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ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
A STUDY
OF THE
REVOLUTION AND THE UNION.
% 8_S / 2
~~~~~"
A N A D D F E SS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
MICHIGAN, DECEMBER Io, 1880.
BY
JOHN CLARK g|DPATH, LL. H
*
3 ºf
\\
W
“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, in-
sure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of North America.”—A. H.
CINCINNATI :
JONES BROTHERS AND COMPANY.
1881.
NOTE.
Por the privilege of using the admirač/e
portrait of Hamilton, which appears in this
monograph, the author is 2ndebted to the dis-
ſinguished courtesy of the A/onorać/e George
Shea, from whose exce//ent work, “The Zife
and Æðoch of Hamz/ton,” the picture is taken
ôy permission and favor of the Žuć/shers,
A ſoughton, Mifflin & Co., of Boston.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
*-ºs-
LADIES AND GENTI.EMEN :
Revolutions, like all other social phenomena,
are evolved out of preexisting conditions. They spring
from the action of antecedent forces. When these forces
are present the revolution follows as naturally and inevitably
as a conflagration bursts forth from the impact of heat with
combustibles. In the seemingly irregular course of human
society certain tendencies appear; they gather head; they
become confluent with other tendencies of a like or con-
tradictory nature; they break the barriers which are
imposed to restrain them, and sweep away the political out-
lines of the past. It is thus that the old forms of society
are uprooted, that old institutions are prostrated in the
dust, and that old customs are destroyed. Without the an-
tecedent forces, no revolution can exist, any more than an
uncaused phenomenon can be found in physical nature.
With the preexisting conditions, the revolution is as sure to
appear as the sun is to rise, or the tides to follow the moon.
It must be understood as a primary truth that the political
cataclysms and social disturbances of mankind occur in
obedience to a law which prevails alike in the plant, the
animal, and the man—the law of progress by evolution,
involving the destruction of the old form by the under-
growth of the new. e
While it is true that revolutions result from antecedent
conditions; while it is true that the general character of a
2 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
revolution will be determined by the nature of the forces
which produce it, it is also true that the particular aspect
of the struggle, the peculiar bias and direction of the event,
will be traceable in a large measure to the personal agency
of the men by whom the revolution is directed. Leader-
ship is a necessary part and parcel of every social conflict;
and the quality of this leadership determines in no small
degree the nature and result of the struggle. This is the
point of view, indeed, from which man as an individual
seems to exercise the largest influence on the destinies of
his race. In a revolution man, as man, becomes colossal.
He seems to others, and perhaps to himself, to be a creator
of the events among which he moves and acts. The
powerful impress of his form and fatherhood is stamped
upon the features of the age and transmitted to the gener-
ations following. In the stormy period of revolt and disso-
lution, human society receives the impress of the master
spirit and bears it forward forever.
Thus it may be seen that general causes, extending
back through the centuries, springing from diverse races in
different quarters of the globe, and drifting hitherward from
the ages past, join at last with personal agency and co-
operate with the individual wills of men in producing the
critical epochs in human history.
In the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the hereditary impulses
of Brahminism, transmitted for thousands of years; the in-
fluence of the Hindu astrologers in predicting that the return
of the Sumbut, 1914, which was completed in the year of
the outbreak, would end the domination of Great Britian in
India; and the peculiar character of Indian society, fixed by
the traditions of centuries—all fretting against the regularity
of British discipline and the stubborn precision of the provin-
cial government, were the general causes which produced
ALEXAAWDER HAMILTON. 3
the outbreak and converted rebellion into revolution. But the
personal character of the audacious private, Mungul Pandy;
of Nana Sahib, Rajah of Bithoor; of the King of Delhi, and
of the ferocious princess of Jhansi, were the personal forces
which gave to the rebellion its peculiar character, converting
revolt into ruin, and local mutiny into universal massacre.
It would be easy to show that the preeminence of Spain
in the fifteenth century was traceable to the superiority of the
Visigothic constitution and laws adopted eight hundred years
before, at the great councils of Toledo. It would also be
easy to show that the prevalence of the spirit of political free-
dom in the Low Countries was traceable to the predominance
of free institutions planted there by the Teutonic tribes, and to
the great number of walled towns and chartered cities which,
dotting the face of the country, became the nuclei of political
agitation; and it would be easy to show that it was the con-
fluence of these two adverse currents in the tides of civiliza-
tion which caused the revolt of the Netherlands and gave to
history one of its most heroic episodes. But it was the per-
sonal character and will of the silent Prince of Orange, of Olden
Barneveldt, of Count Egmont and Count Horn, and of Mau-
rice, of Nassau, that impressed upon the contest its peculiar
features of grandeur, turned revolt into reform, and contribu-
ted to the annals of mankind the story of the Dutch Republic.
In that great struggle of the seventeenth century, which
temporarily overthrew the institutions of England, dethron-
ed and beheaded the king, upheaved the foundations of
the monarchy, and revolutionized the social order, we see
the action of antecedents older than the Stuart kings, older
than the house of Tudor, older than Runnymede, older than
England itself. But the immediate character of the conflict,
its grandeur and its folly, were determined by the personal
prowess, the will, the persistence, and the indomitable he-
4 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
roism of Cromwell and Pym, of Milton and Hampden, of
Hugh Peters and Sir Henry Vane.
Likewise in the terrible regeneration of France we be-
hold on the one side the action of forces whose roots, pierc-
ing the lethargy of preceding centuries, struck down into
the soil of feudalism, taking hold of the house of Capet,
twining about all the traditions of legitimacy, and fastening
at last on the pretensions of mediaeval Rome; while on the
other side we see the impulses of democratic opinion, born
perhaps in the free cities of the twelfth century, spreading
gradually among the people, incorporated by the Encyclo-
pedists in the new French philosophy, springing in little
jets of flame through the pages of Rousseau and Voltaire,
and finally bursting forth in a tempest of purifying fire. But
the peculiar character of the conflict—its violence, its ruin-
ous excesses, its madness, its frenzy, its bravado aud de-
fiance of heaven and earth, its glory and grandeur and blood,
were traceable to the will and purpose and power of Con-
dorcet and Roland, of Mirabeau and Danton, of Robespierre
and Marat, of Demouriez and Bonaparte.
It is thus that the local and limited influence of man,
combining with the general tides of causation which pulsate
through all times and conditions, becomes a factor in the
history of his own and succeeding ages. He is a special
cause attached to the side of a larger cause and cooperat-
ing with it in directing and controlling the events of his
epoch. He is the individual atom in the tides of fate—the
personal impulse in the general destinies of the world.
THE AMERICAN REvolution was one of the most heroic
events in the history of mankind. It was not lacking in any
element of glory. Whether considered with reference to
the general causes which produced it, or viewed with re-
spect to the personal agency by which it was accomplished,
ALEXAAWDER HAMIL TOW. 5
the struggle of our fathers for liberty suffers not by com-
parison with the grandest conflicts of ancient or modern
times. The motives which those great men might justly
plead for breaking their allegiance to the British crown and
organizing a rebellion; the patient self-restraint with which
they bore for fifteen years a series of aggressłions and out-
rages which they knew to be utterly subversive of the lib-
erties of Englishmen; the calmness with which they pro-
ceeded from step to step in the attempted maintenance of
their rights by reason; the readiness with which they opened
their hearts to entertain the new angels of liberty; the back-
ward look which they cast through sighs and tears at their
abandoned loyalty to England; the fiery zeal and brave re-
solve with which at last they drew their swords, trampled
in mire and blood the hated banner of St. George, and raised
a new flag in the sight of the nations; the personal character
and genius of the men who did it—their loyal devotion to
principle, their fidelity, their courage, their lofty purpose and
unsullied patriotism—all conspire to stamp the struggle with
the impress of immortal grandeur.
In their ragged regimentals
Stood the old continentals,
Yielding not,
When the grenadiers went lungeing,
And like hail fell the plunging
Cannon shot;
When the files
Of the Isles,
From the smoky night encampment, bore the ban-
ner of the rampant
Unicorn,
And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the roll
of the drummer,
Through the morn
Let us for a brief space consider what the American
Revolution really was. Let us determine, if we may, some-
6 ALEXANDER HAMIL TO AV.
thing of the nature and causes of the great event, and learn
thereby its true place in history. Thus shall we be able
more fully to appreciate the personal part which the men
of our heroic age contributed to the glory of their own and
the welfare of after times.
