"You wicked varlet!" she exclaimed. "What did you sow all this

dissension for, and deprive me of my best friends?" Then she kissed him

impulsively. "I shall always love you, though. You were the dearest

little chap that ever was--and that is why I am going to tell you

something to-night, although I may never speak to you again, Aaron Burr

is burrowing between my family and the Clinton faction. He hopes to make

a strong combination, defeat General Schuyler at the next election, and

have himself elected senator in his place. Why, why did you alienate us?

We are nine in public life--did you forget that?--and what was Rufus

King to you or to the country compared with our combined strength? Why

should John be preferred to Robert? You are as high-handed and arrogant

as Lucifer himself; and generally you win, but not always. Burr has seen

his first chance for political preferment, and seized it with a cunning

which I almost admire. He has persuaded both the Livingstons and the

Clintons that here is their chance to pull you down, and he is only too

willing to be the instrument--the wretched little mole! I shall hate

myself to-morrow for telling you this, for God knows I am loyal to my

people, but I have watched you go up--up--up. I should feel like your

mother would if I saw you in the dust. I am afraid it is too late to do

anything now. These two hostile parties will not let slip this chance.

But get Burr under your foot when you can, and keep him there. He is

morbid with jealousy and will live to pull you down."

"My dear girl," exclaimed Hamilton, who was holding her hand between

both his own, "do not let your imagination run away with you. I am very

well with Burr, and he is jealous by fits and starts only. Why in the

name of heaven should he be jealous? He has never given a thought to the

welfare of the country, and I have devoted myself to the subject since

boyhood. If I reap the reward--and God knows the future is precarious

enough--why should he grudge me a power for which he has never striven?

I know him to be ambitious, and I believe him to be unscrupulous, and

for that reason I have been glad that he has hitherto kept out of

politics; for he would be of no service to the country, would not

hesitate to sacrifice it to his own ends--unless I am a poor student of

character. But as to personal enmity against me, or jealousy because I

occupy a position he has never sought,--and he is a year older than I,

remember,--I find that hard to believe, as well as this other; he is not

powerful enough to unite two such factions."

"He has a tongue as persuasive from its cunning as yours is in its

impetuosity, and he has convinced greater men than himself of his

usefulness. Believe me, Alexander, I speak of what I know, not of what I

suspect. Accept the fact, if you will not be warned. You always

underrate your enemies. Your confidence in your own genius--a confidence

which so much has occurred to warrant--blinds you to the power of

others. Remember the old adage: Pride goeth before a fall--although I

despise the humble myself; the world owes nothing to them. But I have

often trembled for the time when your high-handed methods and your scorn

of inferior beings would knock the very foundations from under your

feet. Now, I will say no more, and we part for ever. Perhaps if you had

not worn that colour to-night, I should not have betrayed my

family--heaven knows! We women are compounded of so many contradictory

motives. Thank your heaven that you men are not half so complex."

"My dear friend," said Hamilton, drily, "you women are not half so

complex as men. You may lay claim to a fair share because your

intelligence is above the average, but that is the point--complexity is

a matter of intelligence, and as men are, as a rule, far more

intelligent than women, with far more densely furnished brains--"

But here she boxed his ears and left the room. She returned in a moment.

"You have not thanked me!" she exclaimed. "I deserve to be thanked."

Hamilton put his arm about her and kissed her affectionately.

"From the bottom of my heart," he said. "I deeply appreciate the

impulse--and the sacrifice."

"But you won't heed," she said, with a sigh. "Good-by, Alexander! I

think Betsey is looking for you."

XXII

Hamilton for many months was far too busy with the reports he sent to

Congress in rapid succession, above all with the one concerning the

establishment of a National Bank, to be presented at the opening of the

next Session, and with the routine of business connected with his

department, to interfere in politics. He warned General Schuyler,

however, and hoped that the scandal connected with the State lands, in

which Burr was deeply implicated, would argue for the statesman in his

contest with a mere politician. But Burr, in common with the other

commissioners, was acquitted, although no satisfactory explanation of

their astounding transactions was given, and General Schuyler lost the

election as much through personal unpopularity as through the industry

of Burr and the determined efforts of the Livingstons. Schuyler, the

tenderest of men in his friendships, was as austere in his public manner

as in his virtues, and inflexible in demanding the respect due to his

rank and position. Of a broad intelligence, and a statesman of

respectable stature, he knew little of the business of politics and

cared less. He took his defeat with philosophy, regretting it more for

the animosity toward his son-in-law it betokened than because it removed

him temporarily from public life, and returned with his family to

Albany, Hamilton was annoyed and disgusted, and resolved to keep his eye

on Burr in the future. While he himself was in power the United States

should have no set-backs that he could prevent, and if Burr realized his

reading of his character he should manage to balk his ambitions if they

threatened the progress of the country. Kitty Livingston he did not see

again for many months, for her father died on July 25th. Hamilton heard

of William Livingston's death with deep regret, for Liberty Hall was

among the brightest of his memories; but events and emotions were

crowding in his life as they never had crowded before, and he had little

time for reminiscence.

Congress adjourned on the 12th of August to meet in Philadelphia in

December. New York followed Washington to the ferry stairs upon the day

of his departure, weeping not only for that great man's loss, but for

the glory that went with him. "That vile Philadelphia," as Angelica

Church, in a letter to Betsey of consolatory lament, characterized the

city where Independence was born, was to be the capital of the Nation

once more, New York to console herself with her commerce and the

superior cleanliness of her streets. Those who could, followed the

"Court," and those who could not, travelled the weary distance over the

corduroy roads through the forests, and over swamps and rivers, as often

as circumstances would permit. Of the former was Mrs. Croix, whose

particular court protested it must have the solace of her presence in a

city to which few went willingly. Clinton heaped her with reproaches,

but she argued sweetly that he was outvoted, and that she should ever go

where duty called. "She felt politics to be her mission," and in truth

she enjoyed its intrigues, the double game she played, with all her

feminine soul. Hamilton would not help himself in her valuable

storehouse, but it pleased her to know that she held dangerous secrets

in her hands, could confound many an unwary politician. And she had her

methods, as we have seen, of springing upon Hamilton many a useful bit

of knowledge, and of assisting him in ways unsuspected of any. She

established herself in lodgings in Chestnut Street, not unlike those in

which she had spent so many happy hours for two years past, inasmuch as

they were situated on the first floor and communicated with a little

garden. Her removal was looked upon as quite natural, and so admirably

did she deport herself that even Mrs. Washington received her in time.

Philadelphia was a larger city than New York, with wide ill-kept

streets, good pavements, and many fine houses and public buildings.

Chestnut Street was the great thoroughfare, shopping district, and

promenade. It was a city renowned for social activity and "crucifying

expenses." Naturally its press was as jubilant over the revival of its

ancient splendour as that of disappointed New York was scurrilous and

vindictive. When the latter was not caricaturing Robert Morris,

staggering off with the Administration on its back, or "Miss Assumption

and her bastard brats," its anti-Federal part was abusing Hamilton as

the arch-fiend who had sold the country, and applying to him every

adjective of vituperation that fury and coarseness could suggest. There

were poems, taunts, jibes, and squibs, printed as rapidly as the press

and ingenuity could turn them out. If our ancestors were capable of

appreciating the literary excellence of their pamphleteers, as many of

those who have replaced them to-day could not, it must be admitted that

we do not rage and hate so violently. The most hysteric effusions of our

yellow press, or the caustic utterances of our reputable newspapers, are

tame indeed before the daily cyclones of a time when everybody who did

not love his political neighbor hated him with a deadly virulence of

which we know little to-day. We may be improved, merely commercialized,

or more diffuse in our interests. In those days every man was a

politician first and himself after.

The violence of party feeling engendered once more by the debates over

Hamilton's Report spread over the country like a prairie fire, and raged

until, in the North at least, it was met by the back fire of increasing

prosperity. As the summer waned farmers and merchants beheld the prices

of public securities going up, heard that in Holland the foreign loan

had gone above par, and that two hundred and seventy-eight thousand

dollars of the domestic debt had been purchased and cancelled at a cost

of one hundred and fifty thousand, saw trade reviving, felt their own

burdens lighten with the banishment of the State debt. To sing the

praises of the Assumption Bill was but a natural sequence, and from

thence to a constant panegyric of Hamilton. The anti-Federalist press

was drowned in the North by the jubilance of the Federal and its

increasing recruits, but in the South everything connected with the

Government in general and Hamilton in particular was unholy, and the

language in which the sentiment was expressed was unholier.

Meanwhile, Hamilton was established in a little house in Philadelphia,

at work upon his second Report on the Public Credit, and elaborating his

argument in favour of a National Bank. Betsey had been more fortunate

than many in getting her house in order within a reasonable time, for

others were camping in two rooms while the carpenters hammered over the

rest of the neglected mansions. Washington arrived in November and took

possession of the stately home of Robert Morris, although he grumbled

that the stables would hold but twelve horses. It was a splendid

mansion, however, and filled not only with the fine collections of the

rich merchant, but with many beautiful works of art that the President

brought from Mount Vernon. Congress opened on the 6th of December.

If Hamilton had given only an occasional half-amused, half-irritated

attention to the journalistic and pamphlet warfare in which he had been

the target, he now found a domestic engagement confronting him which

commanded his attentions and roused all the fighting Scotch blood in his

composition. Jefferson had done much and distressful thinking during the

summer recess. In the leisure of his extensive, not to say magnificent,

Virginia estates, and while entertaining the neighbouring aristocracy,

he had moved slowly to the conclusion that he approved of nothing in the

Administration, and that Hamilton was a danger to the Nation and a

colossus in his path. Assumption he held to be a measure of the very

devil, and fumed whenever he reflected upon his part in its

accomplishment. "I was made to hold a candle!" he would explain

apologetically. "He hoodwinked me, made a fool of me."

For a statesman of forty-seven, and one of the most distinguished and

successful men in the country, the literary author of The Declaration of

Independence, the father of many beneficent and popular laws in his own

State, a minister to foreign courts and one of the deepest and subtlest

students of human nature of his century, to find himself fooled and

played with by a young man of thirty-three, relegated by him to a second

place in the Cabinet and country, means--meant in those days, at

least--hate of the most remorseless quality. Jefferson was like a

volcano with bowels of fire and a crater which spilled over in the

night. He smouldered and rumbled, a natural timidity preventing the

splendour of fireworks. But he was deadly.

He and Madison met often during these holidays, and an object of their

growing confidence was James Monroe, the new Senator from Virginia.

Monroe was a fighter, and hatred of Hamilton was his religion. Moreover,

he disapproved with violence of every measure of the new government, and

everybody connected with it, from Washington down, Jefferson excepted;

Randolph he held to be a trimmer, and overlooked the fact that although

he himself had opposed the Constitution with all his words, he was one

of the first to take office under it. Jefferson needed but this younger

man's incentive to disapprove more profoundly not only assumption, but

Hamilton's design to establish a National Bank. That was the most

criminal evidence of an ultimate dash for a throne which the Secretary

of the Treasury, whose place in the Cabinet should have been second to

his own, but who was the very head and front of the Administration, had

yet betrayed. And as for the triumphal progress of Washington through

the States in the previous autumn, and again before leaving for Mount

Vernon upon the close of the last Congress, a king could have done no

more. The new Republic was tottering on its rotten foundations, and

Jefferson and his able lieutenants vowed themselves to the rescue.

Madison was the anti-government leader in the House, Monroe would abet

him in the Senate, and Jefferson would undertake the fight in the

Cabinet. It cannot be said that he liked the prospect, for he read his

fellow-beings too well to mistake the mettle of Hamilton. He was a

peaceable soul, except when in his study with pen in hand, but stem this

monarchical tide he would, and bury Hamilton under the dam.

