The Conqueror by Gertrude Franklin Atherton (page 6)

enlightened men ever could have been so mad as to believe that the country would prosper without union, that a mere State should have been thought to be of greater importance than a Nation, or that a democratic constitution, which permits us to coddle anarchists in our midst, and the lower orders to menace the liberties of the upper, was ever an object of terror to men of bitter republican ideals, yet the historic facts confront us, and we wonder, when reading the astonishing arguments of that long and hard-fought contest, if Hamilton’s constitution, had it passed the Great Convention, would not have ratified with a no more determined opposition.

Melancthon Smith was one of the brightest and most conspicuous men of his time, but his name is forgotten to-day. He was sincere; he was, in his way, patriotic; he was a clever and eloquent orator. Moreover, he was generous and manly enough to admit himself beaten, as the sequel will show. To insure greatness, must the gift of long foreknowledge be added to brilliant parts and an honest character? If this be the essential, no wonder Melancthon Smith is forgotten. We have him asserting that in a country where a portion of the people live more than twelve hundred miles from the centre, one body cannot legislate for the whole. He apprehends the abolition of the State constitutions by a species of under-mining, predicts their immediate dwindling into insignificance before the comprehensive and dangerous power vested in Congress. He believes that all rich men are vicious and intemperate, and sees nothing but despotism and disaster in the Federal Constitution.

But, like most of the speakers of that day, he was trenchant and unadorned, so that his speeches are as easy reading as they must have been agreeable to hear. It is a curious fact that the best speakers of to-day resemble our forefathers in this respect of trenchant simplicity. Mediocrity for half a century has ranted on the stump, and given foreigners a false impression of American oratory. Those who indulge in what may be called the open-air metaphor, so intoxicating is our climate, may find consolation in this flight of Mr. Gilbert Livingston, who had not their excuse; for the Court-house of Poughkeepsie was hot and crowded. He is declaiming against the senatorial aristocrats lurking in the proposed Constitution. “What,” he cries, “what will be their situation in a Federal town? Hallowed ground! Nothing so unclean as State laws to enter there, surrounded as they will be by an impenetrable wall of adamant and gold, the wealth of the whole country flowing into it!” “_What_? What WALL?” cried a Federal. “A wall of gold, of adamant, which will flow in from all parts of the continent.” The joyous roar of our ancestors comes down to us.

Hamilton’s speech, in which he as effectually disposed of every argument against the Senate as Roger Sherman had done in the Great Convention, is too long to be quoted; but it is as well to give the precise words in which he defines the vital difference between republics and democracies.

It has been observed by an honourable gentleman [he said] that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity. In these assemblies the enemies of the people brought forward their plans of ambition systematically. They were opposed by their enemies of another party; and it became a matter of contingency, whether the people subjected themselves to be led blindly by one tyrant or another.

Again he says, in reply to Melancthon Smith:–

It is a harsh doctrine that men grow wicked as they improve and enlighten their minds. Experience has by no means justified us in the supposition that there is more virtue in one class of men than in another. Look through the rich and the poor of this community, the learned and the ignorant–Where does virtue predominate? The difference indeed consists not in the quantity, but kind of vices which are incident to various classes; and here the advantage of character belongs to the wealthy. Their vices are probably more favourable to the prosperity of the State than those of the indigent; and partake less of moral depravity.

More than once Hamilton left his seat and went up to the belfry to strain his eyes down the Albany post road or over the Dutchess turnpike, and every afternoon he rode for miles to the east or the south, hoping to meet an express messenger with a letter from Madison, or with the good tidings that New Hampshire had ratified. Madison wrote every few days, sometimes hopefully, sometimes in gloom, especially if he were not feeling well. Each letter was from ten to twelve days old, and it seemed to Hamilton sometimes that he should burst with impatience and anxiety. On the 24th of June, as he was standing in the belfry while Chancellor Livingston rained his sarcasms, he thought he saw an object moving rapidly down the white ribbon which cut the forest from the East. In five minutes he was on his horse and the Dutchess turnpike. The object proved to be the messenger from Rufus King, and the letter which Hamilton opened then and there contained the news of the adoption of the Constitution by New Hampshire.

There was now a Nation, and nine States would be governed by the new laws, whether New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island sulked unprotected in the out-skirts, or gracefully entered the league before dragged in or driven. It was a glittering and two-edged weapon for Hamilton, and he flashed it in the faces of the anti-Federalists until they were well-nigh blinded. Nevertheless, he did not for a moment underrate Clinton’s great strength, and he longed desperately for good news from Virginia, believing that the entrance of that important State into the Union would have more influence upon the opposition than all the arts of which he was master.

VII

And through it all Hamilton was sensible that someone was working for him, and was not long attributing the influence to its proper source. Mysterious hints were dropped of political reunions in a house on a thickly wooded hill, a quarter of a mile behind the Governor’s, the fortunate guests to which enchanted abode being sworn to secrecy. That it was the nightly resort of Clintonians was an open secret, but that Federalism was being intelligently interpreted, albeit with deepest subtlety, was guessed by few of the visitors themselves, and Hamilton divined rather than heard it. If converts were not actually made, they were at least undergoing a process of education which would make them the more susceptible to Hamilton’s final effort. Even before he caught a glimpse of radiant hair among the maples, when riding one day along the lane at the foot of the hill, he suspected that Mrs. Croix had preceded the Convention with the deliberate intention of giving him the precious assistance of a woman with a talent for politics and a genius for men. He was touched, interested, intrigued, but he resisted the temptation to precipitate himself into the eddies of her magnetism. Croix was in England, but even before his departure, which among men was regarded as final, she had achieved a reputation as a lady of erratic impulse and imperious habit. That she was also the most brilliant and fascinating woman in America, as well as the most beautiful, were facts as publicly established. Hamilton had resisted the temptation to meet her, the temptation receiving no help from indifference on the part of the lady; he had answered more than one note of admirable deftness. But he had no intention of being drawn into an intrigue which would be public gossip in a day and ruin the happiness of his wife. To expect a man of Hamilton’s order of genius to keep faith with one woman for a lifetime would be as reasonable as to look for such genius without the transcendent passions which are its furnace; but he was far from being a man who sought adventure. Under certain conditions his horizon abruptly contracted, and life was dual and isolated; but when the opportunity had passed he dismissed its memory with contrite philosophy, and was so charming to Betsey that he persuaded himself, as her, that he wished never to behold the face of another woman. Nor did he–overwhelming temptation being absent: he was the most driven man in the United States, with no time to run about after women, had such been his proclivity; and his romantic temperament, having found high satisfaction in his courtship and marriage with one of the most bewitching and notable girls in America, was smothered under a mountain of work and domestic bliss. So, although well aware that his will must perish at times in the blaze of his passions, he was iron against the temptation that held itself sufficiently aloof. To an extreme point he was master of himself. He knew that it would be no whirlwind and forgetting with this mysterious woman, who had set the town talking, and yet whose social talents were so remarkable that she managed women as deftly as she did men, and was a welcome guest in many of the most exclusive houses in New York; the men were careful to do none of their gossiping at home, and the women, although they criticised, and vowed themselves scandalized, succumbed to her royal command of homage and her air of proud invincibility. That she loved him, he had reason to know, and although he regarded it as a young woman’s romantic passion for a public man focussing the attention of the country, and whom, from pressure of affairs, it was almost impossible to meet, still the passion existed, and, considering her beauty and talents, was too likely to communicate itself to the object, were he rash enough to create the opportunity. Hamilton’s morals were the morals of his day,–a day when aristocrats were libertines, receiving as little censure from society as from their own consciences. His Scotch foundations had religious shoots in their grassy crevices, but religion in a great mind like Hamilton’s is an emotional incident, one of several passions which act independently of each other. He avoided temptation, not because he desired to shun a torment of conscience or an accounting with his Almighty,–to Whom he was devoted,–but because he was satisfied with the woman he had married and would have sacrificed his ambitions rather than deliberately cause her unhappiness. Had she been jealous and eloquent, it is more than probable that his haughty intolerance of restraint would have driven him to assert the pleasure of his will, but she was only amused at his occasional divagations, and had no thought of looking for meanings which might terrify her. He was quite conscious of his good fortune and too well balanced to risk its loss. So Mrs. Croix might be driven to rest her hopes on a trick of chance or a _coup de theatre_. But she was a very clever woman; and she was not unlike Hamilton in a quite phenomenal precocity, and in the torrential nature of her passions.

Having a considerable knowledge of women and some of Mrs. Croix, he inferred that sooner or later she would cease to conceal the light of her endeavour. Nevertheless, he was taken aback to receive one day a parcel, which, in the seclusion of his room, he found to contain a dainty scented handkerchief, the counterpart of the one hidden in the tree by the post road.

“Can she have put it there on purpose?” he thought. “Did she take for granted that I would pause to admire the scenery, and that I would recognize the perfume of her violets? Gad! she’s deeper than I thought if that be true. The wider the berth, the better!”

He gave no sign, and, as he had expected, a note arrived in due course. It ran:–

THE MAPLES, 8th July–4 in the morning.

DEAR SIR: I fear I am a woman of little purpose, for I intended to flit here like a swallow and as noiselessly flit again, accomplishing a political trifle for you meanwhile, of which you never should be the wiser. But alas! I am tormented by the idea that you never _will_ know, that in this great crisis of your career, you think me indifferent when I understand so well your terrible anxieties, your need for stupendous exertion, and all that this convention means to this great country and to yourself; and heart and soul and brain, at the risk of my popularity,–that I love, sir,–and of a social position grudgingly acquired me, but which I demand by right of an inheritance of which the world knows less than of my elevation by Colonel Croix,–at the risk of all, I am here and working for you. Perhaps I love power. Perhaps this country with its strange unimaginable future. Perhaps I merely love politics, which you have glorified–perhaps–well, when we do meet, sir, you will avoid me no longer. Do you find me lacking in pride? Reflect how another woman would have pursued you with love-letters, persecuted you. I have exercised a restraint that has left its mark, not only out of pride for myself, but out of a deep understanding of your multitude of anxieties and interests; nor should I dare to think of you at all were I not so sure of my power to help you–now and always. Think, sir, of what such a partnership–of which the world should never be cognizant–would mean. I purpose to have a _salon_, and it shall be largely composed of your enemies. Not a secret but that shall yield to me, not a conspiracy but that you shall be able to forestall in time. I believe that I was born devoted to your interests. Heart and soul I shall be devoted to them as long as I live, and whether I am permitted to know you or not. I could ruin you if I chose. I feel that I have the power within me even for that. But God forbid! I should have gone mad first. But ask yourself, sir, if I could not be of vital assistance to your career, did we work in common. And ask yourself other things–and truthfully. E.C.C

P.S. In a meeting held here last night the two generals poured vials of their own molten iron into the veins of the rank and file, belted them together in a solid bunch, vowed that you were a dealer in the black arts and reducing them to knaves and fools. Their words sank, no doubt of that. But I uprooted them, and blew them away. For I professed to be seized with an uncontrollable fit of laughter at the nonsense of forty-seven men–_the flower of the State_–terrified of a bare third, and of a man but just in his thirties. I rapidly recounted your failures in your first Congress, dwelling on them, harping on them; and then I stood up like a Chorus, and proclaimed the victories of C’s career. C, who had scowled when I went off into hysterics, almost knelt over my hand at parting; and the rest departed secure in your fancied destiny, their waxen brains ready for your clever fingers. At least you will acknowledge the receipt of this, sir? Conceive my anxiety till I know it has not fallen into the wrong hands!

