be told here of Laurens's private history beyond the statements that his too sensitive mind held him responsible for the accidental death of a younger brother, and that he had married a woman in England, whom he had left at the altar, to join, with all possible haste, the fighting forces in America, and whom he never saw again. If this meets the eye of his family and they care to trust me with the necessary papers, I shall be glad to write a life of Laurens.

PAGE 196. This verse was found in a little bag on Mrs. Hamilton's neck when she died at the age of ninety-seven.

PAGE 208. "At the age of three and twenty he had already formed well-defined, profound, and comprehensive views on the situation and wants of these states. He had clearly discerned the practicability of forming a confederated government and adapting it to their peculiar condition, resources, and exigencies. He had wrought out for himself a political system, far in advance of the conceptions of his contemporaries, and one which in the case of those who most opposed him in life, became, when he was laid in a premature grave, the basis on which this government was consolidated; on which to the present day it has been administered; and on which, alone, it can safely rest in that future which seems to stretch out its unending glories before us."--GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.

PAGE 209. This letter from Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler, from which this extract is taken, was first published in Martha Lamb's "History of New York," A.S. Barnes & Co., New York.

PAGE 226. Burr was aide-de-camp to Washington for six weeks, beginning the last week in May, 1776. He hated the work and left abruptly, incurring Washington's contempt and dislike. The charge of his friends that Hamilton poisoned the Chief's mind against him is wholly unfounded. Washington made up his own mind about men, and there is no evidence that the two young men met except in the most casual manner before this spring of 1782. Of course it is possible that a diligent reading of obscure correspondence might bring to light an earlier acquaintance, but the matter is not worth the waste of time. Matthew Davis, the only responsible biographer of Burr, gives two years as the time consumed by Burr for his legal studies. Parton was wholly indifferent to facts and has no serious position as a biographer; but possessing a picturesque and entertaining style, he has been widely read, and his estimate of Burr accepted by the ignorant.

PAGE 233. Madison was born in 1751, Morris in 1752.

PAGE 257. "A long chapter might be written about Hamilton's other labours in the State legislature;... he laboured hard to prevent legislation in contravention of the treaty of peace; he corrected gross theoretical blunders in a proposed system of regulating elections, and strove hard though not altogether successfully to eliminate religious restrictions; he succeeded in preventing the disfranchisement of a great number of persons for having been interested, often unwillingly, in privateering ventures; he stayed some absurd laws proposed concerning the proposed qualifications of candidates for office; in the matter of taxation he substituted for the old method of an arbitrary official assessment, with all its gross risks of error and partiality, the principle of allowing the individual to return under oath his taxable property; he laboured hard to promote public education by statutory regulations; his 'first great object was to place a book in the hand of every American child,' and he evolved a system which served as the model of that promulgated in France by the imperial decree of 1808; he had much to do with the legislation concerning the relations of debtor and creditor, then threatening to dissever the whole frame of society; he was obliged to give no little attention to the department of criminal law; finally he had to play a chief part in settling the long and perilous struggle concerning the 'New Hampshire Grants,' the region now constituting the State of Vermont: his efforts in this matter chiefly averted war and brought the first new state into the Union."--MORSE'S "Life of Hamilton," Vol. I.

PAGE 265. The classic narrative of the Constitutional Convention is by George Ticknor Curtis, and there have been few more fascinating chronicles of any subject. Of the condensed narratives the most coherent and vivid is in Roosevelt's "Life of Gouverneur Morris."

PAGE 268. Hamilton also invited Gouverneur Morris to collaborate, but that erratic gentleman was otherwise engaged.

PAGE 269. I take this apportionment from a copy of "The Federalist" presented by Hamilton to his nephew Philip Church, and kindly lent to me by Mr. Richard Church. In this copy one of Hamilton's sons, at his father's dictation, wrote the initial of the writer or writers after each essay. To Jay are allotted Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 54. To Madison, 10, 14, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. To Hamilton and Madison jointly: 13, 19, 20. The rest to Hamilton.

