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

A.H.

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

XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, not this time," said Hamilton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He died at two o'clock in the afternoon.

XII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It bears this inscription:

TO THE MEMORY OF

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

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

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

HE DIED JULY 12TH 1804, AGED 47



NOTES

PAGE XI. "Nevis" is pronounced Neevis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAGE 496.

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

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

E.A. TURPIN.

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

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

PAGE 501. Hamilton never would own a slave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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

On St. Christopher

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

On Nevis

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

On St. Croix

The Rev. W.C. Watson

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

THE END