A messenger brought the note directly after breakfast, and Hamilton hastily retreated with it to the privacy of his room. His horse awaited him, but he read the epistle no less than four times. Once he moved uneasily, and once he put his hand to his neck as if he felt a silken halter. He smiled, but his face flushed deeply. Her bait, her veiled threat, affected him little. But all that was unsaid pulled him like a powerful magnet. He struggled for fully twenty minutes with the temptation to ride to that paradise on the hill as fast as his horse would carry him. But although he usually got into mischief when absent from Betsey, contradictorily he was fonder of his wife when she was remote; moreover, her helplessness appealed to him, and he rejected the idea of deliberate disloyalty, even while his pulses hammered and the spirit of romance within him moved turbulently in its long sleep. He glanced out of the window. Beyond the tree-tops gleamed the river; above were the hills, with their woods and grassy intervals. It was an exquisite country, green and primeval; a moderate summer, the air warm but electric. The nights were magnificent. Hamilton dreamed for a time, then burned the letter in a fit of angry impatience.

“I have nothing better to do!” he thought. “Good God!”

An answer was imperative. He took a long ride first, however, then scrawled a few hasty lines, as if he had found just a moment in which to read her letter, but thanking her warmly for her interest and information; ending with a somewhat conscience-stricken hope for the instructive delight of her personal acquaintance when he should find the leisure to be alive once more. So rested the matter for a time.

VIII

That afternoon the very memory of Eliza Croix fled before a mounted messenger, who came tearing into town with word of Virginia’s ratification, of the great excitement in the cities of Richmond, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York, the processions in honour of this important conquest. There were tales also of fray and bloodshed, in which the Federals had retained the field; but, on the whole, the country seemed wild with delight.

But although this news did not produce the visible effect upon the opposition for which Hamilton had hoped, the anti-Federalist leaders were as fearful of hurrying the matter to the final vote as the Constitutionalists. Clinton stood like a rock, but he feared defections at the last moment, was conscious that his dominance over the minds of the men who had come to the Convention believing implicitly in his doctrine that union was unnecessary, concurring in his abhorrence of the new Constitution, was snapping daily, as Hamilton’s arguments and acute logic fermented in their clarifying brains. Many began to avoid their chief. They talked in knots by themselves. They walked the forest roads alone for hours, deep in thought. It was evident that Hamilton had liberated their understandings from one autocrat, whether he had brought them under his own despotic will or not.

There was no speaking, and little or no business for several days. A few more amendments would be suggested, then an adjournment. It was like the lull of the hurricane, when nervous people sit in the very centre of the storm, awaiting the terrors of its final assault.

Hamilton had much leisure for several days, but he was too deeply anxious to give more than a passing thought to Mrs. Croix, although he was grateful for the help he knew she was rendering him. “If we were Turks,” he thought once, “she would be an invaluable member of a harem. She never could fill my domestic needs, which are capacious; most certainly I should never, at any time, have chosen her for the mother of my children; but as an intellectual and political partner, as a confidante and counsellor, she would appeal to me very keenly. I talk to Betsey, dear child, because I must talk, because I have an egotistical craving for response, but I must bore her very often, and I am not conscious of ever having received a suggestion from her–however, God knows I am grateful for her sympathy. As the children grow older I shall have less and less of her; already I appreciate the difference. She will always have the core of my soul and the fealty of my heart, but it is rather a pity that man should be given so many sides with their corresponding demands, if no one woman is to be found able to respond to all. As for this remarkable creature, I could imagine myself in a state of mad infatuation, and seeking her constantly for the delight of mental companionship besides; but the highest and best, if I have them–oh, no! Perhaps the Turks are wiser than we, after all, for their wives suffer only from jealousy, while–most men being Turks on one plan or another–the women of the more advanced races suffer from humiliation, and are wounded in their deepest sentiments. All of which goes to prove, that the longer I delay a meeting with this high-priestess the better.”

In a day or two he was hard at work again fighting the last desperate battle. The oppositionists had brought forward a new form of conditional ratification, with a bill of rights prefixed, and amendments subjoined. This, it would seem, was their proudest achievement, and, in a long and adroit speech, Melancthon Smith announced it as their final decision. That was at midday. Hamilton rose at once, and in one of the most brilliant and comprehensive speeches he had yet made, demonstrated the absurdity of conditional ratification, or the power of Congress to indorse it. It was a close, legal, and constitutional argument, and with the retorts of the anti-Federalists occupied two days, during which Hamilton stood most of the time, alert, resourceful, master of every point of the vast subject, to which he gave an almost embarrassing simplicity. On the third day occurred his first signal triumph and the confounding of Clinton: Melancthon Smith stood up and admitted that Hamilton had convinced him of the impossibility of conditional ratification. Lansing immediately offered as a substitute for the motion withdrawn, another, by which the State ratify but reserve to itself the right to secede after a certain number of years, unless the amendments proposed should previously be submitted to a general convention.

Adjournment followed, and Hamilton and his leaders held a long consultation at the Livingston mansion, as a result of which he wrote that night to Madison, now in New York, asking his advice as to the sort of ratification proposed by the enemy. It was a course he by no means approved, but it seemed the less of two evils; for if, by hook or crook, the Constitution could be forced through, the good government which would ensue was bound to break up the party of the opposition. He had a trump, but he hesitated to resort to a coercion so high-handed and arbitrary. His supposed monarchical aspirations were hurled at him daily, and he must proceed with the utmost caution, lest his future usefulness be impaired at the outset.

Madison replied at once that such a proposition could not be considered, for only unconditional ratification was constitutional; but before his letter arrived Hamilton and Smith had had another hot debate, at the end of which the anti-Federalist leader declared himself wholly beaten, and announced his intention to vote for the unconditional acceptance of the Constitution.

But although there was consternation in the ranks of the anti-Federalists at this momentous defection, Clinton stood like an old lion at bay, with his other leaders behind him, his wavering ranks still coherent under his practised manipulation. For several days more the battle raged, and on the night before what promised to be the day of the final vote, Hamilton received a note from Mrs. Croix.

July 24.

DEAR SIR: The case is more desperate than you think. The weakening caused by the defection of the great Lieutenant has been counteracted in large measure by the General. His personal influence is enormous, his future like yours is at stake; he is desperate. It all rests with you. Make your great and final effort to-morrow. It is a wonderful responsibility, sir–the whole future of this country dependent upon what flows from your brain a few hours hence, but as you have won other great victories by efforts almost unprecedented, so you will win this. I am not so presumptuous as to write this to inspire you, merely to assure you of a gravity, which, after so long and energetic a contest, you might be disposed to underrate.

Hamilton was very grateful for this note, and answered it more warmly than had been his habit. His friends were deep in gloomy prognostications, for it was impossible to delay twenty-four hours longer. He had made converts, but not enough to secure a majority; and his followers did not conceive that even he could put forth an effort more convincing or more splendid than many of his previous achievements. In consequence, his susceptible nature had experienced a chill, for he was Gallic enough to compass greater things under the stimulus of encouragement and prospective success; but this unquestioning belief in him by a woman for whose mind he was beginning to experience a profound admiration, sent his quicksilver up to a point where he felt capable of all things. She had scored one point for herself. He felt that it would be unpardonable longer to accept such favours as she showered upon him unsought, and make no acknowledgment beyond a civil note: he expressed his desire to call upon her when they were both in New York once more. “But not here in Arcadia!” he thought. “I’ll call formally at her lodgings and take Troup or Morris with me. Morris will doubtless abduct her, and that will be the end of it.”

IX

On the following day every shop was closed in Poughkeepsie. The men, even many of the women, stood for hours in the streets, talking little, their eyes seldom wandering from the Court-house, many of them crowding close to the walls, that they might catch a ringing phrase now and again. By this time they all knew Hamilton’s voice, and they confessed to a preference for his lucid precision. In front of the Court-house, under a tree, an express messenger sat beside his horse, saddled for a wild dash to New York with the tidings. The excitement seemed the more intense for the heat of the day, which half suppressed it, and all longed for the snap of the tension.

Within the upper room of the Court-house the very air vibrated. Clinton, who always grunted at intervals, and blew his nose stentoriously when fervescent, was unusually aggressive. Beyond the bar men and women stood; there was no room for chairs, nor for half that desired admittance. In the very front stood the only woman whose superb physique carried her through that trying day without smelling-salts or a friendly shoulder. She was a woman with the eyes of an angel, disdainful of men, the mouth of insatiety, the hair and skin of a Lorelei, and a patrician profile. Her figure was long, slender, and voluptuous. Every man within the bar offered her his chair, but she refused to sit while other women stood; and few were the regrets at the more ample display of her loveliness.

Hamilton and Lansing debated with a lively exchange of acrimonious wit. Smith spoke in behalf of the Constitution. Then Hamilton rose for what all felt was to be a grand final effort, and even his friends experienced an almost intolerable excitement. On the other side men trembled visibly with apprehension, not so much in fear of the result as of the assault upon their nervous systems. They hardly could have felt worse if on their way to execution, but not a man left his seat; the fascination was too strong to induce even a desire to avoid it.

Hamilton began dispassionately enough. He went over the whole Constitution rapidly, yet in so emphatic a manner as to accomplish the intelligent subservience of his audience. Then, with the unexaggerated eloquence of which he was so consummate a master, he pictured the beauty, the happiness, the wealth of the United States under the new Constitution; of the peace and prosperity of half a million homes; of the uninterrupted industry of her great cities, their ramifications to countless hamlets; of the good-will and honour of Europe; of a vast international trade; of a restored credit at home and abroad, which should lift the heavy clouds from the future of every ambitious man in the Republic; of a peace between the States which would tend to the elevation of the American character, as the bitter, petty, warring, and perpetual jealousies had incontestably lowered it; of, for the beginning of their experiment, at least eight years of harmony under George Washington.

He spoke for two hours in the glowing terms of a prophecy and an optimism so alluring, that load after load seemed to roll from the burdened minds opposite, although Clinton snorted as if about to thrust down his head and paw the earth. When Hamilton had made his hearers thoroughly drunk with dreams of an ecstatic future, he advanced upon them suddenly, and, without a word of warning transition, poured upon them so terrible a picture of the consequences of their refusal to enter the Union, that for the first few moments they were ready to leap upon him and wrench him apart. The assault was terrific, and he plunged on remorselessly. He sketched the miseries of the past eleven years, the poverty, the dangers, the dishonour, and then by the most precise and logical deduction presented a future which, by the commonest natural and social laws, must, without the protection of a high and central power, be the hideous finish. The twilight came; the evening breeze was rustling through the trees and across the sultry room. As Hamilton had calculated, the moment came when he had his grip on the very roots of the enemy’s nerves. Chests were rising, handkerchiefs appearing. Women fainted. Clinton blew his nose with such terrific force that the messenger below scrambled to his feet. Hamilton waited during a breathless moment, then charged down upon them.

“Now listen, gentlemen,” he said. “No one so much as I wishes that this Constitution be ratified to the honour of the State of New York; but upon this I have determined: that the enlightened and patriotic minority shall not suffer for the selfishness and obstinacy of the majority. I therefore announce to you plainly, gentlemen, that if you do not ratify this Constitution, with no further talk of impossible amendments and conditions, that Manhattan Island, Westchester, and Kings counties shall secede from the State of New York and form a State by themselves, leaving the rest of your State without a seaport, too contemptible to make treaties, with only a small and possibly rebellious militia to protect her northern boundaries from the certain rapacity of Great Britain, with the scorn and dislike of the Union, and with no hope of assistance from the Federal Government, which is assured, remember, no matter what her straits. That is all.”