When, in the fifth century, the barbarians burst in upon
the Roman Empire of the West and destroyed it, they
were under the leadership of military chieftains. These
savage leaders believed themselves, and were believed to be,
the offspring of the gods of the North—descendants of
Woden and Thor. The half Latinized Keltic populations of
the Provinces were quickly reduced to serfdom. They
were no match for the Teutonic warriors. These chiefs
and their followers, coming out of the cheerless woods of
the North, found little to admire in the city life of the
Romans. They preferred rather to seek for their new
abodes the fastnesses of the rocks and the solitudes of the
forest. It thus came to pass that in all the country districts
of Europe the institutions of feudalism sprang naturally out
of the conditions consequent upon the barbarian invasion.
In the cities and towns were the remains of the old urban
activities. Here the municipal system of the Romans was
not extinguished. Here was perpetuated the tradition of
the glory and the grandeur of the Empire. Here the
bishops and priests of the papal see labored assiduously to
keep alive the remembrance of that great power under
whose shadow they had found refuge and strength. And
so with perpetual iteration they poured into the ears of the
magistrates and barons the story of the grandeur and renown
of that mighty dominion which, under the sanction of heaven,
had combined in itself all the elements of legitimate authority.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, are the materials out of
which has been builded the vast structure called European
A LE XANZ) ER HAMILTON. 7
Monarchy. I can not elaborate. I can only call your attention
to the fact that these elements of monarchy were fused in
the fiery heats of the Crusades when all Europe, peasant
and lord, serf and nobleman, priest and king, flung them-
selves with blind fanaticism against the defilers of the holy
places of the East. Since that event monarchy has been
the central feature in the physiognomy of the West. From
the twelfth to the eighteenth century monarchical institu-
tions became the be-all and the end-all of Europe. The
annals of the European states became the annals of their
kings. In Germany, under Sigismund and Maximilian I.;
in Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella; in France, under
Louis XI.; and in England, under the Plantagenets and
Tudors—everywhere the institution of monarchy grew into
a power and grandeur unknown since the decadence of the
Roman Empire. Let us then inquire what this thing
called monarchy really was.
I. European monarchy was a colossal edition of feudal
chieftainship. The king was simply a suzerain on a gigan-
tic scale. Whatever of arrogance and pride and self-will
the baronial warrior of the eleventh century felt in his castle
halls, that, the typical European king of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries assumed in grander style in his palace
and court. It implied a prince lifted immeasurably above
his subjects. It implied a people without political rights,
dependent for life and liberty upon the pleasure of the king—
peasants and serfs whose property might be taken at will,
whose lives might be exposed in lawless wars, whose bodies
might be used or abused, whose minds might be rightfully
kept in the clouds of perpetual night. -
2. Monarchy was the embodiment of ecclesiastical dom-
ination over secular society. The king was either the head
of the church or its obedient servant. The bishops, for
\
8 ALEXAAWDER HAMIL 7"OA".
their own good, told the monarch that his right to be king
came down out of the skies; that he was by the will of
heaven born a prince ; that his authority was by the grace
of God, and that his person was sacred both by the fact of
his royal birth and by the manipulation of the priest on the
day of coronation. Thus was the arrogance of the feudal
baron bound up with the presumption of the ecclesiastical
bigot in the person of the king.
3. As a necessary prop and stay of the system stood a
graduated order of nobility: dukes who could touch the
hem of the royal garment; marquises who could touch the
the hem of the duke; knights who could touch the hem
of the marquis ; lords who could touch the hem of the
knight; esquires who could touch the hem of his lordship.
4. As a necessary prop and stay of the graduated nobility
stood the principle of primogeniture. For it was manifest
that the splendors and virtues of royalty and its dependent
orders could never be maintained if the blood in which its
glory dwelt was allowed, according to nature's plan, to dif-
fuse and spread into a multitude of vulgar kinsmen.
5. As a necessary prop and stay of the law of primo-
geniture was the doctrine of entails by which landed
estates and all similar properties should tend to concentrate
in certain lines of descent, and thereby be maintained in
perpetual solidarity. Not only should the first-born receive
the titles and nobility of the father, but he should in like
manner inherit the estates to the exclusion of collateral heirs.
6. As to the methods of government, the king should not be
hampered by constitutional limitations. Ministers and par-
liaments were not needed except to carry out the sovereign's
mandates; and popular assemblies, in addition to being the
hot-beds of sedition, were an impediment to goverment and
a menace to civil authority.
JALEXA WDER HAMILTON. 9
7. The people existed for the king's pleasure; the world
was made for the king to act in; and heaven was origi-
nally designed for the king's abode.
Such was the incubus. Sometimes the people struggled
to throw it off. In England they struck down the dragon,
but he arose and crushed their bones. Under William III.
there was a brief spasm of Whig virtue, but with the acces-
sion of the Hanoverian blockheads the old methods came
back; the Georges adopted the maxims of the Jacobites,
and the dog returned to his vomit.
... Now it was against this whole monstrous thing, this
/ whole system of despotic rule, against its principles, against
f its spirit, against its pretensions, against its tendencies, against
its sham methods and bad essence—that our fathers of the
Revolution raised the arm of rebellion. This was the thing
they hurled down and destroyed. Grand insurrection
Glorious sight to see those scattered American colonists,
few, penniless, unequipped, smite the brass gods of the
Middle Ages, tear away the trappings of tradition and chal-
lenge the Past to mortal combat! Our fathers were heroes.
The other day I saw in the top chamber of Bunker
Hill monument two of the four old six-pounders belonging
to Massachusetts at the outbreak of the struggle. They
are even as battered pop-guns, but, oh! there were men be-
hind them in the days of '76 It was a brave battle, and
that is a true thing which Bancroft says when he declares
that the report of the rifle of the youthful Washington, as
it rang out among the bushes of Great Meadows, on that
May morning in 1754 has awakened an echo which shall
never cease to reverberate until the ancient bulwarks of
Catholic legitimacy shall be thrown down in all the earth.
The American Revolution, like all other political crises
of the sort, had two aspects or phases. The first was the
1() ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
phase of destruction, in which the governmental theories of
the Middle Ages were attacked and destroyed. The second
was the phase of construction, in which a new type of gov-
ernment was erected on the site of the abolished edifice. As
a destroying force the revolution swept into oblivion the po-
litical traditions of several centuries. As a constructive en-
ergy it brought in a vast and promising experiment of po-
litical reform. As a destructive agent it seized the old
theory of politics by the throat and crushed it to the earth.
As a constructive force it reared the American Constitution,
established the indissoluble Union of the States, and abso-
lutely reversed the old theory of human government by
making the people the rightful source of power and reduc-
ing the political rulers of mankind to the place of public
servants. I repeat it, that, taken all in all, it was the most
momentous struggle ever recorded in the annals of the world.
I desire, then, to review the personal agencies which in-
fluenced the Revolution and gave to it its grandeur.
First of all there was Washington. He was the balance-
wheel of the conflict. He was neither a destroyer nor a
builder. He was more of a builder than he was a de-
stroyer. His was the consciousness in which the destruct-
ive and the constructive forces of the Revolution joined
their issues. He was a conservator of force. By the de-
stroyers he was made general-in-chief; by the builders he
was made President. If I must tell you the truth, I must
say that the destroyers did not like him—distrusted him.
If I must speak plainly, I must say that the builders re-
garded him as their agent and organ rather than as their
leader. It was in his broad and conservative nature that
the conflicting tides settled to a calm after the battle had
been fought and won. It was within the circle of his in-
fluence that that strange compromise called the Constitu-
ALEXA WZDER HAMILTON. 11
tion of the United States became a possibility. It was by the
preponderance of his influence that the builders carried their
compromise to the people and secured its adoption as the
fundamental law of the land. Across his cabinet table the
angry surf of the constructive and destructive forces of the
Revolution broke in a line of perpetual foam.
At the head of the destroyers stood Jefferson, the two
Adamses, Paine, Franklin, and Henry. Of these men, with
a slight exception in the case of John Adams and a larger
exception in the case of Franklin, not one had the slightest
particle of constructive talent. They, and those whom they
led, were destroyers pure and simple. They were revo-
lutionists in the first intent. They were Levelers and Dem-
ocrats in the old Greek sense of the word. On the pedestal
of the statue of Samuel Adams in one of the squares of
Boston, is this legend: “He was the organizer of the
of the Revolution.” It is certain he never organized any-
thing else !
