him in order. But the President would have his own commissioners or none. He despatched Marshall and Gerry and ordered C.C. Pinckney to join them. Talleyrand refused them official reception, and sent to them, in secret, nameless minions–known officially, later on, as X.Y.Z.–who made shameful proposals, largely consisting of inordinate demand for tribute. Marshall and Pinckney threw up the commission in disgust. The Opposition in Congress demanded the correspondence; and Adams, with his grimmest smile, sent it to the Senate. It was a terrible blow to the Jacobins, not only the manner in which France had prejudiced her interests in this country; some of the disclosures were extremely painful to ponder upon. “Perhaps,” one of the backstairs ambassadors had remarked, “you believe that, in returning and exposing to your countrymen the unreasonableness of the demands of this Government, you will unite them in resistance to those demands. You are mistaken. You ought to know that the diplomatic skill of France, and the means she possesses in your country, are sufficient to enable her, with _the French party in America_, to throw the blame, which will attend the rupture, on the Federalists, as you term yourselves, but the British party, as France terms you; and you may assure yourselves this will be done.” Jefferson retired to weep alone. Several of the faction resigned from Congress. Hamilton published his pamphlets, “The Stand,” “France,” and “The Answer,” and the whole country burst into a roar of vengeance, echoing Pinckney’s parting shot: “Millions for defence, not a cent for tribute!” “Hail Columbia” was composed, and inflamed the popular excitement. Federalist clubs paraded, wearing a black cockade, and one street riot followed another. Brockholst Livingston had his nose pulled, and killed his man. With the exception of the extreme Jacobins, who never swerved from their devotion to France and the principles she had promulgated with the guillotine, the country was for war to a man, and the President inundated with letters and memorials of encouragement. The immediate result was the augmentation of the Federalist party, and the decline of Jacobinism.
For a long while past, Hamilton had been urging naval and military preparations. A bold front, he thought, would be more effective than diplomacy; and the sequel proved his wisdom. When the crisis came a bill for a Provisional Army was passed at once, another for the increase of the Navy, and liberal appropriations were made. The proposed alliance with Great Britain, Hamilton effectually opposed, for he was almost as exasperated with England as with France; in her fear that the French party in the United States would triumph and declare war upon her, she had renewed her depredations upon our commerce.
Few believed that Washington would serve again, and the Nation turned naturally to Hamilton as its General-in-chief. He had manifestly been born to extricate them from difficulties. Even the Presidential faction put their pride in their pockets, and agreed that he was the one man in the country of matchless resource and military genius; they passed over the veterans of the war without controversy. But there was one man who never put his pride in his pocket, and that was John Adams. Rather than present to Alexander Hamilton another opportunity for distinction and power, he would himself cull fresh laurels for George Washington; the supply of his old rival was now so abundant that new ones would add nothing. Hamilton already had written to Washington as peremptorily as only he dared, urging that he must come forth once more and without hesitation. Washington replied that he would as cheerfully go to the tombs of his ancestors, but admitted the obligation, and asked Hamilton would he serve with him? Hamilton answered that he would on condition that he be second in command to himself; he would make no further sacrifice for an inconsiderable reward. When Washington, therefore, received Adams’s invitation, he made his acceptance conditional upon being given the power to appoint his generals next in rank. Adams, meanwhile, without waiting for his answer, had sent his name to the Senate, and it had been confirmed as a matter of course. Washington was irritated, but persisted in his condition, and sent in the names of Alexander Hamilton for Inspector-General, with the rank of Major-General, C.C. Pinckney and Knox for Major-Generals, and a list of Brigadiers and Adjutant-Generals. Adams, fuming, sent the names to the Senate, and they were confirmed in the order in which Washington had written them; but when they came back, jealousy and temper mastered him, and he committed the intemperate act which tolled the death-knell of the Federalist party: he ordered the commissions made out with Hamilton’s name third on the list. Knox and Pinckney, he declared, were entitled to precedence; and so the order should stand or not at all. He had not anticipated an outcry, and when it arose, angry and determined, he was startled but unshaken. The leading men in Congress waited upon him; he received a new deluge of letters, and the most pointed of them was from John Jay. Hamilton alone held his peace. He saw the terrible mistake Adams had made, and dreaded the result. He wrote to Washington that he should be governed entirely by his wishes, that he should not embarrass him in any manner, and that it never should be said of himself that his ambition or interest had stood in the way of the public welfare. But when Adams stood with his head down, like an angry bull, and it was plain to be seen that his astonishing attitude was prompted by personal hatred alone, when the Cabinet and all the eminent men in the Nation, with the exception of the Republican leaders, faced him with an equally determined front, there was nothing for Hamilton to do but to stand his ground; and he stood it. Washington put an end to the unfortunate controversy. He gave Adams his choice between submission or the selection of another General-in-chief. Adams submitted, but Hamilton had in him an enemy no less malignant than Thomas Jefferson himself. Adams had roused the deep implacability of Hamilton’s nature. All hope of even an armed truce for party advantage between the two great Federalists was over. Hamilton had one cause for resentment which alone would have made him ardently desire retaliation: General Knox, who had loved him devotedly for twenty years, was bitterly alienated, and the breach was never healed.
Hamilton made his headquarters in New York, where he could, after a fashion, attend to his law practice,–he was now the leading counsel at the bar,–but he entered upon his new duties with all his old spirit and passionate energy. Although France might be discomfited by the readiness and resource of the United States, the imposing front erected by a universal indignation, there were reasons which made the reverse possible; and Hamilton thrilled with all the military ardours of his youth at the prospect of realizing those half-forgotten ambitions. He had, in those days, sacrificed his burning desire for action and glory to a sense of duty which had ruled him through life like a tyrannical deity. Was he to reap the reward at this late hour? finish his life, perhaps, as he had planned to begin it? Once more he felt a boundless gratitude for the best friend a mortal ever made. Washington passed Hamilton over the heads of those superior in military rank, because he knew that he alone was equal to the great task for which himself was too old and infirm; but Hamilton never doubted that he did it with a deep sense of satisfied justice and of gratitude.
Never had Hamilton’s conspicuous talent for detail, unlimited capacity for work, genius for creating something out of nothing, marshalled for more active service than now. He withheld his personal supervision from nothing; planning forts, preparing codes of tactics, organizing a commissariat department, drafting bills for Congress, advising M’Henry upon every point which puzzled that unfinished statesman, were but a few of the exercises demanded of the organizer of an army from raw material. The legislation upon one of his bills finally matured a pet project of many years, the Military Academy at West Point. Philip Church, the oldest son of Angelica Schuyler, was his aide; John Church, after a brilliant career as a member of Parliament, having returned to American citizenship, his wife to as powerful a position as she had held in London.
It is hardly necessary to inform any one who has followed the fortunes of Hamilton as far as this that he purposed to command an army of aggression as well as defence. A war with France unrolled infinite possibilities. Louisiana and the Floridas should be seized as soon as war was declared, and he lent a kindly ear to Miranda, who was for overthrowing the inhuman rule of Spain in South America. “To arrest the progress of the revolutionary doctrines France was then propagating in those regions, and to unite the American hemisphere in one great society of common interests and common principles against the corruption, the vices, the new theories of Europe,” was an alluring prospect to a man who had given the broadest possible interpretation to the Constitution, and whose every conception had borne the stamp of an imperialistic boldness and amplitude.
But these last of his dreams ended in national humiliation. This time he had sacrificed his private interests, his vital forces, for worse than nothing. One enemy worked his own ruin, and Louisiana was to add to the laurels of Jefferson.
Talleyrand, astonished and irritated by these warlike preparations and the enthusiasm of the infant country, wisely determined to withdraw with grace while there was yet time. He sent a circuitous hint to President Adams that an envoy from the United States would be received with proper respect. For months Adams had been tormented with the vision of Hamilton borne on the shoulders of a triumphant army straight to the Presidential chair. His Cabinet were bitterly and uncompromisingly for war; Hamilton had with difficulty restrained them in the past. Adams, without giving them an inkling of his intention, sent to the Senate the name of William Vans Murray, minister resident at The Hague, to confirm as envoy extraordinary to France.
For a moment the country was stupefied, so firm and uncompromising had been the President’s attitude hitherto. Then it arose in wrath, and his popularity was gone for ever. As for the Federalist party, it divided into two hostile factions, and neither had ever faced the Republicans more bitterly. A third of the party supported the President; the rest were for defeating him in the Senate, and humiliating him in every possible way, as he had humiliated the country by kissing the contemptuous hand of France the moment it was half extended.
Hamilton was furious. He had been in mighty tempers in his life, but this undignified and mortifying act of the President strained his statesmanship to the utmost. It stood the strain, however; he warned the Federalist leaders that the step taken was beyond recall and known to all the world. There was nothing to do but to support the President. He still had an opportunity for revenge while openly protecting the honour of the Nation. Did Murray, a man of insufficient calibre and prestige, go alone, he must fail; Adams would be disgraced; war inevitable, with glory, and greater glory, for himself. But when circumstances commanded his statesmanship, he ceased to be an individual; personal resentments slumbered. He insisted that Murray be but one of a commission, and Adams, now cooled and as disquieted as that indomitable spirit could be, saw the wisdom of the advice; Oliver Ellsworth and General Davie, conspicuous and influential men, were despatched. Once more Hamilton had saved his party from immediate wreck; but the strength which it had gathered during the war fever was dissipated by the hostile camps into which it was divided, and by the matchless opportunity which, in its brief period of numerical strength, it had given to Thomas Jefferson.
The Federalist party had ruled the country by virtue of the preponderance of intellect and educated talents in its ranks, and the masterly leadership of Alexander Hamilton. The Republican party numbered few men of first-rate talents, but the upper grade of the Federalist was set thick with distinguished patriots, all of them leaders, but all deferring without question to the genius of their Captain. For years the harmonious workings of their system, allied to the aggregate ability of their personnel, and the watchful eye and resourceful mind of Hamilton, the silent but sympathetic figure of Washington in the background, had enabled them to win every hard-fought battle in spite of the often superior numbers of the Opposition. That Jefferson was able in the face of this victorious and discouraging army to form a great party out of the rag-tag and bobtail element, animating his policy of decentralization into a virile and indelible Americanism, proved him to be a man of genius. History shows us few men so contemptible in character, so low in tone; and no man has given his biographers so difficult a task. But those who despise him most who oppose the most determined front to the ultimates of his work, must acknowledge that formational quality in his often dubious intellect which ranks him a man of genius.
His party was threatened with disorganization when the shameful conduct of the France he adored united the country in a demand for vengeance, and in admiration for the uncompromising attitude of the Government. Not until the Federalists, carried away by the rapid recruiting to their ranks, passed the Alien and Sedition laws, did Jefferson find ammunition for his next campaign. As one reads those Resolutions to-day, one wonders at the indiscretion of men who had kept the blood out of their heads during so many precarious years. Three-quarters of a century later the Chinese Exclusion Act became a law with insignificant protest; the mistake of the Federalists lay in ignoring the fears and raging jealousies of their time. If Hamilton realized at once that Jefferson would be quick to seize upon their apparent unconstitutionality and convert it into political capital, he seems to have stood alone, although his protests resulted in the modification of both bills.
Let us not establish a tyranny! [he wrote to Wolcott]. Energy is a very different thing from violence. If we make no false step we shall be essentially united; but if we push things to an extreme, we shall then give to faction body and solidity.