It was enough. He had won the day. The Constitution was ratified without further parley.

X

Hamilton reentered New York to the blaze of bonfires, the salute of cannon, and the deafening shouts of a multitude that escorted him to his doorway. Betsey was so proud of him she hardly could speak for a day, and his library was flooded with letters of congratulation from all parts of the Union. For several days he shut himself up with his family and a few friends, for he needed the rest; and the relaxation was paradisal. He played marbles and spun tops with his oldest boys, and dressed and undressed Angelica’s doll as often as his imperious daughter commanded. Troup and Fish, now the dignified Adjutant-General of State, with his bang grown long and his hair brushed back, spent hours with him in the heavy shades of the garden, or tormenting a monkey on the other side of the fence. Madison came at once to wrangle with him over the temporary seat of government, and demanded the spare bedroom, protesting he had too much to say to waste time travelling back and forth. He was a welcome guest; and he, too, sat on the floor and dressed Angelica’s doll.

The city was _en fete_, and little business was transacted except at the public houses. Bands of citizens awoke Hamilton from his sleep, shouting for “Alexander the Great.” Anti-Federalists got so drunk that they embraced the Federalists, and sang on Hamilton’s doorstep. The hero retreated to the back room on the top floor. The climax came on the 5th of August, in the great procession, with which, after the fashion of other triumphant cities, New York was to demonstrate in honour of the victory of the Constitution.

But, unlike its predecessors, this procession was as much in honour of one man as of the triumph of a great principle. To have persuaded New York, at that time, that Hamilton had not written the Constitution, and secured its ratification in the eleven States of the Union by his unaided efforts, would have been a dissipation of energy in August which even Clinton would not have attempted. To them Hamilton was the Constitution, Federalism, the genius of the new United States. And he was their very own. “Virginia has her Madison,” they reiterated, “Massachusetts her Adamses–and may she keep them and be damned; other States may think they have produced a giant, and those that do not can fall back on Washington; but Hamilton is ours, we adore him, we are so proud of him we are like to burst, and we can never express our gratitude, try as we may; so we’ll show him an honour that no other State has thought of showing to any particular man.”

And of the sixth of New York’s thirty thousand inhabitants that turned out on that blazing August day and marched for hours, that all the eager city might see, at least two-thirds bore a banner emblazoned with Hamilton’s portrait or name, held on high. The procession was accompanied by a military escort; and every profession, every trade, was represented. A large proportion of the men who marched were gentlemen. Nicolas Fish was on the staff of the grand marshal, with six of his friends. Robert Troup and two other prominent lawyers bore, on a cushion, the new Constitution, magnificently engrossed. Nicolas Cruger, Hamilton’s old employer, again a resident of New York, led the farmers, driving a plough drawn by three yoke of oxen. Baron Polnitz displayed the wonders of the newly perfected threshing-machine. John Watts, a man who had grown gray in the highest offices of New York, before and since the Revolution, guided a harrow, drawn by horses and oxen. The president, regents, professors, and students of Columbia College, all in academic dress, were followed by the Chamber of Commerce and the members of the bar. The many societies, led by the Cincinnati, followed, each bearing an appropriate banner.

And in the very centre of that pageant, gorgeous in colour and costume, from the green of the foresters to the white of the florists, was the great Federal ship, with HAMILTON, HAMILTON, HAMILTON, HAMILTON, emblazoned on every side of it. In the memory of the youngest present there was to be but one other procession in New York so imposing, and that, too, was in honour of Hamilton.

He stood on a balcony in the Broadway, with his family, Madison, Baron Steuben, and the Schuylers, bowing constantly to the salutes and cheers. Nicolas Cruger looked up and grinned. Fish winked decorously, and Troup attempted a salaam, and nearly dropped the Constitution. But Hamilton’s mind served him a trick for a moment; the vivid procession, with his face and name fluttering above five thousand heads, the compact mass of spectators, proud and humble, that crowded the pavements and waved their handkerchiefs toward him, the patriotically decorated windows filled with eager, often beautiful, faces, disappeared, and he stood in front of Cruger’s store on Bay Street, with his hands in his linen pockets, gazing out over a blinding glare of water, passionately wishing for the war-ship which never came, to deliver him from his Island prison and carry him to the gates of the real world beyond. He had been an ambitious boy, but nothing in his imaginings had projected him to the dizzy eminence on which he stood to-day. He was recalled by the salute of the Federal ship’s thirteen guns to the president of the Congress and its members, who stood on the fort in the Battery.

After all, perhaps it was the proudest and the happiest day of his career, for the depths in his nature still slumbered, the triumph was without alloy; and he knew that there were other heights to scale, and that he should scale them. It was the magnificent and spontaneous tribute of an intelligent people to an enlightened patriotism, to years of severe and unselfish thought; and hardly an enemy grudged him his deserts. The wild feeling of exultant triumph which surged behind his smiling face receded before the rising swell of the profoundest gratitude he had ever known.

The day finished with a great banquet at Mr. Bayard’s country-seat, near Grand Street, where tables were spread for six thousand persons, in a pavilion surmounted by an image of Fame, and decorated with the colours of the nations that had formed treaties with the United States. Later, there was a grand display of fireworks.

XI

On the following day Hamilton went to Albany to march at the head of a Federal procession with General Schuyler, then returned to “Hamiltonopolis” and such legal work as he was permitted to accomplish; for not only were leaders consulting him on every possible question from the coming elections to the proper seat for the new government, and his duties as a member of Congress pressing, but Edward Stevens, now established as a doctor in Philadelphia, paid him a visit of a week, and they talked the night through of St. Croix and old times. One of the pleasantest results of these years of supremacy was the unqualified delight of his Island friends. Hugh Knox was so proud of him, and of himself and the debt which Hamilton acknowledged, that he wrote explosive reams describing the breathless interest of St. Croix in his career, and of the distinguished gatherings at the Governor’s when he arrived with one of their lost citizen’s infrequent epistles. Mrs. Mitchell, poor soul, wrote pathetically that she would no longer regret his loss could she love him less. Hamilton wrote to her as often as he could find the time, and Betsey selected a present for her several times a year. Gratitude is the privilege of a great soul, and Hamilton had a full measure of it. Even his father and brother wrote occasionally, respectfully, if with no great warmth; and if their congratulations were usually accompanied by the experimental sigh of poverty, Hamilton was glad to respond, for at this period he was making a good deal of money.

His promised bow to Mrs. Croix he deferred from day to day, pleading to himself the pressure of work, which was submerging; but while he reproached himself for ingratitude, he knew that he dreaded the meeting: the old spirit of adventure within him, long quiescent, tapped alluringly on the doors of his prudence. That she did not write again, even to congratulate him as other friends had done, but added to his discomfort, for he knew that her pride was now in arms, and that she must be deeply wounded. He heard of her constantly, and at the procession in his honour he had seen her, leaning on the arm of General Knox, a dazzling, but angelic vision in blue and white, at which even the bakers, wig-makers, foresters, tanners, and printers had turned to stare. One of the latter had leaped down from the moving platform on which he was printing a poem of occasion by William Duer, and begged her on his knee to deign to receive a copy. She held weekly receptions, which were attended by two-thirds of the leading men in town, and Hamilton’s intimate friends discoursed of her constantly. Croix was supposed to have been seized with a passion for travelling in savage jungles, and it was the general belief that his death would be announced as soon as the lady should find it convenient to go into mourning. It was plain to the charitable that he had left her with plenty of money, for she dressed like the princess she looked, and her entertainments lacked no material attraction. The gossip was more furious than ever, but the most assiduous scandal-monger could connect no one man with her name, nor trace her income to other than its reputed source. More than once Hamilton had passed her coach, and she had bowed gravely, with neither challenge nor reproach in her sweet haughty eyes. After these quick passings Hamilton usually gave her a few moments of intense thought. He marvelled at her curious intimate knowledge of him, not only of the less known episodes of his career, but of more than one of his mental processes. It is true, she might have led Troup or Fish into gossip and analysis, but her sympathy counted heavily. She drew him by many strings, and sometimes the response thrilled him unbearably. He felt like a man who stood outside the gates of Paradise, bolting them fast. Still, he could quite forget her in his work; and it is probable that but for chance he never would have met her, that one of the greatest disasters in history would have been averted.

Betsey, who had not been well for some time, went to the northern forests of her old home to strive for “spring” and colour. She took the children with her, and Hamilton, who hated to live alone, filled his deserted rooms with Troup, Fish, and Baron Steuben, whose claims he had been pressing upon Congress for years, practically supporting him meanwhile. The old soldier felt keenly the ingratitude of the country he had served, but in time it made him ample compensation; meanwhile the devotion of a few friends, and the lionizing of society, helped him to bear his lot with considerable fortitude. He spent hours in the nursery of the little Hamiltons, and was frequently seen in the Broadway with one in his arms and the other three attached to his person.

All the talk was of Washington and the first administration, Hamilton having carried his point in Congress that New York should be the temporary seat of government; there was jealousy and wrangling over this, as over most other matters involving state pride, but Hamilton believed that should the prize fall to Philadelphia, she would not relinquish it as lightly as New York, which geographically was the more unfit for a permanent gathering, and that the inconvenience to which most of the members, in those days of difficult travel over a vast area, would be subjected, would force them the sooner to agree upon a central and commonly agreeable locality,–one, moreover, which would not meet with the violent opposition of New York. Madison, who had been in favour of Philadelphia, finally acknowledged Hamilton’s sagacity and gave him his influence and vote.

That point settled, all eyes were turned to Mount Vernon. The masses took for granted that Washington would respond to every call of duty the public chose to make, and it was inconceivable that anyone else should fill the first term of that great executive experiment. The universal confidence in Washington and belief that he was to guide the Constitution over the more critical of its shoals, had operated more than any other factor in the ratification of that adventurous instrument. It was a point upon which Hamilton had harped continually. That a whole country should turn, as a matter of course, to a man whom they revered for his virtues rather than for any brilliant parts he may have effectually hidden within his cold and silent exterior, their harmonious choice unbroken by an argument against the safety and dignity of the country in the hands of such a man, certainly is a manifest of the same elevation of tone that we infer from the great popularity of the writings of Hamilton and the deference to such men as Jay and Philip Schuyler. But although they had all the faults of human nature, our forefathers, and were often selfish and jealous to a degree that imperilled the country, at least they had the excuse, not only of being mere mortals, but of living in an era of such changes, uncertainty, and doubt, that public and private interests seemed hopelessly tangled. They were not debased by political corruption until Jefferson took them in hand, and sowed the bountiful crop which has fattened so vast and so curious a variation upon the original American.

The Federal leaders by no means shared the confidence of the people in Washington’s response to their call, and they were deeply uneasy. They knew that he had been bombarded with letters for a year, urging upon him the acceptance of the great office which would surely be offered him, and that he had replied cautiously to each that he could not share their opinion of his indispensability, that he had earned the repose he loved after a lifetime spent in the service of his country, and had no desire to return to public life. Hamilton, at least, knew the motive that lay behind his evasion; without ambition, he was very jealous of his fame. That fame now was not only one of the most resplendent in history, but as unassailable as it was isolated. He feared the untried field in which he might fail.