"We are three to one," he said reassuringly to his coadjutors. "He is

brilliant. I do not deny it. But against a triple power--"

"He is worth any three men I ever knew," said Madison, drearily. "We

shall have to work harder than he will."

Jefferson lifted his pen, and squinted thoughtfully at its point.

Monroe, who was the youngest of the trio, laughed aloud.

And these were the forces of which Hamilton felt the shock shortly after

the convening of Congress.

XXIII

On the 13th of December Hamilton sent to the House of Representatives

his second Report on Public Credit--no longer a nomen of bitter

sarcasm--and the Report in favour of a National Bank. Congress was once

more on edge. Since his first Great Report, it had considered and

wrangled over his successive Reports on State Debits and Credits, West

Point, Public Lands, Estimates, and Renewal of Certificates; and it had

lived through the hot summer on the prospect of the excitement which the

bold and creative Secretary would surely provide. Even his enemies loved

Hamilton in their way, for life was torpid when he rested on his

labours.

The anti-Federalists, had they needed an additional incentive for the

coming battle, a condition to rouse all their strength and mettle, found

it in the rapidly increasing prosperity of the country, which had raised

Hamilton to a height of popularity from which it would be an historic

triumph to drag him down. He was, indeed, almost at the zenith of a

reputation which few men have achieved. From end to end of the Union his

name was on every lip, sometimes coupled with a hiss, but oftener with

every expression of honour and admiration that the language could

furnish. Even in the South he had his followers, and in the North and

East it was hardly worth a man's nose to abuse him. He was a magician,

who could make the fortunes of any man quick enough to seize his

opportunities, and the saviour of the national honour and fortunes. His

fame obscured that of Washington, and abroad he was by far the most

interesting and significant figure in the young country. No wonder the

anti-Federalists trembled for the future, and with all the vigour of

hardened muscles fought his scheme for allying the moneyed classes with

the Government.

Hamilton made no secret of his design so closely to attach the wealthy

men of the country to the central Government that they must stand or

fall with it, coming to its rescue in every crisis; and time has

vindicated his far-sighted policy. But when the National Bank was in the

preliminary stages of its journey, certain of its hosts in Congress saw

but another horrid menace to the liberties of the people, another step

toward the final establishment of a monarchy after the British pattern.

The old arguments of subservience to British institutions in the matter

of funding, and other successful pets of the Secretary, were dragged

forth and wrangled over, in connection with this new and doubly

pernicious measure of a National Bank.

Hamilton recommended that a number of subscribers should be incorporated

into a bank, to be known as the Bank of the United States; the capital

to be ten million dollars; the number of shares twenty-five thousand;

the par value of each share four hundred dollars; the Government to

become a subscriber to the amount of two millions, and to require in

return a loan of an equal sum, payable in ten yearly instalments of two

hundred thousand dollars each. The rest of the capital stock would be

open to the public, to be paid for, one-quarter in gold and silver, and

three-quarters in the six or three per cent certificates of the national

debt. The life of the bank was to end in 1811. As an inducement for

prompt subscriptions a pledge would be given that for twenty years to

come Congress would incorporate no other.

It is odd reading for us, with a bank in every street, not only those

old diatribes in Congress against banks of all sorts, but Hamilton's

elaborate arguments in favour of banks in general, the benefits and

conveniences they confer upon individuals as well as nations. But in

those days there were but three banks in the Union, and each had been

established against violent opposition, Hamilton, in particular, having

carried the Bank of New York through by unremitting personal effort. The

average man preferred his stocking. Representatives from backwoods

districts were used to such circulating mediums as military warrants,

guard certificates, horses, cattle, cow-bells, land, and whiskey. They

looked askance at a bank as a sort of whirlpool into which wealth would

disappear, and bolt out at the bottom into the pockets of a few

individuals who understood what was beyond the average intellect. But by

far the most disquieting objection brought forward against this plan of

the Secretary's was its alleged unconstitutionality.

Monroe, although a new man, and speaking seldom, exerted a systematic

opposition in the Senate, and Madison, in the House, argued, with

lucidity and persistence, that the Constitution had no power to grant a

charter to any such institution as the Secretary proposed. Others argued

that the success of this new scheme would infringe upon the rights of

the States, and still others thundered the everlasting accusations of

monarchical design. Nevertheless, the bill for granting the required

charter passed both Houses by a handsome majority. The able Federalists

had contemptuously dissected the arguments against it with greater skill

than even Madison could command; and confidence in Hamilton, by this

time, practically was a religion. The bill was sent to Washington to

sign or veto, and the anti-Federalists, disconcerted and alarmed by

their signal defeat in Congress, rested their final hope on Jefferson.

The President, according to law, had but ten days in which to sign or

veto a bill: if he hesitated but a moment beyond the constitutional

limit, the bill became a law without his signature. It may safely be

said that these ten days were the most miserable of Washington's life so

far, although they were but the forerunner of many to come.

By this time the Cabinet had acquired the habit of assembling for

conference about a council table in the President's house. Washington

sat at the head of the table, with Hamilton on his left, and Jefferson

on his right. Knox, who would have frowned upon the Almighty had he

contradicted Hamilton, sat beside his Captain. Randolph sat opposite,

his principles with Jefferson, but his intellect so given to

hair-splitting, that in critical moments this passion to weigh every

side of a proposition in turn frequently resulted in the wrench of a

concession by Hamilton, while Jefferson fumed. As time went on,

Washington fell into the habit of extending his long arms upon the table

in front of him, and clasping his imposing hands in the manner of a

rampart.

Jefferson began a tentative showing of his colours while the bill was

fighting its stormy way through Congress, and Hamilton was a brief while

perceiving his drift and appreciating his implacable enmity. The first

time that Jefferson encountered the lightning in Hamilton's eye, the

quivering of his nostril, as he half rose from his chair under the

sudden recognition of what he was to expect, his legs slid forward

limply, and he turned his head toward the door. Washington suppressed a

smile, but it was long before he smiled again, Hamilton would have no

hints and innuendoes; he forced his enemy to show his hand. But although

he wrung from Jefferson his opposition to the Bank and to every scheme

the Secretary of the Treasury had proposed, he could not drag him into

the open. Jefferson was deprecating, politely determined to serve the

country in his own way, lost in admiration of this opponent's intellect,

but forced to admit his mistakes--the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The

more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue,

the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of

self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made

ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington.

Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such

hate and resentment that Washington elevated his hands an inch. The

President sat like a stoic, with a tornado on one side of him and a

growling Vesuvius on the other, and exhibited an impartiality, in spite

of the fact that Jefferson daily betrayed his hostility to the

Administration, which revealed but another of his superhuman attributes.

But there is a psychological manifestation of mental bias, no matter

what the control, and some men are sensitive enough to feel it.

Jefferson was quite aware that Washington loved Hamilton and believed in

him thoroughly, and he felt the concealed desire to side openly with the

Secretary to whom, practically, had been given the reins of government.

Washington, rather than show open favouritism, even to Hamilton, to whom

he felt the profoundest gratitude, would have resigned his high office;

but the desire was in his head, and Jefferson felt it. The campaign

open, he kept up a nagging siege upon Washington's convictions in favour

of his aggressive Secretary's measures, finding constant excuses to be

alone with the President. Hamilton, on the other hand, dismissed the

subject when left alone with Washington, unless responding to a demand.

He frequently remained to the midday meal with the family, and was as

gay and lively as if Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were in the limbo to

which he gladly would have consigned them. His nature was mercurial in

one, at least, of its essences, and a sudden let-down, followed by

congenial company, restored his equilibrium at once. But Washington

watched the development of the blackness and violence of his deeper

passions with uneasiness and regret, finally with alarm.

Hamilton, in truth, was roused to his dregs. The sneaking retreat of

Madison from his standard and affections, the rancorous enmity of

Monroe, with whom he had fought side by side and been well with whenever

they had been thrown together in the bitter winters of inaction; the

slow, cool, determined, deadly opposition of Jefferson, whom he

recognized as a giant in intellect and despised as a man with that hot

contempt for the foe who will not strip and fight in the open, which

whips a passionate nature to the point of fury, had converted Hamilton

into a colossus of hate which, as Madison had intimated, far surpassed

the best endeavours of the powerful trio. He hated harder, for he had

more to hate with,--stronger and deeper passions, ampler resources in

his intellect, and an energy of temperament which Jefferson and Madison,

recruited by Monroe, could not outweigh. He saw that he was in for the

battle of his life, and that its finish might be deferred for years;

for he made no such mistake as to underrate the strength and resources

of this triple enemy; he knew that it would last until one or the other

were worn out. Hamilton had no thought of defeat; he never contemplated

it for a moment; his faith in himself and in the wisdom of his measures

was absolute; what he looked forward to with the deepest irritation was

the persistent opposition, the clogging of his wheels of progress, the

constant personal attacks which might weaken him with the country before

his multitudinous objects should be accomplished. He suggested resource

after resource to his faithful and brilliant disciples in Congress, and

he determined to force Jefferson to leave the Cabinet.

"If he only would take himself out of that room with a defiant admission

that he intended to head the opposite party and fight me to the death!"

he exclaimed to Mrs. Croix, one day. "What right has he to sit there at

Washington's hand, a member of his Cabinet, ostensibly in its first

place, and at war with every measure of the Administration? He cannot

oppose me without involving the President, under whom he holds office,

and if he had a grain of decent feeling he would resign rather than

occupy such an anomalous position."

"He intends to force you to resign."

"You don't mean to say that he is coming here?" asked Hamilton, in

disgust. "Who next?"

"Mr. Jefferson succumbed quite three weeks ago," said Mrs. Croix, gaily.

"He amuses me, and I am instilling the conviction that no human being

can force you to do anything you don't want to do, and that the sooner

he retreats gracefully the better."

Hamilton shrugged his shoulders and made no answer. He had ceased

remonstrance long since. If it pleased her to think she was fighting the

battles he was forced to fight with undiminished vigour himself, he

should be the last to interfere with her amusement. She was a born

intrigante, and would have been miserable freckling her complexion in

the open sunlight. He was too grateful to her at this time to risk a

quarrel, or to condemn her for any of her violations of masculine

standards. It was to her he poured out his wrath, after an encounter

with Jefferson which had roused him too viciously for reaction at

Washington's board or at his own. His wife he spared in every way. Not

only was her delicate health taxed to the utmost with social duties

which could not be avoided, the management of her household affairs, and

an absorbing and frequently ailing family, but he would have controlled

himself had he burst, before he would have terrified her with a glimpse

of passions of whose existence she had not a suspicion. To her and his

family he was ever the most amiable and indulgent of men, giving them

every spare moment he could command, and as delighted as a schoolboy

with a holiday, when he could spend an hour in the nursery, an evening

with his wife, or take a ramble through the woods with his boys. He took

a deep pride in his son Philip, directed his studies and habits, and was

as pleased with every evidence of his progress as had he seen Madison

riding a rail in a coat of tar and feathers. He coddled and petted the

entire family, particularly his little daughter Angelica, and they

adored him, and knew naught of his depths.

But Mrs. Croix knew them. In her management of Hamilton she made few

mistakes, passionately as she loved him. It was in her secluded presence

he stormed himself cool, was indignantly sympathized with first, then

advised, then soothed. He was made to understand that the more he

revealed the black and implacable deeps of his nature, the more was he

worshipped, the more keen the response from other and not dissimilar

deeps. His wife was necessary to him in many ways, his Egeria in many

more. Although he would have sacrificed the last to the first, had it

come to an issue, he would have felt as if one-half of him had been

cruelly divorced. Few women understand this dual nature in men, and few

are the men who do not. It has been known to exist in those who make no

pretensions to genius, and in Hamilton was as natural as the versatility

of his intellect. When with one he locked the other in the recesses of

his mind as successfully as when at college he had accomplished

herculean feats of mental accumulation by keeping but one thing before

his thought at a time. What he wanted he would have, so long as his

family were in no way affected; and had it not been for Mrs. Croix at

this time, it might have been worse for Betsey. She cooled his fevers;

her counsel was always sound. And her rooms and herself were beautiful.

