The Conqueror

XIV

In the spring of 1774 Hamil­ton vis­it­ed Boston dur­ing a short hol­iday. His glimpse of this city had been so brief that it had im­pressed his mind but as a thing of roofs and trees, a fan­tas­tic wood­land am­phithe­atre, in whose depths men of large and solemn mien added dai­ly to the sum of hu­man dis­com­fort. He re­turned to see the im­por­tant city of Boston, but with no over­whelm­ing de­sire to come in clos­er con­tact with its for­bid­ding in­hab­itants. He quick­ly for­got the city in what those stern sour men had to tell him. For to them he owed that rev­ela­tion of the trag­ic jus­tice of the Amer­ican cause which en­abled him to be­gin with the pen his part in the Rev­olu­tion, forc­ing the cri­sis, tak­ing rank as a po­lit­ical philoso­pher when but a youth of sev­en­teen; in­stead of bolt­ing from his books to the bat­tle­field at the first wel­come call to arms. Up to this time he had ad­hered to his res­olu­tion to let noth­ing im­pede the progress of his ed­uca­tion, to live strict­ly in the hour un­til the time came to leave the col­lege for the world. There­fore, al­though he had heard the ques­tion of Colonies ver­sus Crown ar­gued week af­ter week at Lib­er­ty Hall, and at the many New York hous­es where he dined of a Sun­day with his friends, Stevens, Troup, and Fish, he had per­sis­tent­ly re­fused to study the mat­ter: there were old­er heads to set­tle it and there was on­ly one age for a man's ed­uca­tion. More­over, he had grown up with a deep rev­er­ence for the British Con­sti­tu­tion, and his strong aris­to­crat­ic prej­udices in­clined him to all the aloof­ness of the true con­ser­va­tive. So while the pa­tri­ots and roy­al­ists of King's were de­bat­ing, oft­times con­clud­ing in se­questered nooks, Hamil­ton re­mained “The young West In­di­an,” an alien who cared for naught but book-​learn­ing, walk­ing ab­stract­ed­ly un­der the great green shade of Bat­teau Street while Lib­er­ty Boys were shout­ing, and British sol­diers swag­gered with a sharp eye for ag­gres­sion. This pe­ri­od of philo­soph­ic re­pose in the midst of elec­tric fire dart­ing from ev­ery point in turn and some­times from all points at once, en­dured from the Oc­to­ber of his ar­rival to its de­cent buri­al in Boston short­ly af­ter his sev­en­teenth birth­day.

Boston was sober and de­pressed, stoni­ly await­ing the vengeance of the crown for her dra­mat­ic de­fi­ance in the mat­ter of tea. Even in that rum­bling in­ter­val, Hamil­ton learned, the Com­mit­tee of Cor­re­spon­dence, which had di­rect­ed the mo­men­tous act, had been un­ex­cit­ed and me­thod­ical, re­strain­ing the Mo­hawks day af­ter day, hop­ing un­til the last mo­ment that the Col­lec­tor of Cus­toms would clear the ships and send the tea whence it came. Hamil­ton heard the wrongs of the colonies dis­cussed with­out any of the ex­cite­ment or py­rotech­ni­cal bril­lian­cy to which he had be­come ac­cus­tomed. New York was not on­ly the hot-​bed of To­ry­ism, but even such ar­dent Re­pub­li­cans as William Liv­ingston, George Clin­ton, and John Jay were aris­to­crats, hold­ing them­selves fas­tid­ious­ly aloof from the rank and file that marched and yelled un­der the name of Sons of Lib­er­ty. To Hamil­ton the con­flict had been spec­tac­ular rather than re­al, un­til he met and moved with these som­bre, un­demon­stra­tive, su­per­fi­cial­ly un­pleas­ing men of Boston; then, al­most in a flash, he re­al­ized that the colonies were strug­gling, not to be re­lieved of this tax or that, but for a prin­ci­ple; re­al­ized that three mil­lions of peo­ple, a re­spectable ma­jor­ity hon­ourable, in­dus­tri­ous, and ed­ucat­ed, were be­ing treat­ed like in­ca­pables, ap­pre­hen­sive of vi­olence if they dared to protest for their rights un­der the British Con­sti­tu­tion. Hamil­ton al­so learned that Boston was the con­spic­uous head and cen­tre of re­sis­tance to the crown, that she had led the colonies in ag­gres­sive­ness since the first Stamp Act of 1765 had shocked them from pas­sive sub­jects in­to dan­ger­ous crit­ics. He had let­ters which ad­mit­ted him to clubs and homes, and he dis­cussed but one sub­ject dur­ing his vis­it. There were no vel­vet coats and lace ruf­fles here, ex­cept in the small group which formed the Gov­er­nor's court. The men wore dun-​coloured gar­ments, and the wom­en were not much live­li­er. It was, per­haps, as well that he did not see John Han­cock, that or­na­men­tal head-​piece of pa­tri­ot­ic New Eng­land, or the har­mo­ny of the im­pres­sion might have been dis­turbed; but, as it was, ev­ery time he saw these men to­geth­er, whether sit­ting un­demon­stra­tive­ly in Fa­neuil Hall while one of their num­ber spoke, or in church, or in groups on Boston Com­mon, it was as if he saw men of iron, not of flesh and blood. Ev­ery word they ut­tered seemed to have been weighed first, and it was im­pos­si­ble to con­sid­er such men giv­ing their time and thought, mak­ing ready to of­fer up their lives, to any cause which should not mer­it the at­ten­tion of all men. Al­though Hamil­ton met many of them, they made no in­di­vid­ual im­pres­sion on him; he saw them on­ly as a mighty brain, ca­pa­ble of solv­ing a mighty ques­tion, and of a stern and bit­ter courage.