One evening, late in September, as Hamilton and his temporary household were entering the dining room, Gouverneur Morris drove down Wall Street in his usual reckless fashion, scattering dogs and children, and pulling his nervous sweating horses almost to their haunches, as he reached Hamilton’s door. As he entered the house, however, and received the enthusiastic welcome to which he was accustomed, his bearing was as unruffled as if he had walked down from Morrisania reading a breviary.

“I grow desperately lonely and bored out on my ancestral domain, and long for the glare and glitter, the intrigues and women, of Europe–our educated ones are so virtuous, and the others write such shockingly ungrammatical notes,” he announced, as he took his seat at the board. “Educated virtue is beneficial for the country, but we will all admit that politics are our only excitement, and my blood dances when I think of Europe. However, I did not come tearing through the woods on a hot night to lament the virtue of the American woman. I’ve written to Washington, and he won’t listen to me. We all know how many others have written, including Lafayette, I hear. And we all know what the consequences will be if–say John or Sam Adams, Hancock, or Clinton should be our first president. I long for Paris, but I cannot leave the country while she is threatened with as grave a peril as any that has beset her. Would that he had a grain of ambition–of anything that a performer upon the various chords of human nature could impress. I suppose if he were not so desperately perfect, we should not be in the quandary we are, but he would be far easier to manage. As I awoke from my siesta just two hours ago, my brain was illuminated by the idea that one man alone could persuade him; and that was Alexander Hamilton. He likes us, but he loves you. If he has a weak spot, it has yearned over you since you were our infant prodigy in uniform, with your curls in your eyes. You must take him in hand.”

“I have mentioned it to him, when writing of other things.”

“He is only too glad of the excuse to evade a mere mention. You must write to him as peremptorily as only you dare to write to that majestic presence. Don’t mince it. Don’t be too respectful–I was, because he is the one being I am afraid of. So are all the others. Besides, you have the most powerful and pointed pen in this country. We have spoiled you until you are afraid of no one–if you ever were. And you know him as no one else does; you will approach him from precisely the right sides. Your duty is clear, and the danger is appalling. Besides, I want to go to Europe. Promise me that you will write to-night.”

“Very well,” said Hamilton, laughing. “I promise.” And, in truth, his mind had opened at once to the certainty that the time was come for him to make the final effort to insure Washington’s acceptance. He had felt, during the last weeks, as if burrowing in the very heart of a mountain of work; but his skin chilled as he contemplated the opening of the new government without Washington in the presidential Chair.

Two hours after dinner Morris escorted him to the library and shut him in, then went, with his other friends, to Fraunces’ tavern, and the house was quiet. Hamilton’s thoughts arranged themselves rapidly, and before midnight he had finished his letter. Fortunately it has been preserved, for it is of as vital an interest as anything he ever wrote, not only because it was the determining factor in Washington’s acceptance of an office toward which he looked with reluctance and dread, but because of its consummate sagacity and of its peremptory tone, which no man but Hamilton would have dared to assume to Washington.

It ran:–

NEW YORK, September, 1788.

… I should be deeply pained, my dear sir, if your scruples in regard to a certain station should be matured into a resolution to decline it; though I am neither surprised at their existence, nor can I but agree in opinion, that the caution you observe in deferring an ultimate determination, is prudent. I have, however, reflected maturely on the subject, and have come to a conclusion (in which I feel no hesitation), that every public and personal consideration will demand from you an acquiescence in what will _certainly_ be the unanimous wish of your country. The absolute retreat which you meditated at the close of the late war was natural, and proper. Had the Government produced by the Revolution gone on in a _tolerable_ train, it would have been most advisable to have persisted in that retreat. But I am clearly of opinion that the crisis which brought you again into public view, left you no alternative but to comply; and I am equally clear in the opinion, that you are by that act _pledged_ to take a part in the execution of the Government. I am not less convinced, that the impression of this necessity of your filling the station in question is so universal, that you run no risk of any uncandid imputation by submitting to it. But even if this were not the case, a regard to your own reputation, as well as to the public good, calls upon you in the strongest manner, to run that risk.

It cannot be considered as a compliment to say, that on your acceptance of the office of President, the success of the new Government, in its commencement, may materially depend. Your agency and influence will be not less important in preserving it from the future attacks of its enemies, than they have been in recommending it, in the first instance, to the adoption of the people. Independent of all considerations drawn from this source, the point of light in which you stand at home and abroad will make an infinite difference in the respectability with which the Government will begin its operations, in the alternative of your being or not being at the head of it. I forbear to urge considerations which might have a more personal application. What I have said will suffice for the inferences I mean to draw.

First. In a matter so essential to the well being of society, as the prosperity of a newly instituted government, a citizen, of so much consequence as yourself to its success, has no option but to lend his services if called for. Permit me to say it would be inglorious, in such a situation, not to hazard the glory, however great, which he might have previously acquired.

Secondly. Your signature to the proposed system pledges your judgement for its being such an one as, upon the whole, was worthy of the public approbation. If it should miscarry (as men commonly decide from success, or the want of it), the blame will, in all probability, be laid on the system itself; and the framers of it will have to encounter the disrepute of having brought about a revolution in government, without substituting anything that was worthy of the effort. They pulled down one Utopia, it will be said, to build up another. This view of the subject, if I mistake not, my dear sir, will suggest to your mind greater hazard to that fame, which must be and ought to be dear to you, in refusing your future aid to the system, than in affording it. I will only add, that in my estimate of the matter, that aid is indispensable.

I have taken the liberty to express these sentiments, and to lay before you my view of the subject. I doubt not the considerations mentioned have fully occurred to you, and I trust they will finally produce in your mind the same result which exists in mine. I flatter myself the frankness with which I have delivered myself will not be displeasing to you. It has been prompted by motives which you could not disapprove. I remain, my dear sir,

With the sincerest respect and regard,

Your obedient and humble servant,

A. HAMILTON.

XII

Hamilton folded and sealed the letter, then determined to take it to the post-office himself. The night was hot and his head was throbbing: he had worked, dined, wined, talked, and written, since eight in the morning, with no interval for fresh air or exercise. He was not tired, but very nervous, and after he had disposed of his letter, he set off for a stroll along the river front, and walked for two miles up the quiet road on the east side, listening to the lap of the water, and pausing to watch the superb effect of the moonlight on the bright ripples and on the wooded heights of Long Island. The little village of Brooklyn twinkled here and there for a time, then lay like a sombre shadow in the silences of her forest. As he returned, there was not a light anywhere, except now and again at a masthead, for it was very late. The clock in Trinity steeple struck one as he reentered the town. He moved through the narrow dark and crooked streets with a lagging step, although he had walked briskly for the past hour. There seemed to be no sleep in him, and the idea of his quiet room was an irritation.

“That woman is on my nerves,” he thought. “I’ve written a letter to-night that may bridge this country over another crisis, and I should be sleeping the sleep of the self-sufficient statesman, or at least excogitating upon weighty matters; and for the last hour I’ve given no thought to anything but an unknown woman, who has electrified my imagination and my passions. Is there, perhaps, more safety in meeting her and laying the ghost? Imagination plays us such damnable tricks. She may have a raucous voice, or too sharp a wit; or she may love another by this. I’ll ask Nick to take me there to-morrow.”

The drawing-room windows of the dwellings were but a few feet above the ground, and many of them abutted on the pavement. The narrow street was almost dark, in spite of the moonlight, but Hamilton saw that some one sat at a lower window but a few feet ahead of him. It was a woman, for her arm hung over the sill There was nothing to arrest his attention in the circumstance, beyond the vague beauty of the arm and hand, for on these dog nights many sat at their windows until the chill of early morning; but he suddenly remembered that he was in Pearl Street. For a moment he meditated retreat; with no enthusiasm, however. He shrugged his shoulders and walked on, but his breath was short. As he approached he could see that she was watching him, although her face was almost invisible. He paused beneath the window, half in defiance, his eyes striving to pierce the heavy shade of the room. The hand closed abruptly about the lower part of his face. It trembled, but there was as much determination as warmth in the finger tips; and he seemed to have been transported suddenly to a field of violets.

XIII

“Nick,” said Hamilton, a few evenings later as they were peeling walnuts, “This is the night on which Mrs. Croix receives, is it not? Do you attend? I will go with you. The lady has kindly been at pains to let me know that I shall not be unwelcome.”

Troup pushed back his plate abruptly, and Baron Steuben burst into a panegyric. Fish replied that he had not intended to go, but should change his mind for the sake of the sensation he must create with such a lion in tow. He left the table shortly after, to dress, followed by Steuben, who announced his intention to make one of the party. The host and Troup were left alone.

“What is the matter?” asked Hamilton, smiling. “I see you disapprove of something. Surely you have not lost your heart–“

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Troup, roughly, “but I have always hoped you would never meet her.”

“_Have_ you?”

“If you want to know the truth she has pumped me dry about you. She did it so adroitly that it was some time before I discovered what she was up to. At first I wondered if she were a spy, and I changed my first mind to avoid her, determined to get to the bottom of her motives. I soon made up my mind that she was in love with you, and then I began to tremble, for she is not only a very witch of fascination, but she has about forty times more power of loving, or whatever she chooses to call it, than most women, and every mental attraction and fastidious refinement, besides. There is not a good woman in the country that could hold her own against her. I have no wish to slander her, and have never discussed her before; but my instincts are strong enough to teach me that a woman whose whole exterior being is a promise, will be driven by the springs of that promise to redeem her pledges. And the talk of you banishes all that regal calm from her face and lets the rest loose. I suppose I am a fool to tell you this, but I’ve been haunted by the idea from the first that if you know this woman, disaster will come of it. I do not mean any old woman’s presentiment, but from what I know of her nature and yours. You do astonishingly few erratic things for a genius, but in certain conditions you are unbridled, and my only hope has been that the lightning in you would strike at random without doing much harm–to you, at all events. But this volcano has a brain in it, and great force of character. She will either consume you, ruining your career, or if you attempt to leave her she will find some way to ruin you still. God knows I’m no moralist, but I am jealous for your genius and your future. This has been a long speech. I hope you’ll forgive it.”

Hamilton had turned pale, and he hacked at the mahogany with the point of his knife. He made no attempt to laugh off Troup’s attack, Troup watched him until he turned pale himself. “You have met her,” he said abruptly.

Hamilton rose and pushed back his chair. “I promise you one thing,” he said: “that if I happen to lose my nethermost to Mrs. Croix, the world shall never be the wiser. That I explicitly promise you. I dislike extremely the position in which I put the lady by these words, but you will admit that they mean nothing, that I am but striving to allay your fears–which I know to be genuine. She will probably flout me. I shall probably detest her conversation. But should the contrary happen, should she be what you suspect, and should a part of my nature which has never been completely accommodated, annihilate a resistance of many months, at least you have my assurance that worse shall not happen.”

Troup groaned. “You have so many sides to satisfy! Would that you could have your truly phenomenal versatility of mind with a sweet simplicity of character. But we are not in the millennium. And as you have not the customary failings of genius,–ingratitude, morbidity, a disposition to prevaricate, a lack of common-sense, selfishness, and irresponsibility,–it is easy for us to forgive you the one inevitable weakness. Come to me if you get into trouble. She’d have no mercy at my hands. I’d wring her neck.”

