Your most affectionate

TILGHMAN.

The following was from Laurens:—

I am indebted to you, my dear Hamilton, for two letters: the first from Albany, as masterly a piece of cynicism as ever was penned; the other from Philadelphia, dated the second March; in both you mention a design of retiring, which makes me extremely unhappy. I would not wish to have you for a moment withdraw from the public service; at the same time my friendship for you, and knowledge of your value to the United States, makes me most ardently desire that you should fill only the first offices of the Republic. I was flattered with an account of your being elected a delegate from New York, and am much mortified not to hear it confirmed by yourself. I must confess to you that at the present stage of the war, I should prefer your going into Congress, and from thence becoming a minister plenipotentiary for peace, to your remaining in the army, where the dull system of seniority, and the tableau, would prevent you from having the important commands to which you are entitled; but, at any rate, I will not have you renounce your rank unless you entered the career above mentioned. Your private affairs cannot require such immediate and close attention. You speak like a paterfamilias surrounded with a numerous progeny.

On the 26th of May he had an appreciative letter from Robert Morris, thanking him for his suggestions, and assuring him of their acceptability. He promises a bank on Hamilton's plan, although with far less capital; still it may afterward be increased to any extent.

The northern land was full of amenities, the river gay with pleasure barges. The French gardens about the Schuyler mansion were romantic for saunterings with the loveliest of brides; the seats beneath the great trees commanded the wild heights opposite. Forty of the finest horses in the country were in General Schuyler's stables, and many carriages. There was a constant stream of distinguished guests. But Hamilton, who could dally pleasurably for a short time, had no real affinity for anything but work. There being no immediate prospect of fighting, he retired again to the library and began that series of papers called The Continentalist, which were read as attentively as if peace had come. They examined the defects of the existing league of states, their jealousies, which operated against the formation of a Federal government, then proceeded to enumerate the powers with which such a government should be clothed.

Hamilton did not wait with any particular grace, but even the desired command came to him after a reasonable period of attempted patience. At Washington's request he accompanied him to Newport to confer with Rochambeau. Although the Chief did not allude to Hamilton's last letter, their intercourse on this journey was as natural and intimate as ever; and Washington did not conceal his pleasure in the society of this the most captivating and endearing of his many young friends. After the conference was over, Hamilton returned to Albany for a brief visit, then determined to force Washington to show his hand. He joined the army at Dobbs Ferry, and sent the Chief his commission. Tilghman returned with it, express haste, and the assurance that the General would endeavour to give him a command, nearly such as he could desire in the present circumstance of the army, Hamilton had accomplished his object. He retained his commission and quartered with General Lincoln.

When Washington arrived at Dobbs Ferry and went into temporary quarters, he gave a large dinner to the French officers, and invited Hamilton to preside.

His graceful manners and witty speeches provoked universal admiration [runs the pen of a contemporary]. He was the youngest and smallest man present. His hair was turned back from the forehead, powdered, and queued at the back. His face was boyishly fair, and lighted up with intelligence and genius. Washington, grave, elegant and hospitable, sat at the side of the table, with the accomplished Count de Rochambeau on his right. The Duke de Luzerne occupied a seat opposite. General Knox was present, and so was Baron Steuben.

Shortly afterward, Hamilton attended a council of war, at Washington's invitation. The squadron of De Grasse was approaching the coast of Virginia. For the second time, Washington was obliged to give up his cherished scheme of marching on New York, for it was now imperative to meet Cornwallis in the South. The Chief completely hoodwinked Clinton as to his immediate plans, Robert Morris raised the funds for moving the army, and Hamilton obtained his command. To his high satisfaction, Fish was one of his officers. Immediately before his departure for the South he wrote to his wife. He had attained his desire, but he was too unhappy to be playful. A portion of the letter is as follows:—

A part of the army, my dear girl, is going to Virginia, and I must, of necessity, be separated at a much greater distance from my beloved wife. I cannot announce the fatal necessity without feeling everything that a fond husband can feel. I am unhappy;—I am unhappy beyond expression. I am unhappy because I am to be so remote from you; because I am to hear from you less frequently than I am accustomed to do. I am miserable because I know you will be so; I am wretched at the idea of flying so far from you, without a single hour's interview, to tell you all my pains and all my love. But I cannot ask permission to visit you. It might be thought improper to leave my corps at such a time and upon such an occasion. I must go without seeing you—I must go without embracing you:—alas! I must go.

The allied armies moved on the 22d of August and arrived within two miles of the enemy's works at York Town, on the 28th of September. Hamilton's light infantry was attached to the division of Lafayette, who joined the main army with what was left of his own. Laurens was also in command of a company of light infantry in the young French general's division. He had acquitted himself brilliantly in France, returning, in spite of all obstacles and the discouragement of Franklin, with two and a half million livres in cash, part of a subsidy of six millions of livres granted by the French king; but he felt that to be in the field again with Washington, Hamilton, Lafayette, and Fish was higher fortune than successful diplomacy.

The allied army was twelve thousand strong; Cornwallis had about seventy-eight hundred men. The British commander was intrenched in the village of York Town, the main body of his troops encamped on the open grounds in the rear. York Town is situated on a peninsula formed by the rivers York and James, and into this narrow compass Cornwallis had been driven by the masterly tactics of Lafayette. The arrival of De Grasse's fleet cut off all hope of retreat by water. He made but a show of opposition during the eight days employed by the Americans in bringing up their ordnance and making other preparations. On the 9th the trenches were completed, and the Americans began the bombardment of the town and of the British frigates in the river. It continued for nearly twenty-four hours, and so persistent and terrific was the cannonading, that the British, being unfortunate in their embrasures, withdrew most of their cannon and made infrequent reply. On the night of the 11th new trenches were begun within two and three hundred yards of the British works. While they were completing, the enemy opened new embrasures, from which their fire was far more effective than at first. Two redoubts flanked this second parallel and desperately annoyed the men in the trenches. It was determined to carry them by assault, and the American light infantry and De Viomenil's grenadiers and chasseurs were ordered to hold themselves in readiness for the attack. Laurens, with eighty men, was to turn the redoubt in order to intercept the retreat of the garrison, but Hamilton, for the moment, saw his long-coveted opportunity glide by him. Washington had determined to give it to our hero's old Elizabethtown tutor, Colonel Barber, conceiving that the light infantry which had made the Virginia campaign was entitled to precedence. Hamilton was standing with Major Fish when the news of this arrangement was brought to him. He reached the General's tent in three bounds, and poured forth the most impetuous appeal he had ever permitted himself to launch at Washington. But he was terribly in earnest, and the prospect of losing this magnificent opportunity tore down the barriers of his self-possession. "It is my right to attack, sir!" he concluded passionately, "I am the officer on duty!" Washington had watched his flushed nervous face and flashing eyes, which had far more command in their glances than appeal, and he never made great mistakes: he knew that if he refused this request, Hamilton never would forgive him.

"Very well," he said. "Take it."

Hamilton ran back to Fish, crying: "We have it. We have it;" and immediately began to form his troops. The order was issued to advance in two columns, and after dark the march began, Hamilton leading the advance corps. The French were to attack the redoubt on the right.

The signal was a shell from the American batteries, followed by one from the French. The instant the French shell ascended, Hamilton gave the order to advance at the point of the bayonet; then his impatience, too long gnawing at its curb, dominated him, and he ran ahead of his men and leaped to the abatis. For a half moment he stood alone on the parapet, then Fish reached him, and together they encouraged the rest to come on. Hamilton turned and sprang into the ditch, Fish following. The infantry was close behind, and surmounting the abatis, ditch, and palisades, leaped into the work. Hamilton had disappeared, and they feared he had fallen, but he was investigating; he suddenly reappeared, and formed the troops in the redoubt. It surrendered almost immediately. The attack took but nine minutes, so irresistible was the impetuosity of the onslaught. Hamilton gave orders at once to spare every man who had ceased to fight. When Colonel Campbell advanced to surrender, one of the American captains seized a bayonet and drew back to plunge it into the Englishman's breast. Hamilton thrust it aside, and Campbell was made prisoner by Laurens. Washington was delighted. "Few cases," he said, "have exhibited greater proofs of intrepidity, coolness, and firmness than were shown on this occasion." On the 17th, when Washington received the proposition for surrender from Cornwallis, he sent for Hamilton and asked his opinion of the terms. To Laurens was given the honour of representing the American army at the conference before the surrender. Tilghman rode, express haste, to Philadelphia with the first news of the surrender of Cornwallis and his army.

Hamilton's description of his part in the conquest that virtually put an end to the war is characteristic.

Two nights ago, my Eliza [he wrote], my duty and my honour obliged me to take a step in which your happiness was too much risked. I commanded an attack upon one of the enemy's redoubts; we carried it in an instant and with little loss. You will see the particulars in the Philadelphia papers. There will be, certainly, nothing more of this kind; all the rest will be by approach; and if there should be another occasion, it would not fall to my turn to execute it.

"It is to be hoped so," she said plaintively to her mother. "Else shall I no longer need to wear a wig."

