Chapter XV: Book IV: "alexander the Great" (2)

"It is the fortunate situation of our country," said Hamilton, a few months later, at Poughkeepsie, "that the minds of the people are exceedingly enlightened and refined." Certainly these papers are a great tribute to the general intelligence of the American race of a century and more ago. Selfish, petty, and lacking in political knowledge they may have been, but it is evident that their mental _tone_ was high, that their minds had not been vulgarized by trash and sensationalism. Hamilton's sole bait was a lucid and engaging style, which would not puzzle the commonest intelligence, which he hoped might instruct without weighing heavily on the capacity of his humbler readers. That he was addressing the general voter, as well as the men of a higher grade as yet unconvinced, there can be no doubt, for as New York State was still seven-tenths Clintonian, conversion of a large portion of this scowling element was essential to the ratification of the Constitution. And yet he chose two men of austere and unimaginative style to collaborate with him; while his own style for purity, distinction, and profundity combined with simplicity, has never been excelled.

Betsey was ailing, and her doors closed to society; the children romped on the third floor or on the Battery. Hamilton wrote chiefly at night, his practice occupying the best of the hours of day, but he was sensible of the calm of his home and of its incentive to literary composition; it never occurred to him to open his office in the evening. Betsey, the while she knitted socks, listened patiently to her brilliant husband's luminous discussions on the new Constitution--which she could have recited backward--and his profound interpretation of its principles and provisions. If she worried over these continuous labours she made no sign, for Hamilton was racing Clinton, and there was not a moment to lose. Clinton won in the first heat. After a desperate struggle in the State Legislature the Hamiltonians succeeded in passing resolutions ordering a State Convention to be elected for the purpose of considering the Constitution; but the result in April proved the unabated power and industry of Clinton,--the first, and not the meanest of New York's political "bosses,"--for two-thirds of the men selected were his followers. The Convention was called for the 17th of June and it was rumoured that the Clintonians intended immediately to move an adjournment until the following year. According to an act of Congress the ratification of only nine States was necessary to the adoption of the Constitution. The others could come into the Union later if they chose, and there was a disposition in several States to watch the experiment before committing themselves. Hamilton, who knew that such a policy, if pursued by the more important States, would result in civil war, was determined that New York should not behave in a manner which would ruin her in the present and disgrace her in history, and wrote on with increasing vigour, hoping to influence the minds of the oppositionists elected to the Convention as well as the people at large. Even he had never written anything which had attracted so wide admiring and acrimonious attention. The papers were read in all the cities of the Confederation, and in such hamlets as boasted a mail-bag. When they reached England and France they were almost as keenly discussed. That they steadily made converts, Hamilton had cause to know, for his correspondence was overwhelming. Troup and General Schuyler attended to the greater part of it; but only himself could answer the frequent letters from leaders in the different states demanding advice. He thought himself fortunate in segregating five hours of the twenty-four for sleep. The excitement throughout the country was intense, and it is safe to say that nowhere and for months did conversation wander from the subject of politics and the new Constitution, for more than ten minutes at a time. In New York Hamilton was the subject of constant and vicious attack, the Clintonians sparing no effort to discredit him with the masses. New York City was nicknamed Hamiltonopolis and jingled in scurrilous rhymes. In the midst of it all were two diversions: the fourth of his children, and a letter which he discovered before General Schuyler or Troup had sorted his mail. As the entire Schuyler family were now in his house, and his new son was piercingly discontented with his lot, he took refuge in his chambers in Garden Street, until Betsey was able to restore peace and happiness to his home. The postman had orders to bring his mail-bag thither, and it was on the second morning of his exile that the perfume of violets caused him to make a hasty journey through the letters.