Many people were at their country-seats, but politics kept a number of men in town, and for this political and wholly masculine _salon_ of Mrs. Croix, Gouverneur Morris drove down from Morrisania, Robert Livingston from Clermont; Governor Clinton had made it convenient to remain a day longer in New York. Dr. Franklin had been a guest of my lady for the past two days. They were all, with the exception of Clinton, in the drawing-room, when Hamilton, Steuben and Fish arrived; and several of the Crugers, Colonel Duer, General Knox, Mayor Duane, Melancthon Smith, Mr. Watts, Yates, Lansing, and a half-dozen lesser lights. Mrs. Croix sat in the middle of the room, and her chair being somewhat higher and more elaborate than its companions, suggested a throne: Madame de Stael set the fashion in many affectations which were not long travelling to America. In the house, Mrs. Croix discarded the hoopskirt, and the classic folds of her soft muslin gown revealed a figure as superb in contour as it was majestic in carriage. Her glittering hair was in a tower, and the long oval of her face gave to this monstrous head-dress an air of proportion. Her brows and lashes were black, her eyes the deepest violet that ever man had sung, childlike when widely opened, but infinitely various with a drooping lash. The nose was small and aquiline, fine and firm, the nostril thin and haughty. The curves of her mouth included a short upper lip, a full under one, and a bend at the corners. There was a deep cleft in the chin. Technically her hair was auburn; when the sun flooded it her admirers vowed they counted twenty shades of red, yellow, sorrel, russet, and gold. Even under the soft rays of the candles it was crisp with light and colour. The dazzling skin and soft contours hid a jaw that denoted both strength and appetite, and her sweet gracious manner gave little indication of her imperious will, independent mind, and arrogant intellect. She looked to be twenty-eight, but was reputed to have been born in 1769. For women so endowed years have little meaning. They are born with what millions of their sex never acquire, a few with the aid of time and experience only. Nature had fondly and diabolically equipped her to conquer the world, to be one of its successes; and so she was to the last of her ninety-six years. Her subsequent career was as brilliant in Europe as it had been, and was to be again, in America. In Paris, Lafayette was her sponsor, and she counted princes, cardinals, and nobles among her conquests, and died in the abundance of wealth and honours. If her sins found her out, they surprised her in secret only. To the world she gave no sign, and carried an unbroken spirit and an unbowed head into a vault which looks as if not even the trump of Judgement Day could force its marble doors to open and its secrets to come forth. But those doors closed behind her seventy-seven years later, when the greatest of her victims had been dust half a century, and many others were long since forgotten. To-night, in her glorious triumphant womanhood she had no thought of vaults in the cold hillside of Trinity, and when Hamilton entered the room, she rose and courtesied deeply. Then, as he bent over her hand: “At last! Is it you?” she exclaimed softly. “Has this honour indeed come to my house? I have waited a lifetime, sir, and I took pains to assure you long since of a welcome.”

“Do not remind me of those wretched wasted months,” replied Hamilton, gallantly, and Dr. Franklin nodded with approval. “Be sure, madam, that I shall risk no reproaches in the future.”

She passed him on in the fashion of royalty, and was equally gracious to Steuben and Fish, although she did not courtesy. The company, which had been scattered in groups, the deepest about the throne of the hostess, immediately converged and made Hamilton their common centre. Would Washington accept? Surely he must know. Would he choose to be addressed as “His Serene Highness,” “His High Mightiness,” or merely as “Excellency”? Would so haughty an aristocrat lend himself agreeably to the common forms of Republicanism, even if he had refused a crown, and had been the most jealous guardian of the liberties of the American people? An aristocrat is an aristocrat, and doubtless he would observe all the rigid formalities of court life. Most of those present heartily hoped that he would. They, too, were jealous of their liberties, but had no yearning toward a republican simplicity, which, to their minds, savoured of plebianism. Socially they still were royalists, whatever their politics, and many a coat of arms was yet in its frame.

“Of course Washington will be our first President,” replied Hamilton, who was prepared to go to Mount Vernon, if necessary. “I have had no communication from him on the subject, but he would obey the command of public duty if he were on his death-bed. His reluctance is natural, for his life has been a hard one in the field, and his tastes are those of a country gentleman,–tastes which he has recently been permitted to indulge to the full for the first time. Moreover, he is so modest that it is difficult to make him understand that no other man is to be thought of for these first difficult years. When he does, there is no more question of his acceptance than there was of his assuming the command of the army. As for titles they come about as a matter of course, and it is quite positive that Washington, although a Republican, will never become a Democrat. He is a grandee and will continue to live like one, and the man who presumes to take a liberty with him is lost.”

Mrs. Croix, quite forgotten, leaned back in her chair, a smile succeeding the puzzled annoyance of her eyes. In this house her words were the jewels for which this courtly company scrambled, but Hamilton had not been met abroad for weeks, and from him there was always something to learn; whereas from even the most brilliant of women–she shrugged her shoulders; and her eyes, as they dwelt on Hamilton, gradually filled with an expression of idolatrous pride. The new delight of self-effacement was one of the keenest she had known.

The bombardment continued. The Vice-President? Whom should Hamilton support? Adams? Hancock? Was it true that there was a schism in the Federal party that might give the anti-Federalists, with Clinton at their head, a chance for the Vice-Presidency at least? Who would be Washington’s advisers besides himself? Would the President have a cabinet? Would Congress sanction it? Whom should he want as confreres, and whom in the Senate to further his plans? Whom did he favour as Senators and Representatives from New York? Could this rage for amendments be stopped? What was to be the fate of the circular letter? Was all danger of a new Constitutional Convention well over? What about the future site of the Capital–would the North get it, or the South?

All these, the raging questions of the day, it took Hamilton the greater part of the evening to answer or parry, but he deftly altered his orbit until he stood beside Mrs. Croix, the company before her shrine. He had encountered her eyes, but although he knew the supreme surrender of women in the first stages of passion, he also understood the vanities and weaknesses of human nature too well not to apprehend a chill of the affections under too prolonged a mortification.

Clinton entered at midnight; and after almost bending his gouty knee to the hostess, whom he had never seen in such softened yet dazzling beauty, he measured Hamilton for a moment, then laughed and held out his hand.

“You are a wonderful fighter,” he said, “and you beat me squarely. We’ll meet in open combat again and again, no doubt of it, and I hope we will, for you rouse all my mettle; but I like you, sir, I like you. I can’t help it.”

Hamilton, at that time of his life the most placable of men, had shaken his hand heartily. “And I so esteem and admire you, sir,” he answered warmly, “that I would I could convert you, for your doctrines are bound to plunge this country into civil war sooner or later. The Constitution has given the States just four times more power than is safe in their hands; but if we could establish a tradition at this early stage of the country’s history that it was the duty of the States always to consider the Union first and themselves as grateful assistants to a hard-working and paternal central power, we might do much to counteract an evil which, if coddled, is bound to result in a trial of strength.”

“That is the first time I ever heard you croak, except in a public speech where you had a point to gain,” said Livingston. “Do you mean that?”

“What of it?” asked Clinton. “Under Mr. Hamilton’s constitution–for if it be not quite so monarchical as the one he wanted, it has been saddled upon the United States through his agency more than through any other influence or group of influences–I say, that under Mr. Hamilton’s constitution all individualism is lost. We are to be but the component parts of a great machine which will grind us as it lists. Had we remained thirteen independent and sovereign States, with a tribunal for what little common legislation might be necessary, then we might have built up a great and a unique nation; but under what is little better than an absolute monarchy all but a small group of men are bound to live and die nonentities.”

“But think of the excited competition for a place in that group,” said Hamilton, laughing. The disappointed Governor’s propositions were not worthy of serious argument.

“I do not think it is as bad as that, your Excellency,” said Dr. Franklin, mildly. “I should have favoured a somewhat loose Confederation, as you know, but the changes and the development of this country will be so great that there will be plenty of room for individualism; indeed, it could not be suppressed. And after a careful study of this instrument that you are to live under–my own time is so short that my only role now is that of the prophet–I fail to see anything of essential danger to the liberties of the American people. I may say that the essays of “The Federalist” would have reassured me on this point, had I still doubted. I read them again the other week. The proof is there, I think, that the Constitution, if rigidly interpreted and lived up to, must prove a beneficent if stern parent to those who dwell under it.”

Clinton shrugged his shoulders. “I would I could share your optimism,” he said. “What a picture have we! The most venerable statesman in the country finding some hope for individual liberty in this Constitution; the youngest, an optimist by nature and habit, sanguine by youth and temperament, trembling for the powers it may confer upon a people too democratically inclined. This is true, sir–is it not?”

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “Democracy is a poison, just as Republicanism is the ideal of all self-respecting men. I would do all I could to vitalize the one and nullify the other. The spirit of democracy exists already, no doubt of it. If we could suppress it in time, we should also suppress the aspirations of encouraged plebianism,–a dangerous factor in any republic. It means the mixing of ignoble blood with good, a gradual lowering of ideals until a general level of sordidness, individualism in its most selfish and self-seeking form, and political corruption, are the inevitable results. You, your Excellency, are an autocrat. It is odd that your principles should coincide so closely with the despotism of democracy.”

“Oh, I can’t argue with you!” exclaimed Clinton, impatiently. “No one can. That is the reason you beat us when we clearly were in the right. What says Madam? She is our oracle.” “If she would but bring him under her foot!” he said to Yates. “She is heart and soul with us. I augur well that he is here at last.”

“It is long since our fairy queen has spoken,” Franklin was saying; gallant to all women, he was prostrate before this one. “Her genius directs her to the most hidden kernels.”

“What do you wish?” she asked lightly. “A prophecy? I am no Cassandra. Unlike Dr. Franklin, I am too selfish to care what may happen when I am dead. At this date we are assured of two elements in government: unselfish patriotism and common-sense. There never has been a nobler nor a more keenly intelligent group of men in public life than General Washington will be able to command as assistants in forming a government. And should our Governor lead his own party to victory,” she added, turning to Clinton with so brilliant a smile that it dissipated a gathering scowl, “it would be quite the same. The determined struggle of the weaker party for the rights which only supremacy can insure them is often misconstrued as selfishness; and power leads their higher qualities as well as their caution and conservatism to victory. I am a philosopher. I disapproved the Constitution, and loved the idea of thirteen little sovereignties; but I bow to the Inevitable and am prepared to love the Constitution. The country has too much to accomplish, too much to recover from, to waste time arguing what might have been; it is sure to settle down into as complacent a philosophy as my own, and adjust itself to its new and roomy crinoline.”

“Crinoline is the word,” growled Clinton, who accepted her choice of words as a subtle thrust at Hamilton. “It is rigid. Wherever you move it will move with you and bound your horizon.”

“Oh, well, you know,” said Hamilton, who was tired of the conversation, “like a crinoline it can always be broken.”

XIV

Washington was President of the United States. He had come over grandly from the Jersey shore in a magnificent barge manned by twelve oarsmen in white uniform, escorted by other barges but a shade less imposing. A week later he had taken the oath of office on the new Broad Street gallery of Federal Hall, amidst the breathless silence of thousands, surrounded by the dignitaries of state and three personal friends, Hamilton, Steuben, and Knox. The anti-Federalists were crushed, no longer of dignity as a party, although with ample resources for obstruction and annoyance. The country, after an interval of rejoicing, had settled down to another period of hope and anxiety.