In their modified form they were sufficiently menacing to democratic ideals, and Jefferson could have asked for nothing better. He immediately drafted his famous Kentucky Resolutions, and the obedient Madison did a like service for Virginia. The Resolutions of Madison, although containing all the seeds of nullification and secession, are tame indeed compared with the performance of a man who, enveloped in the friendly mists of anonymity, was as aggressive and valiant as Hamilton on the warpath. These Resolutions protested against the unconstitutionality of the Federal Government in exiling foreigners, and curbing the liberty of the press, in arrogating to itself the rights of the States, and assuming the prerogatives of an absolute monarchy. If Jefferson did not advise nullification, he informed the States of their inalienable rights, and counselled them to resist the centralizing tendency of the Federal Government before it was too late. Even in the somewhat modified form in which these Resolutions passed the Kentucky legislature, and although rejected by the States to which they were despatched, they created a sensation and accomplished their primary object. The war excitement had threatened to shove the Alien and Sedition laws beyond the range of the public observation. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions roused the country, and sent the Republicans scampering back to their watchful shepherd. It is one of the master-strokes of political history, and Jefferson culled the fruits and suffered none of the odium. That these historic Resolutions contained the fecundating germs of the Civil War, is by the way.
Such was the situation on the eve of 1800, the eve of a Presidential election, and of the death struggle of the two great parties.
It was in December of this year of 1799 that Hamilton bent under the most crushing blow that life had dealt him. He was standing on the street talking to Sedgwick, when a mounted courier dashed by, crying that Washington was dead. The street was crowded, but Hamilton broke down and wept bitterly. “America has lost her saviour,” he said; “I, a father.”
BOOK V
THE LAST BATTLE OF THE GIANTS AND THE END
I
The sunlight moved along the table and danced on Hamilton’s papers, flecking them and slanting into his eyes. He went to the window to draw the shade, and stood laughing, forgetting the grave anxieties which animated his pen this morning. In the garden without, his son Alexander and young Philip Schuyler, his wife’s orphan nephew, who lived with him, were pounding each other vigorously, while Philip, Angelica, Theodosia Burr, and Gouverneur Morris sat on the fence and applauded.
“What a blessed provision for letting off steam,” he thought, with some envy. “I would I had Burr in front of my fists this moment. I suppose he is nothing but the dupe of Jefferson, but he is a terrible menace, all the same.”
The girls saw him, and leaping from the fence ran to the house, followed more leisurely by Morris.
“You are loitering,” exclaimed Angelica, triumphantly, as she entered the room without ceremony, followed by Theodosia. “And when you loiter you belong to me.”
She had grown tall, and was extremely thin and nervous, moving incessantly. But her face, whether stormy, dreamy, or animated with the pleasure of the moment, was very beautiful. Theodosia Burr was a handsome intellectual girl, with a massive repose; and the two were much in harmony.
“If I snatch a moment to breathe,” Hamilton was beginning, when he suddenly caught two right hands and spread them open.
“What on earth does this mean?” he demanded. The little paws of the two most fastidious girls he knew were dyed with ink. Both blushed vividly, but Angelica flung back her head with her father’s own action.
“We are writing a novel,” she said.
“You are doing what?” gasped Hamilton.
“Yes, sir. All the girls in New York are. Why shouldn’t we? I guess we inherit brains enough.”
“All the girls in New York are writing novels!” exclaimed Hamilton. “Is this the next result of Jacobinism and unbridled liberty, the next development of the new Americanism as expounded by Thomas Jefferson? Good God! What next?”
“You have the prophetic eye,” said Morris, who was seated on the edge of the table, grinning sardonically. (He was bald now, and looked more wicked than ever.) “What of woman in the future?”
“She has given me sufficient occupation in the present,” replied Hamilton, drily. “Heaven preserve me from the terrors of anticipation.” “Well, finish your novel. If you confine your pens to those subjects of which you know nothing, you will enjoy yourselves; and happiness should be sought in all legitimate channels. But as a favour to me, keep your hands clean.”
The girls retired with some hauteur, and Morris said impatiently:–
“I thought I had left that sort of thing behind me in France, where Madame de Stael drove me mad. I return to find all the prettiest women running to lectures on subjects which they never can understand, and scarifying the men’s nerves with pedantic allusions. I always believed that our women were the brightest on the planet, but that they should ever have the bad taste to become intellectual–well, I have known but one woman who could do it successfully, and that is Mrs. Croix. What has she to do with this sudden activity of Burr’s? Is he handling French money?”
“Are you convinced that she is a French spy?”
“I believe it so firmly that her sudden departure would reconcile me to the Alien law. Where has Burr found the money for this campaign? He is bankrupt; he hasn’t a friend among the leaders; I don’t believe the Manhattan Bank, for all that he is the father of it, will let him handle a cent, and Jefferson distrusts and despises him. Still, it is just possible that Jefferson is using him, knowing that the result of the Presidential election will turn on New York, and that after himself Burr is the best politician in the country. I doubt if he would trust him with a cent of his own money, but he may have an understanding with the Aspasia of Bowling Green. Certainly she must have the full confidence of France by this time, and she is the cleverest Jacobin in the country.”
“I wish that dark system could be extirpated, root and branch,” said Hamilton. “I have been too occupied these past two years to watch her, or Burr either, for that matter. Organizing an army, and working for your bread in spare moments, gives your enemies a clear field for operations. I have had enough to do, watching Adams. Burr has stolen a march that certainly does credit to his cunning. That is the most marvellous faculty I know. He is barely on speaking terms with a leader–Jefferson, Clinton, the Livingstons, all turned their backs upon him long since, as a man neither to be trusted nor used. The fraud by which he obtained the charter of the Manhattan Bank has alienated so many of his followers that his entire ticket was beaten at the last elections. Now he will have himself returned for the Assembly from Orange, he is manipulating the lower orders of New York as if they were so much wax, using their secrets, wiping the babies’ noses, and hanging upon the words of every carpenter who wants to talk: and has actually got Clinton–who has treated him like a dog for years–to let him use his name as a possible candidate for the Legislature. Doubtless he may thank Mrs. Croix for that conquest. But his whole work is marvellous, and I suppose it would be well if we had a man on our side who would stoop to the same dirty work. I should as soon invite a strumpet to my house. But I am fearful for the result. With this Legislature we should be safe. But Burr has converted hundreds, if not thousands, to a party for which he cares as much as he does for the Federal. If he succeeds, and the next Legislature is Republican, Jefferson will be the third President of the Unites States, and then, God knows what. Not immediate disunion, possibly, for Jefferson is cunning enough to mislead France for his own purposes; nor can he fail to see that Jacobinism is on the wane–but a vast harvest of democracy, of disintegration, and denationalization, which will work the same disaster in the end. If Burr could be taught that he is being made a tool of, he might desist, for he would work for no party without hope of reward. He may ruin us and gain nothing.”
“It is a great pity we have not a few less statesmen in our party and a few more politicians. When we began life, only great services were needed; and the Opposition, being engaged in the same battle of ideas, fought us with a merely inferior variety of our own weapons. But the greatest of our work is over, and the day of the politician has dawned. Unfortunately, the party of this damned lag-bellied Virginian has the monopoly. Burr is the natural result and the proudest sample of the French Revolution and its spawn. But your personal influence is tremendous. Who can say how many infuscated minds you will illumine when it comes to speech-making. Don’t set your brow in gloom.”
“I have not the slightest intention of despairing. The deep and never ceasing methods of the Jacobin Scandal Club have weakened my influence with the masses, however; no doubt of that. Its policy is to iterate and reiterate, pay no attention to denials, but drop the same poison daily until denial is forgotten and men’s minds are so accustomed to the detraction, belittling, or accusation, that they accept it as they accept the facts of existence. Jefferson has pursued this policy with my reputation for ten years. During the last eight he has been ably abetted by Mrs. Croix, his other personal agents, and those of France. Now they have enlisted Burr, and there is no better man for their work in the country.”
“They know that if you go, the party follows. That is their policy, and may they spend the long evening of time in Hell. But I believe you will be more than a match for them yet; although this is by far the most serious move the enemy has made.” “I wish to Heaven I had persisted in the Great Convention until I carried my point in regard to having the electors chosen by the people in districts. Then I should snap my fingers at Burr in this campaign, for he is an indifferent speaker, and political manipulation would count for very little. With C.C. Pinckney in the chair for eight years, I should feel that the country was planted on reasonably sure foundations. It must be Adams and Pinckney, of course, but with proper harmony Pinckney will carry the day. Rather Jefferson in the chair than Adams–an open army that we can fight with a united front, than a Federal dividing the ranks, and forcing us to uphold him for the honour of the party–to say nothing of being responsible for him.”
“Jefferson is the less of several evils–Burr, for instance.”
“Oh, Burr!” exclaimed Hamilton. “I should be in my dotage if Burr became President of the United States. Personally, I have nothing against him, and he is one of the most agreeable and accomplished of men. Theodosia half lives here. Perhaps no man ever hated another as I hate Jefferson, nor had such cause. He has embittered my life and ruined my health; he has made me feel like a lost soul more than once. But better Jefferson a thousand times than Burr. God knows I hate democracy and fear it, but Jefferson is timid and cautious, and has some principles and patriotism; moreover, a desire for fame. Burr has neither patriotism nor a principle, nor the least regard for his good name. He is bankrupt, profligate–he has been living in the greatest extravagance at Richmond Hill, and his makings at the bar, although large, are far exceeded by his expenses; there is always a story afloat about some dark transaction of his, and never disproved: he challenged Church for talking openly about the story that the Holland Land Company had, for legislative services rendered, cancelled a bond against him for twenty thousand dollars; but the world doubts Burr’s bluster as it doubts his word. At present he is in a desperate way because Alexander Baring, in behalf of a friend, I.I. Augustine, is pressing for payment on a bond given to secure the price of land bought by Burr and Greenleaf, and he has been offering worthless land claims in settlement, and resorting to every artifice to avert a crisis. Baring wanted me to take the case, but of course I wouldn’t touch it. I sent him to Rinnan. The man is literally at the end of his tether. It is a coup or extinction–failure means flight or debtor’s prison. Furthermore, he is a conspirator by nature, and there is no man in the country with such extravagant tastes, who is so unscrupulous as to the means of gratifying them. He is half mad for power and wealth. The reins of state in his hands, and he would stop at nothing which might give him control of the United States Treasury. To be President of the United States would mean nothing to him except as a highway to empire, to unlimited power and plunder. We have been threatened with many disasters since we began our career, but with no such menace as Burr. But unless I die between now and eighteen hundred and one, Burr will lose the great game, although he may give victory to the Republican party.”
“I am not surprised at your estimate and revelations,” said Morris, “for I have heard much the same from others since my return. It was this certainty that he is bankrupt that led me to believe he was handling French money in this election–and he is flinging it right and left in a manner that must gratify his aspiring soul. Considering his lack of fortune and family influence, he has done wonders in the way of elevating himself. This makes it the more remarkable that with his great cleverness he should not have done better–“
“He is not clever; that is the point. He is cunning. His is wholly the brain of the conspirator. Were he clever, he would, like Thomas Jefferson, fool himself and the world into the belief that he is honest. Intellect and statesmanship he holds in contempt. He would elevate himself by the Catiline system, by the simple method of proclaiming himself emperor, and appropriating the moneybags of the country. There is not one act of statesmanship to his credit. To him alone, of all prominent Americans, the country is indebted for nothing. The other night at a dinner, by the way, he toasted first the French Revolution, then Bonaparte. It is more than possible that you are right, for France, whether Directory or Consulate, is not likely to change her policy regarding this country. Nothing would please either Talleyrand or Bonaparte better than to inflame us into a civil war, then swoop down upon us, under the pretence of coming to the rescue. Burr would be just the man to play into their hands, although with no such intention. Jefferson is quite clever enough to foil them, if he found that more to his interest. Well, neither is elected yet. Let us hope for the best. Go and ask Angelica to play for you. I have letters to write to leaders all over the State.”