He re­turned to New York filled with an in­tense in­dig­na­tion against the coun­try which he had be­lieved too an­cient and too firm in her high­est prin­ci­ples to make a colos­sal mis­take, and a hot sym­pa­thy for the colonists which was not long re­solv­ing it­self in­to as burn­ing a pa­tri­otism as any in the land. It was not in him to do any­thing by halves, it is doubt­ful if he ev­er re­al­ized the half-​heart­ed ten­den­cy of the greater part of mankind. He stud­ied the ques­tion from the first Stamp Act to the Tea Par­ty. The day he was con­vinced, he ceased to be a West In­di­an. The time was not yet come to draw the sword in be­half of the coun­try for which he con­ceived a ro­man­tic pas­sion, which sat­is­fied oth­er wants of his soul, but he be­gan at once on a course of read­ing which should be of use to her when she was free to avail her­self of pa­tri­ot­ic thinkers. He al­so joined the de­bat­ing club of the col­lege. His abrupt ad­vent in­to this body, with his fiery elo­quence and re­mark­able log­ic, was elec­tri­cal. In a day he be­came the lead­er of the pa­tri­ot stu­dents. There were many roy­al­ists in King's, and the pres­ident, Dr. Myles Coop­er, was a fa­mous old To­ry. He looked up­on this in­flu­en­tial ad­di­tion to the wrong side with deep dis­favour, and when he dis­cov­ered that the most caus­tic writ­er of Holt's Whig news­pa­per, who had carved him to the quick and bro­ken his con­tro­ver­sial lances again and again, was none oth­er than his youngest and most rev­olu­tion­ary pupil, his wrath knew no bounds.

With the news of the or­der to close the port of Boston, the wave of in­dig­na­tion in the colonies rose so high that even the in­fat­uat­ed cler­gy wrig­gled. Philadel­phia went so far as to toll her muf­fled bells for a day, and as for New York, then as now, the nerve-​knot of the coun­try, she ex­plod­ed. The Sons of Lib­er­ty, who had re­or­ga­nized af­ter the fi­nal at­tempt of Eng­land to force tea on the colonies, pa­rad­ed all day and most of the night, but were, as yet, more or­der­ly than the mass­es, who stormed through the streets with light­ed torch­es, shriek­ing and yelling and burn­ing the king and his min­is­ters in ef­fi­gy.

The sub­stan­tial cit­izens al­so felt that the time was come to pre­pare for the cli­max to­ward which their for­tunes were has­ten­ing. That spite­ful fist would be at their own skulls next, be­yond a doubt. The re­sult of a long and hot de­bate in the Ex­change be­tween the Sons of Lib­er­ty and the more con­ser­va­tive pa­tri­ots was an agree­ment to call a Congress of the Colonies. The con­test over the elec­tion of del­egates was so bit­ter, how­ev­er, the Com­mit­tee of the As­sem­bly, which was large­ly min­is­te­ri­al, claim­ing the right to nom­ina­tion, that it was de­ter­mined to sub­mit the ques­tion to the peo­ple at large.