And Hamilton had incurred the dislike of Adams and the hostility of the Livingstons. He had thought it best to scatter the votes for the Vice-President, lest there be the slightest risk of Washington’s defeat; and Adams who thought quite as much of himself as he did of George Washington, and had expected to be elected with little less than unanimity, instead of by a bare thirty-four votes, never forgave Hamilton the humiliation. “I have seen the utmost delicacy used toward others,” he wrote to a friend, “but my feelings have never been regarded.” He knew that Hamilton believed him to have been in sympathy with the Conway Cabal,–a suspicion of which he never cleared himself,–and attributed to the Federal leader the motive of wishing to belittle his political significance, lest he should endeavour to use his power as President of the Senate to hamper and annoy the Administration. Perhaps he was right. Far be it from anyone to attempt a journey through the utmost recesses of Hamilton’s mind. He was frank by nature and habit, but he had resolved that the United States government should succeed, and had no mind to put weapons into the hands of Washington’s rivals. He believed in Adams’s general integrity, patriotism, and federalism, however, and brought him to power in his own fashion. He achieved his objects with little or no thought of personal consequences; and although this has been characterized as one of the great political mistakes of his career, it must be remembered that it was a time for nervousness and exaggerated fears. Washington had enemies; no other man was believed, by the men who did the thinking for the country, to be able to hold the United States together until they were past their shoals, and the method of election was precarious: each elector casting two votes without specification, the higher office falling to the candidate who received the larger number of votes.

The Livingstons had desired a seat in the Senate of the new Congress for one of their powerful family, and Hamilton had given the prize to Rufus King. No gift could have been more justly bestowed; but the Livingstons felt themselves flouted, their great services to the country unrewarded. Their open hostility roused all the haughty arrogance of Hamilton’s nature, and he made no effort to placate them. When the great office of Chief Justice of the United States was given to John Jay, instead of to Robert Livingston, they attributed the discrimination to Hamilton’s influence over Washington; and the time came when this strong and hostile faction lent themselves to the scheming of one of the subtlest politicians that has ever lived.

The contest for the prizes of the two Houses had been hot and bitter, and Hamilton had never been more active. As a result, the Federalists controlled the Senate, and they had elected four of the six Representatives. Philip Schuyler had drawn the short term in the Senate, and the antagonism of the Livingstons to Hamilton enabled Burr to displace him two years later. The signal mistakes of Hamilton’s political career were in his party management. One of the greatest leaders in history, cool and wise, and of a consummate judgement in all matters of pure statesmanship, he was too hot-headed and impetuous, too obstinate when his righting blood was up, for the skilful manipulation of politics. But so long as the Federal party endured, no other leader was contemplated: his integrity was spotless, his motives unquestioned, his patriotism and stupendous abilities the glory of his party; by sheer force of genius he carried everything before him, whether his methods were approved by the more conservative Federalists or not.

Madison, who mildly desired an office, possibly in the Cabinet, he despatched South to get himself elected to Congress, for he must have powerful friends in that body to support the great measures he had in contemplation; and that not unambitious statesman, after a hot fight with Patrick Henry, was obliged to content himself with a seat in the House. Before he went to Virginia he and Hamilton had talked for long and pleasant hours over the Federal leader’s future schemes. In all things he was in accord with his Captain, and had warmly promised his support.

It was some weeks before Hamilton had a private interview with Washington, although he had dined at his house, entertained him, and been present at several informal consultations on such minor questions as the etiquette of the Administration. But delicacy held him from embarrassing Washington in a familiar interview until he had been invited formally to a position in the contemplated cabinet. He knew that Washington wished him to be Secretary of the Treasury, but he also knew that that most cautious and conscientious of men would not trust to his own judgement in so grave a matter, nor take any step without weeks of anxious thought. The more deeply were Washington’s affections or desires engaged, the more cautious would he be. He was not a man of genius, therefore fell into none of the pitfalls of that terrible gift; he was great by virtue of his superhuman moral strength–and it is safe to say that in public life he never experienced a temptation–by a wisdom that no mental heat ever unbalanced, by an unrivalled instinct for the best and most useful in human beings, and by a public conscience to which he would have unhesitatingly sacrificed himself and all he loved, were it a question of the nation’s good. But Hamilton knew whom he would consult, and devoted himself to his legal work without a qualm for the future. As he had anticipated, Washington wrote to Robert Morris for advice, and the reply of that eminent financier, that “Hamilton was the one man in the United States competent to cope with the extreme difficulties of that office,” pleasantly ended the indecision of the President, and he communicated with Hamilton at once.

Hamilton answered by letter, for Washington was wedded to the formalities, but he followed it with a request for a private interview; and after the lapse of eight years Washington and Hamilton met once more for a purely personal colloquy.

Washington was occupying temporarily the house of Walter Franklin, on the corner of Cherry Street and Franklin Square, a country residence at which society grumbled, for all the world lived between the present site of the City Hall and Battery Park. Hamilton rode up on horseback, and was shown into the library, which overlooked a pleasant garden. The President, in the brown suit of home manufacture which he had worn at the inauguration, as graceful and erect as ever, although with a more elderly visage than in the days of war, entered immediately, closed the door carefully, then took both Hamilton’s hands in his enormous grasp. The austere dignity of his face relaxed perceptibly.

“Oh!” he said. “I am glad to see you!”

“It is not a return to old times, alas!” said Hamilton, gaily; “for what we all had to do then was a bagatelle to this, and you have made the supreme sacrifice of your life.”

Washington seated himself in an arm-chair, motioning Hamilton to one opposite. “I wrote Knox,” he said, “that I felt as if setting out to my own execution; and I swear to you, Hamilton, that if it had not been for you I doubt if my courage would not have failed me at the last moment. I had a moment of nervous dread this morning before I opened your letter, but I believed that you would not fail me. It is a colossal enterprise we are embarked upon, this constructing of a great nation for all time. God knows I am not equal to it, and although I shall always reserve to myself the final judgement, I expect a few of you to think for me–you, in particular. Then with the Almighty’s help we may succeed, but I can assure you that it has cost me many wakeful nights–and cold sweats.”

He spoke with his usual slow impressiveness, but he smiled as he watched Hamilton’s flashing eyes and dilating nostrils. “You look but little older,” he added. “Not that you still look a stripling, controlling your temper with both hands while I worked you half to death; but you have the everlasting youth of genius, I suppose, and you look to me able to cope with anything.”

Hamilton laughed. “I am far older in many things, sir. I fear I often seemed ungrateful. I have blessed you many times, since, for the discipline and the invaluable knowledge I gained in those years.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Washington. “Ah! I am very glad to hear you say that. It is like your generosity, and I have had many anxious moments, wondering if there might not still be a grudge. But not only were your peculiar gifts indispensable to this country, but, I will confess, now that it is over, I mortally dreaded that you would lose your life. You and Laurens were the most reckless devils I ever saw in the field. Poor Laurens! I felt a deep affection for him, and his death was one of the bitterest blows of the war. If he were here now, and Lafayette, how many pleasant hours I should look forward to; but I have you, and God knows I am grateful. Lafayette, I am afraid, has undertaken too great a business for his capacity, which is admirable; but he is not strong enough to be a leader of men.”

“I wish he were here, and well out of it.”

“I have not sufficiently thanked you for the letter you wrote me last September. It was what I had earnestly hoped for. My position was most distressing. It was impossible for me not only to ask the advice of anyone, but the temper of the public mind regarding myself. To assume that I must be desired–but I need not explain to you, who know me better than anybody living, the extreme delicacy of my position, and the torments of my mind. Your letter explained everything, told me all I wished to know, made my duty clear–painfully clear. You divined what I needed and expressed yourself in your usual frank and manly way, without the least hesitation or fear. I take this occasion to assure you again of my deep appreciation.”

“Oh, sir,” said Hamilton, who was always affected unbearably by Washington’s rare moments of deep feeling, “I was merely the selected instrument to give you what you most needed at the moment; nothing more. This was your destiny; you would be here in any case. It is my pride, my reward of many years of thought and work, that I am able to be of service to your administration, and conspicuous enough to permit you to call me to your side. Be sure that all that I have or am is yours, and that I shall never fail you.”

“If I did not believe that, I should indeed be deep in gloomy forebodings. Jay will officiate as Secretary of State for the present; Knox, as Secretary at War. I contemplate inviting Randolph to act as Attorney-General, and Jefferson as permanent Secretary of State, if he will accept; thus dividing the appointments between the North and the South. What do you think of the wisdom of appointing Mr. Jefferson? He is a man of great abilities, and his long residence abroad should make him a valuable Secretary of State, his conspicuous services acceptable to both sections of the country. It is the selection over which I have hesitated longest, for it is a deep and subtle nature, a kind I have no love of dealing with, but so far as I know it is not a devious one, and his talents command my respect.”

“I am unable to advise you, sir, for he is not personally known to me,” said Hamilton, who was not long wishing that he had had a previous and extensive knowledge of Thomas Jefferson. “Madison thinks well of him–is a close personal friend. He has rendered great services to the State of Virginia, his experience is wide, and he possesses a brilliant and facile pen–I can think of no one better fitted for the position. His record for personal bravery is not untarnished, but perhaps that will insure peace in the Cabinet.”

Washington laughed. “Jefferson would slide under the table if you assaulted him,” he said. “It is you only that I fear, as it is you only upon whom I thoroughly rely, and not for advice in your own department alone, but in all. I think it would perhaps be better not to hold collective meetings of the Cabinet, but to receive each of you alone. It is as well the others do not know that your knowledge and judgement are my chief reliance.”

XV

Hamilton, on his way home, stopped in at the chambers of Troup.

“Bob,” he said, “you are to wind up my law business. I am to be Secretary of the Treasury.”

Troup half rose with an exclamation of impatience. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Have you not an introductory line in your nature? It has been bad enough to have been anticipating this, without having it go straight through one like a cannon-ball. Of course it is no use to reason with you–I gave that up just after I had assumed that you were a small boy whom it was the duty of a big collegian to protect, and you nearly demolished my not too handsome visage with your astonishing fists for contradicting you. But I am sorry. Remain at the bar and you have an immediate prospect of wealth, not too many enemies, and the highest honours. Five years from now, and you would lead not only the bar of New York but of the whole country. Jay may be the first Chief Justice, but you would be the second–.”

“Nothing would induce me to be Chief Justice. I should be bored to death. Can you fancy me sitting eternally and solemnly in the middle of a bench, listening to long-winded lawyers? While I live I shall have action–.”

“Well, you will have action enough in this position; it will burn you out twenty years before your time. And it will be the end of what peace and happiness a born fighter could ever hope to possess; for you will raise up enemies and critics on every side, you will be hounded, you will be the victim of cabals, your good name will be assailed–.”

“Answer this: do you know of anyone who could fill this office as advantageously to the country as I?”

“No,” said Troup, unwillingly. “I do not.”

Hamilton was standing by the table. He laid his hand on a volume of Coke, expanding and contracting it slowly. It was perhaps the most beautiful hand in America, and almost as famous as its owner. But as Troup gazed at it he saw only its superhuman suggestion of strength.

“The future of this country lies there,” said Hamilton. “I know, and you know, that my greatest gift is statesmanship; my widest, truest knowledge is in the department of finance; moreover, that nothing has so keen and enduring a fascination for me. I could no more refuse this invitation of Washington’s than I could clog the wheels of my mind to inaction. It is like a magnet to steel. If I were sure of personal consequences the most disastrous, I should accept, and without hesitation. For what else was the peculiar quality of my brain given me? To what other end have I studied this great question since I was a boy of nineteen–wild as I was to fight and win the honours of the field? Was ever a man’s destiny clearer, or his duty?”

“I have no more to say,” said Troup, “but I regret it all the same. Have you heard from Morris–Gouverneur?”

“Oh, yes, I had a long screed, in almost your words, spiced with his own particular impertinence. Will you wind up my law business?”

“Oh, of course,” said Troup.

