Chapter XXV: Book V: The Last Battle of the Giants and the End (3)

"So," he thought, "the end has come. My work is over, I suppose. Personally, I am of no account. All I would have demanded, by way of reward for services faithfully executed, was the health to make a decent living and ten or fifteen years of peaceful and uninterrupted intimacy with my family. For fame, or public honours, or brilliant successes of any sort, I have ceased to care. Nothing would tempt me to touch the reins of public life again unless in the event of a revolution. I believe I have crushed that possibility with this election; otherwise, I doubt if my knell would have sounded. On the bare possibility that such is not the case, and that my usefulness may not be neutralized by public doubt of my courage, I must accept this challenge, whether or not I have sufficient moral courage to refuse it. I believe I have; but that is neither here nor there, and I shall fall. Should I survive, the sole reason would be danger ahead. For the last two years I have felt myself moving steadily deathward. By this abrupt exit I but anticipate the inevitable a year or two, and doubtless it seems to the destiny that controls my affairs as the swiftest way to dispose of Burr, and awaken the country to the other dangers that menace it. To the last I am but a tool. No man was ever so little his own master, so thrust upon a planet for the accomplishment of public and impersonal ends alone. I have been permitted a certain amount of domestic felicity as my strength was best conserved thereby, my mind free to concentrate upon public duties. I was endowed with the gift of fascination, that men should follow me without question, and this country be served with immediate effectiveness, I have received deep and profound satisfaction from both these concessions, but it would not matter in the least if I had not. They were inevitable with the equipment for the part I had to play. I have had an astonishing and conquering career against the mightiest obstacles, and I may as a further concession, be permitted an enduring place in history; but that, also, is by the way. I conquered, not to gratify my love of power and to win immortal fame, but that I might accomplish the part for which I was whirled here from an almost inaccessible island fifteen hundred miles away--to play my part in the creation of this American empire. It has been a great part, creatively the greatest part. The proof that no native-born American could have played it lies in the fact that he did not. The greatest of her men have abetted me; not one has sought to push me aside and do my work. My only enemies have been those who would pull my structure down; the most ambitious and individual men in the Union, of the higher sort, are my willing followers. To win them I never plotted, nor did I ever seek to dazzle and blind them. Part of my equipment was the power to convince them without effort of my superior usefulness; there was no time to lose. I am nothing but a genius, encased in such human form as would best serve its purpose; an atom of the vast creative Being beyond the Universe, loaned for an infinitesimal part of time to the excrescence calling itself The United States of North America, on the dot called Earth. Now the part is played, and I am to be withdrawn. That my human heart is torn with insupportable anguish, matters not at all. I leave that behind."

Hamilton had been bred in the orthodox religion of his time, and its picturesqueness, including its ultimates of heaven and hell, had taken firm hold of his ardent imagination. But in his cosmic moments the formulations of this planet played no part.

"I have not even a mother-country," he thought. "I am a parent, not a child. My patriotism has been that of a tigress for her young, not of a man for his fatherland. God knows I am willing, and always have been, to die for this country, which is so much my own, but why--why--need I have been made so human? Could I not have understood men as well? Could I not have performed my various part without loving my wife and children, my friends, with the deepest tenderness and passion of which the human heart is capable? Then I would go without a pang, for I am tired, and death would be a relief. But, since all humanity was forced into me, why should not I, now that I have faithfully done my part, be permitted a few years of happiness by my hearthstone?"

He raised his hands as if to shut out the cold high stars. He had had few bitter moments since the night, four years before, when he had deliberately exorcised bitterness and hate; and that mellowness had come to him which came to his great rivals in their old age. But to-night he let the deeps rise. He ached with human wants, and he was bidden to work out his last act of service to the country for whose sole use he had been sent to Earth.

He dropped his hands and stared at the worlds above. "Must I go on?" he thought. "Is that it? Does other work await me elsewhere? Has the Almighty detached from himself a few creative egos, who go from world to world and do their part; removed the day their usefulness is over, that they shall not dissipate their energy, nor live until men regard with slighting wonder the work of the useless old creature in their midst, withdraw from it their first reverence? I go in the fulness of my maturity and the high tide of respect and affection; I go in the dramatic manner of my advent, and my work will be a sacred thing;--even my enemies will not dare to pull it down until such time as they are calm enough to see it as it is; and then the desire will have passed. Doubtless all things are best and right.... Maturity? I feel as old as time and as young as laughter."