Let me speak plainly of these great and giorious men.
Take Jefferson and Paine. In both of them the aggressive
and radical energies of the Democratic instinct ran rampant.
They were riotous and uproarious in their Democracy.
They gloried in it. They believed that only one thing was
good, and that was to destroy. To them the existing order
was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. So
they laid the axe at the roots of the tree and said, “Let us
cut it up, trunk and branches.” Whether any other tree
should ever grow there, they cared not so much as a fig.
Whether the goodness of fecund nature should rear a palm
in the waste or send up thickets of thorns and cactus to
cover the spot desolated by their energies, they neither
knew nor cared. It was enough that the old tree should
be torn out by the roots. Take Patrick Henry. With all
12 ALEXAN DER HAMIL TOW. N.
deference to the sturdy old patriot, it is but sober truth to say
that he could not have constructed a political chicken-coop.
And if his neighbors had shown skill in that kind of archi-
tecture, he would have considered it an insult to his
country. Such men were needed in '76, but they were
not needed in '87. Of the immortal fifty-six who signed
the Declaration of Independence only eight were sent to
the constitutional convention; and of these only two—Frank-
lin and Sherman—were men of commanding influence.
Hildreth says, and says truly, that the leveling democracy of
’76 was absolutely unrepresented in the convention. The de-
stroyers were not there. The men who knocked the little
brass gods of the Middle Ages on the head were gone.
The revolutionists were at home trimming apple-trees in
the Connecticut Valley or setting tobacco plants on the
banks of the James. The work of that destroying de-
mocracy which had fired every colony with patriotic zeal and
war-like daring was done. Even Massachusetts passed by
her giants and sent to the convention Gerry, Gorham, and
King. The destroyers lay asleep in their tent, and the
builders went forth to build.
At the head of the builders stood the Man of Destiny—
one who is said by the New Britannica—voicing the senti-
ment of Europe—to have been the ablest jurist and statesman
ever produced in America, and whom the Edinburgh Re-
view, as long ago as 1808, declared to have possessed an ex-
tent and precision of information, a profundity of research, and
an acuteness of understanding which would have done honor
to the most illustrious statesman of ancient or modern times.
It is now seventy-six years since ALEXANDER HAMIL-
TON yielded up his life. It has remained for our own day
to revive his memory, and out of the logic of great events
to determine his true place in history. Men are just be-
ALEXAAWDER AEAMXZ TOW. 13
ginning to understand and appreciate the great part which
he played in the stirring drama of his times. As he recedes
from us in the distance a clearer parallax is revealing to us
the truly colossal grandeur of his character. Even yet we
feel that his full proportion is but half seen in the shadows,
and that the next generation, rather than this, will behold
him in the magnificent outline of completeness.
We now see that the genius of this man has flashed
through and illumined whatever is great and glorious in
our national history. Just in proportion as the spirit of
Hamilton has dominated our institutions just in that degree
has the ark of American civilization been taken up and
borne forward in triumph. He has touched us in every
crisis. When Daniel Webster poured out the flood of his
tremendous argument for nationality, he was only the liv-
ing oracle of the dead Hamilton. Every syllogism of that
immortal plea can be reduced to a Hamiltonian maxim.
When the Little Giant of the North-west blundered across
the political stage with his feet entangled in the meshes of
Squatter Sovereignty he stumbled and fell among the very
complications and pitfalls which Hamilton's prescience had
revealed and would have obliterated. When the immortal
Lincoln put out his great hand in the shadows of doubt and
agony, and groped and groped to touch some pillar of sup-
port, it was the hand of the dead Hamilton that he clasped
in the darkness. When, on the afternoon of the third of
July, Pickett's Virginians went on their awful charge up the
slopes of Gettysburg they met on the summit among the
jagged rocks the invincible lines of blue who were there to
rise victorious or never to rise at all. But it was not Meade
who commanded them, nor Sickles, nor Hancock, nor
Lincoln. Behind those dauntless and heroic lines—rising
like a sublime shadow in the curling smoke of battle—stood
14 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
the figure of Alexander Hamilton. The civil war was his
conflict. Chickamauga and Chancellorsville were his an-
guish, aud Appomattox was his triumph. When the grim-
visaged and iron-hearted Lee offered the hilt of his sword
to the Silent Man of Galena it was the spirit of the Dis-
ruptive Democracy doing obeisance to Hamilton. |
I purpose now to note in a few brief paragraphs the
principal events in Hamilton’s life. He was born in the
island of Nevis, one of the British West Indies, on the 11th
of January, 1757. His father was a Scotch merchant and
his mother a Huguenot lady whose maiden name was
Faucette. She had been first married to a physician named
Lavine with whom she lived for a short time at St. Chris-
topher. But he soon proved to be of no good, and pres-
ently procuring a divorce, she returnend to Nevis and was
married to the merchant, James Hamilton. By him she
had a numerous family of whom only two sons, Thomas
and Alexander, reached maturity. The latter was the
younger, and bore the name of his paternal grandfather,
Alexander Hamilton, of Ayrshire, Scotland.
From his father Hamilton inherited the resoluteness of
the Scotch character, a certain tendency to methodical
habits, and especially that deductive method of thought for
which the Scotch intellect of the eighteenth century was
proverbial. From his mother he drew his nobility of char-
acter, his vivacious and social disposition, his quickness of
perception, his perpetual activity, his studious habit, his per-
sonal magnetism, and his genius. She died while he was
yet a boy, but her manner and voice and spirit remained for-
ever with him in memory.
After his mother’s death the lad Hamilton, was given to
some of her relatives and taken to the neighboring island of
Santa Cruz. From the indifferent schools of the sea-port
ALEXANDER AE/AMILTON. 15
town of this island, by the close of his twelfth year, he had
drawn whatever they had to give. He was then placed in
the counting-house of Nicholas Cruger, and here he im-
mediately began to display those extraordinary activites
which characterized him through life. Such was his profi-
ciency that within a year Cruger went abroad and left young
Hamilton, then thirteen years of age, in sole charge of the
mercantile house. He conducted the large business and ex-
tensive correspondence of the establishment with a dignity
and precision which were the marvel of the port. Nor could
the foreign merchants who traded with the house of Cruger
know but that the letters which they received from Santa
Cruz were written by the most experienced clerk in the island.
During two years Hamilton remained at the desk of the
counting-house, spending his evenings in study. It was
here that he laid the foundations of his great acquirements
in after years. Here he learned French, which he spoke
through life with the ease, and elegance of the best
native conversers. His principal instructor in this epoch
was Dr. Hugh Knox, an Irish Presbyterian clergyman, un-
der whom he made great headway during his stay in Santa
Cruz, and by whom he was encouraged in the project of
leaving the West Indies for New York. With the increase
of knowledge he had grown restless. He pined for a broader
field in which his faculties might expand and his ambi-
tion be appeased. Even at the age of twelve we catch a
glimpse of the spirit and power which were budding with-
in him. In a letter to young Edward Stevens, of New
York, the frank boy Hamilton pens these words of aspi-
ration and promise: “Neddy, my ambition is prevalent so
that I contemn the groveling condition of a clerk or the like,
to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk
my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I
16 ALEXAAWDER AAMILTON.
am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any
hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I
mean to prepare the way for futurity. I’m no philosopher,
you see, and may be said to build castles in the air; my fol-
ly makes me ashamed, and beg you’ll conceal it; yet, Neddy,
we have seen such schemes successful when the projector
is constant. I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was
a war.” Perhaps the vision of Wolfe, falling in death but
rising to immortality from the Heights of Abraham, was be-
fore the eyes of the young enthusiast; but how little did he
anticipate the more glorious epoch which was so shortly to
open for his panting spirit.
In August of 1772, a terrible storm came in upon the
Leeward Islands. A remarkable description of it appeared
in one of the local papers. The governor of Santa Cruz
was astonished at the vivid details of the destruction. He
sought the author and found him in the young lad Hamilton.
Arrangements were immediately made to send the youth
abroad, that he might receive such education as his genius
merited; and so in October of that year he left the West
Indies never to return. He took passage in a vessel for
Boston, and from that city proceeded at once to New York.