II
Burr was the author of municipal corruption in New York, the noble grandsire of Tammany Hall. While Hamilton was too absorbed to watch him, he had divided New York, now a city of sixty thousand inhabitants, into districts and sections. Under his systematic management the name of every resident was enrolled, and his politics ascertained. Then Burr and his committees or sub-committees laid siege to the individual. Insignificant men were given place, and young fire-eaters, furious with Adams, were swept in. Hundreds of doubtful men were dined and wined at Richmond Hill, flattered, fascinated, conquered. Burr knew the private history, the income, of every man he purposed to convert, and made dexterous use of his information. He terrified some with his knowledge, fawned upon others, exempted the stingy from contributions provided he would work, and the lazy from work provided he would pay. It is even asserted that he blackmailed the women who had trusted him on paper, and forced them to wring votes from their men. He drafted a catalogue of names for the electoral Legislature, calculated to impose the hesitant, who were not permitted to observe that he smarted and snarled under many a kick. Strong names were essential if the Republicans were to wrest New York from the Federals after twelve years of unbroken rule, but strong men had long since ceased to have aught to do with Burr; although Jefferson, as Hamilton suspected, had recently extended his politic paw. But in spite of snubs, curt dismissals, and reiterated intimations that his exertions were wasting, Burr did at last, by dint of flattery, working upon the weak points of the men he thoroughly understood, convincing them that victory lay in his hands and no other,–some of them that he was working in harmony with Jefferson,–induce Clinton, Brockholst Livingston, General Gates,–each representing a different faction,–and nine other men of little less importance, to compose the city ticket. All manner of Republicans were pleased, and many discontented Federalists. Burr, knowing that his own election in New York was hopeless, was a candidate for the Assembly in the obscure county of Orange; and the Legislature which would elect the next President was threatened with a Republican majority, which alarmed the Federalist party from one end of the Union to the other.
Hamilton had never been more alert. The moment he was awake to the danger his mind closed to every other demand upon it, and he flung himself into the thick of the fight. He would have none of Burr’s methods, but he spoke daily, upon every least occasion, and was ready to consult at all hours with the distracted leaders of his party. Morris, Troup, Fish, and other Federalists, accustomed to handling the masses, also spoke repeatedly. But Adams had given the party a terrible blow, scattering many of its voters far and wide. They felt that the country had been humiliated, that it was unsafe in the hands of a man who was too obstinate to be advised, and too jealous to control his personal hatreds for the good of the Union; the portent of tyranny in the Alien and Sedition laws had terrified many, and the promises of the Republicans were very alluring. The prospect of a greater equality, of a universal plebeianism, turned the heads of the shopkeepers, mechanics, and labouring men, who had voted hitherto with the Federalist party through admiration of its leaders and their great achievements. In vain Hamilton reminded them of all they owed to the Federalists: the Constitution, the prosperity, the _peace_. He was in the ironical position of defending John Adams. They had made up their minds before they went to hear him speak, and they went because to hear him was a pleasure they never missed. Upon one occasion a man rushed from the room, crying, “Let me out! Let me out! That man will make me believe anything.” Frequently Hamilton and Burr spoke on the same platform, and they were so polite to each other that the audience opened their mouths and wondered at the curious ways of the aristocracy. It was a period of great excitement. Men knocked each other down daily, noses were pulled,–a favourite insult of our ancestors,–and more than one duel was fought in the woods of Weehawken.
The elections began early on the 29th of April and finished at sunset on May 2d. Hamilton and Burr constantly addressed large assemblages. On the first day Hamilton rode up to the poll in his district to vote, and was immediately surrounded by a vociferating crowd. Scurrilous handbills were thrust in his face, and his terrified horse reared before a hundred threatening fists. A big carter forced his way to its side and begged Hamilton to leave, assuring him there was danger of personal violence, and that the men were particularly incensed at his aristocratic manner of approaching the polls.
“Thank you,” said Hamilton, “but I have as good a right to vote as any man, and I shall do it in the mode most agreeable to myself.”
“Very well, General,” said the carter. “I differ with you in politics, but I’ll stick by you as long as there is a drop of blood in my body.”
Hamilton turned to him with that illumination of feature which was not the least of his gifts, then to the mob with the same smile, and lifted his hat above a profound bow. “I never turned my back upon my enemy,” he said, “I certainly shall not flee from those who have always been my friends.”
The crowd burst into an electrified roar. “Three cheers for General Hamilton!” cried the carter, promptly, and they responded as one man. Then they lifted him from his horse and bore him on their shoulders to the poll. He deposited his ballot, and after addressing them to the sound of incessant cheering, was permitted to ride away. The incident both amused and disgusted him, but he needed no further illustrations of the instability of the common mind.
The Republicans won. On the night of the 2d it was known that the Federalists had lost the city by a Republican majority of four hundred and ninety votes.
A few weeks before, when uncertainties were thickest, Hamilton had written to William Smith, who was departing for Constantinople: “… You see I am in a humour to laugh. What can we do better in _this best of all possible worlds?_ Should you ever be shut up in the seven towers, or get the plague, if you are a true philosopher you will consider this only as a laughing matter.”
He laughed–though not with the gaiety of his youth–as he walked home to-night through the drunken yelling crowds of William Street, more than one fist thrust in his face. His son Philip was with him, and his cousin, Robert Hamilton of Grange, who had come over two years before to enlist under the command of the American relative of whom his family were vastly proud. A berth had been found for him in the navy, as better suited to his talents, and he spent his leisure at 26 Broadway. Both the younger men looked crestfallen and anxious. Philip, who resembled his father so closely that Morris called him “his heir indubitate,” looked, at the moment, the older of the two. Ill health had routed the robust appearance of Hamilton’s early maturity, and his slender form, which had lost none of its activity or command, his thin face, mobile, piercing, fiery, as ever, made him appear many years younger than his age.
“Why do you laugh, sir?” asked Philip, as they turned into Wall Street, “I feel as if the end of the world had come.”
“That is the time to laugh, my dear boy. When you see the world you have educated scampering off through space, the retreat led by the greatest rascal in the country, your humour, if you have any, is bound to respond. Moreover, there is always something humorous in one’s downfall, and a certain relief. The worst is over.”
“But, Cousin Alexander,” said Robert Hamilton, “surely this is not ultimate defeat for you? You will not give up the fight after the first engagement–you!”
“Oh, no! not I!” cried Hamilton. “I shall fight on until I have made Thomas Jefferson President of the United States. Should I not laugh? Was any man ever in so ironical a situation before? I shall move heaven and America to put Pinckney in the chair, and I shall fail; and to save the United States from Burr I shall turn over the country I have made to my bitterest enemy.”
“That would not be my way of doing, sir,” said Robert. “I’d fight the rival chieftain to his death. Perhaps this Burr is not so real a Catiline as you think him. Nobody has a good word for him, but I mean he may not have the courage for so dangerous an act as usurpation.”
“Courage is just the one estimable if misdirected quality possessed by Burr, and, whetted by his desperate plight, no length would daunt him. A year or two ago he hinted to me that I had thrown away my opportunities. Pressed, he admitted that I was a fool not to have changed the government when I could. When I reminded him that I could only have done such a thing by turning traitor, he replied, ‘Les grands ames se soucient peu des petits moraux.’ It was not worth while to reason with a man who had neither little morals nor great ones, so I merely replied that from the genius and situation of the country the thing was impracticable; and he answered, ‘That depends on the estimate we form of the human passions, and of the means of influencing them.’ Burr would neither regard a scheme of usurpation as visionary,–he is sanguine and visionary to a degree that will be his ruin,–nor be restrained by any reluctance to occupy an infamous place in history.”
They had reached his doorstep in the Broadway. The house was lighted. Through the open windows of the drawing-room poured a musical torrent. Angelica, although but sixteen, shook life and soul from the cold keys of the piano, and was already ambitious to win fame as a composer. To-night she was playing extemporaneously, and Hamilton caught his breath. In the music was the thunder of the hurricane he so often had described to his children, the piercing rattle of the giant castinets [sic], the roar and crash of artillery, the screaming of the trees, the furious rush of the rain. Robert Hamilton thought it was a battlepiece, but involuntarily he lifted his hat. As the wonderful music finished with the distant roar of the storm’s last revolutions, Hamilton turned to his cousin with the cynicism gone from his face and his eyes sparkling with pride and happiness.
“What do I care for Burr?” he exclaimed. “Or for Jefferson? Has any man ever had a home, a family, like mine? Let them do their worst. Beyond that door they cannot go.”
“Burr can put a bullet into you, sir,” said Robert Hamilton, soberly. “And he is just the man to do it. Jefferson is too great a coward. For God’s sake be warned in time.”
Hamilton laughed and ran up the stoop. His wife was in the drawing-room with Angelica, who was white and excited after the fever of composition. Mrs. Hamilton, too, was pale, for she had heard the news. But mettle had been bred in her, and her spirits never dropped before public misfortune. She had altered little in the last seven years. In spite of her seven children her figure was as slim as in her girlhood, her hair was as black, her skin retained its old union of amber and claret. The lingering girlishness in her face had departed after a memorable occasion, but her prettiness had gained in intellect and character; piquant and roguish, at times, as it still was. It was seven years since she had applied her clever brain to politics and public affairs generally–finance excepting–and with such unwearied persistence that Hamilton had never had another excuse to seek companionship elsewhere. Moreover, she had returned to her former care of his papers, she encouraged him to read to her whatever he wrote, and was necessary to him in all ways. She loved him to the point of idolatry, but she kept her eye on him, nevertheless, and he wandered no more. When he could not accompany her to Saratoga in summer, she sent the children with one of her sisters, and remained with him, no matter what the temperature, or the age of a baby. But she made herself so charming that if he suspected the surveillance he was indifferent, and grateful for her companionship and the intelligent quality of her sympathy. Elizabeth Hamilton never was a brilliant woman, but she became a remarkably strong-minded and sensible one. Femininely she was always adorable. Although relieved of the heavier social duties since the resignation from the Cabinet, Hamilton’s fame and the popularity of both forced them into a prominent position in New York society. They entertained constantly at dinner, and during the past seven years many distinguished men besides Talleyrand had sat at their hospitable board: Louis Philippe d’Orleans,–supported for several years by Gouverneur Morris,–the Duc de Montpensier, the Duke of Kent, John Singleton Copley, subsequently, so eminent as jurist and statesman, Kosciusko, Count Niemcewicz, the novelist, poet, dramatist, and historian, were but a few. All travellers of distinction brought letters to Hamilton, for, not excepting Washington, he was to Europeans the most prosilient of Americans. If there had been little decrease of hard work during these years, there had been social and domestic pleasures, and Hamilton could live in the one or the other with equal thoroughness. He was very proud of his wife’s youthful appearance, and to-night he reproached her for losing so many hours of rest.
“Could anyone sleep in this racket?” she demanded, lightly. “You must be worn out. Come into the dining room and have supper.”
And they all enjoyed their excellent meal of hot oysters, and dismissed politics until the morrow.