XII

The next few years may be passed over quickly; they are not the most interesting, though not the least happy of Hamilton's life. He returned home on furlough after the battle of York Town and remained in his father-in-law's hospitable home until the birth of his boy, on the 22d of January. Then, having made up his mind that there was no further work for him in the army, and that Britain was as tired of the war as the States, he announced his intention to study for the bar. His friends endeavoured to dissuade him from a career whose preparation was so long and arduous, and reminded him of the public offices he could have for the asking. But Hamilton was acquainted with his capacity for annihilating work, and at this time he was not conscious of any immediate ambition but of keeping his wife in a proper style and of founding a fortune for the education of his children. His military ambition had been so possessing that the sudden and brilliant finish at York Town of his power to gratify it had dwarfed for a while any other he may have cherished.

He took a little house in the long street on the river front, and invited Troup to live with him. They studied together. He had been the gayest of companions, the most courted of favourites, since his return from the wars. For four months even his wife and Troup had, save on Sundays, few words with him on unlegal matters. His brain excluded every memory, every interest. For the first time he omitted to write regularly to Mrs. Mitchell, Hugh Knox, and Peter Lytton. All day and half the night he walked up and down his library, or his father-in-law's, reading, memorizing, muttering aloud. His friends vowed that he marched the length and width of the Confederacy. He never gave a more striking exhibition of his control over the powers of his intellect than this. The result was that at the end of four months he obtained a license to practise as an attorney, and published a "Manual on the Practice of Law," which, Troup tells us, "served as an instructive grammar to future students, and became the groundwork of subsequent enlarged practical treatises." If it be protested that these feats were impossible, I can only reply that they are historic facts.

It was during these months of study that Aaron Burr came to Albany.

This young man, also, was not unknown to fame; and the period of the Revolution is the one on which Burr's biographers should dilate, for it was the only one through which he passed in a manner entirely to his credit. He was now in Albany, striving for admittance to the bar, but handicapped by the fact that he had studied only two years, instead of the full three demanded by law.

While Burr did not belong to the aristocracy of the country, his family not ranking by any means with the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, Jays, Morrises, Roosevelts, and others of that small and haughty band, still he came of excellent and respectable stock. His father had been the Rev. Aaron Burr, President of Princeton College, and his mother the daughter of the famous Jonathan Edwards. He was quick-witted and brilliant; and there is no adjective which qualifies his ambition. He was a year older than Hamilton, about an inch taller, and very dark. His features were well cut, his eyes black, glittering, and cold; his bearing dignified but unimposing, for he bent his shoulders and walked heavily. His face was not frank, even in youth, and grew noticeably craftier. He and Hamilton were the greatest fops in dress of their time; but while the elegance and beauty of attire sat with a peculiar fitness on Hamilton, seeming but the natural continuation of his high-bred face and easy erect and graceful bearing, Burr always looked studiously well-dressed. In regard to their height, a similar impression prevailed. One never forgot Burr's small stature, and often commented upon it. Comment upon Hamilton's size was rare, his proportions and motions were so harmonious; when he was on the platform, that ruthless test of inches, he dominated and controlled every brain in the audience, and his enemies vowed he was in league with the devil.

Burr brought letters to General Schuyler, and was politely given the run of the library. He and Hamilton had met casually in the army, but had had no opportunity for acquaintance. At this time the law was a subject of common interest, and they exchanged many opinions. There was no shock of antagonism at first, and for that matter they asked each other to dinner as long as Hamilton lived. But Hamilton estimated him justly at once, although, as Burr was as yet unconscious of the depths of his own worst qualities, the most astute reader of character hardly would suspect them. But Hamilton read that he was artificial and unscrupulous, and too selfish to serve the country in any of her coming needs. Still, he was brilliant and fascinating, and Hamilton asked him to his home. Burr, at first, was agreeably attracted to Hamilton, whose radiant disposition warmed his colder nature; but when he was forced to accept the astounding fact that Hamilton had prepared himself for the bar in four months, digesting and remembering a mountain of knowledge that cost other men the labour of years, and had prepared a Manual besides, he experienced the first convulsion of that jealousy which was to become his controlling passion in later years. Indeed, he established the habit with that first prolonged paroxysm, and he asked himself sullenly why a nameless stranger, from an unheard-of Island, should have the unprecedented success which this youth had had. Social victory, military glory, the preference of Washington, the respect and admiration of the most eminent men in the country, a horde of friends who talked of him as if he were a demi-god, an alliance by marriage with the greatest family in America, a father-in-law to advance any man's ambitions, a fascination which had kept the women talking until he married, and finally a memory and a legal faculty which had so astounded the bar—largely composed of exceptional men—that it could talk of nothing else: it was enough for a lifetime, and the man was only twenty-five. What in heaven's name was to be expected of him before he finished? The more Burr brooded, the more enraged he became. He had been brought up to think himself extraordinary, although his guardian had occasionally birched him when his own confidence had disturbed the peace; he was intensely proud of his military career, and aware of his fitness for the bar. But in the blaze of Hamilton's genius he seemed to shrivel; and as for having attempted to prepare himself for practice in four months, he might as well have grafted wings to his back and expected them to grow. It was some consolation to reflect that, as aide and confidential secretary for four years to Washington, Hamilton had been a student of the law of nations, and that thus his mind was peculiarly fitted to grasp what confronts most men as a solid wall to be taken down stone by stone; also that himself acknowledged no rival where the affections of women were concerned. But while he lifted the drooping head of his pride, and tied it firmly to a stake with many strong words, he chose to regard Hamilton as a rival, and the idea grew until it possessed him.

In July Robert Morris, after some correspondence, persuaded Hamilton to accept the office of Continental Receiver for a short time.

Your former situation in the army [he wrote], the present situation of that very army, your connexions in the state, your perfect knowledge of men and measures, and the abilities with which heaven has blessed you, will give you a fine opportunity to forward the public service.

Hamilton, who had no desire to interrupt his studies, was placed in a position which gave him no choice; his sense of public duty grew steadily.

For my part [he wrote to Morris], considering the late serious misfortune to our ally, the spirit of reformation, of wisdom, and of unanimity, which seems to have succeeded to that of blunder and dissension in the British government, and the universal reluctance of these states to do what is right, I cannot help viewing our situation as critical, and I feel it the duty of every citizen to exert his faculties to the utmost.

But in spite of the onerous and disagreeable duties of his position, he continued to pursue the course of study necessary for admission to the bar as a counsellor. He also found time to write a letter to Meade. The following extract will show that the severity of his great task was over, and that he was once more alive to that domestic happiness to which so large a part of his nature responded.

You reproach me with not having said enough about our little stranger. When I wrote last I was not sufficiently acquainted with him to give you his character. I may now assure you that your daughter, when she sees him, will not consult you about her choice, or will only do it in respect to the rules of decorum. He is truly a very fine young gentleman, the most agreeable in conversation and manners of any I ever knew, nor less remarkable for his intelligence and sweetness of temper. You are not to imagine by my beginning with his mental qualifications that he is defective in personal. It is agreed on all hands that he is handsome; his features are good, his eye is not only sprightly and expressive, but it is full of benignity. His attitude in sitting is, by connoisseurs, esteemed graceful, and he has a method of waving his hand that announces the future orator. He stands, however, rather awkwardly, and as his legs have not all the delicate slimness of his father's, it is feared he may never excel as much in dancing, which is probably the only accomplishment in which he will not be a model. If he has any fault in manners, he laughs too much. He has now passed his seventh month.

Happy by temperament, Hamilton was at this time happier in his conditions—barring the Receivership—than any vague, wistful, crowded dream had ever presaged. His wife was adorable and pretty, sprightly and sympathetic, yet accomplished in every art of the Dutch housewife; and although he was far too modest to boast, he was privately convinced that his baby was the finest in the Confederacy. He had a charming little home, and Troup, the genial, hearty, and solid, was a member of it. In General and Mrs. Schuyler he had found genuine parents, who strove to make him forget that he had ever been without a home. He had been forced to refuse offers of assistance from his father-in-law again and again. He would do nothing to violate his strong sense of personal independence; he had half of the arrears of his pay, Troup his share of the expenses of the little house. He knew that in a short time he should be making an income. The cleverest of men, however, can be hoodwinked by the subtle sex. The great Saratoga estate of the Schuylers furnished the larder of the Hamiltons with many things which the young householder was far too busy to compare with his slender purse.

He heard constantly from his friends in the army, and finally was persuaded to sit for a portrait, to be the common property of six or eight of them. Money was desperately tight, they could not afford a copy apiece, but each was to possess it for two months at a time so long as he lived; he who survived the others to dispose of it as he chose. For Hamilton to sit still and look in one direction for half an hour was nothing short of misery, even with Betsey, Troup, and the Baby to amuse him; and only the head, face, stock, and front of the coat were finished. But the artist managed to do himself justice with the massive spirited head, the deep-set mischievous eyes, whose lightnings never were far from the surface; the humour in the remarkable curves of the mouth, the determination and suppressed energy of the whole face. It was a living portrayal, and Betsey parted from it with tears. When she saw it again her eyes were dim with many tears. The last of its owners to survive fell far into poverty, and sold it to one of her sons. It is to-day as fresh, as alive with impatient youth and genius, as when Hamilton estimated portrait painters thieves of time.