She had her way of banishing the world by drawing her soft blue curtains

and lighting her many candles. Had she been a fool, Hamilton would have

tired of her in a month; as it was, he often thought of her as the most

confidential and dispensing of his friends, and no more.

During the preceding two years of their acquaintance there had been many

quarrels, caused by furious bursts of temper on the part of the lady,

when Hamilton forgot her for a month or more. There were times when she

was the solitary woman of Earth, and others when she might have reigned

on Mars. He was very busy, and he had countless interests to absorb time

and thought. He never pretended to more than a romantic passion for her,

and deep as was her own infatuation, it was sometimes close to hate; for

she was a woman whose vanity was as strong as her passions. At this

time, however, he felt a frequent need of her, and she made the most of

the opportunity.

XXIV

Meanwhile, Washington, deeply disturbed by the arguments in the press

and Congress against the constitutionality of the National Bank, had

privately asked for the written opinions of Jefferson and Randolph, and

for a form of veto from Madison. They were so promptly forthcoming that

they might have been biding demand. Washington read them carefully,

then, too worried and impatient for formalities, carried them himself to

Hamilton's house.

"For God's sake read them at once and tell me what they amount to," he

said, throwing the bundle of papers on the table. "Of course you must

prepare me an answer in writing, but I want your opinion at once. I will

wait."

Long years after, when Betsey was an old woman, someone asked her if she

remembered any incidents in connection with the establishment of the

great Bank. She replied, "Yes, I remember it all distinctly. One day

General Washington called at the house, looking terribly worried. He

shut himself up in the study with my husband for hours, and they talked

nearly all the time. When he went away he looked much more cheerful.

That night my husband did not go to bed at all, but sat up writing; and

the next day we had a Bank."

Hamilton's answer, both verbally and in a more elaborate form, was so

able and sound a refutation of every point advanced by the enemy that

Washington hesitated no longer and signed the bill during the last

moments remaining to him. Years later, when the same question was raised

again, Chief Justice Marshall, the most brilliant ornament, by common

consent, the Supreme Court of the United States has had, admitted that

he could add nothing to Hamilton's argument. It must, also, have

convinced Madison; for while President of the United States, and his

opportunity for displaying the consistencies of his intellect,

unrivalled, he signed the charter of the Second National Bank. Monroe,

whose party was in power, and able to defeat any obnoxious measure of

the Federalists, advocated; the second Bank as heartily as he had cursed

the first. His defence of his conduct was a mixture of insolent

frankness and verbiage. He said: "As to the constitutional objection, it

formed no serious obstacle. In voting against the Bank in the first

instance, I was governed essentially by policy. The construction I gave

to the Constitution I considered a strict one. In the latter instance it

was more liberal but, according to my judgement, justified by its

powers." If anyone can tell what he meant, doubtless his own shade would

be grateful.

Hamilton's second Report on the Public Credit had beer buffeted about

quite as mercilessly as the Report in favour of a bank. The customs

officers had, during the past year collected $1,900,000, which sufficed

to pay two-thirds of the annual expenses of the Government. There was

still a deficit of $826,000, and to meet future contingencies of a

similar nature, the Secretary of the Treasury urged the passage of an

Excise Bill.

Even his enemies admired his courage, for no measure could be more

unpopular, raise more widespread wrath. It was regarded as a deliberate

attempt to deprive man of his most cherished vice; and every argument

was brought forth in opposition, from the historic relation of whiskey

to health and happiness, to the menace of adopting another British

measure. The bill passed; but it was a different matter to enforce it,

as many an excise officer reflected, uncheerfully, whilst riding a rail.

On the 28th of January Hamilton sent in his Report in favour of the

establishment of a mint, with details so minute that he left the framers

of the necessary bill little excuse for delay; but it had the same

adventurous and agitated experience of its predecessors, and only limped

through, in an amended form, after the wildest outburst of democratic

fanaticism which any of the measures of Hamilton had induced. The

proposition to stamp the coins with the head of the President was

conclusive of an immediate design to place a crown upon the head of

Washington. Doubtless the leaders of the Federal party, under the able

tuition of their despot, had their titles ready, their mine laid.

Jefferson, in the Cabinet, protested with such solemn persistence

against so dangerous a precedent, and Hamilton perforated him with such

arrows of ridicule, that Washington exploded with wrath, and demanded to

know if neither never intended to yield a point to the other.

During this session of Congress, Hamilton also sent in Reports on Trade

with India and China, and on the Dutch Loan. He was fortunate in being

able to forget his enemies for days and even weeks at a time, when his

existence was so purely impersonal that every capacity of his mind, save

the working, slept soundly. By now, he had his department in perfect

running order; and his successors have accepted his legacy, with its

infinitude of detail, its unvarying practicality, with gratitude and

trifling alterations. When Jefferson disposed himself in the Chair of

State, in 1801, he appointed Albert Gallatin--the ablest financier,

after Hamilton, the country has produced--Secretary of the Treasury, and

begged him to sweep the department clean of the corruption amidst which

Hamilton had sat and spun his devilish schemes. Gallatin, after a

thorough and conscientious search for political microbes, informed his

Chief that in no respect could the department be improved, that there

was not a trace of crime, past or present. Jefferson was disconcerted;

but, as a matter of fact, his administrations were passed complacently

amidst Hamilton legacies and institutions. Jefferson's hour had come. He

could undo all that he had denounced in his rival as monarchical,

aristocratical, pernicious to the life of Democracy. But the

administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, ran from first to

last on those Federal wheels which are still in use, protected within

and without by Federal institutions. But their architect was sent to his

grave soon after the rise of his arch-enemy to power, was beyond

humiliation or party triumph; it would be folly to war with a spirit,

and greater not to let well enough alone. But that is a far cry.

Meanwhile the Bank was being rushed through, and its establishment was

anticipated with the keenest interest, and followed by a season of crazy

speculation, dissatisfaction, and vituperation. But this Hamilton had

expected, and he used his pen constantly to point out the criminal folly

and inevitable consequences of speculation.

XXV

Congress adjourned while the excitement was at its height. Washington

went to Mount Vernon, the Cabinet scattered, and there was an interval

of peace. Philadelphia in summer was always unhealthy, and liable to an

outbreak of fever at any moment. Hamilton sent his family to the

Schuyler estate at Saratoga. Mrs. Croix had gone as early as May to the

New England coast; for even her magnificent constitution had felt the

strain of that exciting session, and Philadelphia was not too

invigorating in winter. Hamilton remained alone in his home, glad of the

abundant leisure which the empty city afforded to catch up with the

arrears of his work, to design methods for financial relief against the

time to apply them, and to prepare his Report on Manufactures, a paper

destined to become as celebrated and almost as widespread in its

influence as the great Report on Public Credit. It required days and

nights of thinking, research, correspondence, comparison, and writing;

and how in the midst of all this mass of business, this keen anxiety

regarding the whirlwind of speculation--which was involving some of the

leading men in the country, and threatening the young Government with a

new disaster; how, while sitting up half the night with his finger on

the public pulse, waiting for the right moment to apply his remedies, he

managed to entangle himself in a personal difficulty, would be an

inscrutable mystery, were any man but Alexander Hamilton in question.

I shall not enter into the details of the Reynolds affair. No intrigue

was ever less interesting. Nor should I make even a passing allusion to

it, were it not for its political ultimates. A couple of blackmailers

laid a trap for the Secretary of the Treasury, and he walked into it, as

the wisest of men have done before and since, when the woman has been

sufficiently attractive at the right moment. This woman was common and

sordid, but she was young and handsome, and her affectation of violent

attachment, if ungrammatical, was plausible enough to convince any man

accustomed to easy conquest; and the most astute of men, provided his

passions be strong enough, can be fooled by any woman at once designing

and seductive. Ardent susceptibility was in the very essence of

Hamilton, with Scotland and France in his blood, the West Indies the

mould of his youthful being, and the stormy inheritance of his parents.

But although Hamilton might succumb to a woman of Mrs. Reynold's type,

she could not hold him. After liberally relieving the alleged pecuniary

distress of this charmer, and weary of her society, he did his best to

get rid of her. She protested. So did he. It was then that he was made

aware of the plot The woman's husband appeared, and announced that only

a thousand dollars would heal his wounded honour, and that if it were

not immediately forthcoming, he would write to Mrs. Hamilton.

Hamilton was furious. His first impulse was to tell the man to do his

worst, for anything in the nature of coercion stripped him for the fray

at once. But an hour of reflection cooled his blood. No one was to blame

but himself. If he had permitted himself to be made a fool of, it was

but just that he should take the consequences, and not cruelly wound the

woman he loved the better for his vagaries. Moreover, such a scandal

would seriously affect the high office he filled, might indeed force him

to resignation; not only thwarting his great ambitions, but depriving

the country of services which no other man had the ability or the will

to render. And a few moments forecast of the triumph of his enemies, not

only over himself but possibly over his party, in case of his downfall,

was sufficient in itself to force him to terms. Few are the momentous

occasions in which men are governed by a single motive. Hamilton's

ambitions were welded into the future happiness and glory of the country

he had so ardently adopted. And if love of power was his ruling passion,

it certainly was directed to the loftiest of ends. To desire to create a

nation out of the resources of a vast understanding, controlled by

wisdom and honour, is an ambition which should be dignified with a

higher name. Small and purely personal ambitions were unknown to

Hamilton, his gifts were given him for the elevation of the human race;

but he would rather have reigned in hell than have sunk to

insignificance on earth. As he remarked once to Kitty Livingston, the

complexity of man so far exceeds that of the average woman, complexity

being purely a matter of brain and having no roots whatever in sex, that

it were a waste of valuable time to analyze its ramifications, and the

crossings and entanglements of its threads. Hamilton paid the money,

yielded further to the extent of several hundred dollars, then the

people disappeared, and he hoped that he had heard the last of them.

Fortunately his habits were methodical, the result of his mercantile

training on St. Croix, and he preserved the correspondence.

XXVI

Hamilton looked forward to the next Congressional term with no

delusions. He polished his armour until it was fit to blind his

adversaries, tested the temper of every weapon, sharpened every blade,

arranged them for immediate availment. In spite of the absorbing and

disconcerting interests of the summer, he had followed in thought the

mental processes of his enemies, kept a sharp eye out for their new

methods of aggression. Themselves had had no more intimate knowledge of

their astonishment, humiliation, and impotent fury at the successive

victories of the invulnerable Secretary of the Treasury, than had

Hamilton himself. He knew that they had confidently hoped to beat him by

their combined strength and unremitting industry, and by the growing

power of their party, before the finish of the preceding term. The

Federalists no longer had their former majority in Congress upon all

questions, for many of the men who, under that title, had been devoted

adherents of the Constitution, were become alarmed at the constant talk

of the monarchical tendencies of the Government, of the centralizing

aristocratic measures of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the

"unrepublican" formalities and elegance of Washington's "Court," at his

triumphal progresses through the country, and at the enormous one-man

power as exhibited in the person of Hamilton. Upon these minds

Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had worked with unremitting subtlety. It

was not so much that the early Federalists wished to see Hamilton

dragged from his lofty position, for they admired him, and were willing

to acknowledge his services to the country; but that the idea grew

within them that he must be properly checked, lest they suddenly find

themselves subjects again. They realized that they had been running to

him for advice upon every matter, great and insignificant, since the new

Congress began its sittings, and that they had adopted the greater part

of his counsels without question; they believed that Hamilton was

becoming the Congress as he already was the Administration; and

overlooked the fact that legislative authority as against executive had

no such powerful supporter as the Secretary of the Treasury. But it was

not an era when men reasoned as exhaustively as they might have done.