III
But if Hamilton consigned politics to oblivion at midnight and slept for the few hours demanded by outraged nature, he plunged from the crystal of his bath into their reeking blackness early in the morning. He had laughed the night before, but he was in the worst of tempers as he shut his study door behind him. For the first time in his life he was on a battle-ground with no sensation of joy in the coming fight. The business was too ugly and the prospect was almost certain defeat. Were the first battle lost, he knew that a sharper engagement would immediately succeed: his political foresight anticipated the tie, and he alone had a consummate knowledge of the character of Burr. That the Republicans would offer Burr the office of Vice-President was as positive as that Jefferson would be their first and unanimous choice. Clinton and Chancellor Livingston might be more distinguished men than the little politician, but the first was in open opposition to Jefferson, and the second was deaf. Burr’s conquest of New York entitled him to reward, and he would accept it and intrigue with every resource of his cunning and address for the larger number of votes, regardless of the will of the people. If the result were a tie, the Federals would incline to anybody rather than Jefferson, and Hamilton would be obliged to throw into the scale his great influence as leader of his party for the benefit of the man he would gladly have attached to a fork and set to toast above the coals of Hell. He had no score to settle with Burr, but to permit him to become President of the United States would be a crime for which the leader of the Federalist party would be held responsible. When the inevitable moment came he should hand over the structure he had created to the man who had desired to rend it from gable to foundation; both because it was the will of the people and because Jefferson was the safer man of the two.
So far his statesmanship triumphed, as it had done in every crisis which he had been called upon to manipulate, and as it would in many more. But for once, and as regarded the first battle, it failed him, and he made no attempt to invoke it. This was the blackest period of his inner life, and there were times when he never expected to emerge from its depths. The threatened loss of the magnificent power he had wielded, the hatreds that possessed and overwhelmed him, the seeming futility of almost a lifetime of labour, sacrifices without end and prodigal dispensing of great gifts, the constant insults of his enemies, and the public ingratitude, had saturated his spirit with a raging bitterness and roused the deadliest passions of his nature. The marah he had passed through while a member of the Cabinet was shallow compared to the depths in which he almost strangled to-day. Not only was this the final accumulation, but the inspiring and sustaining affection, the circumscribing bulwark, of Washington was gone from him. “He was an Aegis very essential to me,” he had said sadly, and he felt his loss more every day that he lived.
He knew there was just one chance to save the Presidency to the Federalist party. Did he employ the magic of his pen to recreate the popularity of John Adams, it was more than possible that thousands would gladly permit the leader they had followed for years to persuade them they had judged too hastily the man of whom they had expected too much. But by this time there was one man Hamilton hated more implacably than Jefferson, and that was John Adams. Besides the thorough disapproval of the Administration of Adams, which, as a statesman, he shared with all the eminent Federals in the country, his personal counts with this enemy piled to heaven. Adams had severed the party he had created, endeavoured to humiliate him before the country, refused, after Washington’s death, to elevate him to his rightful position as General-in-chief of the army he had organized, alienated from him one of the best of his friends, and primarily was answerable for the crushing defeat of yesterday. With one of the Pinckneys at the helm, Hamilton could have defied Jefferson and kept the Democrats out of power; but the man next in eminence to himself in his own party had given his supremacy its death-blow, and it is little wonder if his depths resembled boiling pitch, if the heights of his character had disappeared from his vision. He was, above all things, intensely human, with all good and all evil in him; and although he conquered himself at no very remote period, he felt, at the present moment, like Lucifer whirling through space.
Troup, now a retired judge of the U.S. District Court of New York, and a man of some fortune, ready as of old to be Hamilton’s faithful lieutenant, entered and looked with sympathy and more apprehension at his Chief.
“I’ve not come to bemoan this bad business,” he said, sitting down at a desk and taking up his pen. “What next? It looks hopeless, but of course you’ll no more cease from effort than one of your Scotch ancestors would have laid down his arms if a rival chieftain had appeared on the warpath with the world at his back. Is it Adams and C.C.P. to the death?”
“It is Pinckney; Adams only in so far as he is useful. He still has his following in the New England States. The leaders in those States, first and second, must be persuaded to work unanimously for Adams and Pinckney, with the distinct understanding that in other States votes for Adams will be thrown away. This, after I have persuaded them of Adams’s absolute unfitness for office. If we carry and it comes to a tie, there is no doubt to whom the House will give the election.”
Troup whistled. “This is politics!” he said. “I never believed you’d go down to your neck. I wish you’d throw the whole thing over, and retire to private life.”
“I shall retire soon enough,” said Hamilton, grimly. “But Adams will go first.”
Troup knew that it was useless to remonstrate further. He had followed this Captain to the bitter end too often. Underneath the immense sanity of Hamilton’s mind was a curious warp of obstinacy, born of implacability and developed far beyond the normal bounds of determination. When this almost perverted faculty was in possession of the brain, Hamilton would pursue his object, did every guardian in his genius, from foresight to acuteness, rise in warning. His present policy if a failure might be the death of the Federalist party, but the flashing presentiment of that historic disaster did not deter him for a moment.
“It is the time for politics,” Hamilton continued. “Statesmanship goes begging. I shall be entirely frank about it, for that matter. There will be no underhand scheming, Adams is welcome to know every step I take. The correspondence must begin at once. I’ll make out a list for you. I shall begin with Wolcott.”
IV
When the tidings of the New York election reached Philadelphia, the Federals of the House met in alarmed and hurried conference. In their desperation they agreed to ask Hamilton to appeal to the Governor of New York, John Jay, to reconvene the existing legislature that it might enact a law authorizing in that State the choice of Presidential electors in districts. Why they did not send a memorial to Jay themselves, instead of placing Hamilton in a position to incur the full odium of such a suggestion, can only be explained by the facts that during the entire span of the party’s existence, their leader had cheerfully assumed the responsibility in every emergency or crisis, and that if the distinguished formalist in the Executive Mansion of New York had a weak spot in him, it was for Hamilton.
When Hamilton read this portentous letter, he flushed deeply and then turned white. The expedient had not occurred to him, but it was too near of kin to his disapproval of a provision which had delivered the State into the hands of an industrious rascal, not to strike an immediate response; especially in his present frame of mind. He was alone with his wife at the moment, and he handed her the letter. She read it twice, then laid it on the table. “It savours very much of fraud, to me,” she said. “Why do politics so often go to the head?”
“Sometimes one sort rises as an antidote to another. There comes a time in human affairs when one is forced into a position of choosing between two evils; a time when the scruples of delicacy and propriety, as relative to a common course of things, ought to yield to the extraordinary nature of the crisis.”
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong,” said Betsey, with her Dutch sturdiness. “This measure–were it adopted by Mr. Jay–would merely mean that the party in power was taking an unconstitutional advantage of its situation to nullify the victories gained by the other.”
“The victories you speak of were won by fraud and every unworthy device. I am not arguing that, such being the case, we are justified in turning their weapons upon them, but that for the good of the country the enemy should be suppressed before they are able to accomplish its demoralization, if not its ruin. The triumph of Jefferson and Jacobinism, the flourishing of Democracy upon the ruins of Federalism, too long a taste of power by the States rights fanatics, means, with the weak spots in our Constitution, civil war. Burr has sowed the seeds of municipal corruption, which, if the sower be rewarded by the second office in the gift of the people, will spread all over the Union. That many in the ranks of Democracy are in the pay of France, and design the overthrow of the Government, there is not a shadow of doubt. If Jefferson should die in office, or a tie, in spite of all I could do, should give the Presidency to Burr, there is nothing that man’s desperate temper would not drive him to accomplish during the time remaining to him–for he will never be the first choice of the Democrats. Therefore, I shall propose this measure to Jay in the course of the next two or three days, unless upon mature deliberation I alter my present opinion that the grave crisis in national affairs justifies it, or I conceive something better.”
“You will violate your higher principles,” said his wife, who had matured in a previous era. “And it will be a terrible weapon for your enemies.”
“I have now reached that happy point where I am entirely indifferent to the broadsides of my enemies; and I believe that if I conclude to take this step, my conscience–and history–will justify me.” “If you succeed,” said Betsey, shrewdly. “But Mr. Jay is very rigid, and he lacks your imagination, your terrible gift of seeing the future in a flash.”
“It is quite true that I have little hope of persuading Jay; as little as I have of endowing him with the gift of foresight. But, if I think best, I shall make the attempt, and whatever the consequences, I shall not regret it.”
Betsey said no more. She knew the exact amount of remonstrance Hamilton would stand, and she never exceeded it. When his fighting armour was on, no human being could influence him beyond a certain point, and she was too wise to risk her happiness. Although he was too careful of her to let her suspect the hideous conflicts which raged in his soul, she was fully aware of his bitter obstinacy, and that he was the best hater in the country. She had many gloomy forebodings, for she anticipated the terrible strain on what was left of his constitution.
There was one person who, through her inherited intuitions, understood Hamilton, and that was Angelica. He had kept her at arm’s length, great as the temptation to have a sympathetic confidant had been, particularly after he had withdrawn from the intimate companionship of Washington; she was so highly wrought and sensitive, so prone to hysteria, that he had never yielded for a moment, even when she turned her head slowly toward him and stared at him with eyes that read his very soul. On the evening after the elections he had played and sung with her for an hour, then talked for another with Philip, who was the most promising student of Columbia College, a youth of fine endowments and elevated character. He was the pride and delight of Hamilton, who could throttle both apprehensions and demons while discussing his son’s future, and listening to his college trials and triumphs. Upon this particular evening Angelica had suddenly burst into tears and left the room. The next morning Hamilton sent her to Saratoga; and, much as he loved her, it was with profound relief that he arranged her comfortably on the deck of the packet-boat.
On the 7th he wrote to the Governor; but, as he had feared, Jay would take no such audacious leap out of his straight and narrow way. The letter was published in the _Aurora_ before it reached Albany, and Hamilton had reason to believe that Burr had a spy in the post-office.
Hamilton executed the orders for disbanding the army, then made a tour of several of the New England States, holding conferences and speaking continually. He found the first-class leaders at one with him as to the danger of entrusting the Executive office to Adams a second time, and favourably inclined to Pinckney. But the second-rate men of influence were still enthusiastic for the President, and extolling him for saving the country from war. Hamilton listened to them with no attempt to conceal his impatience. He pointed out that if Talleyrand had made up his mind that it was best to avoid a war, he would have made a second and regular overture, which could have been accepted without humiliation to the country, and the severance of the Federalist party.
As if Adams had not done enough to rouse the deadly wrath of Hamilton, he announced right and left that the Federalist defeat in New York had been planned by his arch enemy, with the sole purpose of driving himself from office; that there was a British faction in the country and that Hamilton was its chief. He drove Pickering and M’Henry from his Cabinet with contumely, as the only immediate retaliation he could think of, and Wolcott would have followed, had there been anyone to take his place. Franklin once said of Adams that he was always honest, sometimes great, and often mad. Probably so large an amount of truth has never again been condensed into an epigram. If Adams had not become inflamed with the ambition that has ruined the lives and characters of so many Americans, he would have come down to posterity as a great man, with a record of services to his country which would have scattered his few mistakes into the unswept corners of oblivion. But autocratic, irritable, and jealous, all the infirmities of his temper as brittle with years as the blood-vessels of his brain, the most exacting office in the civilized world taxed him too heavily. It is interesting to speculate upon what he might have been in this final trial of his public career, had Hamilton died as he took the helm of State. If Hamilton’s enemies very nearly ruined his own character, there is no denying that he exerted an almost malign influence upon them. To those he loved or who appealed to the highest in him he gave not only strength, but an abundance of sweetness and light, illuminating mind and spirit, and inspiring an affection that was both unselfish and uplifting. But his enemies hated him so frantically that their characters measurably deteriorated; to ruin or even disconcert him they stooped and intrigued and lied; they were betrayed into public acts which lowered them in their own eyes and in those of all students of history. Other hatreds were healthy and stimulating by comparison; but there is no doubt that Adams, Jefferson, and Madison fell far lower than they would have done had Hamilton never shot into the American heavens, holding their fields at his pleasure, and paling the fires of large and ambitious stars.