Meanwhile a compliment was paid to him which upset his plans, and placed him for a short time in the awkward position of hesitating between private desires and public duty: he was elected by the New York legislature, and almost unanimously, a delegate to Congress. Troup brought him the news as he was walking on the broad street along the river front, muttering his Blackstone, oblivious of his fellow-citizens.

"Go to Congress!" he exclaimed. "Who goes to that ramshackle body that is able to keep out of it? Could not they find someone else to send to distinguish himself by failure? I've my living to make. If a man in these days manages to support his wife and child, there is nothing else he can do which so entitles him to the esteem of his fellow-citizens."

"True," said Troup, soothingly; "there certainly is nothing in that body of old women and lunatics, perpetually bickering with thirteen sovereign, disobedient, and jealous States, to tempt the ambition of any man; nor, ordinarily, to appeal to his sense of usefulness. But just at present there are several questions before it with which it is thought you can cope more successfully than any man living. So I think you ought to go, and so does General Schuyler. I know all that you will sacrifice, domestic as well as pecuniarily—but remember, you solemnly dedicated yourself to the service of this country."

"I'm not likely to forget it, and I am willing to sacrifice anything if I am convinced of my usefulness in a given direction, but I see no chance of accomplishing aught in Congress, of doing this country any service until it is a nation, not a sack of scratching cats."

Not only was great pressure brought to bear upon him, but he was not long convincing himself that it was his duty to take his knowledge of certain subjects vexing the Confederation, to the decrepit body which was feebly striving to save the country from anarchy. He had given little attention to the general affairs of the country during the past six months, but an examination of them fired his zeal. He accepted the appointment, and returned to his law books and his dispiriting struggle with the taxes.

In the autumn Hamilton received the second of those heavy blows by which he was reminded that in spite of his magnetism for success he was to suffer like other mortals. Laurens was dead—killed in a petty skirmish which he was so loath to miss that he had bolted to it from a sick-bed. Hamilton mourned him passionately, and never ceased to regret him. He was mercurial only among his lighter feelings. The few people he really loved were a part of his daily thoughts, and could set his heartstrings vibrating at any moment. Betsey consoled, diverted, and bewitched him, but there were times when he would have exchanged her for Laurens. The perfect friendship of two men is the deepest and highest sentiment of which the finite mind is capable; women miss the best in life.

In October Hamilton resigned the Receivership, having brought an honourable amount of order out of chaos and laid down the law for the guidance of future officials. November came, and he set off for Philadelphia philosophically, though by no means with a light heart. The baby was too young to travel; he was obliged to send his little family to General Schuyler's, with no hope of seeing them again for months, and a receding prospect of offering them a home in New York. His father-in-law, not unmindful that consolation was needed, drove him two-thirds of the distance, thus saving him a long ride, or its alternative, the heavy coach. In Philadelphia he found sufficient work awaiting him to drive all personal matters out of his head.

It was during this year of hard work and little result that he renewed an acquaintance with James Madison, Jr., afterward fourth President of the United States, and Gouverneur Morris, one of the most brilliant and disinterested young men in the country, now associated with Robert Morris in the Department of Finance. With the last the acquaintance ripened into a lifelong and intimate friendship; with Madison the friendship was equally ardent and intimate while it lasted. Madison had the brain of a statesman, energy and persistence in crises, immense industry, facility of speech, a broad contempt for the pretensions and mean bickerings of the States, and a fairly national outlook. As Hamilton would have said, he "thought continentally." But he lacked individuality. He was too patriotic, too sincere to act against his principles, but his principles could be changed by a more powerful and magnetic brain than his own, and the inherent weakness in him demanded a stronger nature to cling to. It happened that he and Hamilton, when they met again in Congress, thought alike on many subjects, and they worked together in harmony from the first; nevertheless, he was soon in the position of a double to that towering and energetic personality, and worshipped it. In their letters the two young men sign themselves, "yours affectionately," "yours with deep attachment," which between men—I suppose—means something. So noticeable was Madison's devotion to the most distinguished young man of the day, and a few years later so absorbed was he into the huge personality of his early friend's bitterest enemy, that John Randolph once exclaimed in wrath, "Madison always was some great man's mistress—first Hamilton's, then Jefferson's:" a remark which was safe in the days of our ancestors, when life was all work and no satiety.

Gouverneur Morris had sacrificed home, inheritance, and ties in the cause of the Revolution, most of his family remaining true to the crown. His education was thorough, however, and subsequently he had nine years of Europe, of which he left to posterity an entertaining record. Tall, handsome, a wit, a beau, notable for energy in Congress, erratic, caustic, cynical, but the warmest of friends, he was a pet of society, a darling of women, and trusted by all men. He and Hamilton had much in common, and to some degree he took Laurens's place; not entirely, for Laurens's idealism gave him a pedestal in Hamilton's memory which no other man but Washington ever approached; and Morris was brutal in his cynicism, placing mankind but a degree higher than the beasts of the forest. But heart and brain endeared him to Hamilton, and no man had a loftier or more burning patriotism. As for himself, he loved and admired Hamilton above all men. He was as strong in his nationalism, believing Union under a powerful central government to be the only hope of the States. Both he and Madison were leaders; but both, even then, were willing to be led by Hamilton, who was several years their junior.

The three young enthusiasts made a striking trio of contrasts as they sat one evening over their port and walnuts in a private room of a coffee-house, where they had met to discuss the problems convulsing the unfortunate country. Madison had the look of a student, a taciturn intellectual visage. He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great precision. Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new wooden leg interfered with his comfort or dignity. Hamilton, with his fair mobile face, powerful, penetrating, delicate, illuminated by eyes full of fire and vivacity, but owing its chief attraction to a mouth as sweet as it was firm and humorous, made the other men look almost heavy. Madison was carelessly attired, the other two with all the picturesque elegance of their time.

"A debt of $42,000,000," groaned Morris, "interest $2,400,000; Robert Morris threatening to resign; delirious prospect of panic in consequence; national spirit with which we began the war, a stinking wick under the tin extinguisher of States' selfishness, stinginess, and indifference—caused by the natural reversion of human nature to first principles after the collapse of that enthusiasm which inflates mankind into a bombastic pride of itself; Virginia pusillanimous, Rhode Island an old beldam standing on the village pump and shrieking disapproval of everything; Jay, Adams, and Franklin, after years of humiliating mendicancy, their very hearts wrinkled in the service of the stupidest country known to God or man, shoved by a Congress not fit to black their boots under the thumb of the wiliest and most disingenuous diplomatist in Europe—much France cares for our interests, provided we cut loose from Britain; Newburg address and exciting prospect, in these monotonous times, of civil war, while peace commission is sitting in London; just demands of men who have fought, starving and naked, for a bare subsistence after the army disbands, modest request for arrears of pay,—on which to relieve the necessities of their families turned out to grass for seven years,—pleasantly indorsed by the Congress, which feels safe in indorsing anything, and rejected by the States, called upon to foot the bill, as a painful instance of the greed and depravity of human nature—there you are: no money, no credit, no government, no friends,—for Europe is sick of us,—no patriotism; immediate prospects, bankruptcy, civil war, thirteen separate meals for Europe. What do you propose, Hamilton? I look to you as your Islanders flee to a stone house in a hurricane. You are an alien, with no damned state roots to pull up, your courage is unhuman, or un-American, and you are the one man of genius in the country. Madison is heroic to a fault, a roaring Berserker, but we must temper him, we must temper him; and meanwhile we will both defer to the peculiar quality of your mettle."

Madison, who had not a grain of humour, replied gravely, his rich southern brogue seeming to roll his words down from a height: "I have a modest hope in the address I prepared for the citizens of Rhode Island, more in Hamilton's really magnificent letter to the Governor. Nothing can be more forcible—nay, beguiling—than his argument in that letter in favour of a general government independent of state machinery, and his elaborate appeal to that irritating little commonwealth to consent to the levying of the impost by Congress, necessary to the raising of the moneys. I fear I am not a hero, for I confess I tremble. I fear the worst. But at all events I am determined to place on record that I left no stone unturned to save this miserable country."

"You will go down to posterity as a great man, Madison, if you are never given the chance to be one," replied the father of American humour and coinage; "for it is not in words but in acts that we display the faith that is not in us. Well, Hamilton?"

"I must confess," said Hamilton, "that Congress appears to me, as a newcomer, rooted contentedly to its chairs, and determined to do nothing, happy in the belief that Providence has the matter in hand and but bides the right moment to make the whole world over. But I see no cause to despair, else I should not have come to waste my time. I fear that Rhode Island is too fossilized to listen to us, but I shall urge that we change the principle of the Confederation and vote to make the States contribute to the general treasury in an equal proportion to their means, by a system of general taxation imposed under continental authority. If the poorer States, irrespective of land and numbers, could be relieved, and the wealthier taxed specifically on land and houses, the whole regulated by continental legislation, I think that even Rhode Island might be placated. It may be that this is not agreeable to the spirit of the times, but I shall make the attempt—"

"Considering there is no spirit in the times, we might as well expect to inform its skull with genius by means of a lighted candle. You think too well of human nature, my boy; expect nothing, that ye be not disappointed, especially in the matter of revenue."

"I have no exalted opinion of human nature, but if I did not think more hopefully of it than you do, I should yield up that enthusiasm without which I can accomplish nothing. You have every gift, but you will end as a dilettante because your ideal is always in the mud; and it is only now and again that you think it worth while to pick it up and give it a bath."