He found the spring sweetness coincidentally with a large square, flowingly superscribed. He glanced at the clock. His devoted assistants would not arrive for half an hour. He broke the seal. It was signed Eliza Capet Croix, and ran as follows:--

MY DEAR SIR: Do you care anything for the opinion of my humble sex,
I wonder? The humblest of your wondering admirers is driven beyond
the bounds of feminine modesty, sir, to tell you that what you do
not write she no longer cares to read. I was the first to detect--I
claim that honour--such letters by Publius as were not by your
hand, and while I would not disparage efforts so conscientious,
they seem to me like dawn to sunrise. Is this idle flattery? Ah,
sir! I too am greatly flattered. I do not want for admirers. Nor
can I hope to know--to know--so great and busy a man. But my
restless vanity, sir, compels me to force myself upon your notice.
I should die if I passed another day unknown to the man who gives
me the greatest pleasures of my life--I have every line you have
had printed that can be found, and half the booksellers in the
country searching for the lost copies of the _Continentalist_--I
should die, I say, if you were longer ignorant that I have the
intelligence, the ambition, and the erudition to admire you above
all men, living or dead. For that is my pride, sir. Perchance I was
born for politics; at all events you have made them my passion, and
I spend my days converting Clintonians to your cause. Do not scorn
my efforts. It is not every day that a woman turns a man's thoughts
from love to patriotism; I have heard that 'tis oftenest the other
way. But I take your time, and hasten to subscribe myself, my dear
sir,

Your humble and obd't servant

ELIZA CAPET CROIX.

The absence of superfluous capitals and of underscoring in this letter, alone would have arrested his attention, for even men of a less severe education than himself were liberal in these resources, and women were prodigal. The directness and precision were also remarkable, and he recalled that she was but nineteen. The flattery touched him, no doubt, for he was very human; and despite the brevity of his leisure, he read the note twice, and devoted a moment to conjecture.

"She is cleverer, even, than Lady Kitty, or Susan and Kitty Livingston, by this," he mused. "She would be worth knowing, did a driven mortal but have the time to idle in the wake of so much intelligence--and beauty. Not to answer this were unpardonable--I cannot allow the lady to die." He wrote her a brief note of graceful acknowledgement, which caused Mrs. Croix to shed tears of exultation and vexation. He acknowledged her but breathed no fervid desire for another letter. It is not to be expected that maturest nineteen can realize that, although a busy man will find time to see a woman if it be worth his while, the temptations to a romantic correspondence are not overwhelming.

Hamilton tore up the letter and threw it into the waste basket. Its perfume, delicate but imperious, intruded upon his brief. He dived into the basket as he heard Troup's familiar whistle, and thrust the pieces into a breast pocket. In a moment he remembered that Betsey's head would be pillowed upon that pocket at five in the afternoon, and he hastily extracted the mutilated letter, and applied a match to it, consigning women to perdition. Troup sniffed as he entered the room.

"Violets and burnt paper," remarked he. "'Tis a combination I have noticed before. I wonder will some astute perfumer ever seize the idea? It would have its guilty appeal for our sex--perchance for t'other; though I'm no cynic like you and Morris."

"Shut up," said Hamilton, "and get to work if you love me, for I've no time to write to St. Croix, much less waste five seconds on any woman."

That afternoon he wasted half an hour in search of a bunch of redolent violets to carry home to his wife. He pinned three on his coat.

V

When the 17th of June approached, Hamilton, John Jay, Chancellor Livingston, and James Duane, started on horse for Poughkeepsie, not daring, with Clinton on the spot, and the menace of an immediate adjournment, to trust to the winds of the Hudson. General Schuyler had promised to leave even a day sooner from the North, and the majority of Federal delegates had gone by packet-boat, or horse, in good season.

The old post road between New York and Albany was, for the greater part of the way, but a rough belt through a virgin forest. Occasionally a farmer had cleared a few acres, the lawns of a manor house were open to the sun, the road was varied by the majesty of Hudson and palisade for a brief while, or by the precipitous walls of mountains, so thickly wooded that even the wind barely fluttered their sombre depths. Man was a moving arsenal in those long and lonely journeys, for the bear and the panther were breeding undisturbed. But the month was hot, and those forest depths were very cool; the scenery was often as magnificent as primeval, and a generous hospitality at many a board dispelled, for an interval, the political anxiety of Hamilton and his companions.