The political excitement in the country by this time surpassed every previous convulsion to such an extent that no man prominent in the contest could appear on the street without insult. Although he never knew it, Hamilton, every time he left the house, was shadowed by his son Philip, Robert Hamilton, Troup, John Church, or Philip Church. For the Democratic ammunition and public fury alike were centred on Hamilton. Adams came in for his share, but the Democrats regarded his doom as sealed, and Hamilton, as ever, the Colossus to be destroyed. The windows of the bookshops were filled with pamphlets, lampoons, and cartoons. The changes were rung on the aristocratical temper and the monarchical designs of the leader of the Federalists, until Hamilton was sick of the sight of himself with his nose in the air and a crown on his head, his train borne by Jay, Cabot, Sedgwick, and Bayard. The people were warned in every issue of the _Aurora, Chronicle_, and other industrious sheets, that Hamilton was intriguing to drive the Democratic States to secession, that he might annihilate them at once with his army and his navy. The Reynolds affair was retold once a week, with degrading variations, and there was no doubt that spies were nosing the ground in every direction to obtain evidence of another scandal to vary the monotony. Mrs. Croix, being Queen of the Jacobins, was safe, so press and pamphlet indulged in wild generalities of debauchery and rapine. It must be confessed that Jefferson fared no better in the Federalist sheets. He was a huge and hideous spider, spinning in a web full of seduced citizens; he meditated a resort to arms, did he lose the election. As to his private vices, they saddled him with an entire harem, and a black one at that.
When Hamilton heard that Adams had asserted that he was the chief of a British faction, he wrote to the President, demanding an explanation; and his note had that brief and frigid courtesy which indicated that he was in his most dangerous temper. Adams ignored it. Hamilton waited a reasonable time, then wrote again; but Adams was now too infuriated to care whether or not he committed the unpardonable error of insulting the most distinguished man in the country. He was in a humour to insult the shade of Washington, and he delighted in every opportunity to wreak vengeance on Hamilton, and would have died by his hand rather than placate him.
Then Hamilton took the step he had meditated for some time past, one which had received the cordial sanction of Wolcott, and the uneasy and grudging acquiescence of Cabot, Ames, Carroll of Carrollton, Bayard, and a few other devoted but conservative supporters. He wrote, for the benefit of the second-class leaders, who must be persuaded to cast their votes for Pinckney, to vindicate Pickering and M’Henry, and–it would be foolish to ignore it–to gratify his deep personal hatred, the pamphlet called “The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States.” His temper did not flash in it for a second. It was written in his most concise and pointed, his most lucid and classic, manner; and nothing so damning ever flowed from mortal brain. He set forth all Adams’s virtues and services with judicial impartiality. There they were for all to read. Let no man forget them. Then he counterbalanced and overbalanced them by the weaknesses, jealousies, and other temperamental defects which had arisen in evidence with the beginnings of the President’s public career. He drilled holes in poor Adams’s intellect which proved its unsoundness and its unfitness for public duty, and he lashed him without mercy for his public mistakes and for his treatment of his Secretaries and himself. It was a life history on ivory, and a masterpiece; and there is no friend of Hamilton’s who would not sacrifice the memory of one of his greatest victories for the privilege of unwriting it.
This was one of his creations that he did not read to his wife, but Troup was permitted a glance at the manuscript. He dropped it to the floor, and his face turned white. “Do you intend to publish this thing?” he demanded. “And with your name signed in full?”
“I intend to print it. I had every intention of scattering it broadcast, but I have yielded to the dissuasions of men whose opinions I am bound to respect, and it will go only to them and to the second-class leaders as yet unconvinced. To their entreaties that I would not sign my name I have not listened, because such a work, if anonymous, would be both cowardly and futile. The point is to let those for whom it is intended know that a person in authority is talking; and anonymous performances are legitimate only when published and unmistakable, when given in that form as a concession to the fashion of the age.”
Troup groaned. “And if it falls into the enemy’s hands?”
“In that case, what a hideous opportunity it would enclose, were it unsigned.”
“Oh, sign it!” said Troup, wildly. He set his heel on the manuscript, and looked tentatively at Hamilton. He knew the meaning of the expression he encountered, and removed his heel. It was months since he had seen the gay sparkle in Hamilton’s eyes, humour and sweetness curving his mouth. When Hamilton’s mouth was not as hard as iron, it relaxed to cynicism or contempt. He was so thin that the prominence of the long line from ear to chin and of the high hard nose, with its almost rigid nostrils, would have made him look more old Roman coin than man, had it not been for eyes like molten steel. “Politics and ambition!” thought Troup. “What might not the world be without them?”
“Let us change the subject,” he said. “I hear that Mrs. Croix makes a convert an hour from Federalism to Democracy. That is the estimate. And a small and select band know that she does it in the hope of hastening your ruin. I must say, Hamilton, that as far as women are concerned, you are punished far beyond your deserts. There is hardly a man in public life who has not done as much, or worse, but the world is remarkably uninterested, and the press finds any other news more thrilling. The Reynolds woman is probably responsible for many remorseful twinges in the breasts of eminent patriots, but your name alone is given to the public. As for Mrs. Croix, I don’t suppose that any mere mortal has ever resisted her, but if any other man has regretted it, history is silent. What do you suppose is the reason?”
Hamilton would not discuss Mrs. Croix, but he had long since ceased to waste breath in denial. He made no reply.
“Do you know my theory?” said Troup, turning upon him suddenly. “It is this. You are so greatly endowed that more is expected of you than of other men. You were fashioned to make history; to give birth, not for your own personal good, but for the highest good of a nation, to the greatest achievement of which the human mind is capable. Therefore, when you trip and stumble like any fool among us, when you act like a mere mortal with no gigantic will and intellect to lift him to the heights and keep him there, some power in the unseen universe is infuriated, and you pay the price with compound interest. It will be the same with that thing on the floor. If you could be sure that it would never fall into the hands of a Jacobin, even then it would be a mistake to print it, for it is mainly prompted by hatred, and as such is unworthy of you. But if it finds its way to the public, your punishment will be even in excess of your fault. For God’s sake think it over.”
Hamilton made no reply, and in a moment Troup rose. “Very well,” he said, “have your own way and be happy. I’ll stand by you if the citadel falls.”
Hamilton’s eyes softened, and he shook Troup’s hands heartily. But as soon as he was alone, he sent the manuscript to the printer.
V
M.L. Davis, the authentic biographer of Burr, tells this interesting anecdote concerning the Adams pamphlet:–‘
Colonel Burr ascertained the contents of this pamphlet, and that it was in the press. The immediate publication, he knew, must distract the Federal party, and thus promote the Republican cause in those States where the elections had not taken place. Arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon as the printing of it was completed; and when obtained, John Swartwout, Robert Swartwout, and Matthew L. Davis, by appointment met Colonel Burr at his house. The pamphlet was read, and extracts made for the press. They were immediately published.
When Hamilton read the voluminous extracts in the marked copies of the Democratic papers which he found on the table in his chambers in Garden Street, his first sensation was relief; subterranean methods were little to his liking. He was deeply uneasy, however, when he reflected upon the inevitable consequences to his party, and wondered that his imagination for once had failed him. Everyone who has written with sufficient power to incite antagonism, knows the apprehensive effect of extracts lifted maliciously from a carefully wrought whole. Hamilton felt like a criminal until he plunged into the day’s work, when he had no time for an accounting with his conscience. He was in court all day, and after the five o’clock dinner at home, returned to his office and worked on an important brief until eight. Then he paid a short call on a client, and was returning home through Pearl Street, when he saw Troup bearing down upon him. This old comrade’s face was haggard and set, and his eyes were almost wild. Hamilton smiled grimly. That expression had stamped the Federal visage since morning.
Troup reached Hamilton in three strides, and seizing him by the arm, pointed to the upper story of Fraunces’ Tavern. “Alec,” he said hoarsely, “do you remember the vow you made in that room twenty-five years ago? You have kept it until to-day. There is not an instance in your previous career where you have sacrificed the country to yourself. No man in history ever made greater sacrifices, and no man has had a greater reward in the love and loyalty of the best men in a nation. And now, to gratify the worst of your passions, you have betrayed your country into the hands of the basest politicians in it. Moreover, all your enemies could not drag you down, and no man in history has ever been assailed by greater phalanxes than you have been. It took you–yourself–to work your own ruin, to pull your party down on top of you, and send the country we have all worked so hard for to the devil. I love you better than anyone on earth, and I’ll stick to you till the bitter end, but I’d have this say if you never spoke to me again.”
Hamilton dropped his eyes from the light in the familiar room of Fraunces’ Tavern, but the abyss he seemed to see at his feet was not the one yawning before his friend’s excited imagination. He did not answer for a moment, and then he almost took away what was left of Troup’s breath.
“You are quite right,” he said. “And what I have most to be thankful for in life, is that I have never attracted that refuse of mankind who fawn and flatter; or have dismissed them in short order,” he added, with his usual regard for facts. “Come and breakfast with me to-morrow. Good night.”
He walked home quickly, told the servant at the door that he was not to be disturbed, and locked himself in his study. He lit one candle, then threw himself into his revolving chair, and thought until the lines in his face deepened to the bone, and only his eyes looked alive. He wasted no further regrets on the political consequences of his act. What was done, was done. Nor did he anticipate any such wholesale disaster as had distracted the Federalists since the morning issues. He knew the force of habit and the tenacity of men’s minds. His followers would be aghast, harshly critical for a day, then make every excuse that ingenuity could suggest, unite in his defence, and follow his lead with redoubled loyality. His foresight had long since leaped to the end of this conflict, for the Democratic hordes had been augmenting for years; his own party was hopelessly divided and undermined by systematic slander. To fight was second nature, no matter how hopeless the battle; but in those moments of almost terrifying prescience so common to him, he realized the inevitableness of the end, as history does to-day. His only chance had been to placate Adams and recreate his enemy’s popularity.
The day never came when he was able to say that he might have done this at the only time when such action would have counted. He had been inexorable until the pamphlet was flung to the public; and then, although he was hardly conscious of it at the moment, he was immediately dispossessed of the intensity of his bitterness toward Adams. The revenge had been so terrible, so abrupt, that his hatred seemed disseminating in the stolen leaves fluttering through the city. Therefore his mind was free for the appalling thought which took possession of it as Troup poured out his diatribe; and this thought was, that he was no longer conscious of any greatness in him. Through all the conflicts, trials, and formidable obstacles of previous years he had been sustained by his consciousness of superlative gifts combined with loftiness of purpose. Had not his greatness been dinned into his ears, he would have been as familiar with it. But he seemed to himself to have shrivelled, his very soul might have been in ashes–incremated in the flames of his passions. He had triumphed over every one of his enemies in turn. Historically he was justified, and had he accomplished the same end impersonally, they would have been the only sufferers, and in the just degree. But he had boiled them in the vitriol of his nature; he had scarred them and warped them and destroyed their self-respect. Had these raging passions been fed with other vitalities? Had they ravaged his soul to nourish his demons? Was that his punishment,–an instance of the inexorable law of give and take?
He recalled the white heat of patriotism with which he had written the revolutionary papers of his boyhood, the numberless pamphlets which had finally roused the States to meet in convention and give the wretched country a Constitutional Government, “_The Federalist_”; which had spurred him to the great creative acts that must immortalize him in history. He contrasted that patriotic fire with the spirit in which he had written the Adams pamphlet. The fire had gone out, and the precipitation was gall and worm-wood. Even the spirit in which he had first attacked Jefferson in print was righteous indignation by comparison.