"Right, right," murmured Morris, good-naturedly. "Would that I had your unquenchable belief in the worth while. Allied to your abilities it will make the new world over and upset the wicked plans of the old. Analyst and disbeliever in man's right to his exaggerated opinion of himself, how do you keep enthusiasm abreast with knowledge of human kind? Tell me, Hamilton, how do you do it?"

"I fear 'tis the essence of which I am made. My energies will have outlet or tear me to pieces. When there is work to do, my nostrils quiver like a war-horse's at the first roar and smoke—"

"Your modesty does you infinite honour; the truth is, you have the holy fire of patriotism in an abnormal degree. I have it, but I still am normal. I have made sacrifices and shall make more, but my ego curls its lip. Yours never does. That is the difference between you and most of us. Hundreds of us are doggedly determined to go through to the bitter end, sacrifice money, youth and health; but you alone are happy. That is why we love you and are glad to follow your lead. But, I repeat, how can you labour with such undying enthusiasm for the good of human kind when you know what they amount to?"

"Some are worth working for, that is one point; I don't share your opinion of general abasement, for the facts warrant no such opinion. And the battle of ideas, the fight for certain stirring and race-making principles,—that is the greatest game that mortals can play. And to play it, we must have mortals for puppets. To create a new government, a new race, to found what may become the greatest nation on the earth,—what more stupendous destiny? Even if one were forgotten, it would be worth doing, so tremendous would be the exercise of the faculties, so colossal the difficulties. I would have a few men do it all; I have no faith in the uneducated. The little brain, half opened by a village schoolmaster, is pestilential; but in the few with sufficient power over the many,—from whom will be evolved more and more to rank with the first few,—in those I have faith, and am proud to work with them."

"Good. I'd not have a monarchy, but I'd have the next thing to it, with a muzzle on the rabble. Perhaps I, too, have faith in a few,—in yourself and George Washington; and in Madison, our own Gibraltar. But the pig-headed, selfish, swinish—well, go on with your present plans. 'Tis to hear those we met to-night, not to analyze each other. Tell us all, that we may not only hope, but work with you."

"The army first. If retirement on half pay is impossible, then full pay for, say six years,—and the arrears,—paid upon the disbanding of the army. Washington, by the exercise of the greatest moral force, but one, that has appeared in this world, has averted a civil war—I am persuaded that horror is averted, and I assume that the country does not care eternally to disgrace itself by letting its deliverers, who have suffered all that an army can suffer, return to their ruined homes without the few dollars necessary for another start in life. I have resigned my claim to arrears of pay, that my argument may not be weakened. Then a peace establishment. Fancy leaving our frontiers to the mercy of state militia! I shall urge that the general government have exclusive power over the sword, to establish certain corps of infantry, artillery, cavalry, dragoons, and engineers, a general system of land fortifications, establishment of arsenals and magazines, erection of founderies and manufactories for arms, of ports and maritime fortifications—with many details with which I will not bore you. I shall urge the necessity of strengthening the Federal government through the influence of officers deriving their appointment directly from Congress—always, always, the necessity of strengthening the central government, of centralizing power, and of putting the States where they belong. It is federation or anarchy. Then—moderate funds permanently pledged for the security of lenders. I have preached that since I have dared to preach at all, and that is the only solution of our present distress, for we'll never get another foreign loan—"

"We've accepted your wisdom, but we can't apply it," interposed Morris. "Our only hope lies in your national government—but go on."

"A moment," said Madison. "This, in regard to the peace establishment: Do we apply a war congress to a state of peace, I fear we shall too clearly define its limits. The States may refuse obedience, and then the poor invalided body will fall into greater disrepute than ever."

"I have thought of that," replied Hamilton, "and if the worst comes to the worst, I have a radical plan to propose,—that Congress publish frankly its imperfections to the country—imperfections which make it impossible to conduct the public affairs with honour to itself or advantage to the United States; that it ask the States to appoint a convention, with full powers to revise the Confederation, and to adopt and propose all necessary alterations—all to be approved or rejected, in the last instance, by the legislatures of the several States. That would be the first step toward a national government. With that, all things would be possible,—the payment of our foreign loan, of our army, duties on foreign goods, which is a source of revenue to which they are incredibly blind; the establishment of a firm government, under which all will prosper that are willing to work, of a National Bank, of a peace army—"

"Of Utopia!" exclaimed Morris. "Hamilton, you are the least visionary man in this country, but you are God knows how many years ahead of your times. If we are ever on two legs again, you will put us there; but your golden locks will thin in the process, and that rosy boyish face we love will be lined with the seams of the true statesman. Only you could contemplate imbuing these fossilized and commonplace intellects, composing our Congress of the Confederation—mark the ring of it!—with a belief in its own impotency and worthlessness. You are not mortal. I always said it. When Duane gave me your letter to read, I remarked: 'He withdrew to heaven, and wrote that letter on the knee of the Almighty; never on earth could he have found the courage and the optimism.' No, Hamilton, I would embrace you, did my wooden leg permit me to escape your wrath, but I can give you no encouragement. You will fail here—gloriously, but you will fail. Mark my words, the army will go home cursing, and scratch the ground to feed its women. The States will have no peace establishment to threaten their sovereign rights, we will pay nobody, and become more and more poverty-stricken and contemptible in our own eyes, and in the eyes of Europe; we will do nothing that is wise and everything that is foolish—"

"And then, when the country is sick unto death," interrupted Hamilton, "it will awake to the wisdom of the drastic remedy and cohere into a nation."

"Query," said Madison, "would it not be patriotic to push things from bad to worse as quickly as possible? It might be a case of justifiable Jesuitism."

"And it might lead to anarchy and the jaws of Europe," said Hamilton. "It is never safe to go beyond a certain point in the management of human affairs. What turn the passions of the people may take can never be foretold, nor that element of the unknown, which is always under the invisible cap and close on one's heels. God knows I have not much patience in my nature, and I do not believe that most of my schemes are so far in advance of even this country's development; but certain lessons must be instilled by slow persistence. I have no faith in rushing people at the point of the bayonet in times of peace."

"I think you are right there," said Morris. "But mark my words, you'll propagate ideas here, and the result in time will be the birth of a nation—no doubt of that; but you must rest content to live on hope for the present. I was a fettered limb in this body too long. I know its inertia."

He knew whereof he spoke. Hamilton won little but additional reputation, much admiration, half resentful, and many enemies. The army went home unpaid; the peace establishment consisted of eighty men; little or nothing was done to relieve the national debt or to carry on the business of government. Even his proposition to admit the public to the galleries of Congress, in the hope of interesting it in governmental affairs, only drew upon him the sneer that he could go out on the balcony and make his speeches if he feared his eloquence was wasted. He was accused of writing the Newburg address inciting the officers to civil war, because it was particularly well written, and of hurrying Congress to Trenton, when threatened by a mutinous regiment. But he worked on undaunted, leaving his indelible mark; for he taught the States that their future prosperity and happiness lay in giving up to the Union some part of the imposts that might be levied on foreign commodities, and incidentally the idea of a double government; he proposed a definite system of funding the debts on continental securities, which gradually rooted in the common sense of the American people, and he inveighed with a bitter incisiveness, which was tempered by neither humour nor gaiety, against the traitorous faction in the pay of France. He dissuaded Robert Morris from resigning, and introduced a resolution in eulogy of Washington's management of his officers in the most critical hour of the Union's history. But his immediate accomplishment was small and discouraging, although his foresight may have anticipated what George Ticknor Curtis wrote many years later:—

The ideas of a statesman like Hamilton, earnestly bent on the discovery and inculcation of truth, do not pass away. Wiser than those by whom he was surrounded, with a deeper knowledge of the science of government than most of them, and constantly enunciating principles which extended far beyond the temporizing policy of the hour, the smiles of his opponents only prove to posterity how far he was in advance of them.

The following extract from a letter of James M'Henry, Lafayette's former aide, and a member of the Congress, is interesting as a commentary on the difficulties of our hero's position while a member of that body.

DEAR HAMILTON: The homilies you delivered in Congress are still remembered with pleasure. The impressions they made are in favour of your integrity; and no one but believes you a man of honour and of republican principles. Were you ten years older and twenty thousand pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift. You are supposed to possess various knowledge, useful, substantial, and ornamental. Your very grave and your cautious, your men who measure others by the standard of their own creeping politics, think you sometimes intemperate, but seldom visionary: and that were you to pursue your object with as much cold perseverance as you do with ardour and argument, you would become irresistible. In a word, if you could submit to spend a whole life in dissecting a fly you would be, in their opinion, one of the greatest men in the world. Bold designs; measures calculated for their rapid execution; a wisdom that would convince from its own weight; a project that would surprise the people into greater happiness, without giving them an opportunity to view it and reject it, are not adapted to a council composed of discordant elements, or a people who have thirteen heads, each of which pay superstitious adorations to inferior divinities.

Adieu, my dear friend, and in the days of your happiness drop a line to your

M'HENRY.

At the end of 1783 Hamilton was convinced that he was of no further immediate use to the country, and refused a reelection to the Congress, despite entreaty and expostulation, returning to the happiness of his domestic life and to his neglected law-books. The British having evacuated New York, he moved his family there and entered immediately upon the practice of his profession.