Hamilton, despite a mind trained to the subordination of private interests to public duty, knew that it was the crisis of his own destiny toward which he was hastening. He had bound up his personal ambitions with the principles of the Federalist party--so called since the publication in book form of the Publius essays; for not only was he largely responsible for those principles, but his mind was too well regulated to consider the alternative of a compromise with a possibly victorious party which he detested. Perhaps his ambition was too vaulting to adapt itself to a restricted field when his imagination had played for years with the big ninepins of history; at all events, it was inseparably bound up with nationalism in the boldest sense achievable, and with methods which days and nights of severe thought had convinced him were for the greatest good of the American people. Union meant Washington in the supreme command, himself with the reins of government in both hands. The financial, the foreign, the domestic policy of a harmonious federation were as familiar to his mind as they are to us to-day. Only he could achieve them, and only New York could give him those reins of power.

It is true that he had but to move his furniture over to Philadelphia to be welcomed to citizenship with acclamation by that ambitious town; but not only was his pride bound up in the conquest of New York from Clintonism to Federalism, but New York left out of the Union, dividing as she did New England from the South and North, of the highest commercial importance by virtue of her central position and her harbour, meant civil war at no remote period, disunion, and the undoing of the most careful and strenuous labours of the nation's statesmen. That New York should be forced into the Union at once Hamilton was determined upon, if he had to resort to a coup which might or might not meet with the approval of the rest of the country. Nevertheless, he looked forward to the next few weeks with the deepest anxiety. An accident, an illness, and the cause was lost, for he made no mistake in estimating himself as the sole force which could bear Clinton and his magnificent organization to the ground. Hamilton was no party manipulator. He relied upon his individual exertions, abetted by those of his lieutenants,--the most high-minded and the ablest men in the country,--to force his ideas upon the masses by their own momentum and weight. Indeed, so individual did he make the management of the Federalist party, that years later, when the "Republican" leaders determined upon its overthrow, they aimed all their artillery at him alone: if he fell the party must collapse, on top of him; did he retain the confidence of the people, he would magnetize their obedience, no matter what rifts there might be in his ranks.

He had established a horse-express between Virginia and Poughkeepsie, and between New Hampshire and the little capital. Eight States having ratified, the signature of New Hampshire, the next in order, would mean union and a trial of the Constitution, a prospect which could not fail to influence the thinking men of the anti-Federal party; but it was from the ratification of Virginia that he hoped the greatest good. This State occupied much the same position in the South that New York did in the North, geographically, commercially, historically, and in the importance of her public men. And she was as bitterly opposed to union, to what a narrow provincialism held to be the humiliation of the States. Patrick Henry, her most powerful and eloquent leader, not through the selfish policy of a Clinton, but in the limitations of a too narrow genius, was haranguing with all his recuperated might against the sinister menace to the liberties of a people who had freed themselves of one despotism so dearly; and even Randolph, with characteristic hesitancy when approaching a point, was deficient in enthusiasm, although he intimated that he should vote for the unconditional adoption of the Constitution he had refused to sign. He and Marshall were Madison's only assistants of importance against the formidable opponent of union, and it was well understood among leaders that Jefferson, who was then American minister in France, gave the Constitution but a grudging and inconsistent approval, and would prefer that it failed, were not amendments tacked on which practically would nullify its energies. But although Hamilton had such lieutenants as John Jay, Philip Schuyler, Duane, and Robert Livingston, Madison had the inestimable, though silent, backing of Washington. The great Chief had, months since, forcibly expressed his sentiments in a public letter; and that colossal figure, the more potent that it was invisible and mute, guided as many wills as Madison's strenuous exertions and unanswerable dispassionate logic.

But Washington, although sufficiently revered by New Yorkers, was not their very own, as was he the Virginians'; was by no means so impinging and insistent as his excellency, Governor Clinton, he whose powerful will and personality, aided by an enterprise and wisdom that were not always misguided, for eleven years had compelled their grateful submission. It was difficult to convince New Yorkers that such a man was wholly wrong in his patriotism, particularly when their own interests seemed bound so firmly to his. It was this dominant, dauntless, resourceful, political nabob that Hamilton knew he must conquer single-handed, if he conquered him at all; for his lieutenants, able as they were, could only second and abet him; they had none of his fertility of resource. As he rode through the forest he rehearsed every scheme of counterplay and every method that made for conquest which his fertile brain had conceived. He would exercise every argument likely to appeal to the decent instincts of those ambitious of ranking as first-class citizens, as well as to the congenital selfishness of man, which could illuminate the darker recesses of their Clintonized understandings, and effect their legitimate conversion; then, if these higher methods failed, coercion.