Here he was cordially received by Dr. Rogers, Dr. Mason,
and William Livingston. To these distinguished men he
brought letters of introduction from his old instructor, Dr.
Knox; and by Livingston, who was a retired lawyer, he
was taken to a country seat near Elizabeth, New Jersey,
and admitted to membership in the family. Here his bril-
liant faculties and fascinating address made him an imme-
diate favorite. For some months he attended the grammar
school in Elizabeth, showing the most intense application
and astonishing progress. He seized and devoured all
kinds of knowledge with an almost feverish hunger. It was
ALEXANDER AEAMILTON. 17
at this period of his life that he formed the habit which he
never broke, of talking to himself, saying over and over in a
low tone whatever occupied his thought. As he walked
he talked, and the thing which he thought was rehearsed
in rapid utterance until it had taken the form of a logical
proposition never to be shaken from its place.
At this time Livingston was the editor of the American
Whig, the organ of the popular party in New York. Drs.
Rogers and Mason were contributors to this paper, as was
also the youthful John Jay, afterward Livingston’s son-
in-law. These writers were in the habit of meeting at Liv-
ingston’s house. Debating clubs and political societies
abounded in the neighborhood; and the agitation which was
soon to break over the land sent its premonitory thrills into
every breast. In the midst of these surroundings, still im-
mersed in his studies, Hamilton’s political principles began
to be shaped and fashioned.
But he was not yet ready for battle. His preparation,
indeed, was but begun. By diligent use of his time he was
now ready for a collegiate training. He chose Princeton;
but before starting thither he drew up for himself a plan of
study which, though it embraced the college curriculum,
was both novel and original. On presenting himself to Dr.
Witherspoon, then president of Princeton, he made a written
request that he might be allowed to adopt his own course
and be admitted to all classes which his attainments would
justify, with permission to advance from class to class with
as much rapidity as his exertions would enable him to do.
The sedate Witherspoon, acting after the manner of men,
declared the request incompatible with the rules of the in-
stitution, and so young Hamilton was turned away. He at
once returned to King's College in the city of New York,
renewed his application to Dr. Cooper, the president, and
18 - ALEXANDER AEAMIL TOW.
- &
was admitted on his own terms. It must be confessed that
for a delicate stripling of fifteen years thus to trifle with
the almighty powers of learning was a piece of great audacity.
For two years Hamilton remained at Columbia, applying
himself with a diligence and zeal rarely witnessed. History,
metaphysics, languages, politics, poetry, economics—every-
thing was devoured with the hunger of genius. His mem-
oranda show that Cudworth’s Intellectual System, Hobbes's
Dialogues, Bacon’s Essays, Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws,
Rousseau's Złmż/ius, Demosthenes’ Orations, and Aristotle’s
Politics, were now his favorite books. With these he was
not only familiar, but in them had a mastery not often at-
tained even in veteran scholarship. -
It was already the daybreak of the Revolution. The rank
offenses of Great Britain against colonial liberty had gone
up to heaven. The Boston Port Bill was passed in March
of ’74. The colonists spoke openly of resistance. The con-
servatives, royal officers, reactionary sycophants, and tory
ecclesiastics said Treason. Then the people spoke louder
than before. New York was shaken. A Committee of De-
fense was appointed, but the people ran ahead of the com-
mittee. As a matter of fact the people are always ahead
of the committee. When you want any delicate piece of
mincing conservatism attended to, you should always ap-
point a committee. In the day of doubt and danger it is
the magnetism and example of personal leadership that
brings up Israel out of Egypt.
In the beginning of July, the people of New York called
a meeting “in the fields.” The particular field in question
was in sight, almost in hearing, of Columbia College.
Young Hamilton attended the meeting. The speakers had
fire and enthusiasm; but the stripling said to his friends:
“They have not argued the question.” Thereupon he was
AZE.X.A.N.O.E.R AEAMXZ TOW. 19
called to speak. He went up pale and tremulous to the
stand, and from that day the slender collegian was a man
of note in the American colonies. His life-work had risen
upon him in an hour. -
Events followed swift and fast. The military spirit
broke out. Political societies were formed. Liberty was
debated. The man of brains and courage was at a pre-
mium. The skulk and the coward went to their own place.
The students of Columbia College took fire. Hamilton
organized them and some other young men of the city into
an artillery company, and was chosen captain. In the hour
of danger and glory the first man is always made the cap-
tain. In the day of buncombe the last man is made captain.
In the hour of danger and glory men want a hero for a
leader. In the day of buncombe they want a fool for a
figure-head.
The war came on in earnest, and Hamilton, at the head
of his volunteer company of artillerymen, immediately began
to display those sterling qualities for which his military
career is distinguished. He studied the art of war with a
zeal unsurpassed among the officers of the Continental army.
With an infallible intuition, he adapted the military science
of the books to the somewhat anomalous conditions under
which the revolutionary campaigns must be conducted.
He had the fire and enthusiasm of Greene, the daring of
Wayne, and the caution of Washington. -
A few days after the battle of White Plains, in which
Hamilton's battery had taken a conspicuohs part, when the
American army, undisciplined and dispirited, was reced-
ing across Manhattan into the Jerseys, the attention of
Washington was called to a redoubt which some one had
thrown up at Haarlem Heights. The general was aston-
ished at the skill manifested in the construction of the work.
20 ALEXAAVPER AEAMIZ, TOW.
He inquired by whose command it had been built, and was
answered, by Captain Hamilton of the artillery. The young
officer was sent for to the quarters of the commander-
in-chief. It was the conjunction of Jove and Mercury.
The two soldiers met, and such was the profound impression
made upon the mind of Washington, that the slender fair-
faced captain was invited to become the general’s aid and
private secretary. Hamilton saw that to accept was to de-
prive himself of that military glory which was almost sure
to follow active service in the field; but to accept was also
to be constantly in the companionship and confidence of the
Cincinnatus of the West. He chose the latter, and before
he was twenty years of age had so won the favor of his
chief as to become through life his most trusted counselor.
There is not perhaps in all history an instance of per-
sonal attachment more remarkable, more lasting, more un-
selfish, more honorable, than that of Washington and
Hamilton. Great was the disparity between them. Wash-
ington was sedate and saturnine; Hamilton was communi-
cative and sociable. In discerning the ultimate principle of
things Washington was slow and dull; Hamilton, quick as
an electric flash. Washington could see a fact, but not its
secret springs and causes; in the power to discover the
principia and germs of things, Hamilton surpassed all other
men of the Revolutionary epoch. Washington could handle
events in mass; Hamilton could interpret them. The mind
of Washington moved to its purpose with heavy strides;
the intellect of Hamilton flew to the mark with unerring
accuracy. Washington labored to express that which he
knew to be right and true, but there was always spherical
and chromatic aberration about the thing he saw ; in Ham-
ilton's mind every fact whirled into focus with the rapidity
and precision of the most perfect instrument. Washington
A LEXAMDER AE/AMILTON. 21
was the least ambitious of all the great men known in his-
tory; in Hamilton's breast the fires of a high ambition
burned day and night with inextinguishable brightness.
But in sincere devotion, lofty patriotism, and unspotted
soundness of character, it would be hard to assign the palm.
It thus happened that the Hamiltonian intellect became
the interpreter of the Washingtonian desire. Upon the thing
which Washington reached for in the darkness Hamilton
turned the full light of his genius. From his hand came
nearly all the papers and dispatches of the general-in-chief
Much of the chaos of the Revolutionary tumult sank into
order under Hamilton’s amazing activities. He was every-
where present. He advised in everything. The discipline
of the headquarters of the army was his work. At the
public dinners which Washington sometimes gave to his
officers and to the great men of the colonies, Hamilton
presided with the grace and dignity of the most accomp-
lished diplomate. If any hazardous business arose, requir-
ing celerity and silence, Hamilton was sent to do it. He
it was who gave Arnold his desperate chase down the
river: it was the avenging angel after the devil. If some
matter of great and responsible management, like the
bringing down from the North of the army of the inflated
Gates, was to be undertaken, Hamilton was commissioned
for the work. If some low scheme of inter-colonial intrigue
and jealousy, portending ruin to the patriot cause, had to
be outwitted and brought to open shame, Hamilton was
appointed to the task. He it was—and it is one of the
secret passages of history—who drew the blatant Wilkinson
to Lord Stirling's dinner table, knowing that he would heat
himself with wine and divulge the treasonable conspiracy
of Conway, Mifflin, and Gates against Washington, which
Hamilton had scented in the air during his recent visit to
22 - ALEXANDER AAMILTON.
the North. If the general-in-chief required a calm, dispas-
sionate, and comprehensive paper, laying before Congress
and the country some of the great questions of the Revo-
lution, he had only to indicate his wish, and on the morrow
there would be placed in his hands a document that would
have done credit to the best diplomacy of Europe. All the
way through, from Long Island to Yorktown, from York-
town to the presidency, from the presidency to Mount Ver-
non, this same tireless, watchful spirit, this same indefati-
gable genius went by the side of his chief, through evil re-
port and good, sharing his trust, inspiring his counsels, and
delivering his wisdom and patriotism to the army and the
people. It is not to the discredit of Washington—for
nothing can ever disparage that immortal figure—that
Hamilton was his chief support, his oracle, and his guide.