They were terrified by bogies, and the blood rarely was out of their

heads. "Monarchism must be checked," and Hamilton for some months past

had watched the rapid welding of the old anti-Federalists and the timid

Federalists into what was shortly to be known, for a time, as the

Republican party. That Jefferson had been at work all summer, as during

the previous term, with his subtle, insinuating, and convincing pen, he

well knew, and for what the examples of such men as Jefferson and

Madison counted--taking their stand on the high ground of stemming the

menace to personal liberties. The Republican party was to be stronger

far than the old anti-Federal, for it was to be a direct and constant

appeal to the controlling passion of man, vanity; and Hamilton believed

that did it obtain the reins of power too early in the history of the

Nation, confusion, if not anarchy, would result: not only was it too

soon to try new experiments, diametrically opposed to those now in

operation, but, under the tutelage of Jefferson, the party was in favour

of vesting more power in the masses. Hamilton had no belief in

entrusting power to any man or body of men that had not brains,

education, and a developed reasoning capacity. He was a Republican but

not a Democrat. He recognized, long before the rival party saw their

mistake in nomenclature, that this Jefferson school marked the

degeneracy of republicanism into democracy. Knowing how absurd and

unfounded was all the hysterical talk about monarchism, and that time

would vindicate the first Administration and its party as Republican in

its very essence, he watched with deep, and often with impersonal,

uneasiness the growth of a party which would denationalize the

government, scatter its forces, and interpret the Constitution in a

fashion not intended by the most protesting of its framers. Hamilton had

in an extraordinary degree the faculty which Spencer calls

representativeness; but there were some things he could not foresee, and

one was that when the Republicans insinuated themselves to power they

would rest on their laurels, let play the inherent conservatism of man,

and gladly accept the goods the Federal party had provided them. The

three men who wrote and harangued and intrigued against Hamilton for

years, were to govern as had they been the humblest of Hamiltonians. But

this their great antagonist was in unblest ignorance of, for he, too,

reasoned in the heat and height and thick of the fray; and he made

himself ready to dispute every inch of the ground, checkmate every move,

force Jefferson into retirement, and invigorate and encourage his own

ranks. The majority in both Houses was still Federal, if diminished, and

he determined that it should remain so.

As early as October his watching eye caught the first flash in the

sunlight of a new blade in the enemies' armoury. One Freneau had come to

town. He had some reputation as a writer of squibs and verses, and

Hamilton knew him to be a political hireling utterly without principle.

When, therefore, he heard incidentally that this man had lately been in

correspondence and conference with the Virginian junta, and particularly

that he had been "persuaded by his old friend Madison to settle in

Philadelphia," had received an appointment as translating clerk in the

Department of State, and purposed to start a newspaper called the

_National Gazette_ in opposition to Fenno's Administration organ, _The

United States Gazette_, he knew what he was to expect. Fenno's paper was

devoted to the Administration, and to the Secretary of the Treasury in

particular; it was the medium through which Hamilton addressed most of

his messages to the people. Naturally it was of little use to his

enemies; and that Jefferson and his aides had realized the value of an

organ of attack, he divined very quickly. He stated his suspicions to

Washington immediately upon the President's arrival, and warned him to

expect personal assault and abuse.

"There is now every evidence of a strong and admirably organized cabal,"

he added. "And to pull us down they will not stop at abuse of even you,

if failure haunts them. I shall get the most of it, perhaps all. I hope

so, for I am used to it."

He laughed, and quite as light-heartedly as ever; but Washington looked

at him with uneasiness.

"You are a terrible fighter, Hamilton," he said. "I have never seen or

dreamed of your equal. Why not merely oppose to them a massive

resistance? Why be continually on the warpath? They give you a tentative

scratch, and you reply with a blow under the jaw, from which they rise

with a sullener determination to ruin you, than ever. When you are alone

with your pen and the needs of the country, you might have the wisdom of

a thousand years in your brain, and I doubt if at such times you

remember your name; you are one of the greatest, wisest, coolest

statesmen of any age; but the moment you come forth to the open, you are

not so much a political leader as a warlike Scot at the head of his

clan, and readier by far to make a dash into the neighbouring fastness

than to wait for an attack. Are you and Jefferson going to fight

straight through this session?--for if you are, I shall no longer yearn

so much for the repose of Mount Vernon as for the silences of the tomb."

Washington spoke lightly, as he often did when they were alone, and he

had returned from Virginia refreshed; but Hamilton answered

contritely:--

"We both behaved abominably last year, and it was shocking that you

should bear the brunt of it. I'll do my best to control myself in the

Cabinet--although that man rouses all the devil in me; but not to fight

at the head of my party. Oh! Can the leopard change his spots? I fear I

shall die with my back against the wall, sir, and my boots on." "I

haven't the slightest doubt of it. But be careful of giving too free and

constant a play to your passions and your capacity for rancour, or your

character will deteriorate. Tell me," he added abruptly, narrowing his

eyes and fixing Hamilton with a prolonged scrutiny, "do you not feel its

effects already?"

By this time the early, half-unwilling, half-magnetized affection which

the boy in Hamilton had yielded to his Chief had given place to a

consistent admiration for the exalted character, the wisdom, justice,

and self-control of the President of the United States, and to a devoted

attachment. The bond between the two men grew closer every day, and only

the end of all things severed it. Hamilton, therefore, replied as

frankly as if Washington had asked his opinion on the temper of the

country, instead of probing the sacred recesses of his spirit:--

"There have been times when I have sat down and stared into myself with

horror; when I have felt as if sitting in the ruins of my nature. I have

caught myself up again and again, realizing where I was drifting. I have

let a fiend loose within me, and I have turned upon it at times with a

disgust so bitter and a terror so over-mastering that the mildness which

has resulted has made me feel indifferent and even amiable to mine

enemies. Whether this intimate knowledge of myself will save me, God

knows; but when some maddening provocation comes, after reaction has run

its course, I rage more hotly than ever, and only a sense of personal

dignity keeps me from using my fists. I am two-thirds passion, and I am

afraid that in the end it will consume me. I live so intensely, in my

best and my worst! I would give all I possess for your moderation and

balance."

"No, you would not," said Washington. "War is the breath of your

nostrils, and peace would kill you. Not that the poise I have acquired

brings me much peace in these days."

Hamilton, who had spoken dejectedly, but with the deep relief which

every mortal feels in a moment of open and safe confession, sprang to

his feet, and stood on the hearth rug, his eyes sparkling with humour.

"Confess, sir," he cried gaily. "You do not like Jefferson any better

than I do. Fancy him opposite to you day after day, stinging you with

honeyed shafts and opposing you with obstacle after obstacle, while

leering with hypocrisy. Put yourself in my place for an instant, and

blame me if you can."

"Oh," said Washington, with a deep growl of disgust, "o-h-h!" But he

would not discuss his Secretary of State, even with Hamilton.

XXVII

The bombardment from Freneau's _Gazette_ opened at once. It began with a

general assault upon the Administration, denouncing every prominent

member in turn as a monarchist or an aristocrat, and every measure as

subversive of the liberties of the country. Vice-President Adams

received a heavy broadside, his "Discourses on Davila," with their

animadversions upon the French Revolution in particular and Democracy in

general, being regarded as a heinous offence against the spirit of his

country, and detrimental to the political morals of the American youth.

But although the _Gazette_ kept up its pretence of being an

anti-Administration organ, publishing in the interests of a deluded

people, it soon settled down to abuse of Hamilton.

That a large number of the articles were from Jefferson's damning pen

few of the Republican leader's friends denied with any warmth, and the

natural deductions of history would have settled the question, had not

Freneau himself confessed the truth in his old age. What Jefferson did

not write, he or Madison inspired, and Freneau had a lively pen of his

own. They had promising material in General St. Clair's recent and

disastrous defeat by the Indians, which, by a triumph of literary

ingenuity, was ascribed to the ease and abundance with which the

Secretary of the Treasury had caused money to circulate. But a far

stronger weapon for their malignant use was the ruinous speculation

which had maddened the country since the opening of the Bank of the

United States. It was not enough that the Bank was a monarchical

institution, a machine for the corruption of the Government, a club of

grasping and moneyed aristocrats, but it had been purposely designed for

the benefit of the few--the "corrupt squadron," namely, the Secretary

and his friends--at the expense of the many. The subsequent failure for

$3,000,000 of one of these friends, William Duer, gave them no pause,

for his ruin precipitated a panic, and but added distinction to his

patron's villany.

For a time Hamilton held his peace. He had enough to do, steering the

financial bark through the agitated waters of speculation, without

wasting time on personal recrimination. Even when, before the failure,

he was accused of being in secret partnership with Duer, he did not

pause for vindication, but exerted himself to alleviate the general

distress. He initiated the practice, followed by Secretaries of the

Treasury at the present moment, of buying Government loan certificates

in different financial centres throughout the country, thus easing the

money market, raising the price of the certificates, and strengthening

the public credit. He used the sinking-fund for this purpose.

There was comparative peace in the Cabinet, an armed truce being,

perhaps, a more accurate description of an uneasy psychological

condition. Hamilton had made up his mind not only to spare Washington

further annoyance, if possible, but to maintain a dignity which he was

keenly conscious of having relinquished in the past. The two antagonists

greeted each other politely when they met for the first time in the

Council Chamber, although they had crossed the street several times

previously to avoid meeting; and if Jefferson discoursed unctiously and

at length, whenever the opportunity offered, upon the lamentable

consequences of a lamentable measure, and indulged in melancholy

prognostications of a general ruin, in which the Government would

disappear and be forgotten, Hamilton replied for a time with but an

occasional sarcasm, and a change of subject. One day, however, a

long-desired opportunity presented itself, and he did not neglect it. He

was well aware that Jefferson had complained to Virginia that he had

been made to hold a candle to the wily Secretary of the Treasury in the

matter of assumption, in other words, that his guileless understanding,

absorbed in matters of State, had been duped into a bargain of which

Virginia did not approve, despite the concession to the Potomac.

About two months after Congress opened, Washington, as his Cabinet

seated itself, was detained in his room with a slight indisposition, but

sent word that he would appear presently. For a time, Randolph and Knox

talked feverishly about the Indian troubles, while Hamilton looked over

some notes, and Jefferson watched his antagonist covertly, as if

anticipating a sudden spring across the table. Hamilton was not in a

good humour. He was accustomed to abuse in Congress, and that it was

again in full tide concerned him little, for he was sure of ultimate

victories in both Houses; and words which were powerless to result in a

defeat for himself, or his party, he treated with the scorn which

impotence deserved. But it was another matter to have his private

character assailed day after day in the press, to watch a subtle pen

insinuate into the public mind that a woman imperilled her reputation in

receiving him, and that he was speculating in secret with the reckless

friend whom he had warned over and over, and begged to desist. Freneau

sent him three copies of the _Gazette_ daily, lest he miss something,

and he had that morning left Betsey in tears. Fenno was fighting the

Secretary's battles valiantly; but there was only one pen in America

which could cope with Jefferson's, and that was Hamilton's own. But

aside from his accumulating cares, it was a strife to which he did not

care to descend. To-day, however, he needed but a match, and Jefferson,

who experienced a fearful fascination in provoking him, applied it.

"I hear that Duer is on the verge of failure," he remarked sadly.

"Yes," said Hamilton; "he is."

"I hold it to be a great misfortune that he has been connected with the

Administration in any way."

"His connection was quite distinct from your department. I alone was

responsible for his appointment as my assistant. There is no necessity

for you to shed any hypocritical tears."