"What imperious method are you devising, Hamilton?" asked Livingston. "Your lips are set; your eyes are almost black. I've seen you like that in court, but never in good company before. You look as if considering a challenge to mortal combat."

Hamilton's brow cleared, and he laughed with that mercurial lightness which did more to preserve the balance of what otherwise would have been an overweighted mind than any other quality it possessed.

"Well, am I not to fight a duel?" he asked. "Would that I could call Clinton out and settle the question as easily as that. I disapprove of duelling, but so critical a moment as this would justify anything short of trickery. We'll leave that to Clinton; but although there is no vast difference between my political and my private conscience, there are recourses which are as fair in political as in martial warfare, and I should be found ingenuous and incapable did I fail to make use of them."

"Well, you love a fight," said Jay, without experiencing the humour of his remark. "I believe you would rather fight than sit down in good company at any time, and you are notoriously convivial. But easy conquest would demoralize you. If I do not mistake, you have the greatest battle of your career, past or present, immediately ahead of you--and it means so much to all of us--I fear--I fear--"

"I will listen to no fears," cried Hamilton, who at all events had no mind to be tormented by any but his own. "Are we not alive? Are we not in health? Are not our intellectual powers at their ripest point of development? Can Clinton, Melancthon Smith, Yates, Lansing, Jones, make a better showing?"

"We are nineteen against forty-six," said Jay, with conceivable gloom.

"True. But there is no reason why we should not shortly be forty-six against nineteen."

"We certainly are Right against the most unstatesman-like Selfishness the world has ever seen," observed Duane.

"Would that experience justified us in thinking well enough of the human race to gather courage from that fact," replied Hamilton. "It is to the self-interest of the majority we shall have to appeal. Convince them that there is neither career nor prosperity for them in an isolated State, and we may drag them up to a height which is safer than their mire, simply because it is better, or better because it is safer. This is a time to practice patriotism, but not to waste time talking about it."

"Your remarks savour of cynicism," replied Jay, "but I fear there is much truth in them. It is only in the millennium, I suppose, that we shall have the unthinkable happiness of seeing on all sides of us an absolute conformity to our ideals."

In spite of the close, if somewhat formal, friendship between Jay and Hamilton, the latter was often momentarily depressed by the resemblance of this flawless character to, and its rigid contrasts from, his dead friend Laurens. Jay was all that Laurens had passionately wished to be, and apparently without effort; for nature had not balanced him with a redeeming vice, consequently with no power to inspire hate or love. Had he been a degree greater, a trifle more ambitious, or had circumstances isolated him in politics, he would have been an even lonelier and loftier figure than Washington, for our Chief had one or two redeeming humanities; as it was, he stood to a few as a character so perfect that they marvelled, while they deplored his lack of personal influence. But his intellect is in the rank which stands just beneath that of the men of genius revealed by history, and he hangs like a silver star of the tropics upon the sometimes dubious fields of our ancestral heavens. Nevertheless, he frequently inspired Hamilton with so poignant a longing for Laurens that our impetuous hero was tempted to wish for an exchange of fates.

"In the millennium we will all tell the truth and hate each other," answered Hamilton. "And we either shall all be fools, or those irritants will be extinct; in any case we shall be happy, particularly if we have someone to hate."

"Ah, now you jest," said Duane, smiling. "For you are logical or nothing. _You_ may be happy when on the warpath, but the rest of us are not. And you are the last man to be happy in a millennium by yourself."

They all laughed at this sally, for Hamilton was seldom silent. He answered lightly:--

"Someone to fight. Someone to love. Three warm friends. Three hot enemies. A sufficiency of delicate food and wine. A West Indian swimming-bath. Someone to talk to. Someone to make love to. War. Politics. Books. Song. Children. Woman. A religion. There you have the essence of the millennium, embroider it as you may."