Had he hated his soul to cinders? Had the bitterness and the implacability he had encouraged for so many years bitten their acids through and through the lofty ideals which once had been the larger part of himself? Had the angel in him fallen to the bottom of the pit in that frightful nethermost region of his, for his cynical brain to mock, until that, too, was in its grave? He thought of the high degree of self-government, almost the perfection, that Washington had attained,–one of the most passionate men that had ever lived. Did that great Chieftain stand alone in the history of souls? He thought of Laurens, with his early despair that self-conquest seemed impossible. Would he have conquered, had he lived? What would he or Washington think, were they present to-night? Would they hate him, or would their love be proof against even this abasement? He passionately wished they were there, whether they came to revile or console. Isolated and terror-stricken, he felt as if thrust for ever from the world of living men.
His mind had been turned in, every faculty bent introspectively, but for some moments past his consciousness had vibrated mechanically to an external influence. It flew open suddenly, as he realized that someone was watching him, and he wheeled his chair opposite the dusk in the lower end of the room. For a moment it, seemed to him that every function in him ceased and was enveloped in ice. A face rested lightly on the farther end of the long table, the fair hair floating on either side of it, the eyes fixed upon him with an expression that flashed him back to St. Croix and the last weeks of his mother’s life. He fancied in that moment that he could even discern the earthen hue of the skin. When he realized that it was Angelica, he was hardly less startled, but he found his voice.
“When did you return?” he asked, in as calm a tone as he could command. “And why did you hide in here?”
“I came down with Grandpa, who made up his mind in a minute. And I came in here to be sure to have a little talk with you alone. I was going to surprise you as soon as you lit the candle, and then your face frightened me. It is worse now.”
Her voice was hardly audible, and she did not move. Hamilton went down and lifted her to her feet, then supported her to a chair opposite his own. He made no search for an excuse, for he would not have dared to offer it to this girl, whose spiritual recesses he suddenly determined to probe. Between her and the dead woman there was a similarity that was something more than superficially atavistic. His practical brain refused to speculate even upon the doctrine of metempsychosis. He was like his mother in many ways. That unique and powerful personality had stamped his brain cells when he was wholly hers. He recalled that his own soul had echoed faintly with memories in his youth. What wonder that he had given this inheritance to the most sensitively constituted of his children, whose musical genius, the least sane of all gifts, put her in touch with the greater mysteries of the Universe? That nebulous memories moved like ghosts in her soul he did not doubt, nor that at such moments she was tormented with vague maternal pangs. He conquered his first impulse to confess himself to her; doubtless she needed more help than he. She was staring at him in mingled terror and agony.
“Why do you suffer so when I suffer?” he asked gently; then bluntly, “do you yearn over me as if I were your child, and in peril?”
“Yes,” she answered, without betraying any surprise; “that is it. I have a terrible feeling of responsibility and helplessness, of understanding and knowing nothing. I feel sometimes as if I had done you a great wrong, for which I suffer when you are in trouble, and I am no more use to you than John or little Eliza. If you would tell me. If you would let me share it with you. You remember I begged as a child. You have made believe to tell me secrets many times, but you have told me nothing. My imagination has nearly shattered me.”
“Do you wish to know?” he asked. “Are you strong enough to see me as I see myself to-night? I warn you it will be a glimpse into Hell.”
“I don’t care what it is,” she answered, “so long as it is the reality, and you let me know you as I do underneath my blindness and ignorance.”
Then he told her. He talked to her as he would have talked to the dead had she risen, although without losing his sense of her identity for a moment, or the consciousness of the danger of the experiment. He showed her what few mortals have seen, a naked soul with its scars, its stains, and its ravages from flame and convulsion. He need not have apprehended a disastrous result. She was compounded of his essences, and her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius. She listened intently, the expression of torment displaced by normal if profound sympathy. He had begun with the passions inspired by Jefferson; he finished with the climax of deterioration in the revenge he had taken on Adams, and the abyss of despair into which it had plunged him. He drew a long breath of relief, and regarded his little judge with some defiance. She nodded.
“I feel old and wise,” she said, “and at the same time much younger, because I no longer shrink from a load on my mind I cannot understand. And you–it has all gone.” She darted at the candle and held it to his face. “You look twenty years younger than when you sat there and thought. I believed you were dying of old age.”
“I feel better,” he admitted, “But nothing can obliterate the scars. And although I shall always be young at intervals, remember that I have crowded three lifetimes into one, and that I must pay the penalty spiritually and physically, although mentally I believe I shall hold my own until the end.” He leaned forward on a sudden impulse and took both her hands. “I make you a vow,” he said, “and I have never broken even a promise–or only one,” he added, remembering Troup’s accusation. “I will drive the bitterness out of myself and I will hate no more. My public acts shall be unaccompanied by personal bitterness henceforth. Not a vengeance that I have accomplished has been worth the hideous experience of to-night, and so long as I live I shall have no cause to repeat it.”
“If you ever broke that vow,” said Angelica, “I should either die or go crazy, for you would sink and never rise again.”
VI
As Hamilton had anticipated, the Jacobin press shouted and laughed itself hoarse, vowed that it never could have concocted so effective a bit of campaign literature, and that the ursine roars of Adams could be heard from Dan to Beersheba. Burr, as yet undetected, almost danced as he walked. The windows were filled with parodies of the pamphlet, entitled, “The Last Speech and Dying Words of Alexander Hamilton,” “Hamilton’s Last Letter and His Amorous Vindication,” “A Free Examination of the Morals, Political and Literary Characters of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton.” One cartoon displayed the sinking ship _Administration_, with the Federal rats scuttling out of her, and Hamilton standing alone on the deck; another, “The Little Lion” sitting, dejected and forlorn, outside the barred gates of “Hamiltonopolis.” The deep, silent laughter of Jefferson shook the continent.
The Federalist leaders were furious and aghast. But they recovered, and when the time came, every Federalist delegate to the Electoral College, with one exception, voted precisely as Hamilton had counselled. South Carolina deserted Pinckney because he would not desert Adams, but she would have pursued that policy had the pamphlet never been written; and whether it affected the defeat of the Federalists in Pennsylvania and other States is doubtful. The publication in August of Adams’s letter to Tench Coxe, written in 1792, when he was bitterly disappointed at Washington’s refusal to send him as minister to England, and asserting that the appointment of Pinckney was due to British influence, thus casting opprobrium upon the integrity of Washington, had done as much as Hamilton’s pamphlet, if not more, to damn him finally with the Federalists. Hamilton’s chief punishment for his thunderbolt was in his conscience, and his leadership of his party was not questioned for a moment. He expected a paternal rebuke from General Schuyler, but that old warrior, severe always with the delinquencies of his own children, had found few faults in his favourite son-in-law; and he took a greater pride in his career than he had taken in his own. Now that gout and failing sight had forced him from public life, he found his chief enjoyment in Hamilton’s society. General Schuyler survived the death of several of his children and of his wife, but Hamilton’s death killed him. Assuredly, life dealt generously with our hero in the matter of fathers, despite or because of an early oversight. James Hamilton had never made the long and dangerous journey to the North, and he had died on St. Vincent, in 1799, but what filial regret his son might have dutifully experienced was swept away on the current of the overwhelming grief for Washington. And as for mothers, charming elder sisters, and big brothers, eager to fight his battles, no man was ever so blest. In December Hamilton received the following letter from William Vans Murray:–
Paris, Oct. 9th, 1800.
Dear Sir: I was extremely flattered by the confidence which your letter by Mr. Colbert proved you have in my disposition to follow your wishes. A letter from you is no affair of ceremony. It is an obligation on any man who flatters himself with the hope of your personal esteem. Mr. Colbert gave it to me yesterday. I immediately, in particular, addressed a letter to Bonaparte, and made use of your name, which I was sure would be pleasing to him. To-day I dined with him. The Secretary of State assured me that he received it kindly, and I can hope something good from him. If any come it will be your work. I never before spoke or wrote to Bonaparte on any affair other than public business. It will be very pleasing to you if we succeed, that your silent agency works good to the unhappy and meritorious at such a distance. I know nothing better belonging to reputation.
Poor Adams!
General Davie arrived by the next ship, bringing with him a convention concluded with France on the 30th of October. He also brought a letter to Hamilton from one of the commission, with a copy of the document and a journal of the proceedings of the negotiators. The writer was Oliver Ellsworth, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Adams might occupy the chair of State, but to the Federals Hamilton was President in all but name.
Sedgwick and Gouverneur Morris, now a member of the Senate, not knowing of the communication, wrote immediately to Hamilton, acquainting him with the contents of the treaty.
It contains no stipulation for satisfaction of the injuries we have received [Sedgwick wrote in wrath]. It makes the treaty of ’78 a subject for future negotiation. It engages that we shall return, in the condition they now are, all our captures. It makes neutral bottoms a protection to their cargoes, and it contains a stipulation directly in violation of the 25th article of our treaty with Great Britain. Such are the blessed effects of our mission! These are the ripened fruits of this independent Administration! Our friends in the Senate are not enough recovered from their astonishment to begin to reflect on the course they shall pursue.
This treaty was a far more deadly weapon in Hamilton’s hands than the entire arsenal he had manipulated in his pamphlet, for campaign literature is often pickled and retired with the salt of its readers. But did this mission fail, did Adams lose his only chance of justification for sending the commission at all, did the Senate refuse to ratify, and war break out, or honourable terms of peace be left to the next President, then Adams’s Administration must be stamped in history as a failure, and he himself retire from office covered with ignominy. But had Hamilton not recovered his balance and trimmed to their old steady duty the wicks of those lamps whose brilliance had dimmed in a stormy hour, his statesmanship would have controlled him in such a crisis as this. He knew that the rejection of the treaty would shatter the Federal party and cause national schisms and discords; that, if left over to a Jacobin administration, the result would be still worse for the United States. It was a poor thing, but no doubt the best that could have been extracted from triumphant France; nor was it as bad in some respects as the irritated Senate would have it. Such as it was, it must be ratified, peace placed to the credit of the Federalists, and the act of the man they had made President justified. Hamilton was obliged to write a great many letters on the subject, for the Federalists found it a bitter pill to swallow; but he prevailed and they swallowed it.
Meanwhile, the Electoral College had met. Adams had received sixty-five votes, Pinckney sixty-four, Jefferson and Burr seventy-three each. That threw the decision upon the House of Representatives, for Burr refused to recognize the will of the people, and withdraw in favour of the man whom the Democratic hemisphere of American politics had unanimously elected. Burr had already lost caste with the party by his attempts to secure more votes than the leaders were willing to give him, and had alarmed Jefferson into strenuous and diplomatic effort, the while he piously folded his visible hands or discoursed upon the bones of the mammoth. When Burr, therefore, permitted the election to go to the House, he was flung out of the Democratic party neck and crop, and Jefferson treated him like a dog until he killed Hamilton, when he gave a banquet in his honour. Burr’s only chance for election lay with the Federalists, who would rather have seen horns and a tail in the Executive Chair than Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton had anticipated their hesitation and disposition to bargain with Burr, and he bombarded them with letters from the moment the Electoral College announced the result, until the House decided the question on the 17th of February. He analyzed Burr for the benefit of the anxious members until the dark and poisonous little man must have haunted their dreams at night. Whether they approached Burr or not will never be known; but they were finally convinced that to bargain with a man as unfigurable as water would be throwing away time which had far better be employed in extracting pledges from Jefferson.
One of Hamilton’s letters to Gouverneur Morris, who wielded much influence in the House, is typical of many.
… Another subject. _Jefferson or Burr_? The former beyond a doubt. The latter in my judgement has no principle, public or private; could be bound by no agreement; will listen to no monitor but his ambition; and for this purpose will use the worst portion of the community as a ladder to climb to permanent power, and an instrument to crush the better part. He is bankrupt beyond redemption, except by the resources that grow out of war and disorder; or by a sale to a foreign power, or by great peculation. War with Great Britain would be the immediate instrument. He is sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to attempt everything, wicked enough to scruple nothing. From the elevation of such a man may heaven preserve the country.