He sat up suddenly and bent his head. Millions of tiny bells were ringing through the forest. So low, so golden, so remote they sounded, that they might have hung in the stars above or in the deeps of the earth. He listened so intently for a moment that life seemed suspended, and he saw neither the cool dark forest nor the silver ripple of the Hudson, but a torn and desolate land, and a gravestone at his feet. Then he passed his hand over his forehead with a long breath, and went softly into the drawing-room.

Angelica sat at the piano, with her head thrown back, her long fair hair hanging to the floor. Her dark eyes were blank, but her fingers shook from the keys the music of a Tropic night. It was a music that Hamilton had not sent a thought after since the day he landed in America, thirty-one years ago. It had come to her, with other memories, by direct inheritance.

He went to the dining room hastily and poured out a glass of wine. When he returned, Angelica, as he expected, was half lying in a chair, white and limp.

"Drink this," he said, in the bright peremptory manner to which his children were accustomed. "I think you are not strong enough yet to indulge in composition. You have grown too fast, and creation needs a great deal of physical vigour. Now run to bed, and forget that you can play a note."

Angelica sipped the wine obediently, and bade him good night. As she toiled up the stairs she prayed for the physical strength that would permit her to become the great musician of her ambitious dreams. Her prayer was answered; the great strength came to her, and her music was the wonder of those who listened; but they were very few.

Hamilton went into his library, prepared to write until morning. Bitterness and cosmic curiosity had vanished; he was the practical man, with a mass of affairs to arrange during the few days that were left to him. But he did no work that night. The door-knocker pounded loudly. The servants had gone to bed. He took a lamp, and unchained and unlocked the front door, wondering what the summons meant, for visitors in that lonely spot were rare after nightfall. A woman stood in the heavy shade of the porch, and behind her was a carriage. She wore a long thin pelisse; and the hood was drawn over her face. Nevertheless, she hesitated but a moment. She lifted her head with a motion of haughty defiance that Hamilton well remembered, and stepped forward.

"It is I, Hamilton," she said. "I have come to have a few words with you alone, and I shall not leave until--"

"Come in, by all means," said Hamilton, politely. "You were imprudent to choose such a dark night, for the roads are dangerous. When you return I will send a servant ahead of you with a lantern."

He led the way to the library and closed the door behind them. Madame Jumel threw off her cloak, and stood before him in the magnificence of cloth of gold and many diamonds. Her neck blazed, and the glittering tower of her hair was a jewel garden. She was one of the women for whom splendour of attire was conceived, and had always looked her best when in full regalia. To-night she was the most superb creature that man had ever seen or dreamed of. Even her great eyes looked like jewels, deep and burning as that blue jewel of the West Indies, the Caribbean Sea; but her lips and cheeks were like soft pink roses. Hamilton had seen her many times since the day of parting, for she went constantly to the theatre, and had been invited to the larger receptions until her reckless Jacobinism had put the final touch to the disapproval of Federal dames; but he had never seen her in such beauty as she was to-night. Eleven years had perfected this beauty, taken from it nothing. He sighed, and the past rose for a moment; but it seemed a century behind him.

"Will you not sit down?" he asked. "Can I fetch you a glass of wine? I remember you never liked it, but perhaps, after so long a drive--"

"I do not wish any wine," said Madame Jumel, shortly. She was nonplussed by this matter-of-fact acceptance of a situation which she had intended should be intensely dramatic. She was not yet gone, however.

"No one ever could get the best of you, Hamilton," she exclaimed. "I have come here to-night--how terribly delicate you look," she faltered, with a sudden pallor. "I have not seen you for so long--"

"My health does not give me the least concern," said Hamilton, hurriedly, wondering if he could lay his hand on a bottle of smelling-salts without awaking his wife. "Pray go on. To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

Madame Jumel rose and swept up and down the long room twice. "Can there be anything in that tale of royal blood?" thought Hamilton. "Or in that other tale of equally distinguished parentage?"

She had paused with her back to him, facing one of the bookcases.

"Classics, classics, classics!" she exclaimed, in a voice which grew steadier as she proceeded. "That was the only taste we did not share. Don Quixote in Spanish, Dante and Alfieri in Italian; and all the German brutes. Ah! Voltaire! Rousseau! What superb editions! No one can bind but the French. And the dear old _Moniteur_--all bound for posterity, which will never look at it."

She returned and stood before him, and she was quite composed.