BOOK IV

"ALEXANDER THE GREAT"

INCLUDING THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

I

It was the autumn of 1786. New York had risen from her charred and battered ruins. There were cows on her meadows, a lake with wooded shores as merely traditional, groves, gardens, orchards, fields, and swamps; but her business houses and public buildings were ambitious once more, her spires more lofty and enduring, her new dwelling-houses, whether somewhat crowded in Wall Street and Broadway, or on the terraces of less busy streets, or along the river fronts and facing a wild and lovely prospect, were square, substantial, and usually very large. And every street was an avenue of ancient trees. Mrs. John Jay, with her experience of foreign courts, her great beauty, and the prestige of her distinguished husband, was the leader of society, holding weekly receptions, and the first to receive the many distinguished strangers. Although society was not quite as gay as it became three years later, under a more settled government and hopeful outlook, still there was quiet entertaining by the Hamiltons, who lived at 58 Wall Street, the Duers, Watts, Livingstons, Clintons, Duanes, Jays, Roosevelts, Van Cortlandts, and other representatives of old New York families, now returned to their own. Congress was come to New York and established in the City Hall in Wall Street. It had given the final impetus to the city, struggling under the burden of ruins and debt left by the British; and society sauntered forth every afternoon in all the glory of velvet and ruffles, three-cornered hats recklessly laced, brocades, hoopskirts, and Rohan hats, to promenade past the building where the moribund body was holding its last sessions. The drive was down the Broadway into the shades of the Battery, with the magnificent prospect of bay and wooded shores beyond. Politics, always epidemic among men and women alike, had recently been animated by Hamilton's coup at Annapolis, and the prospect of a general convention of the States to consider the reorganization of a government which had reduced the Confederation to a condition fearfully close to anarchy, the country to ruin, and brought upon the thirteen sovereign independent impotent and warring States the contempt of Europe and the threat of its greed.

A group of men, standing on a corner of Wall Street and the Broadway, were laughing heartily: a watch was dragging off to jail two citizens who had fallen upon each other with the venom of political antithesis; the one, a Nationalist, having called Heaven to witness that Hamilton was a demi-god, begotten to save the wretched country, the other vociferating that Hamilton was the devil who would trick the country into a monarchy, create a vast standing army, which would proclaim him king and stand upon the heads of a people that had fought and died for freedom, while the tyrant exercised his abominable functions.

The men in the group were Governor Clinton, Hamilton's bitterest opponent, but sufficiently amused at the incident; William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey, now with but a few hairs on the top of his head and a few at the base, his nose more penetrating, his eye more disapproving, than ever; James Duane, Mayor of New York; John Jay, the most faultless character in the Confederation, honoured and unloved, his cold eyes ever burning with an exalted fire; and John Marshall of Virginia, munching an apple, his attire in shabby contrast to the fashionable New Yorkers, the black mane on his splendid head unpowdered and tossing in the ocean breeze.

"I like your Hamilton," he announced, "and I've come to the conclusion that I think with him on all matters. He's done more to educate the people up to a rational form of government during the last seven years than all the rest of us put together. He's shone upon them like a fixed star. Other comets have come and gone, whirling them forward to destruction, but they have always been forced to turn and look at him again and again, and he has always shone in the same place."

"Sir," exclaimed Clinton, who was flushed with rage, "are you aware that I am present, and that I entirely disapprove of Mr. Hamilton's attempt to reduce the States to a condition of ignominious subserviency to an ambitious and tyrannical central power?"

"I had heard of you, sir," replied Marshall, meekly, "and I am glad to have the opportunity to ask you what your remedy is for the existing state of things? You will admit that there must be a remedy, and quickly. If not a common government with a Constitution empowering it to regulate trade, imposts, reduce the debt, enter into treaties with foreign powers which will not be sneered at, administer upon a thousand details which I will not enumerate, and raise the country from its slough of contempt, then what? As the personage who has taken the most decided stand against the enlightened and patriotic efforts of Mr. Hamilton, I appeal to you for a counter suggestion as magnificent as his. I am prepared, sir, to listen with all humility."

Clinton, whose selfish fear of his own downfall with that of State supremacy was so well known that a smile wrinkled across the polite group of gentlemen surrounding him, deepened his colour to purple under this assault, and stammered: "Sir, have I not myself proposed an enlargement of the powers of Congress, in order to counteract the damnable policy of Britain? Did not your Hamilton harangue that crowd I sanctioned till he got nearly all he asked for?"

"But he knew better than to ask for too much, in the conditions," replied Marshall, suavely. "May I suggest that you have not answered my humble and earnest questions?"

"I answer no questions that I hold to be impertinent and unimportant!" said Clinton, pompously, and with a dignified attempt to recover his poise. He swept his hat from his head; the New Yorkers were as punctilious; Marshall lifted his battered lid from the wild mass beneath, and the popular Governor sauntered down the street, saluted deferentially by Nationalists and followers alike. When he had occasion to sweep his gorgeous hat to his knees, the ladies courtesied to the ground, their draperies taking up the entire pavement, and His Excellency was obliged to encounter the carriages in the street.

"If Clinton were sure of figuring as powerfully in a national government as he does in the state of New York, he would withdraw his opposition," said Livingston, contemptuously. "He has been Governor for nine years. New York is his throne. He is a king among the common people, who will elect him indefinitely. Were it not for Hamilton, he would be New York, and the awful possibilities lying hidden in the kernel of change haunt his dreams at night. You embarrassed him in a manner that rejoiced my heart, Mr. Marshall. I beg you will do me the honour to dine with me to-night. I beg to assure you that your fame is as known to me as were I a Virginian."

"I'll accept the invitation with pleasure," replied Marshall, whose manners were all that his attire was not. "I shall be glad to talk with you on many subjects. To-morrow I shall pay my respects to Mr. Hamilton. His has been a trying but not a thankless task. He has addressed himself to the right class of men all over the country, winning them to his sound and enlightened views, giving them courage, consolidating them against the self-interested advocates of State sovereignty. That he has so often neglected a legal practice which must bring him a large income, as well as sufficient personal glory, out of a sincere pity for and patriotic interest in this afflicted country, gives New York deep cause for congratulation that she was in such close communication with that Island of his youth. I wish that fate had steered him to Virginia."

"Surely you have enough as it is," said Duane, laughing: "Washington, yourself, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph. Spare us Hamilton. We shall need him badly enough. The Clinton faction is very strong. That the Hamilton embraces the best spirits of the community means that it is in the minority, and needs the unremitting exercise of his genius to counteract the disadvantage in numbers."

"I think that what I admire most in Hamilton," remarked a newcomer, a small dark man of vivid personality, "are his methods of manipulation. He picks out his own men, Duer, Troup, Malcolm, has them sent to the legislature, where they blindly and indefatigably obey his behest and gain the consent of that body to the convention at Annapolis, then see that he is elected as principal delegate. He goes to Annapolis ostensibly to attend a commercial convention: while its insufficient numbers are drowsing, he springs upon them an eloquent proposal for a national convention for reforming the Union, and forces it through before they know what they are about. Certainly Mr. Hamilton is a man of genius."

"Do I understand. Mr. Burr," said Jay, from his glacial height, "that you are impugning the purity of Mr. Hamilton's motives?"

"No, sir," replied Burr, whom an archangel could not have rebuked. "In the present condition of things all methods are justifiable. Hamilton is great but adaptable. I respect him for that quality above all others, for he is quite the most imperious character in America, and his natural instinct is to come out and say, 'You idiots, fall into line behind me and stop twaddling. I will do your thinking; be kind enough not to delay me further.' On the other hand, he is forced to be diplomatic, to persuade where he would command, to move slowly instead of charging at the point of the bayonet. So, although I have no sympathy with his pronounced monarchical inclinations, I respect his acquired methods of getting what he wants."

"What do you mean by pronounced monarchical inclinations?" snorted Governor Livingston, who could not endure Burr.

Burr gave his peculiar sardonic laugh. "Will you deny it, sir?"

"Deny it? I certainly am in Mr. Hamilton's confidence to no such extent, and I challenge you to indicate one sentence in his published writings which points to such a conclusion."

"Ah, he is too clever for that; but his very walk, his whole personality expresses it, to say nothing of the fact that he never thinks of denying his admiration of the British Constitution. And did he not defend the Tories after the evacuation, when no other lawyer would touch them? I admired his courage, but it was sufficient evidence of the catholicity of his sentiments."

"Mr. Hamilton defended the abstract principle of right against wrong in defending the wretched Tories against the persecutions of an unmagnanimous public sentiment," said Jay, witheringly. "I should advise you, young gentleman, to become a disciple of Mr. Hamilton. I can recommend no course which would prove so beneficial." And he turned on his heel.