PAGE 271. "'The Federalist,' written principally by Hamilton, exhibits an extent and precision of information, a profundity of research, and an accurateness of understanding, which would have done honour to the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or modern times."--_Edinburgh Review_, No. 24.

"It is a work altogether, which, for comprehensiveness of design, strength, clearness, and simplicity, has no parallel. We do not even except or overlook Montesquieu and Aristotle among the writings of men."--_Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1825.

"In the application of elementary principles of government to practical administration 'The Federalist' is the greatest work known to me."--_Guizot_.

PAGE 300. This coup of Hamilton's was evidently not placed on record,--for manifest reasons,--for it is not to be found in Elliot's "Debates," and we should have lost it but for a letter from Clinton to John Lamb. See Foster, "On the Constitution," page 4, Vol. I.

PAGE 304. On page 842, "History of the Republic," by J.C. Hamilton, is the only letter from Hamilton to his brother James which has been preserved. It is well known in the family, however, that he corresponded with both his father and brother after his arrival in America. A letter from his father promising to come to the United States as soon as practicable will be found on page 567, Vol. V, Hamilton's Works (J.C. Hamilton edition).

PAGE 304. I am at a loss to understand upon what authority certain of Hamilton's biographers base their assertion that, shortly after his arrival in this country, he cut his West Indian relatives, ignored their many claims upon his affection and gratitude, and deliberately excluded them from his memory. There is no such assertion in his son's biography, and the lives of Hamilton that have followed have been little more than a condensation of that voluminous work. This uncharitable assumption--which must precede such a statement--cannot be the result of an exhaustive reading of his correspondence, for there they would find letters from Hugh Knox and Governor Walsterstorff and Edward Stevens, extending over a period of many years; and reproaches in none of them. Nor can it be the result of investigation among his descendants, for it is well known in the Hamilton family, that he not only corresponded regularly with his relatives, including his father, for a long while, but that he supported Mrs. Mitchell after her husband's failure and death. And even if this indisputable information were not accessible, it is incredible to me that any one capable of understanding Hamilton even a little should believe that so contemptible a quality as ingratitude had any place in his nature. The most impetuous, generous, honest, and tender of men, he was the last person to turn his back upon those who had befriended and supported him in his precarious youth. Had he been capable of such meanness, he would not have died lamented by the best men in the country, many of whom had loved him devotedly for a quarter of a century. Nor was there any motive for such a performance. One is not at all surprised to find that Mrs. Mitchell was among the last of his earthly thoughts; but were there not ample proof of the falsity of these careless assertions, then indeed would Hamilton be an enigma.

PAGE 339. Burr was married to Madame Jumel for a short time when they were both old enough to know better. She very quickly sent him about his business and resumed the name of her second husband. Burr had appropriated sixteen thousand dollars with which she had entrusted him, and, as she told people still living, his charming manners were entirely superficial, he was cross and exacting at home. Nevertheless she did not hesitate to make use of him upon occasion. During the bread riots in Italy her carriage was hemmed in one day and her richly attired self threatened by the furious populace. When it became evident that her terrified coachman could make no headway she arose to her majestic height, and, sweeping out one hand with her haughtiest gesture, said in a loud and commanding tone, "Make way! make way! for the widow of the Vice-President of the United States." The crowd fell back properly awed. Madame Jumel claimed to have the famous diamond necklace, but for the truth of this claim I cannot vouch. She certainly had many personal relics of Napoleon, confided to the care of Jumel, when the fallen Emperor meditated flight on his faithful banker's frigate.

PAGE 387. It is impossible that Hamilton could have sat for all the alleged portraits of himself, scattered over the United States, or he would have had no time to do any work. Moreover, few realize his personality or the contemporaneous description of him. That in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is the best. That in the City Hall, New York, is one of the best, and the copy of it in the Treasury Department, Washington, is better. Several others are charming, notably, the one at Morristown Headquarters, New Jersey, and the one painted for his army friends, now in the possession of Mr. Philip Schuyler. The one in the Chamber of Commerce is a Trumbull, but looks like a fat boy with thin legs. It is to be hoped there will be no further photographing of that libel. Had Hamilton looked like it he would have accomplished nothing.