It is not my purpose to review at any length Hamilton’s
career as a soldier. His extreme youth and the restrictions
with which he was hampered as a member of the general's
staff obscured the display of his military talents. Yet as
occasion offered, his daring and celerity in the field shone
out with peculiar luster. He it was who brought up the
shattered rear in the perilous retreat from Long Island.
Think of a boy of nineteen on such a duty as that l No
wonder that Greene and Washington were astonished. At
the dangerous passage of the Raritan, with the enemy on
the other bank and the river fordable, it was Hamilton’s
batteries, placed on the heights, that blazed into the face of
the foe until the patriots were safe out of reach. He it
it was who broke the letters which laid bare the treachery
of Arnold, and he it was who first revealed to Wash-
ington that deep-laid scheme of villainy and treason. When
at last, on the night of the 14th of October, the British re-
doubts at Yorktown were to be carried by storm, Hamil-
ALEXAAWDER //AMILTON. 23
ton, by special request made to Washington, was ordered
to lead the American advance. Taking his place at the
head of the column, he and his men dashed forward and
tore through the abatis as if it were a sport of the holidays;
and while the British shells were blazing and bursting in the
darkness, Hamilton, unhurt, with sword in hand, placed his
foot on the shoulder of a soldier and was the first man to
leap the parapet in the last charge of the Revolution. The
rest came pouring after, and the blackened redoubt was
carried without the firing of a gun.
On the evening of the 23d of October, 1781, the watch-
men of Philadelphia, going their nightly rounds, uttered this
welcome cry: “Ten o’clock 1 Starlight night ! Cornwallis
is taken!” It was a fitting thing that this glorious proc-
lamation of freedom and victory should thus be made under
the eternal benignity of the open heavens and the silent
benediction of the stars, in the streets of that old town
which first among the cities of the world had heard the
declaration that all men are created equal. Though peace
lagged for a season, the war was at an end. The patriots who
at Concord and Lexington had begun a battle for the rights
of Englishmen had ended by winning their independence.
In all history there is nothing more pitiable than the con-
dition of the civil government of the United States during
and just after the Revolution. While the army, under the
lead of Washington, covered the American name with glory,
Congress, under the lead of nobody, covered it with con-
tempt. Of a certainty it was not the fault of the great
and patriotic men who for the most part comprised that
body; but it was the inherent weakness of the puerile organ-
ism under which they were expected to act. The confed-
erate system, as hurriedly devised amid the terrors of war in
the summer of 1777, was the very climax of organic weak-
24 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
ness—the paragon of political imbecility. Never since the
days of the Amphyctionic councils of Greece had the an-
nals of mankind presented a parallel to the farcical absurd-
ities of the Confederation. Think of a government without
an executive, without a judiciary, without the power to
levy a duty or impose a tax, without ability to inspire re-
spect or enforce obedience, and that is the Confederation.
As an organism it had neither head, trunk, limbs, nor vitals.
It was an eviscerated myth, a mere shadow, a phantom, a
ghost, a political nothing. From 1783 to 1787 the civil
powers of the United States were really in a state of chaos;
and Washington spoke the truth when he said, in infinite
sorrow, that after all the sacrifices of war, the government
of his country had become a thing of contempt in the eyes
of all nations.
The patriots of the time now came to see that only
half of the struggle was over. Through the gray cold
morning of doubt dawned the solemn truth that though the
war of the Revolution was ended, the war for the Union
remained to be fought. Mere freedom was not enough. In
order for freedom to live, it was necessary to build a temple
fit for her to dwell in.
It is not needed that I should here recount the deplor-
able circumstances which drove the Wise men of ’87 into
the Constitutional Convention. A ruined credit, a bankrupt
treasury, a disordered finance, a crazy constitution, a dis-
tracted commerce, a disintegrating people, thirteen ghostly
States stalking around like specters in a graveyard and mak-
ing grimaces at a government of shreds and patches—
such were the goblins that ruled the hour. The Wise men
saw and trembled; and so, acting from motives of patriot-
ism and the instinct of self-preservation, they came together
to build they knew not what.
ALEXAAWDER HAMILTON. 25
It is the truth of history that no greater task was ever
imposed upon a body of men than upon the Constitutional
Convention of 1787. It was an hour of danger and doubt
in the general destinies of the world. The Confederation
had ingloriously failed. The people, apparently satisfied
with local independence, had grown lethargic, and seemed
to be shockingly indifferent to the general interest of the
nation. The process of disintegration went on unchecked,
and civil liberty was withering from the land.
About fifty of the leading citizens of the United States
appeared in the convention. On assembling, it was the
common understanding that the business in hand was the
remodeling of the Articles of Confederation. A few lead-
ing spirits, such as Washington, Franklin, Charles Pinckney,
and Madison, saw further than this; and very soon the is-
sue of making a NEW CONSTITUTION was sprung upon the
convention. Indeed, with the progress of debate, it became
more and more evident that no mere revision of the old
form of government would suffice for the future of America.
Thus all of a sudden, and, as I believe, without any positive
previous expectancy on the part of the delegates assembled,
the whole question of government—government in the ab-
stract and government in its special application to the wants
of the Western continent—arose upon the convention.
Then followed such a clash of opinions and discord of in-
terests as perhaps has never been elsewhere witnessed in a
deliberative body. The ball was opened by Edmund Ran-
dolph with his “Virginia Plan” of government, and this
was immediately followed by Pinckney with his favorite
scheme, a part of which was afterwards incorporated in the
Constitution. Then came the outbreak of the smaller States.
Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, with
two out of the three delegates from New York, raised the
26 ALEXANDER HAMIL Tow.
*
hue and cry that the small States were to be swallowed up
in a great consolidated government—a “monarchy” in
which the rights of the people would be utterly engulfed.
It was the first public parade of that black and spectral
nightmare of American politics—the doctrine of State Rights.
Here the line was drawn, and here was planted the seed of
the deadly upas. -
Vain would it be to enumerate the multifarious schemes and
inglorious projects of that convention. Many of them were
wild, extravagant, visionary. Some sprang from ignorance;
some, from misdirected patriotism; some were puerile and ri-
diculous. While the Virginia plan and the scheme proposed
by Pinckney were both before the Committee of the Whole,
the State Rights party, headed by Patterson of New Jersey
and Lansing of New York, brought forward the “New Jer-
sey Plan” by which it was proposed to retain the old
Continental Congress and the Confederative Union nearly as
they were, and to elect annually a double-headed president;
that is, a plural or a dual executive. It was this absurd
project which first called Alexander Hamilton to his feet. He
was at the head of the delegation from New York. Thus
far he had remained a silent witness of the vain projects daily
hatched in the convention. In answer to the rather puerile
speech which Patterson made in defense of his double-
barreled presidency, Hamilton walked into the arena and
boldly declared his dissent from all the plans thus far submit-
ted. The proceedings here, said he, were of such a sort
as to weaken his faith in the expediency of Republican Insti-
tutions. His own reading of history and study of philosophy
had led him to admire the British constitution more than
any frame of government with which he was acquainted.
In the United States, however, where entails and primogen-
iture were abolished, where no nobility could exist, where
ALEXAAWDEAE A/A MIL TOW. 27
property was equally divided, and where the whole genius
of the people was adapted to popular forms, the real and
only expedient thing for the convention to do was to
constitute such a frame of government as should secure
English liberty and English stability under a Republi-
can form. The Constitution of the United States, now
to be established, ought to have, and must have, all pos-
sible solidity and strength in order that Republican institu-
tions might have a fair chance of surviving, which they
certainly would not have if the doctrines recently advocated
in the convention should prevail. He was in favor of a
single Executive who should hold his office during good
behavior, and of a senate whose members should have
the same tenure as the president. Hamilton closed his
speech by offering for the consideration of the convention a
sketch of that form of government which he should favor.