"And scenery," added Jay, devoutly.

The road for the last quarter of an hour had led up a steep hill, above which other hills piled without an opening; and below lay the Hudson. As they paused upon the bare cone of the elevation, the river looked like a chain of Adirondack lakes, with dense and upright forests rising tier beyond tier until lost in the blue haze of the Catskills. The mountains looked as if they had pushed out from the mainland down to the water's edge to cross and meet each other. So close were the opposite crags that the travellers could see a deer leap through the brush, the red of his coat flashing through the gloomy depths. Below sped two packet-boats in a stiff breeze.

"Friends or enemies?" queried Livingston. "I wish I were with them, for I must confess the pleasures of horse travel for seventy-five miles must be the climax of a daily habit to be fully appreciated. It is all very well for Hamilton, who is on a horse twice every day; but as I am ten years older and proportionately stiffer, I shall leave patriotism to the rest of you for a day or two after our arrival."

Hamilton did not answer. He had become conscious of the delicate yet piercing scent of violets. Wild violets had no perfume, and it was long past their season. He glanced eagerly around, but without realizing what prompted a quick stirring of his pulses. There was but one tree on the crag, and he stood against it. Almost mechanically his glance sought its recesses, and his hand reached forward to something white. It was a small handkerchief of cambric and lace. The other men were staring at the scenery. He hastily glanced at the initials in the corner of the scented trifle, and wondered that he should so easily decipher a tangled E.C.C. But he marvelled, nevertheless, and thrust the handkerchief into his pocket.

They reached Poughkeepsie late in the afternoon. Main Street, which was the interruption of the post road, and East Street, which terminated the Dutchess turnpike, were gaily decorated with flags and greens, the windows and pavements crowded with people whose faces reflected the nervous excitement with which the whole country throbbed. The capital for ten years, the original village had spread over the hills into a rambling town of many avenues, straight and twisted, and there were pretentious houses and a certain amount of business. Hamilton and his party were stared at with deep curiosity, but not cheered, for the town was almost wholly Clintonian. The Governor had his official residence on the Dutchess turnpike, a short distance from town; and this was his court. Nevertheless, it was proudly conscious of the dignity incumbent upon it as the legislative centre of the State, and no matter what the suspense or the issue, had no mind to make the violent demonstrations of other towns. Nearly every town of the North, including Albany, had burned Hamilton in effigy, albeit with battered noses, for he had his followers everywhere; but here he was met with a refreshing coolness, for which the others of his party, at least, were thankful.

They went first to Van Kleek's tavern, on the Upper Landing Road, not far from the Court-house, to secure the rooms they had engaged; but finding an invitation awaiting them from Henry Livingston to make use of his house during the Convention, repaired with unmixed satisfaction to the large estate on the other side of the town. The host was absent, but his cousin had been requested to do the honours to as many as he would ask to share a peaceful retreat from the daily scene of strife.

"And it has the advantage of an assured privacy," said Hamilton. "For here we can hold conference nightly with no fear of eavesdropping. Moreover, to get a bath at Van Kleek's is as easy as making love to Clinton."

General Schuyler joined them an hour later. He had been in town all day, and had held several conferences with the depressed Federalists, who, between a minority which made them almost ridiculous, and uncomfortable lodgings, were deep in gloomy forebodings. As soon as they heard of their Captain's arrival they swarmed down to the Livingston mansion. Hamilton harangued them cheerfully in the drawing-room, drank with them, in his host's excellent wine, to the success of their righteous cause; and they retired, buoyant, confirmed in their almost idolatrous belief in the man who was responsible for all the ideas they possessed.