PAGE 413. As the visit of little Lafayette to the United States was of no historical moment I have taken the liberty of bringing him over at my own pleasure. Otherwise I should have been obliged merely to mention his advent in the course of the rapid seven years' summary which comes later.

PAGE 430. That Hamilton conceived the ice-water cure for yellow fever is well known to doctors.

PAGE 435. Mr. Richard Church kindly brought me an old bundle of letters from Mrs. Church to Mrs. Hamilton. Except for the faded ink they might been written yesterday, so lively, natural, and _modern_ were they. It was impossible to realize that the writer was dust long since. Indeed, in all the matter, published and unpublished, that I have read for this book, I find no excuse for the inverted absurdities and stilted forms with which it is thought necessary to create a hundred-year-old atmosphere.

PAGE 441. This letter of Thomas Corbin disposes of the asseverations of Jefferson's biographers that the leader of the Democrats dressed himself like a gentleman until he became President. His untidiness was probably congenital to begin with, and in any case would have been a policy from the first, of that deep and subtle mind.

PAGE 448. A clause had been inserted in Article II of the Constitution which would permit Hamilton, although an alien born, to be a President of the United States.

PAGE 451. It was Mr. James Q. Howard in a letter to the New York _Sun_, May, 1901, who called attention to the fact that Hamilton was the first of the "Imperialists," or "Expansionists."

PAGE 458. I wrote to Colonel Mills, Commander of West Point, to ask him if any of Hamilton's codes were still in use. The librarian of the post, Dr. Edward S. Holden, replied, among other things, as follows: "... As circumstances have changed, the details of his codes have changed, and the principles which guided him have been readapted to new conditions as they have arisen. The best praise that can be given him is, then, that he thoroughly understood the basic principles underlying military affairs, and that with superb genius he applied them to the exigencies of his time with that philosophical and at the same time practical talent which was his special endowment."

PAGE 469. I made a copy from the original of a letter from Alexander Baring (afterward Lord Ashburton) to his counsel, D.J. Rinnan, containing full details of this transaction. One of the significant points about the contemptuous opinions of Burr's dishonesty which one comes upon constantly in the correspondence of this period, is that no one claims to have made its discovery, or to think comment worth while. It evidently became established at an early date. But brilliancy and dexterity saved him at the bar, and he won many a case for those who despised him most.

PAGE 471. Tammany Hall was highly respectable in the beginning of its career. I have here used the term in the figurative sense; it is in truth an epigram into which all political abomination is concentrated.

PAGE 474. For correspondence of Hamilton with his Scotch relatives, and with Secretary of the Navy regarding Robert Hamilton, see Vol. VI, Hamilton's Works.

PAGE 496.

Burials in 1799, Con. June 3d. James Hamilton--Father of General Hamilton in America killed by Col. Baird.

NOTE: The Rev. I. Guilding was the Rector of the Parish at this time, and the entry was made by him in the above form.

E.A. TURPIN.

I certify that the above entry is a true and correct copy from the Register of Burials in the Cathedral Church of St. George, in the town of Kingston, in the island of St. Vincent, West Indies, by me,

E.A. TURPIN, Rector of St. George and St. Andrew, and Archdeacon of St. Vincent, this 13th day of May, 1901.

PAGE 501. Hamilton never would own a slave.

PAGE 509. The story of Burr's awakening Hamilton in the early morning to borrow of him, is related in "The History of the Republic." Mrs. Hamilton herself is the authority for the other loan. The story was told her by Washington Morton, her brother-in-law, who arranged it, Burr, for once, being ashamed to go openly to Hamilton. He repaid this sum after Hamilton's death.