His plan proposed a government of three departments;
legislative, executive, judiciary. The legislative department
should consist of two branches; an assembly, and a senate.
The members of the assembly should be elected for three
years by a direct vote of the people. The senators should
be selected by electors chosen by a direct vote of the peo-
ple. The executive should be chosen by electors who were
in turn to be chosen by the people, and should hold his of
fice during good behavior. He should have an absolute
veto over the acts of Congress. The judiciary should be
chosen by the senate, and should consist of a supreme and
subordinate courts after the manner subsequently adopted.
As to the States, very little was said except that the gov-
enors were to be appointed by the chief-magistrate of the
AWałion. *
I bid you mark this plan with care. It has two peculiar
features. The first is that the power of the States, in mat-
28 A LE XAN DEA' HAMIL TO AW.
ters of the national government is absolutely annulled. The
dogma of State Rights is utterly sponged out. The word
State is only mentioned in the scheme as if to emphasize its
subordination to national authority. Secondly, every thing
is made to rest upon the people. The representatives are
to be chosen by the people. The senators are to be named
by electors chosen by the people. The president is to be
chosen by electors of the people. Everything is as distinct-
ly popular as it is distinctly national. The tenure of the
presidency and of the senatorship is not for life, not heredit-
ary, not based on a graduated nobility, not characterized by
a single monarchical feature. There is everywhere strength,
solidity, equipoise, centralization, unity, but no monarchy.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Constitution proposed by
Alexander Hamilton in the convention of 1787 is the
foundation of nationality in the United States. He was
the author of that great thought. I do not mean that he
originated the concept. The same grand idea had floated
through other patriotic brains. Franklin had seen the vision
afar. Washington had seen it in the shadows. Edmund
Randolph and Madison had seen it through a glass darkly.
But with them all, the thought had been vague and unde-
fined, shifting and uncertain. In Hamilton’s consciousness
it became a living thing—a vision of light and glory. He
only of all the Wise men realized the peril and the possi-
bility of the great occasion. He only understood the past,
comprehended the present, and divined the future. He saw
as clear as day the one great fact that as between a con- .
solidated Union and no Union at all there was no mid-
dle ground. He saw that sovereignty is one and indivis-
ible; and that to talk of sovereign States in a sovereign
Union was to utter a political paradox. And so he laid the
axe at the root of the tree. He said, Down with the State.
A LE XANZ) EF AZAM/Z 7"OM. 29
He said, Up with the Wation. He neither winced nor
stammered. He neither balked nor trembled. He neither
paled nor faltered. He walked straight up to the bar of
greatness with the step of a conqueror. In the folly and
dissensions, the truckling and mental reservations, the
cross-purposes and cowardice of the hour, he struck
boldly for the solid ground. He rose and stood upon it. O
that his courage had been emulated O that his tempo-
rizing colleagues had rallied to that impregnable rock O
that the spirit of Unity had triumphed then and there ! O
that the genius of Nationality had risen from that confused
arena with the indivisible banner lifted above the clouds
and tempests l g
The purpose of Hamilton to build an American Nation-
ality directly upon the foundation of the people, without the
intervention of the States, was the grandest project con-
ceived by the statesmanship of the eighteenth century.
Happy had it been for the destinies of America and for the
friends of civil liberty throughout the world if Hamilton's
views could have prevailed in the Constitution of our country.
Just in proportion as they did prevail, just to the extent
that his sound and substantial theories of government were
incorporated in our fundamental law, just in that degree
has the temple of American liberty been founded on a
rock. Just in proportion as his views did not prevail, just
to the extent that his comprehensive principles of civil gov-
ernment were thrust aside by temporizing expedients and
the miserable shufflings and patchwork of compromise, just
to that degree have our institutions been imperiled and the
glory of the American name scattered to the winds.
The Federal Convention of ’87 closed its work, after a
four months’ session, by adopting and submitting to the
people of the States our present frame of government.
30 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
Gerry, of Massachusetts, and Mason, of Virginia, would not
sign it because State Rights were overthrown. Edmund
Randolph would not affix his name because the executive
department was rendered so weak and contemptible. Yates
aud Lansing, of New York, had both gone home in disgust
because the convention was trying to establish monarchy.
To this day the name of Alexander Hamilton stands alone as
the solitary indorsement of the Empire State to the Constitu-
tion of the Union.
The influence of Hamilton in giving a final form to the
great document was almost as conspicious and singular as
his name. The illustrious Guizot declares that there is not
in the Constitution of the United States a single element of
order, of force, or of perpetuity which Hamilton did not
powerfully contribute to introduce and to make predominant.
As soon as the work of the great convention was trans-
mitted to the States, -
A storming fury rose
And clamor such as heard on earth till now
Was never.
The opposition members of the convention became the
avant-couriers of distrust and antagonism. Wherever they
went they cried out, “Overthrow of liberty!” “Tyranny
re-established!” “Centralization!” “Monarchy!” The
democracy ran to with vehement declamations. There
were no more tobacco plants to be set on the banks of the
James, nor apple-trees to be trimmed in the valley of the
Connecticut. If the Constitution had been at once sub-
mitted to the people, it would have been rejected in every
State. Such was the popular horror and fear of the con-
solidated Union that its chief promoters were regarded, in
many parts of the country, with an aversion only equaled
by that which the patriots had felt for the ministers and
emissaries of George III. Patrick Henry, in a public as-
ALEXANDER AAMILTON. 31
sembly, cried out with a loud voice addressed to Wash-
ington: “Even from that illustrious man who saved us by
his valor I will have a reason for his conduct. Who au-
thorized the Convention to say ‘We the people,’ instead of
‘We the States ?’” Unless this tide of popular prejudice
could be stemmed and the apprehensions of the masses
quieted by sound argument, it was evident that demagogical
appeals would triumph over reason and that the Constitu-
tion so painfully and patiently elaborated would be rejected
with disdain.
It is not invidious to say that at this perilous epoch in
our country's history there was in all America but one man
who, by the genius within him and the forces of training,
had the ability to carry the Constitution before the bar of
the people, to overcome their prejudices, to conquer their
hereditary jealousy, to allay their fears, to convince their
judgments, and to rally them to the support of the consoli-
dated Union. That man was Hamilton. He quietly
undertook the cause of the people against themselves. The
plan adopted was conceived by himself, and his were the
merits of the execution. From his office in New York he
began the composition and publication of those famous
essays in defense of the Constitution, which will ever remain
the pride of statesmen and the confusion of demagogues.
The Federalist was the herald of victory to the support-
ers of the Constitution, and of overthrow to the reactionary
Democracy. The calm and masterly arguments were read
by the hearthstone of the Revolutionary veteran, and his
brow grew thoughtful. They were read by the young de-
bater in the political club, and the opposition sat silent.
They were read in great halls and before assemblies of the
people, and no man in the ranks of the disorganizers had
the courage to make answer. They were read with aston-
32. A LEXANPER AE/AM/L 7"ON.
ishment wherever the English tongue was spoken, and were
applauded to the echo in the salons of Paris.
In the composition of the Federalist, Hamilton was ma-
terially aided by Madison and Jay; and it is but fair to say
that the parts contributed by them, though inferior to the
work of the master, are worthy of the highest praise. In
these great papers, Hamilton had the disadvantage of plead-
ing the cause of an instrument which he knew to be in
some respects defective; but recognizing the fact that the
Constitution was on the whole the best that the spirit of the
times would bear, he undertook the advocacy of the great
instrument with all the zeal and enthusiasm of his nature;
and such was the ability, the candor, the clearness, the pro-
fundity and soundness, the breadth and comprehensiveness
of his work that the most renowned publicists of our century
have conceded it to be without a superior, perhaps without
a parallel, among the political writings of the world.