"What concerns the honour of the Administration naturally concerns the

Secretary of State."

"There is no question of honour. If Duer fails, he will fail honourably,

and the Administration, with which he is no longer connected, will in no

way be involved."

"Of those facts of course I am sure, but I fear the reflections in the

press."

"Keep your own pen worthily employed, and the Administration will take

care of itself."

"I do not understand you, sir," said Jefferson, with great dignity.

"I am quite ready to be explicit. Keep your pen out of Freneau's

blackguard sheet, while you are sitting at Washington's right hand, at

all events--"

Jefferson had elevated both hands. "I call Heaven to witness," he cried,

"this black aspersion upon my character is, has been, entirely a

production of the imagination of my enemies. I have never written nor

inspired a line in Mr. Freneau's paper."

Hamilton laughed and returned to his notes.

"You do not believe me, sir?" demanded Jefferson, the blood boiling

slowly to his large face.

"No," said Hamilton; "I do not."

Jefferson brought his mighty fist down upon the table with a bang."

Sir!" he exclaimed, his husky voice unpleasantly strained, "I have stood

enough from you. Are you aware that you have called me a liar, sir? I

have suffered at your hands since the day I set foot in this country. I

left the peace and retirement that I love, to come forth in response to

a demand upon my duty, a demand I have ever heeded, and what has been my

reward? The very first act I was tricked into committing was a crime

against my country--"

"Were you in your dotage, sir?" thundered Hamilton, springing to his

feet, and bringing his own hand down with such violence that the lead in

his cuff dented his wrist. "Was your understanding enfeebled with age,

that you could not comprehend the exhaustive explanation I made of the

crisis in this country's affairs? Did I not give you twenty-four hours

in which to think it over? What were you doing--muddling your brains

with French wines?--that you could not reason clearly when relieved of

my baleful fascination? Were you not protected on the following day by

two men, who were more your friends than mine? I proposed a

straightforward bargain, which you understood as well then as you do

now. You realized to the full what the interests of the country

demanded, and in a rare moment of disinterested patriotism you agreed to

a compromise in which you saw no detriment to yourself. What you did not

anticipate was the irritation of your particular State, and the

annoyance to your vanity of permitting a younger man to have his way.

Now let me hear no more of this holding a candle, and the tricking of an

open mind by a wily one, unless you are willing to acknowledge that your

brain was too weak to grasp a simple proposition; in which case you had

better resign from public office."

"I know that is what you are trying to force me to do," gasped

Jefferson, almost speechless between rage and physical fear; for

Hamilton's eyes were flashing, his body curved as if he meditated

immediate personal violence. "But I'll not do it, sir, any more than I

or anyone else will be deluded by the speciousness of your language. You

are an upstart. You have no State affinities, you despise them for a

very good reason--you come from God knows where--I do not even know the

name of the place. You are playing a game. You care nothing for the

country you were not born in. Unless you can be king, you would treat it

as your toy."

"For your absurd personalities I care nothing," said Hamilton, reseating

himself. "They are but the ebullitions of an impotence that would ruin

and cannot. But take heed what you write, for in injuring the Secretary

of the Treasury you injure the prosperity of the country; and if you

push me too far, I'll expose you and make you infamous. Here comes the

President. For God's sake bottle your spite for the present."

The two men did not exchange a remark during the rest of the sitting,

but Jefferson boiled slowly and steadily; Hamilton's words had raised

welts under which he would writhe for some time to come. When the

Cabinet adjourned he remained, and followed Washington into the library,

under cover of a chat about seeds and bulbs, a topic of absorbing

interest to both. When their legs were extended before the fire,

Jefferson said, as abruptly as if the idea had but just presented

itself:--

"Mr. President, we are both Virginians, and had cut our wisdom

teeth--not that for a moment I class myself with you, sir--while young

Hamilton was still in diapers."

"Children do not wear diapers in the West Indies," interrupted

Washington, in his gravest accents. "I spent some months on the Island

of Barbadoes, in the year seventeen hundred and fifty-one."

"Was he born In the West Indies? I had never heard. But, if I may

continue, I have therefore summoned up my courage to speak to you on a

subject close to my heart--for no subject can be so close as the welfare

of a country to which we have devoted our lives."

He paused a moment, prepared with an answer, did the President haughtily

warn him not to transgress the bounds of etiquette; but Washington was

staring at the fire, apparently recalling the scenery of the Tropics.

Jefferson continued: "In the length and breadth of this Union there is

not a man, not even the most ardent Republican, who has not implicit

faith in the flawless quality of your patriotism and in your personal

wisdom; but, and possibly unknown to you, sir, the extreme and

high-handed measures, coupled with the haughty personal arrogance, of

our Secretary of the Treasury have inspired a widespread belief, which

is permeating even his personal friends, that he entertains subtle and

insidious monarchical designs, is plotting to convert our little

Republic into a kingdom. Personally, I do not believe this--"

"I should hope not. You have always seemed to me to be a man of

singular wisdom and good sense. Therefore I feel sure that you are as

heartily sick of all this absurd talk about monarchism as I am. There is

not a word of truth in Mr. Hamilton's 'monarchical designs'; it is

impossible that you should not know this as well as I do. You must also

be as well aware that he has rendered services to this country which

will be felt as long as it remains united. It is doubtful if anyone else

could have rendered these same services, for, to my knowledge at least,

we have no man in the country who combines financial genius with an

unexampled boldness and audacity. He has emphatically been the man for

the hour, abruptly transferred from his remote birthplace, it has seemed

to me, by a special intervention of Providence; free of all local

prejudices, which have been, and will continue to be, the curse of this

country, and with a mettle unacted upon by years of doubt and

hesitation. I do no other man in public life an injustice in my warm

admiration of Mr. Hamilton's genius and absolute disinterestedness. Each

has his place, and is doing his part bravely and according to his

lights, many of them rendering historic services which Mr. Hamilton's

will not overshadow. His are equally indisputable. This unfortunate

result of establishing a National Bank was doubtless inevitable, and

will quickly disappear. That the Bank is a monarchical device, you, of

all men, are too wise to believe for a moment. Leave that for such

sensational scoundrels as the editors of this new _Gazette_ and of other

papers. I regret that there is a personal antipathy between you and Mr.

Hamilton, but I have not the least doubt that you believe in his

integrity as firmly as I do."

Jefferson was scowling heavily. "I am not so sure that I do, sir," he

said; inconsistent often in his calmest tempers, passion dissipated his

power of consecutive thought. "When Mr. Hamilton and I were on friendly

terms--before he took to annoying me with a daily exhibition of personal

rancour, from which I have been entirely free--he has often at my own

table avowed his admiration of the British Constitution, deprecated the

weakness of our own admirable instrument, tacitly admitted his regret

that we are a republic and not a kingdom. I have his very words in my

diary. He is committed out of his own mouth. I not only believe but know

him to be a lover of absolute monarchy, and that he has no faith that

this country can continue to exist in its present shape. It is for that

reason I hold him to be a traitor to the country with which he is merely

amusing himself."

"Sir," said Washington, turning to Jefferson an immobile face, in which

the eyes were beginning to glitter, "is a man to be judged by his

private fancies or by his public acts? I know nothing of Mr. Hamilton's

secret desires. Neither, I fancy, do you. We do know that he has

resigned a brilliant and profitable practice at the bar to guide this

unfortunate country out of bankruptcy and dishonour into prosperity and

every promise of a great and honourable future. Pray let the matter rest

there for the present. If Mr. Hamilton be really a liar and a charlatan,

rest assured he will betray himself before any great harm is done. Every

man is his own worst enemy. I was deeply interested in what you were

saying when we entered this room. Where did you say you purchased those

lily bulbs? My garden is sadly behind yours, I fear. I certainly shall

enter upon an amiable rivalry with you next summer."

And Jefferson knew better than to persist.

XXVIII

On January 28th Hamilton sent to Congress his Report on Manufactures,

and how anybody survived the fray which ensued can only be explained by

the cast-iron muscles forged in the ancestral arena. Hamilton had no

abstract or personal theories regarding tariff, and would have been the

first to denounce the criminal selfishness which distinguishes

Protection to-day. The situation was peculiar, and required the

application of strictly business methods to a threatening and immediate

emergency. Great Britain was oppressing the country commercially by

every method her council could devise. Defensive legislation was

imperative. Moreover, if the country was to compete with the nations of

the world and grow in independent wealth, particularly if it would

provide internal resources against another war, it must manufacture

extensively, and its manufactures must be protected. Such, in brief, was

the argument of one of the ablest State papers in any country, for whose

exhaustive details, the result of two years of study and comparison, of

research into the commercial conditions of every State in Europe, there

is no space here. The battle was purely political, for the measure was

popular with the country from the first. It was opposed by the planters,

with Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe in the lead. They argued that the

measure would burden the people at large; that the country was too

remunerative not to be able to take care of itself; that progress should

be natural and not artificial; that the measure was unconstitutional;

above all, as the reader need hardly be told, that no proposition had

yet been advanced by the monarchical Secretary of the Treasury so

"paternal," so conclusive of his ultimate designs. "To let the thirteen

States, bound together in a great indissoluble union, concur in erecting

one great system, superior to the control of transatlantic force and

influence, and able to dictate the connection between the old and the

new world," was but another subtle device to consolidate the States for

sudden and utter subversion when Hamilton had screwed the last point

into his crown. That in the Twentieth Century the United States would be

an object of uneasiness daily approaching to terror in the eyes of Great

Britain and Europe, as a result of this Report, even Hamilton himself

did not foresee, much less the planters; nor that it would carry through

the War of 1812 without financial distress. Above all, did no one

anticipate that the three Virginians, in their successive incumbencies

of the Executive Chair, would pursue the policy of protection in

unhesitating obedience to the voice of the people. The first result of

this Report was the great manufacturing interests of Paterson, New

Jersey, which celebrated their centennial a few years ago. Paterson was

Hamilton's personal selection, and it still throbs with something of his

own energy.

Meanwhile he was being elected an honorary member of colleges and

societies of arts and letters, and persecuted by portrait painters and

sculptors. Every honour, public and private, was thrust upon him, and

each new victory was attended by a public banquet and a burst of popular

applause. He was apparently invulnerable, confounding his opponents and

enemies without effort. Never had there been such a conquering hero;

even the Virginian trio began to wonder uneasily if he were but mortal,

if he were not under some mighty and invisible protection. As for the

Federalists, they waxed in enthusiasm and devotion. His career was at

its zenith. No man in the United States was--nor has been since--so

loved and so hated, both in public and in private life. Even

Washington's career had not been more triumphant, and hardly so

remarkable; for he was an American born, had always had a larger measure

of popular approval, and never had discovered the faculty of raising

such bitter and powerful enemies. Nor had he won an extraordinary

reputation until he was long past Hamilton's present age. Certainly he

had never exhibited such unhuman precocity.

But although Hamilton had, by this time, extancy to suffice any man, and

was hunted to his very lair by society, he had no thought of resting on

his labours. He by no means regarded himself as a demi-god, nor the

country as able to take care of itself. He prepared, and sent to

Congress in rapid succession, his Reports on Estimates for Receipts and

Expenditures for 1791-92, on Loans, on Duties, on Spirits, on Additional

Supplies for 1792, on Remission of Duties, and on the Public Debt.

Nor did his labours for the year confine itself to reports. On August

4th, his patience with the scurrilities of Freneau's _Gazette_ came to

an end, and he published in Fenno's journal the first of a series of

papers that Jefferson, in the hush of Monticello, read with the

sensations of those forefathers who sat on a pan of live coals for the

amusement of Indian warriors. Hamilton was thorough or nothing. He had

held himself in as long as could be expected of any mortal less

perfected in his self-government than George Washington: but when,

finally, he was not only stung to fury by the constant and systematic

calumnies of Jefferson's slanting art, but fearful for the permanence of

his measures, in the gradual unsettling of the public mind, he took off

his coat; and Jefferson knew that the first engagement of the final

battle had begun in earnest, that the finish would be the retirement of

one or other from the Cabinet.