Let our situation be improved to obtain from Jefferson assurances on certain points: the maintenance of the present system, especially on the cardinal articles of public credit–a navy, neutrality. Make any discreet use you may think fit of this letter.
He was deeply alarmed at the tendency of the excited House, which sat in continuous session from the 11th to the 17th, members sleeping on the floor and sick men brought thither on cots, one with his wife in attendance. The South was threatening civil war, and Burr’s subsequent career justified his alarm and his warnings; but in spite of his great influence he won his case with his followers by a very small margin. They were under no delusions regarding the character of Burr, their letters to Hamilton abound in strictures almost as severe as his own, but their argument was that he was the less of two evils, that every move he made could be sharply watched. It is quite true that he would have had Federalists and Democrats in both Houses to frustrate him; but it does not seem to have occurred to the former that impeachment would have been inevitable, and Jefferson President but a year or two later than the will of the people decreed. But it was a time of terrible excitement, and for the matter of that their brains must have been a trifle clouded by the unvarying excitement of their lives. Bayard of Delaware, with whom Hamilton had fought over point by point, winning one or more with each letter, changed his vote on the last ballot from Burr to a blank. Hamilton’s friends knew that Burr would kill him sooner or later, for the ambitious man had lost his one chance of the great office; but Hamilton chose to see only the humour of the present he had made Thomas Jefferson. That sensible politician had tacitly agreed to the terms suggested by the Federalists, when they debated the possibility of accepting him, and Hamilton knew that he was far too clever to break his word at once. What Hamilton hoped for was what came to pass: Jefferson found the machinery of his new possession more to his taste than he could have imagined while sitting out in the cold, and he let it alone.
VII
Hamilton was now free to devote himself to the practice of law, with but an occasional interruption. It hardly need be stated that he kept a sharp eye on Jefferson, but for the sake of the country he supported him when he could do so consistently with his principles. More than once the President found in him an invaluable ally; and as often, perhaps, he writhed as on a hot gridiron. Hamilton came forth in the pamphlet upon extreme occasions only, but he was still the first political philosopher and writer of his time, and the Federalists would have demanded his pen upon these occasions had he been disposed to retire it. Although out of the active field of politics, he kept the best of the demoralized Federalists together, warning them constantly that the day might come when they would be called upon to reorganize a disintegrated union, and responding to the demands of his followers in Congress for advice. In local politics he continued to make himself felt in spite of the fattening ranks of Democracy. His most powerful instrument was the _New York Evening Post_, which he founded for the purpose of keeping the Federalist cause alive, and holding the enemy in check. He selected an able man as editor, William Coleman of Massachusetts, but he directed the policy of the paper, dictating many of the editorials in the late hours of night. This journal took its position at once as the most respectable and brilliant in the country.
He also founded the Society for the Manumission of Slaves, securing as honorary member the name of Lafayette–now a nobleman at large once more. But all these duties weighed lightly. For the first time in his life he felt himself at liberty to devote himself almost wholly to his practice, and it was not long before he was making fifteen thousand dollars a year. It was an immense income to make in that time, and he could have doubled it had he been less erratic in the matter of fees. Upon one occasion he was sent eight thousand dollars for winning a suit, and returned seven. He invariably placed his own valuation upon a case, and frequently refused large fees that would have been paid with gratitude. If a case interested him and the man who asked his services were poorer than himself, he would accept nothing. If he were convinced that a man was in the wrong, he would not take his case at any price. He was delighted to be able to shower benefits upon his little family, and he would have ceased to be Alexander Hamilton had he been content to occupy a second place at the bar, or in any other pursuit which engaged his faculties; but for money itself, he had only contempt. Perhaps that is the reason why he is so out of tune with the present day, and unknown to the average American.
Washington, after the retirement of John Jay, had offered Hamilton the office of Chief Justice of the United States; but Hamilton felt that the bar was more suited to his activities than the bench, and declined the gift. His legal career was as brilliant and successful as his political, but although none is more familiar to ambitious lawyers, and his position as the highest authority on constitutional law has never been rivalled, his achievements of greater value to the Nation have reduced it in history to the position of an incident. There is little space left, and somewhat of his personal life still to tell, but no story of Hamilton would be complete without at least a glimpse of this particular shuttle in the tireless loom of his brain. Such glimpses have by no one been so sharply given as by his great contemporary, Chancellor Kent.
He never made any argument in court [Kent relates] without displaying his habits of thinking, resorting at once to some well-founded principle of law, and drawing his deductions logically from his premises. Law was always treated by him as a science, founded on established principles…. He rose at once to the loftiest heights of professional eminence, by his profound penetration, his power of analysis, the comprehensive grasp and strength of his understanding, and the firmness, frankness and integrity of his character…. His manners were affable, gentle and kind; and he appeared to be frank, liberal and courteous in all his professional intercourse. [Referring to a particular case the Chancellor continues.] Hamilton by means of his fine melodious voice, and dignified deportment, his reasoning powers and persuasive address, soared far above all competition. His preeminence was at once and universally conceded…. Hamilton returned to private life and to the practice of the law in ’95. He was cordially welcomed and cheered on his return, by his fellow citizens. Between this year and 1798, he took his station as the leading counsel at the bar. He was employed in every important and every commercial case. He was a very great favourite with the merchants of New York and he most justly deserved to be, for he had shown himself to be one of the most enlightened, intrepid and persevering friends to the commercial prosperity of this country. Insurance questions, both upon the law and fact, constituted a large portion of the litigated business in the courts, and much of the intense study and discussion at the bar. Hamilton had an overwhelming share of this business…. His mighty mind would at times bear down all opposition by its comprehensive grasp and the strength of his reasoning powers. He taught us all how to probe deeply into the hidden recesses of the science, and to follow up principles to their far distant sources. He ransacked cases and precedents to their very foundations; and we learned from him to carry our inquiries into the commercial codes of the nations of the European continent; and in a special manner to illustrate the law of Insurance by the secure judgement of Emerigon and the luminous commentaries of Valin…. My judicial station in 1798 brought Hamilton before me in a new relation…. I was called to listen with lively interest and high admiration to the rapid exercise of his reasoning powers, the intensity and sagacity with which he pursued his investigations, his piercing criticisms, his masterly analysis, and the energy and fervour of his appeals to the judgement and conscience of the tribunal which he addressed. [In regard to the celebrated case of Croswell vs. the People, in the course of which Hamilton reversed the law of libel, declaring the British interpretation to be inconsistent with the genius of the American people, Kent remarks.] I have always considered General Hamilton’s argument in this cause as the greatest forensic effort he ever made. He had come prepared to discuss the points of law with a perfect mastery of the subject. He believed that the rights and liberties of the people were essentially concerned…. There was an unusual solemnity and earnestness on his part in this discussion. He was at times highly impassioned and pathetic. His whole soul was enlisted in the cause, and in contending for the rights of the Jury and a free Press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression…. He never before in my hearing made any effort in which he commanded higher reverence for his principles, nor equal admiration of the power and pathos of his eloquence…. I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer, he would have rivalled Socrates or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times, in researches after truth and in benevolence to mankind. The active and profound statesman, the learned and eloquent lawyer, would probably have disappeared in a great degree before the character of the sage and philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom, and elevating the country by his example.
[Ambrose Spencer, Attorney General of the State,–afterward Chief Justice,–who did not love him, having received the benefit of Hamilton’s scathing sarcasm more than once, has this to say.] Alexander Hamilton was the greatest man this country ever produced. I knew him well. I was in situations to observe and study him. He argued cases before me while I sat as judge on the bench. Webster has done the same. In power of reasoning, Hamilton was the equal of Webster; and more than this can be said of no man. In creative power, Hamilton was infinitely Webster’s superior, and in this respect he was endowed as God endows the most gifted of our race. If we call Shakspeare a genius or creator, because he evoked plays and character from the great chaos of thought, Hamilton merits the same appellation; for it was he, more than any other man, who thought out the Constitution of the United States and the details of the Government of the Union; and out of the chaos that existed after the Revolution, raised a fabric, every part of which is instinct with his thought. I can truly say that hundreds of politicians and statesmen of the day get both the web and woof of their thoughts from Hamilton’s brains. He, more than any man, did the thinking of the time.
His fooling was as inimitable as his use of passion and logic, and on one occasion he treated Gouverneur Morris, who was his opposing counsel, to such a prolonged attack of raillery that his momentary rival sat with the perspiration pouring from his brow, and was acid for some time after. During his earlier years of practice, while listening to Chancellor Livingston summing up a case in which eloquence was made to disguise the poverty of the cause, Hamilton scribbled on the margin of his brief: “Recipe for obtaining good title for ejectment: two or three void patents, several _ex parte_ surveys, one or two acts of usurpation acquiesced in for the time but afterwards proved such. Mix well with half a dozen scriptural allusions, some ghosts, fairies, elves, hobgoblins, and a _quantum suff_. of eloquence.” Hamilton also originated the practice of preparing “Points,” now in general use.
VIII
Hamilton, after the conclusion of the great libel case in the spring of 1804, returned from Albany to New York to receive honours almost as great, if less vociferous, than those which had hailed him after the momentous Convention of 1788. Banquets were given in his honour, the bar extolled him, and the large body of his personal friends were triumphant at this new proof of his fecundity and his power over the minds of men. They were deeply disturbed on another point, however, and several days after his arrival, Troup rode out to The Grange, Hamilton’s country-seat, to remonstrate.
Hamilton, several years since, had bought a large tract of wooded land on Harlem Heights and built him a house on the ridge. It commanded a view of the city, the Hudson, and the Sound. The house was spacious and strong, built to withstand the winds of the Atlantic, and to shelter commodiously not only his family, but his many guests. The garden and the woods were the one hobby of his life, and with his own hands he had planted thirteen gum trees to commemorate the thirteen original States of the Union. Fortunately his deepest sorrow was not associated with this estate; Philip had fallen before the house was finished. This brilliant youth, who had left Columbia with flying honours, had brooded over the constant attacks upon his father,–still the Colossus in the path of the Democrats, to be destroyed before they could feel secure in their new possessions,–until he had deliberately insulted the most recent offender, received his challenge, and been shot to death close to the spot where Hamilton was to fall a few years later. That was in the autumn of 1801. Hamilton’s strong brain and buoyant temperament had delivered him from the intolerable suffering of that heaviest of his afflictions, and the severe and unremitting work of his life gave him little time to brood. If he rarely lost consciousness of his bereavement, the sharpness passed, and he was even grateful at times that his son, whose gifts would have urged him into public life, was spared the crucifying rewards of patriotism.
As Troup rode up the avenue and glanced from right to left into the heavy shades of the forest, with its boulders and ravines, its streams and mosses and ferns, then to the brilliant mass of colour at the end of the avenue, out of which rose the stately house, he sighed heavily.
“May the devil get the lot of them!” he said.
It was Saturday, and he found Hamilton on his back under a tree, the last number of the _Moniteur_ close to his hand, his wife and Angelica looking down upon him from a rustic seat. Both the women were in mourning, and Betsey’s piquant charming face was aging; her sister Peggy and her mother had followed her son.
Hamilton had never recovered his health, and he paid for the prolonged strains upon his delicate system with a languor to which at times he was forced to yield. To-day, although he greeted the welcome visitor gaily, he did not rise, and Troup sat down on the ground with his back to the tree. As he looked very solemn, Mrs. Hamilton and Angelica inferred they were not wanted, and retired.
“Well?” said Hamilton, laughing. “What is it? What have I done now?”