"I came to tell you," she said, "that when you die, it will be by the hand of my deputy. I tell you because I am determined that your last earthly thought shall be of me."

"_Cherchez la femme--toujours!_ Why are you doing this?" he asked curiously. "You no longer love me, and your hate should have worn out long since."

"Neither my hate nor my love has ceased for a second. I married Jumel for these jewels, for the courts of Europe, for a position in this country which the mighty Schuylers cannot take from me again. But I would fly with you to-morrow, and live with you in a hole under ground. I came to make no such proposal, however; I know that you would sacrifice even your family to your honour, and everything else in life to them. For years I waited, hoping that you would suddenly come back to me, hating you and injuring you in every way my Jacobinism could devise, but ready to wipe your shoes with my hair the moment you appeared. Now the hard work of your life is over. You look forward to years of happiness with your family on this beautiful estate, while I am married to a silly old Frenchman--who, however, has brought me my final means of revenge. I know you well. You would rather be alive now than at any time of your life. Well, you shall go. And I would pray, if that were my habit, that into these last days you may condense all the agonies of parting from those you love that I have ached and raged through in these eleven long years."

"God knows I have bitterly regretted that you should suffer for my passions. And, if it is any satisfaction to you, I go unwillingly, and the parting will be very bitter."

She drew a sharp breath, and flung her head about. "One cannot triumph over you!" she cried. "Why was I such a fool as to come here to-night? My imagination would have served me better."

"Is it French money?" asked Hamilton.

"Yes, but I alone am responsible. We handle immense sums, and its disposal is left to our discretion. This will be distasteful neither to France nor Virginia,--I suppose I may have Louisiana, if I want it!--but I am no man's agent in this matter."

"You are magnificent! It is quite like you to disdain to share your terrible responsibility. I can lighten it a little. I shall not shoot Burr."

"I should rather you did. Still, it does not matter. He will be disposed of, and I shall lead the hue and cry."

"You are young to be so brutal. Will your conscience never torment you?"

"I have too much brain to submit to conscience, and you know it. I shall suffer the torments of the damned, but not from conscience. But I would rather suffer with you out of the world than in it. I have stood that as long as a mere mortal can stand anything. Revenge is not my only motive. Either you or I must go, and as I have now found the means of boundless distraction, I live. I have been on the point of killing myself and you more than once. But my power to injure you gave me an exquisite satisfaction; and then, I always hoped. Now the time for the _period_ has come." Her chin sank to her neck, and she stared at him until her eyes filled. "Do you love them so much more than you ever loved me?" she asked wistfully.

Hamilton turned away his head. "Yes," he said.

She drew a long shivering breath. "Ah!" she said. "You are a frail shadow of yourself. You have no passion in you. And yet, even as you are, I would fling these jewels into the river, and live with you until you died in my arms. You may think me a monster, if you like, but you shall die knowing that your wife does not love you as I do."

Hamilton leaned forward and dried her tears. "Say that you forgive me," she said; for audacity was ever a part of genius.

"Yes," he said grimly, "I forgive you. You and Bonaparte are the two magnificent products of the French Revolution. I am sorry you are not more of a philosopher, but, so far as I alone am concerned, I regret nothing."

"Oh, men!" she exclaimed, with scorn. "They are always philosophers when they are no longer in love with a woman. But you will give me your last conscious moment?"

"No," he said deliberately, "I shall not."

She sprang to her feet. "You will! Thank you for saying that, though! I was about to grovel at your feet. Take me to my coach! What a fool I was to come here!" She seized her pelisse, and wound it about her as she ran down the hall. Hamilton followed, insisting that she give him time to awaken a servant. But she would not heed. She flung herself into her coach, and called to the driver to gallop his horses, unless he wished to lose his place on the morrow. Hamilton stood on the porch, listening to the wild flight down the rough hill through the forest But it was unbroken, so long as he could hear anything, and he laughed suddenly and entered the house.

"The high farce of tragedy," he thought. "Probably a mosquito will settle on Burr's nose as he fires, and my life be spared."

X

The challenge was delivered on Wednesday. Hamilton refused to withdraw his services from his clients in the midst of the Circuit Court, and July 11th, a fortnight later, was appointed for the meeting. When Hamilton was not busy with the important interests confided to him by his clients, he arranged his own affairs, and drew up a document for publication, in the event of his death, in which he stated that he had criticised Burr freely for years, but added that he bore him no ill-will, that his opposition had been for public reasons only, that his impressions of Burr were entertained with sincerity, and had been uttered with motives and for purposes which appeared to himself commendable. He announced his intention to throw away his fire, and gave this reason for yielding to a custom which he had held in avowed abhorrence: "The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular."