Meanwhile elections were held and delegates chosen to
adopt or reject the Constitution. In several States the op-
position had a majority, but the principles upon which the
opposition rested were already sapped and mined before the
assembling of the conventions. The supporters of the con-
solidated Union had scattered the Federalist into every
State, and everything except unconquerable prejudice had
given way. The State Rights partisans were reduced to the
extremity of repeating the senseless outcry of “Centraliza-
tion! Monarchy!” But the cry had lost its terrors. In
Massachusetts and Virginia the battle was long and fiercely
contested, but the friends of the Union triumphed; at even-
ing it was light. Hamilton’s genius never shone more
conspicuously than in the convention of his own State at
Poughkeepsie. In the election of delegates to that body
everything had gone against him. Two-thirds of the mem-
ALEXANZ).E.R HAMIL TOW. 33
bers had been chosen on a platform of pronounced opposi-
tion to the Constitution. Governor Clinton, president of
the convention, and many of the most eminent men of
the State were arrayed under the enemy's banners. That
the great Federalist leader could win over these delegates
and gain a sufficient number of votes to secure the adoption
of the Constitution seemed beyond the reach of possibility.
Day after day he stood up and led the swelling minority.
Even when not speaking his thin lips were seen to be con-
stantly moving in silent formulation of arguments that
should answer and persuade. With infinite chagrin the
opposition saw its majority melting away; and when at last
the news came in from the Potomac that the Old Dominion
had given her vote for the consolidated Union, Hamilton
arose and said : “Virginia has ratified the Constitution.
The Union is an accomplished fact. I move that we now
cease from our contentions and add New York to the new
empire of republican States.” The effect was electrical.
Even Governor Clinton voted aye. The Union was an ac-
complished fact; and the man by whose magnificent powers
the grand work had been effected, bore from the smoking
arena the laurel crown of triumph.
In the formation of his cabinet Washington tendered the
secretaryship of the treasury to Robert Morris. The dis-
tinguished banker declined the position, but in doing so
suggested to Washington that the one man in the United
States who was fitted both by studies and ability to create
a public credit and to bring the resources of the country
into active efficiency, was Alexander Hamilton. The pre-
diction was fully verified. The immediate success which
Hamilton achieved in the face of difficulties which might
well have appalled the most courageous spirit, is without
a parallel in the history of cabinets.
3
34 - ALEXAwdar HAMIzzow.
Hamilton became the real organizer of the new govern-
ment. Upon the still youthful and elastic form of his old
military secretary, Washington rested his powerful hand as
on a pillar of support. Besides the pressing and responsible
offices of his own department just emerging from chaos—
the public credit, like Milton’s lion, still hanging half-created
to the ground and “pawing to get free”—Hamilton had to
share the counsels of his chief and to bear with him the
burdens of the new Nation. His state papers issued during
the two terms of his service in the cabinet have been
pronounced the ablest ever produced by an American
secretary. His report on the constitutionality of a National
bank, in which he elaborates his favorite theory of the
implied powers of the Federal Government, is a master-
piece on that difficult branch of statecraft; and his great
thesis on manufactures, embracing in its scope the whole
policy of the government, such as he desired it to be, with
respect to the multifarious industries of the American peo-
ple and the necessity of encouraging those industries by
protective legislation, is of itself sufficient to establish his
rank as the foremost publicist of his epoch.
After retiring from the cabinet, Hamilton was offered the
chief-justiceship of the United States, but he declined the
proffered honor and retired to private life. In his adopted
State he soon became the recognized leader of the bar—
a leader without a peer or rival. For nine years—broken
only by a brief interval in 1798, when he was called from
retirement by the now aged Washington to become first
major-general of the army in the expected war with
France—he continued the admiration of his friends and
one of the most distinguished citizens of the Nation. What
the future might have had in store, what influence he
might have had upon the destinies of his country, to what
ALEXA WDER AAMILTON. 35
high honor that country might have called him, will remain a
part of the mystery of that clouded valley which Mirza saw
in his vision. -
Of the occasion and the manner of the death of Ham-
ilton I need not speak. Vain would it be to harrow the
sensibilities and passions of our nature by reciting again
the story of that malicious, cowardly, devilish murder.
Little need to recount the stealthy steps by which Aaron
Burr approached his victims, or to emphasize the one pro-
digious mistake of Hamilton's life in accepting the chal-
lenge of that libidinous assassin. For all this anger and
sorrow there is but one compensation, and that is that in
the eternal justice of things the name of the murderer has
been cast out with utter contempt and loathing, while the
memory of the murdered statesman has been gently cov-
ered with the blessings of his countrymen and the perpet-
ual benediction of history. In thc great Park of the Me-
tropolis of the Nation, within sight of the spot where the
young collegian, fired with the zeal of boyhood, first raised
his voice for the rights of man and the freedom of his
country, a grateful son, with the encouragement of a grate-
ful people, has lately unveiled a granite statue of his father,
while statesmen, orators and poets, fair women and brave
men, with applauding hands and cheering voice have hon-
ored the memory of the illustrious dead.
It is one of the peculiarities of our times to have re-
vived an interest in Hamilton’s character and work. With
the subsidence of the tumult of the Civil War men have
begun to look more thoughtfully into the antecedents of
the bloody struggle. This fact, more than any other, has
brought into clear relief the worth, the grandeur, the glory,
of THE HAMILTONIAN UNION; and this fact more than any
other has made as odious as it deserves to be the pernicious
36 ALEXAAWDER HAMILTON.
heresy of State Rights and secession. So the defeated but
still vital apologists of nullification and disunion, the old dis-
organizers and their descendants, have gone to malign
the memory of Hamilton and defile his work. They say
that he was an enemy to American liberty; a bold, bad man;
a conspirator against the freedom of his country.
It is averred that Hamilton was a monarchist—a secret
foe to Republican institutions—a hater of the simple and
severe forms of Democratic government. If this were true,
then indeed was he a profound hyprocrite and dissembler.
For no man could have written the preamble to the Con-
stitution of the United States and defended that instrument
in the ablest political papers produced in the eighteenth
century, and at the same time have been a secret foe to
Republican liberty, unless, his moral character had been on
a level with that of Mephistopheles. If we open Hamilton’s
works—and it would appear that every man might well
be judged by the works he leaves on record—we find the
charge that he was at heart in favor of introducing kingly
rule into the United States utterly and defiantly contradicted.
Mark this his indignant language :
“The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into
* * * * is one of those visionary things
that none but madmen could meditate. * * But if we
incline too much to Democracy we shall soon shoot into a
monarchy. * * * * * The fabric of the American
Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of
the people; and the streams of national power ought to
flow immediately from that pure original fountain of all
legitimate authority.” Can these words have come from a
this country
man who was secretly on the side of kings and princes P
Whence, then, comes the charge that Hamilton was a
monarchist P Who is its author P I answer, a political
ALEXAAVIDER HAMILTON. 37
A
opponent—Jefferson. He it was who more than all others
together gave currency to this view of Hamilton's opinions
on the question of government; and from this source have
sprung all the charges and innuendoes against the political
integrity of one who is said by the historian Niebuhr to have
been as great as the greatest of his age. The charge that
Hamilton desired the establishment of a monarchy in
America is not true. It is a partisan falsehood proceeding
from a political opponent, and revamped and reissued from
time to time in the interest of those who desire to weaken
the pillars of our nationalty. In the disturbed era preceding
the adoption of our Federal Constitution, when the form
of government to be instituted in the United States was
still an open question, Hamilton believed and taught that
in the history of mankind the best example of civil liberty
combined with social order had been afforded by the
government of Great Britian. And what he said was true.
Let him who can, point to a solitary State, ancient or mod-
ern, in which the liberty of the citizen has been as well
guarded as under the constitution of the British monarchy.
The Cromwellian principle was that every Englishman shall
be protected if it requires every other Englishman to do
it. And this very day, if in one of the provinces of
Great Britian a company of political thugs and midnight
assassins should bind themselves with an oath, put on
masks, and sally forth to terrify, burn, and murder, the
eye-balls of the British lion would turn green with rage,
and in three days he would make Rome howl.
All this Hamilton said—and more. He said it when
the question of government in America was still an open
question. He constantly cited the precedents of English
liberty, and kept his countrymen ever reminded of that
which they were ever prone to forget, namely that it was
Af
38 A LE X.A.N.D.E.R HAMILTON.
English liberty which the Americans fought for and won
in the war of the Revolution. He would have the people
remember that in the glorious era of the Commonwealth
England had fought a battle for America, just as America
had now fought a battle for England. . Their Cromwell was
our Cromwell, and our Washington was their Washington.