“Put another nail into your coffin, we are all afraid. The story of the paper you read before the Federalist Conference in Albany is common talk; and if Burr is defeated, it will be owing to your influence, whether you hold yourself aloof from this election or not. Why do you jeopardize your life? I’d rather give him his plum and choke him with it–“
“What?” cried Hamilton, erect and alert. “Permit Burr to become Governor of New York? Do you realize that the New England States are talking of secession, that even the Democrats of the North are disgusted and alarmed at the influence and arrogance of Virginia? Burr has a certain prestige in New England on account of his father and Jonathan Edwards, and his agents have been promoting discussion of this ancestry for some time past. Do the Federalists of New York endorse him, this prestige will have received its fine finish; and New Englanders have winked his vices out of sight because Jefferson’s treatment of him makes him almost virtuous in their eyes. The moment he is Governor he will foment the unrest of New England until it secedes, and then, being the first officer of the leading State of the North, he will claim a higher office that will end in sovereignty. He fancies himself another Bonaparte, he who is utterly devoid of even that desire for fame, and that magnificence, which would make the Corsican a great man without his genius. That he is in communication with his idol, I happen to know, for he has been seen in secret conversation with fresh Jacobin spies. Now is the time to crush Burr once for all. Jefferson has intrigued the Livingstons and Clinton away from him again; the party he patched together out of hating factions is in a state of incohesion. If the Federals–“
“That is just it,” interrupted Troup; “the man is desperate. So are his followers, his ‘little band.’ They were sick and gasping after Burr’s failure to receive one vote in the Republican caucus for even the Vice-Presidency, and they know that the Louisiana Purchase has made Jefferson invincible with the Democrats–or the Republicans, as Jefferson still persists in calling them. They know that Burr’s chance for the Presidency has gone for ever. So New York is their only hope. Secession and empire or not, their hope, like his, is in the spoils of office; they are lean and desperate. If you balk them–“
“What a spectacle is this!” cried Hamilton, gaily. He threw himself back on the grass, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Troup, of all men, reproaching me for keeping a vow he once was ready to annihilate me for having broken. That offence was insignificant to the crime of supinely permitting our Catiline to accomplish his designs.”
“If I could agree with you, I should be the last to counsel indifference; no, not if your life were the forfeit. But I never believed in Burr’s talent for conspiracy. He is too sanguine and visionary. He desires power, office, and emolument–rewards for his henchmen before they desert him; but I believe he’d go–or get–no farther, and the country is strong enough to stand a quack or two; while, if we lose you–“
“You will live to see every prophecy I have made in regard to Burr fulfilled. I will not, because so long as I am alive he shall not even attempt to split the Union, to whose accomplishment and maintenance I pledged every faculty and my last vital spark. Sanguine and visionary he may be, but he is also cunning and quick, and there is a condition ready to his hand at the present moment. Jefferson is bad enough, Heaven knows. He has retained our machinery, but I sometimes fancy I can hear the crumbling of the foundations; the demoralizing and the disintegrating process began even sooner than I expected. He is appealing to the meanest passion of mankind, vanity; and the United States, which we tried to make the ideal Republic, is galloping toward the most mischievous of all establishments, Democracy. Every cowherd hopes to be President. What is the meaning of civilization, pray, if the educated, enlightened, broad-minded, are not to rule? Is man permitted to advance, progress, embellish his understanding, for his own selfish benefit, or for the benefit of mankind? And how can his superiority avail his fellows unless he be permitted to occupy the high offices of responsibility? God knows, he is not happy in his power; he is, indeed, a sacrifice to the mass. But so it was intended. He is the only sufferer, and mankind is happier.”
“Jefferson and Burr both have a consummate knowledge of the limited understanding; they know how to tickle it with painted straws and bait it with lies. Bonaparte is not a greater autocrat than Jefferson, but our tyrant fools the world with his dirty old clothes and his familiarities. But I am not to be diverted. I want to keep you for my old age. I believe that you have done your part. It has been a magnificent part; there is no greater in history. Your friends are satisfied. So should you be. I want you to give up politics before it is too late. I fear more than one evil, and it has kept me awake many nights. Burr is not the only one who wishes you under ground. His ‘little band’ is composed of men who are worse than himself without one of his talents. Any one of them is capable of stabbing you in the dark. The Virginia Junta know that the Federalist party will exist as long as you do, and that some external menace might cohere and augment it again under your leadership. At every Federalist banquet last Fourth you were toasted as the greatest man in America; and I know this undiminished enthusiasm–as well as the influence of the _Evening Post_–alarms them deeply. They are neither great enough nor bad enough to murder you, nor even to employ someone to do it; but more than one needy rascal knows that he has only to call you out and kill you according to the code, to be rewarded with an office as soon as decency permits. There is another menace. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Croix married a Frenchman named Stephen Jumel while you were in Albany?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Hamilton, with interest; “who is he?”
“A Parisian diamond merchant and banker, a personal friend of Bonaparte. The belief is that he came over here as a special emissary of the Consulate. Of course he brought a letter to that other illustrious agent, and to the amazement of everybody he married her. They must handle thousands of French money between them. France would be something more than glad to hear of your elimination from this complicated American problem; particularly, if you demonstrate your power by crushing this last hope of Burr’s. I doubt if Burr would call you out with no stronger motive than a desire for personal revenge. He is no fool, and he knows that if he kills you, he had better put a bullet through his own brain at once. He is a sanguine man, but not so sanguine as not to know that if he compassed your death, he would be hounded into exile. But he is in a more desperate way financially than ever. He can borrow no more, and his debtors are clamouring. If he is defeated in this election, and the Jumels are sharp enough to take advantage of his fury and despair,–I think she has been watching her chance for years; and the talk is, she is anxious, for her own reasons, to get rid of Burr, besides,–I believe that a large enough sum would tempt Burr to call you out–“
“He certainly is hard up,” interrupted Hamilton, “for he rang my front door bell at five o’clock this morning, and when I let him in he went on like a madman and begged me to let him have several thousands, or Richmond Hill would be sold over his head.”
“And you gave them to him, I suppose? How much have you lent him altogether? I know from Washington Morton that Burr borrowed six hundred dollars of you through him.”
“I lent him the six hundred, partly because his desperate plight appeals to me–I believe him to be the unhappiest wretch in America–and more because I don’t want Europe laughing at the spectacle of a Vice-President of the United States in Debtor’s prison. Of course I can’t lend him this last sum myself, but I have promised to raise it for him.”
“Well, I argue with you no more about throwing away money. Did you listen to what I said about Madame Jumel?”
“With the deepest interest. It was most ingenious, and does honour to your imagination.” Troup, with an angry exclamation, sprang to his feet. Hamilton deftly caught him by the ankle and his great form sprawled on the grass. He arose in wrath.
“You are no older than one of your own young ones!” he began; then recovered, and resumed his seat. “This is the latest story I have heard of you,” he continued: “Some man from New England came here recently with a letter to you. When he returned to his rural home he was asked if he had seen the great man. ‘I don’t know about the _great_’ he replied; ‘but he was as playful as a kitten.'”
Hamilton laughed heartily. “Well, let me frolic while I may,” he said. “I shall die by Burr’s hand, no doubt of that. Whether he kills me for revenge or money, that is my destiny, and I have known it for years. And it does not matter in the least, my dear Bob. I have not three years of life left in me.”
IX
Burr was defeated by a majority of seven thousand votes; and New England, which had hoped, with the help of a man who was at war with all the powerful families of New York,–Schuylers, Livingstons, and Clintons at the head of them,–to break down the oligarchy of which it had been jealous for nearly a century, deserted the politician promptly. Incidentally, Hamilton had quenched its best hope of secession, for the elected Governor of New York, Judge Lewis, was a member of the Livingston family. Burr was in a desperate plight. Debtor’s prison and disgrace yawned before him; his only followers left were a handful of disappointed politicians, and these deserted him daily. But although his hatred of Hamilton, by now, was a foaming beast within him, he was wary and coolheaded, and history knows no better than he did that if he killed the man who was still the most brilliant figure in America, as well as the idol of the best men in it, cunning, and skill, and mastery of every political art would avail him nothing in the future; every avenue but that frequented by the avowed adventurer would be closed to him. Moreover, he must have known that Hamilton’s life was almost over, that in a very few years he could intrigue undisturbed. Nor could he have felt a keen interest in presenting to Jefferson so welcome a gift as his own political corpse. But desperate for money, crushed to the earth, his hatred for Hamilton cursing and raging afresh, the only conspicuous enemy who might be bought with gold of the man who was still a bristling rampart in the path of successful Jacobinism, he was in a situation to fall an easy victim to greater plotters than himself. His act, did he challenge Hamilton, would be ascribed to revenge, and the towering figures in the background of the tragedy would pass unnoticed by the horrified spectators in front.
On June 18th William Van Ness, Burr’s intimate friend, waited upon Hamilton with a studiously impertinent note, demanding an acknowledgment or denial of the essence of certain newspaper paragraphs, which stated that the leader of the Federalists had, upon various occasions, expressed his low opinion of the New York politician, and in no measured terms. Hamilton replied, pointing out the impossibility of either acknowledging or denying an accusation so vague, and analyzed at length the weakness of Burr’s position in endeavouring to pick a quarrel out of such raw material. He said, in conclusion:–
I stand ready to avow or disavow promptly and explicitly any precise or definite opinion which I may be charged with having declared of any gentleman. More than this cannot fitly be expected from me; and especially, it cannot reasonably be expected that I shall enter into an explanation upon a basis so vague as that which you have adopted. I trust on more reflection you will see the matter in the same light with me. If not I can only regret the circumstance and must abide the consequences.
Hamilton foresaw the inevitable end, and commenced putting his affairs in order at once; but, for both personal and abstract reasons, holding the practice of duelling in abhorrence, he was determined to give Burr any chance to retreat, consistent with his own self-respect. Burr replied in a manner both venomous and insulting, and Hamilton called upon Colonel Pendleton, General Greene’s aide during the Revolution, and asked him to act as his second. On the 23d he received a note from Van Ness, inquiring when and where it would be most convenient for him to receive a communication, and the correspondence thereafter was conducted by the seconds.
It was Sunday, and Hamilton was at The Grange, when the note from Van Ness arrived. He was swinging in a hammock, and he put the missive in his pocket, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted himself on his elbow. His entire family, with the exception of his wife and Angelica, were shouting in the woods. The baby, a sturdy youngster of two, named for the brother who had died shortly before his birth, emerged in a state of fury. He had eighty-two years of vitality in him, and he roared like a young bull. Hamilton’s children inherited the tough fibre and the longevity of the Schuylers. Of the seven who survived him all lived to old age, and several were close to being centenarians.
Angelica was busy in her aviary, close by. She was now twenty, and one of the most beautiful girls in the country, but successive deaths had kept her in seclusion; and the world in which her parents were such familiar figures was to remember nothing of her but her tragedy. Betsey, still as slim as her daughter, ran from the house at the familiar roar, and Gouverneur Morris came dashing through the woods with a half-dozen guests, self-invited for dinner. It was an animated day, and Hamilton was the life of the company. He had no time for thought until night. His wife retired early, with a headache; the boys had subsided even earlier. At ten o’clock Angelica went to the piano, and Hamilton threw himself into a long chair on the terrace and clasped his hands behind his head.
“So,” he thought, “the end has come. My work is over, I suppose. Personally, I am of no account. All I would have demanded, by way of reward for services faithfully executed, was the health to make a decent living and ten or fifteen years of peaceful and uninterrupted intimacy with my family. For fame, or public honours, or brilliant successes of any sort, I have ceased to care. Nothing would tempt me to touch the