He had hit Burr. The jealousy born in Albany had thriven with much sustenance since. Hamilton was by far the most prominent figure at the New York bar, and was hastening to its leadership. Burr was conspicuous for legal ability, but never would be first while Hamilton was in the race. Moreover, although Hamilton had not then reached that dizzy height from which a few years later he looked down upon a gaping world, he was the leader of a growing and important party, intelligently followed and worshipped by the most eminent men in the Confederation, many of them old enough to be his father; and he was the theme of every drawing-room, of every coffee-house group and conclave. His constant pamphlets on the subject nearest to all men's hearts, his eloquent speeches on the same theme upon every possible occasion, and the extraordinary brilliance of his legal victories, gave people no time to think of other men. When he entered a drawing-room general conversation ceased, and the company revolved about him so long as he remained. When he spoke, all the world went to hear. For an ambitious young man to be told to attach himself to the train of this conquering hero was more than poor Burr could stand, and he replied angrily:—

"I have the privilege of being true to my own convictions, I suppose. They are not Mr. Hamilton's and never will be. I do not impugn the purity of his motives, but I have no desire to see George Washington king, nor Hamilton, neither. I wish you good day, sirs," and he strode up Broadway to the Fields with dignity in every inch of him.

"This constant talk of Hamilton's monarchical principles makes my gorge rise," said Livingston. "Did he not fight as hard as he was permitted, to drive monarchy out of the country? Was he not the first to sound the call to arms?"

"Hamilton's exact attitude on that question is not clearly understood," replied Duane, soothingly, for the heat of Livingston's republicanism had never abated. "I fancy it is something like this: So far no constitution has worked so well as the British. Montesquieu knew whereof he praised. The number of men in this country equal to the great problem of self-government are in a pitiful minority. The anarchic conditions of the States, the disgrace which they have brought upon us, their inefficiency to cope with any problem, the contemptible depths of human nature which they have revealed to the thinking members of the community—all these causes inspire Hamilton, incomparably the greatest brain in the country, with a dread of leaving any power whatever in their hands. He believes firmly in the few of tried brain and patriotism. I very much doubt if he has considered the subject of actual monarchy for a moment, for he is no dreamer, and he knows that even his followers have been Republicans too long. But that he will fight for the strongest sort of national government, with the least possible power vested in the States—oh, no doubt of that."

"Our people are hopeless, I fear," said Livingston, with a sigh. "This period of independency seems to have demoralized them when it should have brought out their best elements. Well, Mr. Marshall, what say you? You have been modestly silent, and we have been rudely voluble when so distinguished a guest should have had all the floor."

"I have been deeply entertained," replied Marshall, with a grin. "My visit to New York is by no means wasted. I envy Mr. Hamilton; but let him look out for Mr. Burr. There are just five feet seven inches of jealous hate in that well-balanced exterior, and its methods would be sinuous, I fancy, but no less deadly. But Hamilton has had many escapes. What was that atrocious story I heard of a duelling cabal? When the rolling stone of gossip reaches Virginia from New York, it has gathered more moss than you would think."

"It would be difficult to exaggerate that story," snorted Livingston." Hamilton defended his course in regard to the Tories in two pamphlets, signed 'Phocion.' They were answered by a Mr. Ledyard, who signed himself 'Mentor,' and was a conspicuous advocate of the damnable spirit of revenge possessing this country. It is a bold man indeed who enters into a conflict of the pen with Hamilton, and 'Mentor' was left without a leg to stand on. Forthwith, a club of Ledyard's friends and sympathizers, enraged by defeat, and fearing the growing ascendency of Hamilton over men's minds, deliberately agreed to challenge him in turn until he was silenced forever. This atrocious project would undoubtedly have been carried out, had not Ledyard himself repudiated it with horror. Can you show me a greater instance of the depravity of human nature, sir?"

"We are in a ferment of bitter passions," said Marshall, sadly, "and I fear they will be worse before they are better. I only hope that Hamilton will not be swept into their current, for upon his keeping his balance depends the future greatness of this country. I am at your service, sir, for I will confess my two legs are tired."

II

As the three men turned into Broadway they saluted a man who was entering Wall Street. It was Hamilton, hastening home to his family after the day's work. He had lost his boyish slenderness; his figure had broadened and filled out sufficiently to add to his presence while destroying nothing of its symmetry or agile grace, and it was dressed with the same care. His face was as gay and animated as ever, responded with the old mobility to every passing thought, but its lines and contours showed the hard work and severe thought of the last four years. When he was taking a brief holiday with his friends, or tumbling about the floor with his little brood, he felt as much a boy as ever, but no one appreciated more fully than he the terrible responsibility of his position in the Confederation. His abilities, combined with his patriotism, had forced him to the head of the Nationalist Party, for whose existence he was in greatest measure responsible; and he hardly dared to think of his personal ambitions, nor could he hesitate to neglect his lucrative practice whenever the crying needs of the country demanded it. He had also given much time to the creating and organization of the Bank of New York. But Burr was not far wrong when he accused him of impatience. His bearing was more imperious, his eye flashed more intolerantly, than ever. To impute to him monarchical ambitions was but the fling of a smarting jealousy, but it is quite true that he felt he knew what was best for the country, and would have liked to regulate its affairs without further hindrance.

His house, beyond the dip of Wall Street and within sight of the bay, was of red brick, and as unbeautiful architecturally as other New York houses which had risen at random from the ruins. But within, it was very charming. The long drawing-room was furnished with mahogany, and rose-coloured brocade, with spindle-legged tables and many bibelots sent by Angelica Church, now living in London. The library was filling with valuable books, and the panelled whiteness of the dining room glittered with silver and glass, which in quantity or value was not exceeded in the home of any young couple in America; the world had outdone itself at the most interesting wedding of the Revolution. Betsey's sitting room was behind the drawing-room, and there Hamilton found her counting the moments until his return. She had lost nothing of her slimness, and except on dress occasions wore her mass of soft black hair twisted in a loose knot and unpowdered. She looked younger and prettier than with powder or wig, and Hamilton begged her to defy the fashion; but yielding in all else, on this point she was inflexible. "I am wiser than you in just a few things," she would say, playfully, for she firmly believed him infallible; "my position would suffer, were I thought eccentric. You cannot stand in rank without a uniform. I shall not yield to Sarah Jay nor even Kitty Duer. I am a little Republican, sir, and know my rights. And I know how to keep them."

To-day, after her usual prolonged and unmitigated greeting, she remarked: "Speaking of eccentric people, I met to-day, at Lady Sterling's, that curious person, Mrs. Croix, or Miss Capet, as some will call her. Her hair was built up quite a foot and unpowdered. On top of it was an immense black hat with plumes, and her velvet gown was at least three yards on the floor. She certainly is the handsomest creature in town, but, considering all the gossip, I think it odd Lady Sterling should take her up, and I believe that Kitty is quite annoyed. But Lady Sterling is so good-natured, and I am told that Dr. Franklin went personally and asked her to give this lady countenance. He calls her his Fairy Queen, and to-day saluted her on the lips before all of us. Poor dear Dr. Franklin is by now quite in the class with Caesar's wife, but still I think his conduct rather remarkable."

"Who is this woman?" asked Hamilton, indifferently.

"Well!" exclaimed his wife, with a certain satisfaction, "you are busy. She has been the talk of the town for quite three months, although she never went anywhere before to-day."

"I hear all my gossip from you," said Hamilton, smiling from the hearth rug, "and considering the labours of the past three months—but tell me about her. I believe I love you best when gossiping. Your effort to be caustic is the sweetest thing in the world."

She threw a ball of wool at him, which he caught and pulled apart, then showered on her head. It was yellow wool, and vastly becoming on her black hair. "You must have a yellow hat at once, with plumes," he said, "but go on."

"You shall wind that this evening, sir. Well, she came here about three months ago with Captain Croix of the British army, and rumour hath it that he left a wife in England, and that this lady's right to the royal name of Capet is still unchallenged. The story goes that she was born about eighteen years ago, on a French frigate bound for the West Indies, that her mother died, and that, there being no one else of that royal name on board, the Captain adopted her; but that a baby and a ship being more than he could manage, he presented the baby to a humble friend at Newport, by the name of Thompson, who brought her up virtuously, but without eradicating the spirit of the age, and one fine day she disappeared with Colonel Croix, and after a honeymoon which may have been spent in the neighbourhood of any church between here and Rhode Island, or of none, they arrived in New York, and took the finest lodgings in town. I suppose Dr. Franklin was a friend of her humble guardian, he is so philanthropic, and that he is willing to take my lady's word that all is well—and perhaps it is. I feel myself quite vicious in repeating the vaguest sort of gossip—active, though. Who knows, if she had worn a wig, or an inch of powder, and employed the accepted architect for her tower, she would have passed without question? Another pillar for my argument, sir."

"As it is, you are even willing to believe that she is a daughter of the house of France," said Hamilton, with a hearty laugh. "Would that the world were as easily persuaded of what is good for it as of what tickles its pettiness. Shall you ask this daughter of the Capets to the house?"

"I have not made up my mind," said Mrs. Hamilton, demurely.

The two older children, Philip and Angelica, came tumbling into the room, and Hamilton romped with them for a half-hour, then flung them upon their mother, and watched them from the hearth rug. Betsey was lovely with her children, who were beautiful little creatures, and Hamilton was always arranging them in groups. The boy and girl pulled down her hair with the yellow wool, until all her diminutive figure and all her face, but its roguish black eyes, were extinguished; and Hamilton forgot the country.