Their Milton was our Milton, and our Franklin was theirs.
To say this, and to repeat it over and over, was not to utter
sympathy with monarchical institutions: it was the soundest
of all republicanism. It was the most loyal political truth in
the world. t -
Jefferson was not a competent witness against Hamilton.
The testimony of Alexander H. Stephens and Robert
Toombs would hardly be accepted against the political prin-
ciples of Sumner and Morton. Jefferson was honest, but
he was embittered. Every vein in him was tide-full of the
virtues and vices of radicalism. He was fired with intense
prejudices. He had brooded over the evils of tyranny
until he could have distrusted the moon for having the
shape of a crescent. He could have mistaken the shadow
of a stork in the marshes of the Chickahominy for the liv-
ing apparition of George III. Jefferson was for a democ-
racy or nothing. A man who could say that he found
more pleasure in planting peas than he did in the Consti-
tution of the United States was not a competent witness
against the framers of that Constitution. He who, while
holding the second office in the gift of his country, declared
that under the administrations of Washington and John
Adams the government of the United States had been
more arbitrary and tyrannical than that of England, at the
same time saying that the old State governments were the
best in the world, could hardly be expected to speak the
truth of one who had striven with all his might to give the
ALEXANDER FAMILTON. 39
Union additional power and prerogatives. Jefferson openly
accused Washington of being a monarchist. He said that
John Adams and Edmund Randolph were monarchists. He
declared that all of the Federalists were monarchists, and
that with the continuation of Federalism the Revolution
would have been fought in vain. He croaked on this ques-
tion through all the figures and forms of speech. It is
amazing to what extent he carried his denunciations of
those who held the doctrine of a consolidated Union. Even
after the close of Washington’s administration, when the
United States under the Constitution had taken high rank
among the nations of the earth, he poured out in the Ken-
tucky and Virginia Resolutions of '98 all the rank poison of
nullification and State Rights. Calhoun and Hayne never
went beyond him in his reckless attacks on national su-
premacy. If the Kentucky Resolutions, now existing in
Jefferson’s own hand, had been penned by Alexander H.
Stephens in the palmiest days of the Rebellion they could not
have been more heavily freighted with the deadly heresies
of secession. -
Upon this man’s testimony we are asked to believe that
Hamilton—Hamilton who wrote the preamble to the Con-
stitution and fought for that instrument a victorious battle
against a two-thirds majority in the convention at Pough-
keepsie—was a monarchist. The evidence is not sufficient.
In after years when Jefferson was hard pressed to give
some substantial evidence of his oft-repeated charges
against Hamilton he could adduce nothing more tangible
than an after-dinner remark which Hamilton was said to
have made at Jefferson’s own table, to the effect that the
British constitution might be regarded as the best in the
world. The evidence does not convict. And even if it
did, it is high time for the American people to be plainly
40 ALEXA.N.D.E.R HAMILTON.
told that such a government as that of Great Britain, with
its magnificent House of Commons and Responsible Min-
istry, is better, is to be preferred, is a safer refuge for civil
liberty than any nondescript secession confederacy. But
while this is true, be it never forgotten that the consolidated,
indivisible, republican Union, to the defense of which Ham-
ilton contributed the vast resources of his genius, is infinitely
better than either confederacy or kingdom. Vive la Re-
publique! -
In the United States the problem has been not only to
emancipate man and to keep him free, but also to create a
Nation of freemen with whom the will of the majority
shall have the force of sovereign law. Jefferson seized the
first part of this problem; Hamilton grasped it all. It was
because Jefferson could not and would not see the impor-
tance of transforming the United States into a Nation that
he remained to his dying day wedded to the destructive
theories of Democracy. He was a great patriot, and a bad
statesman. His ability to destroy existing evils was only
equaled by his inability to create new institutions. He
could write the Declaration of Independence, but could not
appreciate the grandeur of the Union. He could declare
the rights of man, but could not construct or even conceive
the organic forms necessary to preserve them.
Ladies and gentlemen, I say without prejudice or pas-
sion that the later governmental theories of Thomas Jef-
ferson have been the bane of American politics. The Jef-
fersonian democracy, by itself, means anarchy and ruin. It
means the dissolution of political unity and the lapse of all
things into chaos. If one plan, one purpose, one hope, one
destiny be good for the American people, or for any people,
then the Jeffersonian democracy is not good except in so
far as it yields to the Hamiltonian Union. In the history
ALEXA WDER HAMIL 7"ON. 41
of the past the democracy has done marvels. It has
pulled down the thrones of despotism. Here in the West
it has lighted a torch which shall never be extinguished.
It has startled the nations by its courage and magnanimity.
It has written Sic Semper Zyrannis in a record that shall
outlast the obelisks of Egypt. It has made arbitrary power
odious and damned the doctrine of the domination of the
few over the many with an everlasting curse. It has given
to liberty a new definition in the language of mankind. It
has preached the pure gospel of human nature in the presence
of trembling kings, and has painted an aureole of glory
about the head of him who dares to die for freedom. But
the Jeffersonian Democracy, great as it is, must bend the
knee to the Hamiltonian Union. Otherwise there is nothing
before us but discord, dismemberment, and death.
The democratic instinct is still ready, as it has ever been,
to defeat itself by audacity. It cries out for liberty, equality,
fraternity; but it forgets that liberty, equality, and fraternity,
can exist only within the bulwarks of the Nation. Outside
of the strong towers of Union there is nothing but an-
archy, disintegration, and barbarism.
I am for all the rights of the Jeffersonian Democracy,
and I am for all the powers of the Hamiltonian Union. I
am for the Jeffersonian Democracy under the Hamiltonian
Union. This is the key of American liberty. Give us the
unobstructed exercise of Democratic rights under the un-
obstructed exercise of National supremacy, and you have
the prize for which the ages have contended. But if any
man will put the Hamiltonian Union under the feet of a
disruptive Democracy turn upon him the guns of Gettysburg!
As between the Nation and the State, I say, Down with
the State and up with the Wation. The Hamiltonian max-
im is the one thing cardinal in American politics. How
42 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
otherwise shall the rights of man be made secure except by
the supremacy of law and the oneness of the Nation?
Where shall we go for the maintenance of individual liberty
except to the flag of “the States in Empire P” How shall
the precious rights of local self-government—the right of
every man to adjudge his own affairs according to his will—
be guaranteed and perpetuated except by the supreme
power of unequivocal Nationality?
This one thing essential to the perpetuity of his
country Hamilton grasped with greater sagacity and pro-
founder penetration than did any other man of the epoch.
The rest doubted, wavered, compromised; he only stood
fast, holding the anchor. He divined the future. He saw in
the distance the storms and perils to which the American
people were to be exposed. He understood the besetting
sins of democracy as well as he understood the vices of des—
potism. The study of history gave him his materials;
genius gave him his insight. Every relapse of antiquity he
analyzed to its elements and causes. Every abortive pro-
ject of the human race struggling for freedom he read as
an open book. Every complication and tendency of mod-
ern Europe he knew by heart. “Hamilton avait divine
!' Burope,” said Talleyrand. To the wisdom of the philos-
opher he added the vision of the prophet. With the lore
of the jurist and statesman he joined the virtues of the pat-
riot and philanthropist.
If Alexander Hamilton could have had his way he
would have choked the serpent of disunion even as Her-
cules strangled the Hydra. If he could have had his way
the pernicious doctrines of secession and dismemberment,
whether in New England or Carolina, would have died
without an advocate. If he could have had his way the
patriotic but infatuated people of the Southern States would
ALEXA WDER AAMILTON. 43
never have closed their hearts to the blessed memories of
the Revolution and rushed blindly after the shameful ban-
ners of disunion, into the dark gorges of blood and death.
If Hamilton could have had his way the atrocities of Fort
Pillow and Belle Isle, the horrors of Andersonville and Lib-
by, would never have stained the escutcheon of our country
or blackened the annals of the world. If he could have
had his way the fairest portion of our land would not to-
day be sitting in darkness and gloom, crouching in the
corner of the temple of liberty, but half recovered from the
wild insanity and fierce hatred of bloody war. O that the
day may speedily dawn when the distrust and suspicion of
the disruptive and hostile South shall give place to return-
ing confidence in the glory of the Nation and love for the
starry banner of that indissoluble Union made sacred by
the sorrows of our fathers l
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