Hamilton began by mathematically demonstrating that Freneau was the tool

of Jefferson, imported and suborned for the purpose of depressing the

national authority, and exposed the absurdity of the denials of both.

When he had finished dealing with this proposition, its day for being a

subject of animated debate was over. He then laid before the public

certain facts in the career of Jefferson with which they were

unacquainted: that he had first discountenanced the adoption of the

Constitution, and then advised the ratification of nine of the States

and the refusal of four until amendments were secured,--a proceeding

which infallibly would have led to civil war; that he had advocated the

transfer of the debt due to France to a company of Hollanders in these

words: "If there is a _danger_ of the public debt _not being punctual_,

I submit whether it may not be better, that _the discontents which would

then arise_ should be _transferred_ from a _court_ of whose _good-will

we have so much need_ to the _breasts_ of a _private company_"--an

obviously dishonourable suggestion, particularly as the company in view

was a set of speculators. It was natural enough, however, in a man whose

kink for repudiation in general led him to promulgate the theory that

one generation cannot bind another for the payment of a debt. Hamilton,

having disposed of Jefferson's attempts, under the signature of

Aristides, to wriggle out of both these accusations, discoursed upon the

disloyal fact that the Secretary of State was the declared opponent of

every important measure which had been devised by the Government, and

proceeded to lash him for his hypocrisy in sitting daily at the right

hand of the President while privately slandering him; of exercising all

the arts of an intriguing mind, ripened by a long course of European

diplomacy, to undermine an Administration whose solidity was the only

guaranty for the continued prosperity and honour of the country.

Hamilton reminded the people, with a pen too pointed to fail of

conviction, of the increase of wealth and happiness which had ensued

every measure opposed by the Secretary of State, and drew a warning

picture of what must result were these measures reversed by a party

without any convictions beyond the determination to compass the downfall

of the party in power. He bade them choose, and passed on to a

refutation of the several accusations hurled at the Administration, and

at himself in particular.

He wrote sometimes with temperance and self-restraint, at others with

stinging contempt and scorn. Jefferson replied with elaborate denials,

solemn protests of disinterested virtue, and counter accusations.

Hamilton was back at him before the print was dry, and the battle raged

with such unseemly violence, that Washington wrote an indignant letter

to each, demanding that they put aside their personal rancours and act

together for the common good of the country. The replies of the two men

were characteristic. Hamilton wrote a frank and manly letter, barely

alluding to Jefferson, and asserting that honour and policy exacted his

charges and refutations. He would make no promise to discontinue his

papers, for he had no intention of laying down his pen until Jefferson

was routed from the controversial field, and the public satisfied of the

truth. Jefferson's letter was pious and sad. It breathed a fervent

disinterestedness, and provided as many poisoned arrows for his rival as

its ample space permitted. It was a guinea beaten out into an acre of

gold leaf and steeped in corrosive sublimate.

But during that summer of 1792 Hamilton had little time for personal

explosions except in brief. The Presidential elections approached, and

the greater part of his time was given to party management and counsel.

Washington's renomination and election were assured. The only obstacle

encountered had been Washington himself, but his yearning for peace had

again retired before duty. The parties were arrayed in a desperate

struggle for the Vice-Presidency, the issue to determine the

vindication or the condemnation of the measures of Hamilton. Adams

himself was unpopular in the anti-Federalist ranks, on account of his

aristocratic tastes and his opposition to the French Revolution; but the

time was propitious for a tremendous trial of strength with the

omnipotent Secretary of the Treasury, and any candidate of his would

have been opposed as bitterly.

Jefferson and Burr were each suggested for the office, but Hamilton

brought down his heavy hand on both of them promptly, and the fight

settled into a bitter struggle between Adams and Clinton. The latter's

strength in the State of New York was still very great, and he was as

hardy a fighter as ever. But his political past was studded with

vulnerable points, and the Federalists spared him not.

It is impossible, whatever one's predilections, not to admire Clinton

for his superb fighting qualities. He was indomitable, and in ability

and resourcefulness second only to Hamilton himself, in party management

far superior; for he had greater patience, a tenderer and more intimate

concern for his meaner followers, and less trust in his own unaided

efforts and the right of his cause. Hamilton by no means was blind to

the pettier side of human nature, but he despised it; instead of

truckling and manipulating, he would scatter it before him or grind it

to pulp. There is no possible doubt that if Hamilton had happened into a

country at war with itself, but with strong monarchical proclivities, he

would have seized the crown and made one of the wisest and kindest of

autocrats. His lines cast in a land alight from end to end with

republican fires, he accepted the situation with his inherent

philosophy, burned with a patriotism as steady as Washington's own, but

ruled it in his own way, forced upon it measures in whose wisdom he

implicitly believed, and which, in every instance, time has vindicated.

But his instinct was that of the amiable despot, and he had no

conciliation in him.

His opponents saw only the despot, for time had not given them range of

vision. Therefore, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Clinton, and his other

formidable enemies have a large measure of excuse for their conduct,

especially as they were seldom unstung by mortifying defeat. It is

doubtful if the first three, at least, ever admitted to themselves or

each other that they hated Hamilton, and were determined for purely

personal reasons to pull him down. Every man knows how easy it is to

persuade himself that he is entirely in the right, his opponent, or even

he who differs from him, entirely in the wrong. The Virginian trio had

by this, at all events, talked themselves into the belief that Hamilton

was a menace to the permanence of the Union, and that it was their pious

duty to relegate him to the shades of private life. That in public life

he would infallibly interfere with their contemplated twenty-four years

Chair Trust may have been by the way. They were all men with a

consciousness of public benefits to their credit, and some disinterested

patriotism. If their ignoble side is constantly in evidence in their

dealings with Hamilton, it by no means follows that two, at least, of

our most distinguished Presidents--Monroe was a mere imitationist--had

no other. Had that been the case, they would have failed as miserably as

Burr, despite their talents, for the public is not a fool. But that

their faults were ignoble, rather than passionate, their biographers

have never pretended to deny. In many instances no apology is attempted.

On the other hand, the most exhaustive research among the records of

friends and enemies has failed to bring to light any evidence of mean

and contemptible traits in Hamilton. No one will deny his faults, his

mistakes; but they were the mistakes and faults of passion in every

instance; of a great nature, capable of the extremest violence, of the

deadliest hate and maddest blows, but fighting always in the open; in

great crises unhesitatingly sacrificing his personal desires or hatreds

to the public good. Even his detractors--those who count in

letters--have admitted that his nature and his methods were too

high-handed for grovelling and deceit, that the mettle of his courage

was unsurpassed. Jefferson and Madison had the spirit of the mongrel in

comparison; Monroe was a fighter, but cowardly and spiteful. In point of

mettle alone, Adams and Clinton were Hamilton's most worthy opponents.

Burr had not shown his hand as yet. He was at war with Clinton himself,

and an active and coruscating member of the Senate. But Hamilton, by

this, knew him thoroughly. He read his lack of Public spirit in every

successive act of his life, recognized an ambition which would not

hesitate to sacrifice his best friend and the country he was using, and

a subtlety and cunning which would, with his lack of principle and

property, make him the most dangerous man in America should he contrive

to grasp the reins of power. Therefore he checkmated his every move,

careless of whether he made another powerful enemy or not.

Hamilton attempted no delusions with himself. He knew that he hated

Jefferson with a violence which threatened at times to submerge all the

good in him, horrified him when he sat down and looked into himself. On

the other hand, he knew himself to be justified in thwarting and

humiliating him, for the present policy of the country must be preserved

at any cost. But he was too clear and practised an analyst to fail to

separate his public from his personal rancour. He would drive Jefferson

from public office for the public good, but he would experience the

keenest personal pleasure in so doing. Such was Hamilton. Could a genius

like his be allied in one ego with a character like Washington's, we

should have a being for which the world has never dared to hope in its

most Biblical moments. But genius must ever be imperfect. Life is not

long enough nor slow enough for both brain and character to grow side by

side to superhuman proportions.

XXIX

The following political year was a lively one for Hamilton, perhaps the

liveliest of his career. As it approached, those interested in public

affairs had many subjects for constant and excited discussion: the

possible Vice-President, whose election was to determine the future

status of the Secretary of State, and cement or weaken the centralized

powers of the Administration; the battle in the two _Gazettes_, with

the laurels to Hamilton, beyond all controversy, and humiliation for

Jefferson and Madison; the growing strength of the "Republican" party

under Madison's open and Jefferson's literary leadership; the probable

policy of the Administration toward the French Revolution, with

Jefferson hot with rank Democracy, and Hamilton hotter with contempt for

the ferocity of the Revolutionists; the next move of the Virginians did

Hamilton win the Vice-Presidency for the Administration party; and the

various policies of the Secretary of the Treasury and their results. At

coffee-houses, at public and private receptions, and in Mrs. Croix's

drawing-room, hardly another subject was broached.

"A fool could understand politics in these days," said Betsey, one

evening in December, with a sigh. "Not a word does one hear of clothes,

gossip, husbands, or babies. Mrs. Washington told me the day after she

returned that she had deliberately thought of nothing but butter and

patchwork during the entire recess, that her poor brain might be able to

stand the strain of the winter. Shall you have to work harder than

ever?"

"I do not know," replied Hamilton, and at that moment he did not. He was

correcting a French exercise of his son's, and feeling domestic and

happy. Jefferson and he had made no pretence at formal amiability this

season; they did not speak at all, but communicated on paper when the

business of their respective departments required an interchange of

opinion. He had vanquished his enemy in print, made him ridiculous in

the eyes of all who read the _Gazettes_. Moreover, Washington, disturbed

during the summer by the constant nagging of Jefferson and his agents,

respecting the "monarchical schemes" and "corrupt practices" of the

Secretary of the Treasury, had formulated the accusations and sent them

to Hamilton for refutation. The vindication, written without passion, as

cold, clear, consistent, and logical, as if dealing with an abstract

proposition, had convinced, and finally, all to whom it was shown; with

the exception of Jefferson, who had no intention of being convinced.

Hamilton was conscious that there was no vulnerable point in his public

armour. Of his private he was not so sure; Reynolds was in jail, for

attempting, in company with one Clingman, to suborn a witness to commit

perjury, and had appealed to him for aid. He had ignored him, determined

to submit to no further blackmail, be the consequences what they might.

But he was the last man to anticipate trouble, and on the whole he was

in the best of humours as the Christmas holidays approached, with his

boys home from their school on Staten Island, his little girl growing

lovelier and more accomplished, and his wife always charming and pretty;

in their rare hours of uninterrupted companionship, piquant and

diverting. He had gone out with her constantly since Congress assembled,

and had enjoyed the recreations of society after his summer of hard work

and angry passions. Everywhere he had a triumphal progress; men and

women jostled each other about him, eager for a word, a smile, making

him talk at length, whether he would or not. The confidence in him was

stronger than ever, but his enemies were the most powerful, collectively

and individually, that had ever arrayed against a public man: Jefferson,

Madison, and Monroe, with the South behind them; the Livingstons and the

Clinton faction in New York; Burr, with his smiling subterranean

industry; the growing menace of the Republican party. Pamphlets were

circulating in the States warning voters against all who supported the

Secretary of the Treasury. It was one man against odds of appalling

strength and resource; for by common consent both of friends and enemies

Hamilton was the Federal party. Did he fall, it must go; all blows were

aimed at him alone. Could any one man stand for ever an impregnable

fortress before such a battery? Many vowed that he would, for "he was

more than human," but others, as firm in their admiration, shrugged

their shoulders. The enemy were infuriated at the loss of the

Vice-Presidency, for again Hamilton had been vindicated and Adams

reflected. What would be their next move?