Elizabeth Schuyler was a cleverer woman than her meed of credit has led the world to believe. She understood Hamilton very well even then, although, as his faults but added to his fascination in the eyes of those that loved him, the knowledge did not detract from her happiness. In many ways she made herself necessary to him; at that time she even kept his papers in order. He talked to her freely on every subject that interested him, from human nature to finance, taxes, and the law, and she never permitted a yawn to threaten. He read aloud to her every line he wrote, and while she would not have presumed to suggest, her sympathy was one of his imperative needs. When his erratic fancy flashed him into seductive meshes, she pulled a string and back he came. Perhaps this is the reason why no specific account of his numerous alleged amours have come down to us. He is vaguely accused of being the Lothario of his time, irresistible and indefatigable; but of all famous men whose names are enlivened with anecdotes of gallantry in the vast bulk of the world's unwritten history, he alone is the hero of much mysterious affirmation but of no particular romance. The Reynolds affair is open history and not a case in point. It is probable that, owing to inherent fickleness and Betsey's gentle manipulation, his affairs rarely lasted long enough to attract attention. It is one of the accidents of life that the world barely knew of his acquaintance with Eliza Croix, she who has come down to us as Madame Jumel; and such a thing could not happen twice. But whether or not he possessed in all their perfection the proclivities of so great and impetuous and passionate a genius, it is certain that he loved his wife devotedly, and above all other women, so long as his being held together. His home was always his Mecca, and he left it only when public duty compelled his presence in exile.

III

In February he went to the Assembly to fight Clinton's opposition to the harassing need of conferring a permanent revenue upon Congress. He had already written a memorial, distributed over the State, setting forth the dangerous position of the country. But Clinton was lord of the masses, and their representatives in the Legislature had been trained to think as he thought. They honoured him because he had made New York the greatest State in the Union, not yet realizing that he had brought her into disrepute at home and abroad, and that his selfish policy was now hastening her to her ruin. To increase the power of Congress was to encourage the spirit of Nationalism, and that meant the sure decline of the States and of himself. The fight was hot and bitter. Clinton won; but the thinking men present took Hamilton's words home and pondered upon them, and in time they bore fruit.

After many delays the Convention was summoned to meet at Philadelphia on the 14th of May. History calls it the Constitutional Convention, but its promoters were careful to give the States-right people no such guide to contravention. The violent oppositionists of all change slumbered peacefully, while the representatives of the more enlightened were appointed to the Convention under moderately worded and somewhat vague resolutions; and some of them went as vaguely. Congress, after a characteristic and selfish hesitation, and a thorough fright induced by the Massachusetts rebellion, was finally persuaded to give her official sanction to the proposed Convention. Hamilton secured his appointment as a delegate,—after a hard fight to have New York represented at all,—and found himself saddled with two Clintonians, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr. But the first great step for which he had struggled, since his Morristown letter to the Financier of the Revolution seven years before, was assured at last.

Shortly before the Convention opened, Gouverneur Morris and James Madison, Jr. met by appointment at Hamilton's house to discuss the plan of campaign and make sure of their leader's wishes. General Schuyler and Robert Troup were also present.

Morris was a delegate from Pennsylvania, but was about to return to New York, having bought the family estate at Morrisania from his brother, Staats Long Morris, and was involved in business enterprises which resulted in a large fortune. He awaited the settlement of the country's affairs before sailing for Europe in his private interests. Troup, now a successful lawyer at the New York bar, was an able politician and devoted to Hamilton's interests. Philip Schuyler was entirely in his son-in-law's confidence, working for and with him always, occupying the double position of adviser and follower. Madison, who had forced the Convention at Annapolis, had had his breath taken away by Hamilton's coup, but now was delighted that he had been the instrument which made it possible. He had composed his somewhat halting mind to the determination to concentrate his energies upon wringing from the Convention a national scheme of government after Hamilton's model, provided that model were not too extreme: he was no monarchist, and knew the people very thoroughly. But he was deeply anxious to have Hamilton's views and plans for his guidance, even if modification were necessary. He knew Hamilton's complete mastery of the science of government, and that his broad structure was bound to be right, no matter what its frills.

The company assembled in the library, whose open windows overhung a garden full of lilacs, dogwood, and maples. There was a long table in the room, about which the guests mechanically seated themselves, so accustomed were they to the council table. Hamilton had greeted them in the hall, and sent them on to the library, while he went to fetch some papers his wife had promised to copy for him.

"So this is the room in which the government of the United States is to be born," said Troup, glancing about at the familiar books and at the desk stuffed with papers. "I shall always smell lilacs in the new Constitution."

"If we get one," observed Morris. "'Conceive' would be a better word than 'born,' Twelve states,—for my part I am glad the refusal of Rhode Island to send delegates makes one less,—each wanting its own way, and the North inevitably pitted against the South: I confess that 'still-born' strikes me as a better word than any."

"We'll have a Constitution," said Madison, doggedly, "I've made up my mind to that. There are a sufficient number of able and public-spirited men on their way to Philadelphia to agree upon a wise scheme of government and force it through—besides Hamilton and ourselves there are Washington, Governor Randolph, William Livingston, Rufus King, Roger Sherman, Dr. Franklin, James Wilson, George Wythe, the Pinckneys, Hugh Williamson—to mention but a few."

"They are not a bad lot," admitted Morris, "if they had all seen more of the world and less of their native or adopted State—all this State patriotism makes me sick. Half were not born in the State they vociferate about, are not certain of ending their days in it, nor of which their children may adopt as intemperately."

"Travel is not the only cure for provincialism," said General Schuyler. "Dr. Franklin, I happen to know, is bent upon a form of government little firmer than the one now existing; and Hamilton, whose travels are limited to campaigning in the different States, has a comprehensive grasp of European political machinery, and the breadth of vision such knowledge involves, which could gain nothing by personal contact."

"Dr. Franklin was too long a mendicant at foreign courts not to be besottedly in love with their antithesis, and Hamilton has a brain power and an intellectual grasp which quite remove him from the odiums of comparison," said Morris. "I think myself he is fortunate in never having visited Europe, deeply as he may regret it; for with his faculty of divination he goes straight for what is best only—or most essential. Had he lived there, the details and disappointments might have blocked his vision and upset the fine balance of his mind. There she is!"

He was at the window as quickly as he could have flung a book to the lilacs, despite his wooden leg; and he was followed by Troup and General Schuyler, demanding "Who?"

"Mrs. Croix—there. Did anything so lovely ever dawn upon a distracted American's vision? 'Tis said she is an unregistered daughter of the house of Capet, and I vow she looks every inch a princess. I stared at her so long last night in Vauxhall that she was embarrassed; and I never saw such poise, such royal command of homage. How has she developed it at the age of eighteen? I half believe this tale of royal birth; although there are those who assert that she is nothing less than the daughter of our highest in honour."

"'Tis said that she had an opportunity to acquire her aplomb in the village of Rutland, Massachusetts, where for some years she enlivened the exile and soothed the domestic yearnings of many British officers," said Troup. "One told me that he would vow she was none other than the famous vagrant 'Betsey.'"

"But I am told that she comes of a respectable Rhode Island family named Bowen," observed General Schuyler, who was not romantic. "That she was wayward and ran off with Colonel Croix, of whose other wife there is no proof, but that none of these fancy stories are true."

"Then wherein lies her claim to the name of Capet?" demanded Morris. "'Twould be nothing remarkable were she a daughter of Louis V., and I'm told she signs her name Eliza Capet Croix."

"I don't know," said Schuyler, meekly. "'Tis easy enough to assume a name, if you have it not. I am told that Lady Sterling is assured of her respectability. She certainly shines upon us like a star at this moment. I did not know that women had such hair."

"Is this what we came here to discuss?" asked a voice, dropped to the register of profound contempt. They turned about with a laugh and faced Madison's ascetic countenance, pale with disgust. "We have the most important work to do for which men ever met together, and we stand at the window and talk scandal about a silly woman and her hair."

"You did not, my dear James," said Morris, lightly; "and thereby you have missed the truly divine stimulus for the day's work. Don't you realize, my friend, that no matter how hard a man may labour, some woman is always in the background of his mind? She is the one reward of virtue."

"I know nothing of the sort," replied Madison, contemptuously. "I can flatter myself that I at least am independent of what appears to men like you to be the only motive for living."

"Right, my boy, but great as you are, you don't know what you might have been."

The door opened, and Hamilton entered the room, his hands full of papers, his face as gay and eager as if he were about to read to his audience a poem or a lively tale. Perhaps one secret of his ascendency over those who knew him best was that he never appeared to take himself seriously, even when his whole being radiated power and imperious determination. When he descended to the depths of seriousness and his individuality was most overwhelming, his unsleeping sense of humour saved him from a hint of the demagogue.

"While my wife was finishing, I heard you gossiping from the window above," he said, "but I had by far the best view. The lilac bushes—"

"Do you know her?" asked Morris, eagerly.

"Alas, I do not. It is incalculable months since I have had time to look so long at a woman. What is the matter, Madison?"

"I am nauseated. I had thought that you—"

Here even General Schuyler laughed, and Hamilton hurriedly arranged his papers.

He sat down when he began to talk, but was quickly on his feet and shaking his papers over the table. To him, also, the council table was the most familiar article of furniture in his world, but he was usually addressing those it stood for, and he was too ardent a speaker, even when without the incentive of debate, to keep to his chair.