Burr spent several hours of each day in pistol practice, using the cherry trees of Richmond Hill as targets. Thurlow Weed, in his "Autobiography," has told of Burr's testament, written on the night before the duel. Having neither money nor lands, but an infinitude of debts, to bequeath his daughter, he left her a bundle of compromising letters from women. The writers moved in circles where virtue was held in esteem, and several were of the world of fashion. They had, with the instinct of self-defence, which animates women even in that stage where they idealize the man, omitted to sign their names. Burr supplied the omission in every case and added the present address. That Hamilton would throw away his fire was a possibility remote from the best effort of Burr's imagination, and although he knew that no one could fire more quickly than himself, he was not the man to go to the ground unprepared for emergencies: if his daughter, now Mrs. Alston, would obey his hint and blackmail, she might realize a pretty fortune. That Theodosia Burr, even with the incentive of poverty, would have sunk to such ignominy, no one who knows the open history of her short life will believe; but the father, whose idol she was, insulted her and stained her memory, too depraved and warped to understand nobility in anyone, least of all in one of his own blood. In the study of lost souls Burr has appealed to many analysts, and by no one has been made so attractive as by Harriet Beecher Stowe; who, knowing naught by experience of men of the world, either idealized them as interesting villains or transformed them into beasts. In Burr she saw the fallen angel, and bedewed him with many Christian tears. But I doubt if Burr, the inner and real Burr, had far to fall. His visible divergence from first conditions was as striking as, no doubt, it was natural. As the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the son of the Reverend Aaron Burr, and reared by relatives of that same morbid, hideous, unhuman school of early New England theology, it only needed a wayward nature in addition to brain and spirit to send him flying on his own tangent as soon as he was old enough to think. After that his congenital selfishness did the rest. For a time he climbed the hill of prizes very steadily, taking, once in a way, a flight, swift as an arrow: in addition to great ability at the bar, and a cunning which rose to the dignity of a talent, he was handsome, magnetic, well-bred, and polished, studied women with the precision of a vivisectionist, assumed emotions and impulses he could not feel with such dexterity that even men yielded to his fascination until they plumbed him; had in fact many of the fleeting kindly instincts to which every mortal is subject who is made of flesh and blood, or comes of a stock that has been bred to certain ideals. Every wretch has a modicum of good in him, and in spite of the preponderance of evil in Burr, had he been born under kindly Southern skies with a gold spoon in his mouth, if, when ambitions developed, he had had but to stretch out his hand to pluck the prizes of life, instead of exercising the basest talents of his brain to overreach more fortunate men, why it is possible that his nature might not have hardened into a glacier: its visible third dazzling and symmetrical, its deadly bulk skulking below the surface of the waters which divided the two parts of him from his victims; might have died in the chaste reclusion of an ancestral four-poster, beneficiaries at his side. But that immalleable mind lacked the strong fibre of logic and foresight--which is all that moral force amounts to--that lifts a man triumphant above his worst temptations; and he paid the bitter and hideous penalty in a poverty, loneliness, and living death that would have moved the theologians of his blood to the uneasy suspicion that punishment is of this earth, a logical sequence of foolish and short-sighted acts. Both men and women are allowed a great latitude in this world; they have little to complain of. It is only when the brain fails in its part, or the character is gradually undermined by lying and dishonour, that the inevitable sequence is some act which arouses the indignation of society or jerks down the iron fist of the law. When Burr took to the slope he slid with few haltings. In his long life of plottings and failures, from his sympathy with the Conway Cabal to his desperate old age, there were no depths of blackguardism that he did not touch. Whether Madame Jumel spoke the truth or not to Hamilton on that night of their last interview, it was entirely in keeping with his life and character that he should kill for hire.