Betsey knew that her husband had enemies, but the fact gave her little

concern; she believed Hamilton to be a match for the allied forces of

darkness. She noticed when his hair was unpowdered that it was turning

gray and had quite lost its boyish brightness; here and there work and

care had drawn a line. But he was handsomer, if anything, and of the

scars on his spirit she knew nothing. In the peace and pleasant

distractions of his home his mercurial spirits leaped high above his

anxieties and enmities, and he was as gay and happy, as interested in

the manifold small interests of his family, as were he a private man of

fortune, without an ambition, an enemy, or a care. When most absorbed or

irritated he never victimized his household by moods or tempers, not

only because they were at his mercy, but because his nature

spontaneously gave as it received; his friends had his best always, his

enemies the very worst of which his intense passionate nature was

capable. Naturally his family adored him and studied his happiness.

Betsey continued her somewhat rambling remarks, "The only variety is the

French Revolution."

"By the way, Washington has had a distressing letter from Madame

Lafayette. She begs him to receive her boy--George Washington--and keep

him until the trouble is over. The Chief fears that in the present

temper of the public his reception of Lafayette's son would be given an

embarrassing significance, and yet it is impossible to refuse such a

request,--with Lafayette in an Austrian dungeon, his wife in daily

danger of prison or guillotine, and this boy, his only son, with no one

but a tutor to protect him. I offered at once to receive the child into

my family--subject, of course, to your approval. Should you object? It

would add to your cares--"

"I have no cares, sir. I shall be delighted; and he can talk French with

the children."

"I shall send him to Staten Island with Philip and Alex. Washington will

make him a liberal allowance for school and clothing. I confess I am

anxious to receive him, more than anxious to show that my old friendship

is undiminished. I fear to open every packet from Europe, lest I hear of

Lafayette's death. Fortunately, Morris was able to render some

assistance to Madame Lafayette. Morris is a source of sufficient worry

himself, for he is much too independent and bold for a foreign envoy in

the thick of mob rule, mad with blood."

"I hate to think of old friends in trouble," said Betsey, removing a

tear. "Poor Kitty Duer! I had another letter from her to-day. It is

pitiful to think of her and the poor little children, with nothing but

what Lady Sterling, who has so little, and Lady Mary can give them. Is

there no way of getting Colonel Duer out of Debtor's prison?"

"I've moved heaven and earth, but certain of his creditors are

inexorable. Still, I hope to have him out and on his feet before long.

You are not to worry about other people this evening, for I am

particularly happy. Philip is really remarkable, and I believe that

Angelica is going to turn out a musical genius. What a delight it is to

have one person in the world to whom one can brag about one's offspring

without apology."

"Why, of course they are the most remarkable children in the world--all

five of them," said Betsey, placidly.

Edward Stevens came in and threw himself on the sofa. "What a relief to

come into this scene of domestic tranquillity, after the row outside!"

he exclaimed. "All the world is in the streets; that is to say, all the

daft American world that sympathizes with that bloody horror in France.

The news that the allied armies have been beaten and the Duke of

Brunswick was in full retreat when the packets sailed, has apparently

driven them frantic with joy. They are yelling 'Ça ira,' bonfires are

flaring everywhere, and bells ringing. All of the men are drunk, and

some of the women. And yet the statesman who must grapple with this

portentous problem is gossiping with his wife, and looking as if he had

not a care in the world. Thank Heaven!"

"I can do nothing to-night," said Hamilton, smiling. "I have had too

much experience as a practical philosopher not to be happy while I can."

"You have the gift of eternal youth. What shall you do in this French

matter, Alexander the Great? All the world is waiting to know. I should

worry about you if I had time in this reeking town, where it is a wonder

any man has health in him. Oh, for the cane-fields of St. Croix! But

tell me, what is the policy to be--strict neutrality? Of course the

President will agree with you; but fancy Jefferson, on his other side,

burning with approval for the very excesses of the Revolution, since

they typify democracy exultant. And of course he is burrowing in the

dark to increase his Republican party and inspire it with his fanatical

enthusiasm for those inhuman wretches in France. I believe he would

plunge us into a war to-morrow."

"No, he is an unwarlike creature. He would like to trim, keep this

country from being actually bespattered with blood, but coax the

Administration to give the Revolutionists money and moral support. He

will do nothing of the sort, however. The policy of this remote country

is absolute, uncompromising, neutrality. Let Europe keep her hands off

this continent, and we will let her have her own way across the water.

The United States is the nucleus of a great nation that will spread

indefinitely, and any further Europeanizing of our continent would be a

menace which we can best avoid by observing from the beginning a

strictly defensive policy. To weaken it by an aggressive inroad into

European politics would be the folly of schoolboys not fit to conduct a

nation. We must have the Floridas and Louisiana as soon as possible. I

have been urging the matter upon Washington's attention for three years.

Spain is a constant source of annoyance, and the sooner we get her off

the continent the better--and before Great Britain sends her. We need

the Mississippi for navigation and must possess the territories that are

the key to it. How idiotic, therefore, to antagonize any old-world

power!"

"You _are_ long-headed!" exclaimed Stevens. "Good heavens! Listen to

that! The very lungs of Philadelphia are bellowing. Our people must be

mad to see in this hideous French Revolution any resemblance to their

own dignified and orderly struggle for freedom."

"It is so easy to drive men mad," said Hamilton, contemptuously.

"Particularly when they are in constant and bitter opposition to the

party in power, and possess a leader as subtle and venomous as Thomas

Jefferson--'Thomas,' as he signed a letter to Washington the other day.

You may imagine the disgust of the Chief."

"Not another word of politics this night!" exclaimed Mrs. Hamilton. "I

have not uttered a word for just twenty-five minutes. Alexander, go and

brew a beaker of negus."

XXX

The next morning Hamilton was sitting in his office when the cards of

James Monroe, F.A. Muhlenberg, and A. Venable were brought in.

"What on earth can they want?" he thought. "Monroe? We have not bowed

for a year. Two days ago he turned into a muddy lane and splashed

himself to his waist, that he might avoid meeting me."

His first impulse was to excuse himself, on the plea of the pressing

nature of his work; but curiosity triumphed, and he told his page to

admit the men.

Muhlenberg was again Speaker of the House; Venable was a Representative

from Virginia. Hamilton was not friendly with either, but nodded when

they passed him. He greeted them amiably as they entered to-day, and

exchanged a frigid bow with Monroe. The Senator from Virginia took a

chair in the rear of the others, stretched his long legs in front of

him, and folded his arms defiantly. He looked not unlike a greyhound,

his preference for drab clothing enhancing the general effect of a

pointed and narrow leanness.

There was a moment of extreme awkwardness. Muhlenberg and Venable

hitched their chairs about. Monroe grinned spasmodically, and rubbed his

nose with his upper lip.

"Well, gentlemen," said Hamilton, rapping his fingers on the table.

"What can I do for you?" He scented gun-powder at once.

"I am to be the spokesman in this delicate matter, I believe," said

Muhlenberg, who looked red and miserable, "and I will, with your

permission, proceed to my unpleasant task with as little delay as

possible."

"Pray do," replied Hamilton. "The daily assaults of my enemies for

several years have endowed me with a fortitude which doubtless will

carry me through this interview in a creditable manner."

"I assure you, sir, that I do not come as an enemy, but as a friend. It

is owing to my appeal that the matter was not laid directly before the

President."

"The President?" Hamilton half rose, then seated himself again. His eyes

were glittering dangerously. Muhlenberg blundered on, his own gaze

roving. The Federal term of endearment for Hamilton, "The Little Lion,"

clanged suddenly in his mind, a warning bell.

"I regret to say that we have discovered an improper connection between

yourself and one Reynolds." He produced a bundle of letters and handed

them to Hamilton. "These are not in your handwriting, sir, but I am

informed that you wrote them."

Hamilton glanced at them hastily, and the angry blood raced through his

arteries.

"These letters were written by me," he said. "I disguised my handwriting

for purposes of my own. What is the meaning of this unwarrantable

intrusion into a man's private affairs? Explain yourself at once."

"That is what we have come for, sir. Unfortunately we cannot regard it

as a private affair, but one which concerns the whole nation."

"The whole nation!" thundered Hamilton. "What has the nation to do with

an affair of this sort? Why cannot you tell the truth and say that you

gloat in having discovered this wretched affair,--a common enough

episode in the lives of all of you,--in having another tid-bit for

Freneau? Why did you not take it to him at once? What do you mean by

coming here personally to take me to task?"

"I think there is some misapprehension, sir," said Muhlenberg. "It

would be quite impossible for any one present to have misconducted

himself in the manner in which the holder of those letters, Mr.

Reynolds, accuses you of having done. And surely the whole country is

intimately concerned in the honesty--or the dishonesty--of the Secretary

of the Treasury."

The words were out, and Muhlenberg sat with his mouth open for a moment,

as if to reinhale the air which was escaping too quickly for calm

speech. Then he set his shoulders and braced himself to meet the

Secretary's eyes. Hamilton was staring at him, with no trace of passion

in his face. His eyes looked like steel; his whole face had hardened

into a mask. He had realized in a flash that he was in the meshes of a

plot, and forced the heat from his brain. "Explain," he said. "I am

listening."

"As you are aware, sir, this James Clingman, who has been arrested with

Reynolds, was a clerk in my employ. You will also recall that when he

applied to me to get him out, I, in company with Colonel Burr, waited on

you and asked your assistance. You said that you would do all that was

consistent, but we did not hear from you further. Clingman refunded the

money, or certificates, which they had improperly obtained from the

Treasury, the action was withdrawn, and he was discharged to-day. While

the matter was pending I had several conversations with Clingman, and he

frequently dropped hints to the effect that Reynolds had it in his power

materially to injure the Secretary of the Treasury, as he knew of

several very improper transactions of his. At first I paid no attention

to these hints, but when he went so far as to assert that Reynolds had

it in his power to hang the Secretary of the Treasury, that the latter

was deeply concerned in speculation with Duer, and had frequently

advanced him--Reynolds, I mean--money with which to speculate, then I

conceived it my duty to take some sort of action, and yesterday

communicated with Mr. Monroe and Mr. Venable. They went at once to call

on Reynolds--whom I privately believe to be a rascal, sir--and he

asserted that he was kept in prison by your connivance, as you feared

him; and promised to put us in possession of the entire facts this

morning. When we returned at the hour appointed, he had absconded,

having received his discharge. We then went to his house and saw his

wife, who asserted, after some circumlocution, that you had been

concerned in speculations with her husband, that at your request she had

burnt most of the letters you had written to herself and her husband,

and that all were in a disguised hand--like these few which she had

preserved. You will admit that it is a very serious charge, sir, and

that we should have been justified in going directly to the President.

But we thought that in case there might be an explanation--"

"Oh, there is an explanation," said Hamilton, with a sneer. "You shall

have it at my pleasure. I see that these notes implicate me to the

extent of eleven hundred dollars. Strange, that a rapacious Secretary of

the Treasury, handling millions, and speculating wildly with a friend of

large resources, should have descended to such small play as this. More

especially strange that he should have deliberately placed himself in

the power of such a rascal as this Reynolds--who seems to impress every

one he meets with his blackguardism--and communicated with him freely on

paper; you will have observed that I acknowledged these notes without

hesitation. What a clumsy knave you must think me. I resent the

imputation. Perhaps you have noticed that in one of these notes I state

that on my honour I cannot accommodate him with the three hundred

dollars he demands, because it is quite out of my power to furnish it.