"I know what you are wondering," he said. "No, it is not the British Constitution. What I have done so distempered as to impress people with the belief that I am blind to the spirit of this country, I am at a loss to conjecture. The British Constitution is the best form which the world has yet produced; in the words of Necker, it is the only government 'which unites public strength with individual security,' Nevertheless, no one is more fully convinced than I that none but a republican government can be attempted in this country, or would be adapted to our situation. Therefore, I propose to look to the British Constitution for nothing but those elements of stability and permanency which a republican system requires, and which may be incorporated into it without changing its characteristic principles. There never has been, and there never will be, anything in my acts or principles inconsistent with the spirit of republican liberty. Whatever my private predilections, it would be impossible for me, understanding the people of this country as I do, to fail to recognize the authority of that people as the source of all political power. Therefore you will find many departures from the British Constitution in the rough draft I am about to read. I have neither the patience nor the temper to dogmatize upon abstract theories of liberty, and our success will lie in adapting to our particular needs such principles of government as have been tried and not found wanting, our failure in visionary experiments. The best and wisest effort we can make will be a sufficient experiment, for whose result we must all tremble.

"It is going to be difficult to persuade this Convention to unite upon any constitution very much stronger than the one Dr. Franklin will propose, or to accomplish its ratification afterward. Nevertheless, I have prepared a draft of the strongest constitution short of monarchy which it is possible to conceive, and which I shall propose to the Convention for reasons I will explain after I have read it to you. Do you care to listen?"

"Hurry up!" exclaimed Morris. The audience leaned forward. Madison shook his head all through the reading; Morris jerked his with emphatic approval.

The radical points in which Hamilton's constitution differed from that under which we live, was in the demand for a President, to be elected by property holders, and who should hold office during good behaviour; senators possessing certain property qualifications and elected on the same principle; and governors of States appointed and removable by the President. Practically the author of the dual government, he believed emphatically in subserving the lesser to the greater, although endowing the States with sufficient power for self-protection. The Executive was to be held personally responsible for official misconduct, both he and the senators subject to impeachment and to removal from office. The whole scheme was wrought out with the mathematical complexity and precision characteristic of Hamilton's mind.

"Would that it were possible," exclaimed Morris, when Hamilton had finished. "But as well expect the Almighty to drive the quill. You will weaken your influence, Hamilton, and to no effect."

"Ah, but I have calculated upon two distinct points, and I believe I shall achieve them. I have not the most distant hope that this paper will be acceptable to five men in the Convention,—three, perhaps, would round the number,—Washington, yourself, myself. Nevertheless, I shall introduce it and speak in its favour with all the passion of which I am master, for these reasons: I believe in it; its energy is bound to give a tone that might be lacking otherwise; and—this is the principal point—there must be something to work back from. If I alarm with the mere chance of so perilous a menace to their democratic ideals, they will go to work in earnest at something in order to defeat me, and they will not go back so far in the line of vigour as if I had suggested a more moderate plan; for, mark my words, they would infallibly incline to weaker measures than any firm government which should first be proposed. In the management of men one of the most important things to bear in mind is their proneness to work forward from the weak, and backward from the strong. On the quality of the strength depends its magnetism over the weak. All reformers are ridiculed or outlawed, and their measures are never wholly successful; but they awaken men's minds to something of approximate worth, and to a desire for a divorce from the old order of things. So, while I expect to be called a monarchist, I hope to instil subtly the idea of the absolute necessity of a strong government, and implant in their minds a distrust of one too weak."

"Good," said Morris. "And it is always a delight to see your revelation of yourself in a new light. I perceive that to your other accomplishments you add the cunning of the fox."

"You are right to call it an accomplishment," retorted Hamilton. "We cannot go through life successfully with the bare gifts of the Almighty, generous though He may have been. If I find that I have need of cunning, or brutality,—than which nothing is farther from my nature,—or even nagging, I do not hesitate to borrow and use them."

"Let us call this sagacity," said Troup. "'Tis a prettier word. Or the canniness of the Scot. But there is one thing I fear," he added anxiously. "You may injure your chances of future preferment. Your ambition will be thought too vaulting, particularly for so young a man, and, besides, you may be thought a menace to the commonwealth."

"That is a point to be considered, Hamilton," said General Schuyler.

"I have an end to gain, sir, and I mean to gain it. Moreover, this is no time to be considering private interests. If this be not the day for patriotism to stifle every personal ambition, then there is little hope for human nature. I believe the result of this paper will be a constitution of respectable strength, and I shall use all the influence I wield to make the people accept it. So, if you worry, consider if the later effort will not outweigh the first."

"Hamilton," said Madison, solemnly, "you are a greater man even than I thought you. You have given me a most welcome hint, and I shall take upon myself to engineer the recession from your constitution. I shall study its effect with the closest attention and be guided accordingly, I am heart and soul in this matter, and would give my life to it if necessary. I never should have thought of anything so astute," he added, with some envy, "but perhaps if I had, no one else would be so peculiarly fitted as myself to work upon its manifold suggestions. I hope I do not strike you as conceited," he said, looking around anxiously, "but I feel that it is in me to render efficient service in the present crisis."

Before Morris could launch his ready fling, Hamilton hastened to assure Madison of his belief that no man living could render services so great. He underrated neither Madison's great abilities nor the danger of rankling arrows in that sensitive and not too courageous spirit. They then discussed a general plan of campaign and the best methods of managing certain members of the Convention. Morris was the first to rise.

"Adieu," he said. "I go to ruminate upon our Captain's diplomacy, and to pursue the ankle of Mrs. Croix. Be sure that the one will not interfere with the other, but will mutually stimulate."

The other gentlemen adjourned to the dining room.

IV

The story of the Convention has been told so often that only the merest outline is necessary here; those who have not before this read at least one of the numberless reports, would be the last to wish its multigenerous details. To the students of history there is nothing new to tell, as may be the case with less exploited incidents of Hamilton's career. Someone has said that it was an assemblage of hostile camps, and it certainly was the scene of intense and bitter struggles, of a heterogeneous mass blindly striving to cohere, whilst a thousand sectional interests tugged at the more familiar of the dual ideal; of compromise after compromise; of a fear pervading at least one-half that the liberties of republicanism were menaced by every energetic suggestion; of the soundest judgement and patriotism compelled to truckle to meaner sentiments lest they get nothing; of the picked men of the Confederacy, honourable, loyal, able, and enlightened, animated in the first and last instance by a pure and common desire for the highest welfare of the country, driven to war upon one another by the strength of their conflicting opinions; ending—among the thirty-nine out of the sixty-one delegates who signed the Constitution—in a feeling as closely resembling general satisfaction as individual disappointments would permit.

At first so turbulent were the conditions, that Franklin, who troubled the Almighty but little himself, arose and suggested that the meetings be opened with prayer. After this sarcasm, and the submission of his mild compromise with the Confederation, he sat and watched the painted sun behind Washington's chair, pensively wondering if the artist had intended to convey the idea of a rise or a setting. Hamilton presented his draft at the right moment, and the startled impression it made quite satisfied him, particularly as his long speech to the Committee of the Whole was received with the closest attention. Nothing could alter his personal fascination, and even his bitterest enemies rarely left their chairs while he spoke. The small figure, so full of dignity and magnetizing power that it excluded every other object from their vision, the massive head with a piercing force in every line of its features, the dark eyes blazing and flashing with a fire that never had been seen in the eyes of a mere mortal before, the graceful rapid gestures, and the passionate eloquence which never in its most apparently abandoned moments failed to be sincere and logical, made him for the hour the glory of friend and enemy alike, although the reaction was correspondingly bitter. Upon this occasion he spoke for six hours without the interruption of a scraping heel; and what the Convention did not know about the science of government before he finished with them, they never would learn elsewhere. Although he made but this one speech, he talked constantly to the groups surrounding him wherever he moved. To his original scheme he had too much tact to make further allusion; but his general opinions, ardently propounded, his emphatic reiteration of the demoralized country's need for a national government, and of the tyrannies inherent in unbridled democracies, wedged in many a chink. Nevertheless, he was disgusted and disheartened when he left for New York, at the end of May. The Convention was chaos, but he could accomplish nothing more than what he hoped he might have done; the matter was now best in the hands of Madison and Gouverneur Morris, and his practice could no longer be neglected.

But although he returned to a mass of work,—for he handled most of the great cases of the time,—he managed to mingle daily with the crowd at Fraunces' and the coffee-houses, in order to gauge the public sentiment regarding the proposed change of government, and to see the leading men constantly. On the whole, he wrote to Washington, he found that both in the Jerseys and in New York there was "an astonishing revolution for the better in the minds of the people."

Washington replied from the depths of his disgust:—

... In a word I almost despair of seeing a favourable issue to the proceedings of the Convention, and do, therefore, repent having any agency in the business. The men who oppose a strong and energetic government are, in my opinion, narrow-minded politicians, or are under the influence of local views. The apprehension expressed by them that the people will not accede to the form proposed, is the ostensible, not the real cause of the opposition; but admitting that present sentiment is as they prognosticate, the question ought nevertheless to be, is it, or is it not, the best form? If the former, recommend it, and it will assuredly obtain, maugre opposition. I am sorry you went away; I wish you were back.