VI

Although Hamilton and Clinton had no liking for each other, they were far from being the furious principals in one of those political hatreds which the times were about to engender,--an intellectual cataclysm which Hamilton was to experience in all its blackness, of which he was to be the most conspicuous victim. He had by no means plumbed his depths as yet. So far he had met with few disappointments, few stumbling blocks, never a dead wall. Life had smiled upon him as if magnetized. At home he found perfect peace, abroad augmenting ranks of followers, sufficient work to use up his nervous energies, and the stimulant of enmity and opposition that he loved. It was long since he had given way to rage, although he flew into a temper occasionally. He told himself he was become a philosopher, and was far from suspecting the terrible passions which the future was to undam. His mother, with dying insight, had divined the depth and fury of a nature which was all light on the surface, and in its upper half a bewildering but harmonious intermingling of strength, energy, tenderness, indomitability, generosity, and intense emotionalism: a stratum so large and so generously endowed that no one else, least of all himself, had suspected that primeval inheritance which might blaze to ashes one of the most nicely balanced judgements ever bestowed on a mortal, should his enemies combine and beat his own great strength to the dust.

But when Hamilton and Clinton approached the Court-house from opposite directions, on the morning of the 17th, they did not cross the street to avoid meeting, although they bowed with extreme formality and measured each other with a keen and speculative regard. Clinton was now forty-nine years old, his autocratic will, love of power, and knowledge of men, in their contemptuous maturity. He was a large man, with the military bearing of the born and finished martinet, a long hard nose, and an irritated eye. The irritation kindled as it met Hamilton's, which was sparkling with the eager determination of a youth which, although desirable in itself, was become a presumption when pitted against those eighteen additional distinguished years of the Governor of New York. That there was a twinkle of amusement in the Federalist's eye was also to his discredit.

"The young fop," fumed Clinton, as he brushed a fleck of mud from his own magnificent costume of black ducape, "he is the _enfant gâté_ of politics, and I shall settle him here once for all. It will be a public benefaction."

The Court-house, which stood halfway up the hill, on the corner of Main and East streets, and was surrounded by the shade of many maples, was a two-story building of rough stones welded together by a ruder cement. The roof sloped, and above was a belfry. The Convention was held in the upper story, which was unbroken by partition; and with the windows open upon what looked to be a virgin forest, so many were the ancient trees remaining in the little town, the singing of birds, the shrilling of crickets, the murmur of the leaves in an almost constant breeze, the old Court-house of Poughkeepsie was by no means a disagreeable gathering-place. Moreover, it was as picturesque within as it was arcadian without; for the fine alert-looking men, with their powdered hair in queues, their elaborately cut clothes of many colours, made for the most part of the corded silk named ducape, their lawn and ruffles, made up the details of a charming picture, which was far from appealing to them, but which gives us a distinct pleasure in the retrospect.

Governor Clinton was elected the President of the Convention. On the right of the central table sat his forty-five henchmen, with Melancthon Smith, one of the most astute and brilliant debaters of the time, well to the front. Opposite sat Hamilton, surrounded by General Schuyler, Jay, Duane, and Robert Livingston, the rest of his small following close to the windows, but very alert, their gaze never ranging far from their leader. Beyond the bar crowded the invited guests, many of them women in all the finery of the time.

If the anti-Federalists had entertained the idea of an immediate and indefinite adjournment, they appear to have abandoned it without waste of time; perhaps because long and tedious journeys in midsummer were not to be played with; perhaps because they were sure of their strength; possibly because Clinton was so strongly in favour of arranging Hamilton's destinies once for all.

Certainly at the outset the prospects of the Federalists were almost ludicrous. The anti-Federalists were two-thirds against one-third, fortified against argument, uncompromisingly opposed to union at the expense of State sovereignty, clever and thinking men, most of them, devoted to Clinton, and admirably led by an orator who acknowledged no rival but Hamilton. The latter set his lips more than once, and his heart sank, but only to leap a moment later with delight in the mere test of strength.

Clinton's first move was to attempt a vote at once upon the Constitution as a whole, but he was beaten by Hamilton and many in his own ranks, who were in favour of the fair play of free debate. The Governor was forced to permit the Convention to go into a Committee of the Whole, which would argue the Constitution section by section. Hamilton had gained a great point, and he soon revealed the use he purposed to make of it.

It is doubtful if his own followers had anticipated that he would speak almost daily for three weeks, receiving and repelling the brunt of every argument; and certainly Clinton had looked for no such feat.

The contest opened on the Clintonian side, with the argument that an amended Confederation was all that was necessary for the purposes of a more general welfare. The plan advanced was that Congress should be given the power to compel by force the payment of the requisitions which the States so often ignored. Hamilton demolished this proposition with one of his most scornful outbursts.