The new Congress, made up, though it was, of many of the ablest men in the country, had inherited the dilatory methods of the old, and did not pass an act establishing the Treasury Department until the 2d of September. Hamilton’s appointment to this most important portfolio at the disposal of the President was looked upon as a matter of course. It created little discussion, but so deep a feeling of security, that even before the reading of his famous Report business had revived to some extent. This Report upon the public credit was demanded of him at once, but it was not until the recess of Congress that he could work uninterruptedly upon it; for that body, floundering in its chaos of inherited difficulties, turned to the new Secretary for advice on almost every problem that beset it. I cannot do better here than to quote from the monograph on Hamilton by Henry Cabot Lodge, who puts with admirable succinctness a series of facts important to the knowledge of every American:–

In the course of a year he was asked to report, and did report with full details, upon the raising, management, and collection of the revenue, including a scheme for revenue cutters; as to the estimates of income and expenditure; as to the temporary regulation of the chaotic currency; as to navigation laws, and the regulation of the coasting trade, after a thorough consideration of a heap of undigested statistics; as to the post-office, for which he drafted a bill; as to the purchase of West Point; on the great question of public lands and a uniform system of managing them; and upon all claims against the government. Rapidly and effectively the secretary dealt with all these matters, besides drawing up as a voluntary suggestion a scheme for a judicial system. But in addition to all this multiplicity of business there were other matters like the temporary regulation of the currency, requiring peremptory settlement. Money had to be found for the immediate and pressing wants of the new government before any system had been or could be adopted, and the only resources were the empty treasury and broken credit of the old confederacy. By one ingenious expedient or another, sometimes by pledging his own credit, Hamilton got together what was absolutely needful, and without a murmur conquered those petty troubles when he was elaborating and devising a far-reaching policy. Then the whole financial machine of the Treasury Department, and a system of accounting, demanded instant attention. These intricate problems were solved at once, the machine constructed, and the system of accounts devised and put into operation; and so well were these difficult tasks performed that they still subsist, developing and growing with the nation, but at bottom the original arrangements of Hamilton. These complicated questions, answered so rapidly and yet so accurately in the first weeks of confusion incident to the establishment of a new government, show a familiarity and preparation, as well as a readiness of mind of a most unusual kind. Yet while Hamilton was engaged in all this bewildering work, he was evolving the great financial policy, at once broad, comprehensive, and minute, and after the recess in January he laid his ground plan before Congress in his first report on public credit; a state paper which marks an era in American history, and by which the massive corner-stone, from which the great structure of the Federal government has risen, was securely laid.

New York, meanwhile, had blossomed to her full. Houses had been renovated, and with all the elegance to be commanded. Many had been let, by the less ambitious, to the Members of Congress from other States, and all were entertaining. General Schuyler occupied a house close to Hamilton, and his daughters Cornelia and Peggy–Mrs. Stephen Van Rensselaer–were lively members of society. The Vice-President had taken the great house at Richmond Hill, and General Knox as imposing a mansion as he could find. Washington, after a few months, moved to the McComb house in lower Broadway, one of the largest in town, with a reception room of superb proportions. Here Mrs. Washington, standing on a dais, usually assisted by Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Hamilton, received, with the rigid formality of foreign courts, all who dared to attend her levees. She had discarded the simplicity of campaigning days, and attired herself with a magnificence which was emulated by her “Court.” It was yet too soon to break from tradition, and the Washingtons conducted themselves in accordance with their strong aristocratic proclivities. Nor did it occur to anyone, even the most ardent Republican, that dignity and splendour were inconsistent with a free and enlightened Republic, until Jefferson began his steady and successful system of plebeianizing the country.

Washington’s levees were frigid; but I have not observed any special warmth at the White House upon public occasions in my own time. The President, after the company had assembled, entered in full official costume: black velvet and satin, diamond knee-buckles, his hair in a bag and tied with ribbons. He carried a military hat under his arm, and wore a dress sword in a green shagreen scabbard. He made a tour of the room, addressing each guest in turn, all being ranged according to their rank. At his wife’s levees he attended as a private individual and mingled more freely with the guests; but his presence always lowered every voice in the room, and women trembled with anxiety lest he should not engage them in conversation, while dreading that he might. The unparalleled dignity, the icy reserve of his personality, had always affected the temperature of the gatherings he honoured; but at this time, when to the height of a colossal and unique reputation was added the first incumbency of an office, bestowed by a unanimous sentiment, which was to raise the United States to the plane of the great nations of Europe, he was instinctively regarded as superhuman, rather as a human embodiment of the Power beyond space. He was deeply sensitive to the depressing effect he produced, and not a little bored by the open-mouthed curiosity he excited. A youngster, having run after him for quite a block, one day, panting from his exertions, Washington wheeled about suddenly, and made a bow so profound and satirical that his pursuer fled with a yell of terror.

The President was very fond of the theatre, and invited a party once a week to accompany him to John Street. He entertained at table constantly, and dined out formally and intimately. Congress, he attended in great state. He had brought to New York six white horses of the finest Virginian breed, and a magnificent cream-coloured coach, ornamented with cupids and festoons. For state occasions the horses were covered over night with a white paste, and polished next morning until they shone like silver. The hoofs were painted black. When Washington drove through the city on his way to Congress, attended by postilions and outriders, it is little wonder that he had a royal progress through proud and satisfied throngs.

The Adamses, who had counselled all the usages of foreign courts, but had been outvoted by Hamilton and Jay, entertained but little less than the President; and so did the Schuylers, Livingstons, Jays, and half the town. The Hamiltons, of necessity, entertained far more simply; but Betsey received every Wednesday evening, when her rooms were a crush of fashion and politics, eager for a glimpse of Hamilton and to do court to her popular self. They gave at least one dinner a week, but Betsey as a rule went out with her parents, for her husband was too busy for society.

The world saw little of Hamilton at this time, and Betsey but little more. He worked in his library or office for fourteen hours of the day, while the country teemed with conjectures of his coming Report. A disposition to speculate upon it was already manifest, and more than one friend endeavoured to gain a hint of its contents. Not even Madison, to whom he had talked more freely than to anyone, knew aught of the details of that momentous Report, what recommendations he actually should make to Congress; for none knew better than he that a hint derived from him which should lead to profitable speculation would tarnish his good name irretrievably. Careless in much else, on the subject of his private and public integrity he was rigid; he would not have yielded a point to retain the affection of the best and most valued of his friends. Fastidious by nature on the question of his honour, he knew, also, that other accusations, even when verified, mattered little in the long run; a man’s actual position in life and in history was determined by the weight of his brain and the spotlessness of his public character. He worked in secret, with no help from anyone; nor could blandishments extract a hint of his purpose. Against the rock of his integrity passion availed nothing. As for Betsey, between her growing children, the delicacy which had followed the birth of her last child, and her heavy social duties, she would have had little time to assist him had he confided even in her. Moreover, to keep up a dignified position upon $3500 a year cost her clever little Dutch head much anxious thought. It is true that some money had been put aside from the income of her husband’s large practice, but he was the most careless and generous of men, always refusing the fees of people poorer than himself, and with no talent for personal, great as was his mastery of political, economy. If General Schuyler often came to the rescue his son-in-law never knew it. Hamilton had a vague idea that Betsey could manage somehow, and was far too absorbed to give the matter a thought. Betsey, it would seem, had her own little reputation, for it was about this time that M’Henry finished a letter to Hamilton, as follows:–

Pray present me to Mrs. Hamilton. I have learned from a friend of yours that she has, as far as the comparison will hold, as much merit as your treasurer as you have as treasurer of the wealth of the United States.

XVI

Congress reassembled, and on the 2d of January Hamilton sent in his Report on Public Credit. By this time excitement and anxiety, to say nothing of cupidity, were risen to fever pitch. All realized that they were well in the midst of a national crisis, for the country was bankrupt, and her foreign and domestic debts footed up to quite eighty millions of dollars–a stupendous sum in the infancy of a nation, when there was little specie in the country, and an incalculable amount of worthless paper, with long arrears of interest besides. If Hamilton could cope with this great question, and if Congress, with its determined anti-government party, would support him, the Union and its long-suffering patriots would enter upon a season of prosperity and happiness. If the one were inadequate to meet the situation, or the other failed in its national duty, the consequences must be deeper wretchedness and disaster than anything they yet had endured. The confidence in Hamilton was very widespread, for not only were his great abilities fully recognized, but his general opinions on the subject had long been known, and approved by all but the politicians on the wrong side. The confidence had been manifested in a manner little to his liking: speculators had scoured the country, buying up government securities at the rate of a few shillings on the pound, taking advantage of needy holders, who dwelt, many of them, in districts too remote from the centre of action to know what the Government was about. And even before this “signal instance of moral turpitude,” the fact that so many old soldiers who had gone home with no other pay than government securities, to be exchanged for specie at the pleasure of a government which nobody had trusted, had sold out for a small sum, was one of the agitating themes of the country; and opinion was divided upon the right of the assignees to collect the full amount which the new government might be prepared to pay, while the moral rights of the worthy and original holder were ignored. It was understood, however, that Hamilton had given no more searching thought to any subject than to this.

The public was not admitted to the galleries of Congress in those days, but a great crowd packed Wall and Broad streets while the Report was reading and until some hint of its contents filtered through the guarded doors. Hamilton himself was at home with his family, enjoying a day of rest. It is one of the most curious incidents in his career, as well as one of the highest tributes to his power over men, that Congress, after mature deliberation, decided that it would be safer to receive his Report in writing than in the form of a personal address from a man who played so dangerously upon the nerve-board of the human nature. There hardly could be any hidden witchery in a long paper dealing with so unemotional a subject as finance; but no man could foresee what might be the effect of the Secretary’s voice and enthusiasm,–which was perilously communicable,–his inevitable bursts of spontaneous eloquence. But Hamilton had a pen which served him well, when he was forced to substitute it for the charm of his personality. It was so pointed, simple, and powerful, it classified with such clarity, it expressed his convictions so unmistakably, and conveyed his subtle appeals to human passions so obediently, that it rarely failed to quiver like an arrow in the brain to which it was directed. And this particular report was vitalized by the author’s overwhelming sense of the great crisis with which he was dealing. Reading it to-day, a hundred and eleven years after it was written, and close to the top of a twelve-story building, which is a symbol of the industry and progress for which he more than any man who has ever dedicated his talents to the United States is responsible, it is so fresh and convincing, so earnest, so insistent, so courteously peremptory, that the great century which lies between us and that empire-making paper lapses from the memory, and one is in that anxious time, in the very study of the yet more anxious statesman; who, on a tropical island that most of his countrymen never will see, came into being with the seed of an unimagined nation in his brain.

To condense Hamilton is much like attempting to increase the density of a stone, or to reduce the alphabet to a tabloid. I therefore shall make no effort to add another failure to the several abstracts of this Report. The heads of his propositions are sufficient. The Report is accessible to all who find the subject interesting. The main points were these: The exploding of the discrimination fallacy; the assumption of the State debts by the Government; the funding of the entire amount of the public debt, foreign, domestic, and State; three new loans, one to the entire amount of the debt, another of $10,000,000, a third of $12,000,000; the prompt payment of the arrears and current interest of the foreign loan on the original terms of the contract; the segregating of the post-office revenue, amounting to about a million dollars, for a sinking fund, that the creation of a debt should always be accompanied by the means of extinguishment; increased duties on foreign commodities, that the government might be able to pay the interest on her new debts and meet her current expenses; and more than one admonition for prompt action, as the credit of the nation was reaching a lower level daily, besides sinking more hopelessly into debt through arrears of interest. The indebtedness he divided as follows: The foreign debt, $10,070,307, with arrears of interest amounting to $1,640,071. The liquidated domestic debt, $27,383,917, with arrears of interest amounting to $13,030,168. The unliquidated part he estimated at $2,000,000, and the aggregate debt of the State at $25,000,000; making a total of nearly $80,000.000.