On the Fourth of July, the Society of the Cincinnati gave its annual dinner. This society, then the most distinguished in the Union, and membered by men who had fought in the War of Independence, had, upon the death of Washington, their first President, elected Hamilton to the vacant office. He presided at this banquet, and never had appeared nor felt happier. Not only did that peculiar exaltation which precedes certain death possess him, as it possesses all men of mettle and brain in a like condition, but the philosophy which had been born in him and ruled his imagination through life had shrugged its shoulders and accepted the inevitable. Hamilton knew that his death warrant had been signed above, and he no longer experienced a regret, although he had often felt depressed and martyred when obliged to go to the courts of Albany and leave his family behind him. He had lost interest in his body; his spirit, ever, by far, the strongest and the dominant part of him, seemed already struggling for its freedom, arrogant and blithe as it approached its final triumph. There is nothing in all life so selfish as death; and the colossal ego which genius breeds or is bred out of, isolated Hamilton even more completely than imminent death isolates most men. The while he gave every moment he could spare to planning the future comfort and welfare of his family, he felt as if he had already bade them farewell, and wondered when and how he should meet them again.

At this gathering he was so gay and sportive that he infected the great company, and it was the most hilarious banquet in the society's history. The old warriors sighed, and wondered at his eternal youth. When he sprang upon the table and sang his old camp-song, "The Drum," he looked the boy they remembered at Valley Forge and Morristown. There was only one member of the company who was unelectrified by the gay abandon of the evening, and his sombre appearance was so marked in contrast that it was widely commented on afterward. Burr frequently leaned forward and stared at Hamilton in amazement. As the hilarity waxed, his taciturnity deepened, and he finally withdrew.

The secret was well kept. Few knew of the projected meeting, and none suspected it, although Burr's pistol practice aroused some curiosity. He had been a principal in a number of duels, and killed no one. But he was known to have more than one bitter score to pay, for this last campaign had exceeded every other in heat and fury. So many duels had studded it, and so many more impended, that the thinking men of the community were roused to a deep disapproval of the custom. The excitement and horror over the sacrifice of Hamilton, full-blew this sentiment.

On Saturday, Hamilton gave a dinner at the Grange, and a guest was one of Washington's first aides, Colonel Trumbull. As he was leaving, Hamilton took him aside and said, with an emphasis which impressed Trumbull even at the moment: "You are going to Boston. You will see the principal men there. Tell them from me, as my request, for God's sake to cease these conversations and threatings about a separation of the Union. It must hang together as long as it can be made to. If this Union were to be broken, it would break my heart."

The following day preceded the duel. Hamilton attended an entertainment given by Oliver Wolcott, whose fortunes he had made, raising the capital of a business that could be presided over by no one so well as a former Secretary of the Treasury. It was a large reception, and he met many of his old friends. Lady Kitty Duer, widowed, but pleasantly circumstanced, was there, and Kitty Livingston, once more bearing her old name in a second marriage. Bitter as the feeling between her house and Hamilton still was, she had declared long since that she would not cut him again; and although they never met in private, they often retired to a secluded corner at gatherings and talked for an hour. His first reason for attending this reception was to shake her hand as they parted. Madame Jumel was there, paling the loveliness of even the young daughters of Mrs. Jay and Lady Kitty Duer. Those who did not mob about Hamilton surrounded her, and although her cheek was without colour, she looked serene and scornful.

After the reception Hamilton spent an hour with Troup. This oldest of his friends, and Angelica, were the only people whose suspicion he feared. Troup was quite capable of wringing Burr's neck, and his daughter of taking some other desperate measure. But it was long now since he had given Angelica reason for anxiety, and she had ceased to watch him; and to-day, Troup, whom he had avoided hitherto, was treated to such a flow of spirits that he not only suspected nothing, but allowed himself to hope that Hamilton's health was mending. Hamilton dared not even hold his hand longer than usual at parting, although he longed to embrace him.

That night, in the late seclusion of his library, Hamilton wrote two letters to his wife, in one of which he recommended Mrs. Mitchell to her care; then the following to Sedgwick, still a close friend, and probably the most influential man in New England:--

NEW YORK, July 10th, 1804.

MY DEAR SIR: I have received two letters from you since we last saw
each other--that of the latest date being the twenty-fourth of May.
I have had on hand for some time a long letter to you, explaining
my view of the course and tendency of our politics, and my
intentions as to my own future conduct. But my plan embraced so
large a range, that, owing to much avocation, some indifferent
health, and a growing distaste for politics, the letter is still
considerably short of being finished. I write this now to satisfy
you that want of regard for you has not been the cause of my
silence.

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

A.H.

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

XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, not this time," said Hamilton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He died at two o'clock in the afternoon.

XII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It bears this inscription:

TO THE MEMORY OF

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

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

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

HE DIED JULY 12TH 1804, AGED 47

NOTES

PAGE XI. "Nevis" is pronounced Neevis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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