Odd, that a thieving Secretary, engaged in riotous speculation, could

not lay his hand on three hundred dollars, especially if it were

necessary to close this rascal's mouth. I doubt, gentlemen, if you will

be able to convince the country that I am a fool. Nevertheless, I

recognize that this accusation must be met by controverting proof; and

if you will do me the honour to call at my house to-night at nine

o'clock, I shall, in the presence of the Comptroller of the Treasury,

furnish these proofs."

He rose, and the others pushed back their chairs and departed hastily.

Muhlenberg's red face wore a look of relief, but Monroe scowled. Neither

had failed to be impressed by the Secretary's manner, and the Speaker of

the House, ashamed of his part in the business, would gladly have

listened to an immediate vindication.

Hamilton sat motionless for some moments, the blood returning to his

face, for he was seething with fury and disgust.

"The hounds!" he said aloud, then again and again. He was alone, and he

never had conquered his youthful habit of muttering to himself. "I can

see Monroe leaping, not walking, to the jail, the moment he learned of a

chance to incriminate me. The heels at the end of those long legs must

have beaten the powder from his queue. And this is what a man is to

expect so long as he remains in public life--if he succeeds. He resigns

a large income, reduces his family almost to poverty, works himself half

to death, rescues the country from contempt, launches it upon the sea of

prosperity; and his public rewards are more than counterbalanced by the

persecutions of his enemies. I have been on the defensive from the

moment I entered public life. Scarcely a week but I have been obliged to

parry some poisoned arrow or pluck it out and cauterize. The dreams of

my youth! They never soared so high as my present attainment, but

neither did they include this constant struggle with the vilest

manifestations of which the human nature is capable." He brought his

fist down on the table. "I am a match for all of them," he exclaimed.

"But their arrows rankle, for I am human. They have poisoned every hour

of victory."

He caught up his hat and went out into the air. The solace of Mrs. Croix

in his blacker moods occurred to him; and he walked down Chestnut Street

as rapidly as he could, in the crowd, lifting his hat now and again to

cool his head in the frosty air. It was a brilliant winter's day; drifts

of snow hid the dead animals and the garbage in the streets; and all the

world was out for Christmas shopping. As it was one of the seasons for

display, everybody was in his best. The women wore bright-coloured

taffetas or velvets, over hoops flattened before and behind, muskmelon

bonnets or towering hats. They whisked their gowns about, that their

satin petticoats be not overlooked. The men wore the cocked hat, heavily

laced, and a long coat, usually of light-coloured cloth, with a

diminutive cape, the silver buttons engraved with initials or crest.

Their small clothes were very short, but heavy striped stockings

protected their legs; on their feet were pointed shoes, with immense

silver buckles. Hamilton was dressed with his usual exquisite care, his

cuffs carefully leaded. But his appearance interested him little to-day.

For the moment, however, he forgot his private annoyance in the portent

on every side of him. Few of the seekers after gifts had entered the

shops. They blocked the pavements, even the street, talking excitedly of

the news of the day before. Fully half the throng sported the

tri-coloured cockade, the air hissed with "Citizen," "Citess," or rang

with a volley of "Ça ira! Ça ira!"

Hamilton set his teeth. "It _is_ the next nightmare," he thought. "The

Cabinet is quiet at present--Jefferson, mortified and beaten, is coaxing

back his courage for a final spring. When the time comes to determine

our attitude there will be Hell, nothing less." But his nostrils

quivered. He might rebel at poisoned arrows, but he revelled in the

fight that involved the triumph of a policy.

His mind was abstracted, the blood was still in his brain as he entered

Mrs. Croix's drawing-room. For a moment he had a confused idea that he

had blundered into a shop. The chairs, the sofas, the floor, were

covered with garments and stuffs of every hue. Hats and bonnets were

perched on every point. Never had he seen so much gorgeous raiment in

one space before. There were brocades, taffetas, satins, lutestrings,

laces, feathers, fans, underwear like mist. While he was staring about

him in bewilderment, Mrs. Croix came running in from her bedroom. Her

hair was down and tangled, her dressing sacque half off, her face

flushed, her eyes sparkling. She looked half wanton, half like a giddy

girl darting about among her first trunks.

"Hamilton!" she cried. "Hamilton!" She flew at him much as his children

did when excited. "Look! Look! Look! Is this not magnificent? This is

the happiest day of my life!"

"Indeed? Are you about to set up a shop?"

"A shop? I am about to deck myself once more in the raiment that I love.

Have I not drooped in weeds long enough, sir? I am going to be beautiful

again! I am going to wear all those lovely things--all! all! And I am

going to Lady Washington's to-morrow night. Mrs. Knox will take me. But

I vow I do not care half so much for that as for my beautiful things.

They arrived by the London packet yesterday, but have only now been

delivered. I ordered them long since, and hardly could control my

impatience till they came. I am so happy! I feel like a bird that has

been plucked for years."

Hamilton looked at her in amazement, and despair. More than once he had

caught a glimpse of the frivolous side of her nature, but that it could

spread and control her he never had imagined. Her intelligence, her

passions, her inherited and accumulated wisdom, were crowded into some

submerged cell. There was nothing in her at the present moment for him,

and he turned on his heel without a word and left the house. She rapped

sharply on the window as he passed, but he did not look up. He was

filled with that unreasoning anger peculiar to man when woman for once

has failed to respond. He consigned her and her clothes to the devil,

and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to one. His dinner hour was

two o'clock. He would go home to his wife, where he should have gone in

the first place. She never had failed him, or if she had he could not

recall the occasion. Her little dark face rose before him, innocent and

adorable. He could not tell her of the cause of his annoyance,--it

suddenly occurred to him that the less of that matter confided to Mrs.

Croix the better,--but then he never worried her with his troubles. He

would merely go and bask in her presence for an hour, confess to a

headache, and receive her sweet ministrations.

As he entered his own house, and, relieved of his coat and hat by the

waiting black, ran up the stair, he thought he heard a soft babble of

voices. Knowing that his wife would, if he desired it, dismiss at once

any company she might have, he knocked confidently at her door and

entered. For a moment he felt inclined to rub his eyes, and wondered if

he were the victim of delirium. The bed was covered with bandboxes, the

sofa with new frocks. Betsey was sitting before the mirror, trying on a

cap, and her sisters, Peggy and Cornelia, were clapping their hands.

Angelica was perched on the back of a chair, her eyes twice their

natural size, Hamilton attempted instant retreat, but Betsey saw his

reflection in the mirror.

"You?" she cried. "What a surprise and pleasure. Come here, sir, at

once."

Meanwhile his two sisters-in-law, whose expected visit he had quite

forgotten, ran forward and kissed him effusively. With the desire in his

heart to rend the Universe in twain he went forward and smiled down into

his wife's eager face.

"Angelica has sent me so many things!" she exclaimed. Her face was

flushed, her eyes sparkling. She looked sixteen. "And this cap is the

most bewitching of all. You came just at the right moment; it is quite

singular. Read--".

She thrust a letter from Mrs. Church into his hand, and he read where

his wife pointed. "Someone who loves you will tell you if it is becoming

or not." And on the following page. "Kiss my saucy Brother for me. I

call him my Brother with an air of pride. And tell him, _Il est l'homme

le plus aimable du monde_."

"It is charming," said Hamilton, pinching his wife's chin. "It is like a

frame. You never looked half so sweet."

Betsey cooed with delight. Hamilton, having done his duty, was about to

retire in good order, when he met his little daughter's eyes. They had

dismissed the wonderful cap and were fixed on him with an expression

that gave him a sudden thrill. It was not the first time he had seen in

Angelica so strong a resemblance to his mother that he half believed

some fragment of Rachael Levine had come back to him. Her eyes were

dark, but she had a mane of reddish fair hair, and a skin as white as

porcelain, a long sensitive nose, and a full mobile mouth. She had none

of his mother's vitality and dash, however. She was delicate and rather

shrinking, and he knew that Rachael at her age must have been a marvel

of mental and physical energy. It was only occasionally, when he turned

suddenly and caught Angelica staring at him, that he experienced the odd

sensation of meeting his mother's eyes, informed, moreover, with an

expression of penetrating comprehension--an expression he recalled

without effort. The child idolized him. She sat outside his study while

he wrote, crawling in between the legs of anyone who opened the door? to

sit at his feet; or, if he dismissed her, in another part of the room

until he left it. She watched for his daily returns, and usually greeted

him from the banister post. Amiable, intelligent, pretty, affectionate,

and already putting forth the tender leaves of a great gift, her father

thought her quite perfect, and they had long conversations whenever he

was at leisure in his home. She demanded a great deal of petting, and he

was always ready to humour her, the more as she was the only girl, and

the one quiet member of his little family--although she had been known

to use her fists upon occasion. Her prettiness and intelligence

delighted him, her affection was one of the deepest pleasures of his

life, and he was thankful for the return to him of his mother's

beautiful and singular features. To-day the resemblance was so striking

that he contracted his eyelids. Angelica straightened herself, gave a

spring, and alighted on his chest.

"Take me downstairs and talk to me," she commanded. "'Tis nearly an hour

to dinner."

Hamilton swung her to his shoulder, and went downstairs. On the way he

laughed out loud. The past half-hour tossed itself into the foreground

of his mind, clad in the skirts of high comedy. Tragedy fled. The

burden in his breast went with it. Far be it from him to cherish a

grudge against the sex that so often reduced the trials of public life

to insignificance. Women were delicious irresponsible beings; man was an

ingrate to take their shortcomings seriously.

"Why do you laugh?" asked his daughter, whose arm nearly strangled him.

"You were very angry when you came into mamma's room."

"Indeed?" said Hamilton, nettled. "Was I not smiling?"

"Yes, sir; but you often smile when you would like to run the

carving-knife into somebody."

They had reached the library. Hamilton sat the child on the edge of his

table and took a chair closely facing her. "What do you mean, you little

witch?" he demanded. "I am always happy when I am at home."

"Almost always. Sometimes you are very angry, and sometimes you are sad.

Why do you pretend? Why don't you tell us?"

"Well," said Hamilton, with some confusion. "I love you all very much,

you see, and you do make me happy--why should I worry you?"

"I should feel better if you told me--right out. It gives me a pain

here."

She laid her hand to her head, and Hamilton stared at her in deepening

perplexity. Another child--anything feminine, at least--would have

indicated her heart as the citadel of sorrow. "Why there?" he asked. "Do

you mean a pain?"

"Yes, a pain, but not so bad as when I am in Albany or Saratoga and you

are here. Then I worry all the time."

"Do you mean that you are ever unhappy?"

"I am unhappy whenever you are, or I am afraid that you are. I know that

you are very big and the cleverest man in the world, and that I am too

little to do you any good, and I don't know why I worry when I am away."

"But, my dear child, what in Heaven's name do you mean? Have you ever

spoken to your mother of this?"

Angelica shook her head. Her eyes grew larger and wiser. "No; I should

only worry Betsey, and she is always happy. She is not clever like you

and me."

Hamilton rose abruptly and walked to the window. When he had composed

his features he returned. "You must not criticise your mother in that

way, my dear. She is a very clever little woman, indeed."

Angelica nodded. "If she were clever, you would not say 'little.' Nobody

says that you are a very clever little man. When I'm big, I'll not be

called little, either. I love our dear Queen Bess, but I'm _all yours_.

Why were you so angry to-day?"

"I couldn't possibly tell you," replied her father, turning cold. "You

must not ask too many questions; but I am very grateful for your

sympathy. You are my dear little girl, and you make me love you more and

more, daily."

"And will you tell me whenever you are not feeling like what you are

making the rest believe?"

"If it will make you any happier, I will whisper it into your pink

little ear. But I think I should be a very bad father to make you

unhappy."

"I told you, sir, that I am more unhappy when I imagine things. It is

just like a knife," and again she pointed to her head.