He also hinted at his long-cherished scheme of a National Bank, and a possible excise law, and gave considerable space to the miserable condition of landed property and the methods by which it might be restored to its due value.

XVII

The talk in the drawing-room of Mrs. Croix that night was of little else but the Secretary’s Report. Mrs. Croix, so said gossip, had concluded that this was the proper time for the demise of her recalcitrant officer, and had retired to weeds and a semi-seclusion while Mrs. Washington pondered upon the propriety of receiving her. Her court cared little for the facts, and vowed that she never had looked so fair or so proud; Hamilton, that she shone with the splendour of a crystal star on the black velvet skies of the Tropics. She wore, this evening, a few yards of black gauze which left bare a crescent of her shining neck and the lower arms. Her bright hair was arranged in a mass of ringlets, after a fashion obtaining in Europe, and surmounted by a small turban of gauze fastened with a diamond sun. Many of the men who visited her habitually called her Lady Betty, for she was one of those women who invite a certain playful familiarity while repelling intimacy. Hamilton called her, as the fancy moved him, Egeria, Boadicea, or Lady Godiva.

Clinton came in fuming. “It is not possible,” he cried, “that the Congress can be so mad as to be hoodwinked by this deep political scheme for concentrating the liberties of the United States under the executive heel. ‘To cement more closely the union of the States and to add to their security against foreign attack!’ Forsooth! This assumption plan is nothing more nor less than another of his dastardly schemes to squeeze out of the poor States what little liberty he left them under the Constitution. He could not obtain at Philadelphia all he wished for, but now that Washington has given him both reins, he laughs in our faces. I regret that I ever offered him my hand.”

“Then our party in Congress will fight him on political grounds?” asked Mrs. Croix.

“You may put it that way if you choose. It certainly will not be blinded by his speciousness and aid him in his subtle monarchism. ‘Contribute in an eminent degree to an orderly, stable, and satisfactory arrangement of the Nation’s finances!’ ‘Several reasons which render it probable that the situation of the State creditors will be worse than that of the creditors of the Union, if there be not a national assumption of the State debts!’ And then his plan of debit and credit, with ‘little doubt that balances would appear in favour of all the States against the United States!’ My blood has boiled since I read that paper. I have feared apoplexy. He is clever, that West Indian,–do they grow many such?–but he did not select a country composed entirely of fools to machinate in.”

“My dearest Governor,” whispered Mrs. Croix, “calm yourself, pray. Only you can cope with Mr. Hamilton. You must be the colossal spirit without the walls of Congress to whom all will look for guidance. If you become ill, the cause is lost.”

Clinton composed himself promptly, and asked Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, which, section of the Report he expected to attack first. There were no Federalists present.

Gerry shrugged his shoulders and shot a narrow glance of contempt at the Governor. “Give me time, your Excellency, pray. Mr. Hamilton’s paper has the thought of a decade in it. It merits at least a week of thought on our part. I never could agree with him in all things, but in some I am at one with him; and I acknowledge myself deeply in his debt, insomuch as he has taught me, among thousands of others, to ‘think continentally,’ I certainly agree with him that to pay to present holders the full value of their certificates, without discrimination, is a matter of constitutional law, a violation of which would be a menace to the new government. I shall support him on that point at the risk of being accused of speculation.”

Stone, of Maryland, was striding up and down, but a degree less agitated than the Governor of New York.

“The man is cleverer than all the rest of us put together!” he exclaimed. “Let us not forget that for an instant. A greater thought than this of assumption has never been devised by man. If it be carried into execution,–which God forbid,–it will prove a wall of adamant to the Federal government, impregnable to any attempt on its fabric or operations.”

“Oh, is it so bad as that?” asked Gerry. “Every fort falls if the siege be sufficiently prolonged. I apprehend no such disaster, and I confess I see much promise in at least two of Mr. Hamilton’s schemes. After all, the redemption of the country is what we must look to first.”

“You are a trimmer. Cannot you see that if the whole revenue of the States be taken into the power of Congress, it will prove a band to draw us so close together as not to leave the smallest interstice for separation?”

“But do you meditate separation?” asked Mrs. Croix. “Surely that would be as great a crime as Mr. Hamilton’s monarchical manoeuvres–if it be true he practises such.”

“He is bold enough about them,” snorted Clinton. “I do the man justice to recognize his insolent frankness.”

“Those I cannot say I have observed,” said Gerry. “Nor do I think that we meditate separation. We are struggling out of one pit. It would be folly to dig a deeper. And Massachusetts has a great debt, with decreasing revenue for interest and redemption. I am not sure that assumption would not be to her advantage. She stood the brunt of the war. It is but fair that she should have relief now, even at the expense of other States whose debt is insignificant; and she is able to take care of herself against the Federal government–“

“The brunt of the war!” exclaimed the Attorney-General of the Cabinet, who, with the Speaker of the House, had just entered, and who had controlled himself with difficulty for several seconds. “I beg to assure you, sir, that Virginia may claim that honour. Her glorious patriotism, her contributions in men and money–they exceeded those of any State in the Union, sir.”

Gerry laughed. “I have no means of comparison by which patriotism may be measured, Mr. Randolph,” he said. “But we can produce figures, if necessary, to prove our title to supremacy in the other matters you mention. As you have reduced your debt, however, by an almost total repudiation of your paper money–“

“How about Mr. Madison?” asked Mrs. Croix, hurriedly. “He is your fellow-statesman, Mr. Randolph, but he is Mr. Hamilton’s devoted friend and follower. Virginia may be sadly divided.”

“My fears have decreased on that point,” said Randolph, drily. “Mr. Madison’s loyalty toward his State increases daily.”

“So does his ambition,” observed Muhlenberg. “If I am not mistaken, he has begun to chafe at Hamilton’s arrangement of his destinies–and a nature like that is not without deep and sullen jealousies. To be a leader of leaders requires a sleepless art; to lead the masses is play by comparison. Hamilton is a magician, but he is arrogant and impatient. With all his art and control of men’s minds, he will lose a follower now and again, and not the least important would be–will be–Madison.”

“Have you proof?” asked Clinton, eagerly. “He would be of incomparable value in our ranks. By the way, Aaron Burr is working to the front. He is a born politician, if I am not mistaken, and is in a rapid process of education. I feel sure that I have attached him to our cause by appointing him Attorney-General of the Staite. He should make an invaluable party man.”

“He will be attached to no cause,” said Gerry. “He is, as you say, a politician. There is not a germ of the statesman in him; nor of the honest man, either, unless I am deeply mistaken. He is the only man of note in the country who has not one patriotic act to his credit. He fought, but so did every adventurous youth in the country; and had there been anything more to his interest to do at the time, the Revolution could have taken care of itself. But during all our trying desperate years since–did he go once to Congress? Did he interest himself in the Constitution, either at Philadelphia or Poughkeepsie? What record did he make in the State Legislature during his one term of infrequent attendance? While other men, notably Hamilton, of whom he betrays an absurd jealousy, have been neglecting their private interests in the public cause, he has been distinguishing himself as a femalist, and thinking of nothing else but making money at the bar. I admit his brilliancy, his intrepidity, and the exquisite quality of his address, but I don’t believe that an honest man who comes into contact with him instinctively trusts him.”

“Oh, let us not indulge in such bitter personalities,” cried Mrs. Croix, who took no interest at that time in the temporary husband of her old age. “Surely this coming legislation should compel every faculty. What of the other debts?–of funding? Or, if it is still too soon to talk of these matters with equilibrium,” she added hastily, as Clinton turned purple again, “pray tell me that the great question of deciding upon a site for the Capital is nearing a solution. It has been such a source of bitter agitation. I wish it were settled.”

“The House may or may not pass this bill for ten years in Philadelphia, and the banks of the Potomac thereafter,” growled the Senator from North Carolina. “The Federalists have the majority, and they are determined to keep the seat of government in the North, as they are determined to have their monarchical will in everything. Madison hopes for some fortuitous coincidence, but I confess I hardly know what he means.”

Gerry laughed. “When Madison takes to verbiage,” he said, “I should resort to a plummet and line.”

“Sir!” cried Randolph, limping toward the door in angry haste. “Mr. Madison is one of the loftiest statesmen in the country!”

“Has been. Centrifugal forces are in motion.”

“How everybody in politics does hate everybody else!” said Mrs. Croix, with a patient sigh.

XVIII

The next morning Mrs. Croix sent a peremptory summons to Hamilton. Although at work upon his “Additional Estimates,” he responded at once. The lady was combing her emotional mane in the sunshine before the mirror of her boudoir when he arrived, and the maid had been dismissed.

“Well, Egeria,” he said, smiling down upon this dazzling vision, “what is it? What warning of tremendous import have you to deliver, that you rout a busy Secretary from his work at eleven in the morning? I dared not loiter, lest your capricious majesty refuse me your door upon my next evening of leisure–“

“It is not I who am capricious!” cried Mrs. Croix. She pouted charmingly. “Indeed, sir, I never am quite sure of you. You are all ardour to-day, and indifference to-morrow. For work I am always put aside, and against your family demands I do not exist.”

“My dear Boadicea,” said Hamilton, drily, “I am a mere creature of routine. I met you after my habits of work and domesticity were well established. You are the fairest thing on earth, and there are times when you consume it, but circumstances isolate you. Believe me, I am a victim of those circumstances, not of caprice.”

“My dear Hamilton,” replied Mrs. Croix, quite as drily, “you have all the caprice of a woman combined with all the lordly superiority of the male. I well know that although I bewitch you, I can do so at your pleasure only. You are abominably your own master, both in your strength and your weakness. But there is no one like you on earth, so I submit. And I work and burrow for you, and you will not even accept my precious offerings.”

“I will not have you playing the role of spy, if that is what you mean. I do not like this idea of confessing my enemies when they think themselves safe in your house, I prefer to fight in the open, and they reveal themselves to me sooner or later. What should I think of myself and you if I permitted you to act as a treacherous go-between.”

“You will not permit me to help you! And I could do much! I could tell you so much now that would put you on your guard. I could help you immeasurably. I could be your fate. But you care for nothing but my beauty!” And she dropped dismally into her pocket-handkerchief.

Hamilton was not one of those men who dread a woman’s tears. He had dried too many. His immediate and practical consolation but appeared to deepen her grief, however, and he was obliged to resort to eloquence.

“Where do I find such hours of mental companionship as here?” he demanded. “I say nothing of art and literature; do I not discuss with you the weightiest affairs of State–everything, in fact, upon which my honour does not compel silence? Never have I thought of asking the advice, the opinion, of a woman before. You are my Egeria, and I am deeply grateful for you. If at times I remember nothing but your beauty, would you have it otherwise? I flatter myself that you would not. Have you really anything to reproach me for, because I will not hear of your committing an act which I would not commit myself? I suppose it is hopeless to talk of honour to the cleverest of women, but you must accept this dictum whether you understand it or not: I will listen to none of the confidences of your trusting anti-Federalists. Why cannot you come out honestly and declare your true politics? You could do far more good, and I leave you no excuse to perpetrate this lie.”

“I will not,” sobbed his Egeria, obstinately. “I may be able to be of service to you, even if you will not let me warn you of Madison’s treachery.”