PAGE 516. The oft-told tale of Hamilton and Burr meeting at the house of Madame Jumel on the night before the challenge, I have, after careful investigation, utterly repudiated. In the first place, the lady had been married but two months, and to a Frenchman at that. He was a rich man and had undoubtedly married her for love, moreover was devoted to her as long as he lived. It is not at all likely that he was permitting Hamilton to call one night and Burr the next--so the story runs. In the second place, Hamilton, whatever may have been his adventures in the past, was in no condition for gallivanting at this period, as I think I have demonstrated. Dr. Hosack, in the paper he prepared for the _Post_ on the day following Hamilton's death, asserted that owing to the patient's feeble condition he had been unable to give the usual medicines. At the same time Hamilton had been working from fourteen to fifteen hours a day. The conclusions are obvious. Moreover, General Hamilton, now eighty-seven, and in perfect possession of all his faculties, has told me that he frequently accompanied his grandmother, Hamilton's widow, to call on Madame Jumel. In the small town of New York no such sensational meeting could have been kept a secret for long. Madame Jumel lived in the city at the time, by the way, her husband not buying the house on the Heights until 1815.

But that she was at the bottom of the matter I should not have had the slightest doubt, even were it not an accepted fact by both Hamilton's present family and hers, and I arrived at my conclusions, as the story of all concerned, and of the history of the times, developed.

PAGE 522. Burr kept these letters until he died, at the age of 80, and left them to Matthew Davis, who destroyed those whose writers were dead, and returned the others to certain ancient and highly respected dames.

PAGE 527. These pistols are now in the possession of Mr. Richard Church.

PAGE 531. Hamilton's strong likeness to the Caesars is best seen in the marbles of him, notably the one executed by Ceracchi. The painted likenesses of him either do not resemble him at all or are so full of his vivacity, mischievous humour, and indomitable youth that they are wholly himself.

From "Statistical Account of Scotland," Vol. V, page 450, Edinburgh: "The most remarkable person connected with the parish (Stevenston in Ayrshire) was the late General Alexander Hamilton of the family of Grange, though America was the field in which he distinguished himself. He was excelled by none as a general, orator, financier, lawyer. In the words of one who knew him, he was 'the mentor of Washington, the framer of the present constitution of America, a man of strict honour and integrity; equally esteemed in public and in private life.'"

The above came to my hand after the book went to press, and I publish it to emphasize the fact that the Scotch Hamiltons eagerly claimed the kinship of Hamilton, quite indifferent to the irregularity of his birth.

Hamilton's children were born and named as follows: Philip, January 22, 1782; Angelica, September 25, 1784; Alexander, May 16, 1786; James Alexander, April 14, 1788; John Church, August 22, 1792; William Stephen, August 4, 1797; Eliza, November 20, 1799; Philip, June 7, 1802.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to the following people who have helped me with family papers, books and political pamphlets long out of print, their knowledge of the unwritten history of the United States, unpublished anecdotes of Hamilton, and general suggestions: Mr. James Q. Howard of the Library of Congress; Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton; General A. Hamilton; Colonel J.C.L. Hamilton; Mr. Richard Church; Mr. Roger Foster; Mr. H.W. Parker of the Mechanics' Institute Free Library of New York; Dr. Richard B. Coutant, and Mr. Philip Schuyler; and to the following residents of the British and Danish West Indies:

_On St. Christopher_

Mrs. Spencer Wigley Dr. Joseph Haven, U.S. Consul The Rev. William Evered The Rev. George Yoe Mr. E.P. Latouche, Registrar and Provost Marshal

_On Nevis_

The Hon. C.C. Greaves The Rev. W. Cowley The Rev. Mr. Shephard Mr. G.V. Mercier

_On St. Croix_

The Rev. W.C. Watson

Also--The West Indian works of Dr. Taylor, and Lightbourne's Annuals.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Conqueror, by Gertrude Franklin Atherton