Coerce the States! [he cried]. Never was a madder project devised!
Do you imagine that the result of the failure of one State to
comply would be confined to that State alone? Are you so willing to
hazard a civil war? Consider the refusal of Massachusetts, the
attempt at compulsion by Congress. What a series of pictures does
this conjure up? A powerful State procuring immediate assistance
from other States, particularly from some delinquent! A complying
State at war with a non-complying State! Congress marching the
troops of one State into the bosom of another! This State
collecting auxiliaries and forming perhaps a majority against its
Federal head! And can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a
government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting
itself?--a government that can exist only by the sword? And what
sort of a State would it be which would suffer itself to be used as
the instrument of coercing another? ... A Federal standing army,
then, must enforce the requisitions or the Federal treasury will be
left without supplies, and the government without support.... There
is but one cure for such an evil--to enable the national laws to
operate on individuals like the laws of the States. To take the old
Confederation as the basis of a new system, and to trust the sword
and the purse to a single assembly organized upon principles so
defective, giving it the full powers of taxation and the national
forces, would result in what--Despotism! To avoid the very issue
which appears to be held in such abject terror, a totally different
government from anything into which the old Confederation can be
twisted, or fitted out with wings and gables, must be established
with proper powers and proper checks and balances.

His words created a palpable uneasiness. The outburst was the more effective for following and preceding close passionless and pointed reasoning, a trenchant review of other republics ancient and modern, and an elaborate argument in favour of the representation prescribed by the new Constitution.

Hamilton was not only the most brilliant, resourceful, and unanswerable orator of his time, but he was gifted with an almost diabolical power over the emotions of men, which he did not hesitate to use. At this momentous assembly he kept them in exercise; when he chose, he made his audience weep; and the Clintonians weakened daily. Had not many years of trouble and anxiety made their emotions peculiarly susceptible, Hamilton would have attempted their agitation more sparingly; and had he been theatrical and rhetorical in his methods, he would have lost his control of them long before the end of the session. But he rarely indulged in a trope or a flight, never in bathos nor in bursts of ill-balanced appeal. Nothing ever was drier than the subjects he elucidated day after day for three weeks: for he took the Constitution to pieces bit by bit, and compelled them to listen to an analysis which, if propounded by another, would have bored them to distraction, vitally interested as they were. But he not only so illuminated the cold pages of the Constitution that while they listened they were willing to swear it was more beautiful than the Bible, but the torrent of his eloquence, never confusing, so sharp was every feature of the Constitution to his own mind, the magic of his personality, and his intense humanity in treating the driest sections of the document, so bewitched his audience that, even when he talked for six hours without pausing on the subject of taxation, perhaps the baldest topic which the human understanding is obliged to consider, there was not a sign of impatience in the ranks of the enemy.

He by no means harrowed them daily; he was far too astute for that. There were days together when he merely charmed them, and they sat with a warm unconscious smile while he demolished bit by bit one of Melancthon Smith's clever arguments, in a manner so courteous that even his victim could only shrug his shoulders, although he cursed him roundly afterward. Then, when his audience least expected an assault, he would treat them to a burst of scorn that made them hitch their chairs and glance uneasily at each other, or to a picture of future misery which reduced them to pulp.

Clinton was infuriated. Even he often leaned forward, forgetting his own selfish ambitions when Hamilton's thrilling voice poured forth a rapid appeal to the passions of his hearers; but he quickly resumed the perpendicular, and set his lips to imprison a scarlet comment. He saw that his men were weakening, and as much to the luminous expounding of the Constitution, to the logic of the orator, as to a truly satanic eloquence and charm. He held long private sessions at his mansion on the turnpike, where he was assisted by much material argument. But even Melancthon Smith, who distinguished himself in almost daily debate, acknowledged more than once that Hamilton had convinced him; and others asserted, with depression, that their minds, which they had supposed to be their own,--or Clinton's,--seemed to be in a process of remaking.

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

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

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

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

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

Again he says, in reply to Melancthon Smith:--

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

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

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

VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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