The Conqueror

XI

On the fol­low­ing day Hamil­ton went to Al­bany to march at the head of a Fed­er­al pro­ces­sion with Gen­er­al Schuyler, then re­turned to “Hamilto­nop­olis” and such le­gal work as he was per­mit­ted to ac­com­plish; for not on­ly were lead­ers con­sult­ing him on ev­ery pos­si­ble ques­tion from the com­ing elec­tions to the prop­er seat for the new gov­ern­ment, and his du­ties as a mem­ber of Congress press­ing, but Ed­ward Stevens, now es­tab­lished as a doc­tor in Philadel­phia, paid him a vis­it of a week, and they talked the night through of St. Croix and old times. One of the pleas­an­test re­sults of these years of suprema­cy was the un­qual­ified de­light of his Is­land friends. Hugh Knox was so proud of him, and of him­self and the debt which Hamil­ton ac­knowl­edged, that he wrote ex­plo­sive reams de­scrib­ing the breath­less in­ter­est of St. Croix in his ca­reer, and of the dis­tin­guished gath­er­ings at the Gov­er­nor's when he ar­rived with one of their lost cit­izen's in­fre­quent epis­tles. Mrs. Mitchell, poor soul, wrote pa­thet­ical­ly that she would no longer re­gret his loss could she love him less. Hamil­ton wrote to her as of­ten as he could find the time, and Bet­sey se­lect­ed a present for her sev­er­al times a year. Grat­itude is the priv­ilege of a great soul, and Hamil­ton had a full mea­sure of it. Even his fa­ther and broth­er wrote oc­ca­sion­al­ly, re­spect­ful­ly, if with no great warmth; and if their con­grat­ula­tions were usu­al­ly ac­com­pa­nied by the ex­per­imen­tal sigh of pover­ty, Hamil­ton was glad to re­spond, for at this pe­ri­od he was mak­ing a good deal of mon­ey.

His promised bow to Mrs. Croix he de­ferred from day to day, plead­ing to him­self the pres­sure of work, which was sub­merg­ing; but while he re­proached him­self for in­grat­itude, he knew that he dread­ed the meet­ing: the old spir­it of ad­ven­ture with­in him, long qui­es­cent, tapped al­lur­ing­ly on the doors of his pru­dence. That she did not write again, even to con­grat­ulate him as oth­er friends had done, but added to his dis­com­fort, for he knew that her pride was now in arms, and that she must be deeply wound­ed. He heard of her con­stant­ly, and at the pro­ces­sion in his hon­our he had seen her, lean­ing on the arm of Gen­er­al Knox, a daz­zling, but an­gel­ic vi­sion in blue and white, at which even the bak­ers, wig-​mak­ers, foresters, tan­ners, and print­ers had turned to stare. One of the lat­ter had leaped down from the mov­ing plat­form on which he was print­ing a po­em of oc­ca­sion by William Duer, and begged her on his knee to deign to re­ceive a copy. She held week­ly re­cep­tions, which were at­tend­ed by two-​thirds of the lead­ing men in town, and Hamil­ton's in­ti­mate friends dis­coursed of her con­stant­ly. Croix was sup­posed to have been seized with a pas­sion for trav­el­ling in sav­age jun­gles, and it was the gen­er­al be­lief that his death would be an­nounced as soon as the la­dy should find it con­ve­nient to go in­to mourn­ing. It was plain to the char­ita­ble that he had left her with plen­ty of mon­ey, for she dressed like the princess she looked, and her en­ter­tain­ments lacked no ma­te­ri­al at­trac­tion. The gos­sip was more fu­ri­ous than ev­er, but the most as­sid­uous scan­dal-​mon­ger could con­nect no one man with her name, nor trace her in­come to oth­er than its re­put­ed source. More than once Hamil­ton had passed her coach, and she had bowed grave­ly, with nei­ther chal­lenge nor re­proach in her sweet haughty eyes. Af­ter these quick pass­ings Hamil­ton usu­al­ly gave her a few mo­ments of in­tense thought. He mar­velled at her cu­ri­ous in­ti­mate knowl­edge of him, not on­ly of the less known episodes of his ca­reer, but of more than one of his men­tal pro­cess­es. It is true, she might have led Troup or Fish in­to gos­sip and anal­ysis, but her sym­pa­thy count­ed heav­ily. She drew him by many strings, and some­times the re­sponse thrilled him un­bear­ably. He felt like a man who stood out­side the gates of Par­adise, bolt­ing them fast. Still, he could quite for­get her in his work; and it is prob­able that but for chance he nev­er would have met her, that one of the great­est dis­as­ters in his­to­ry would have been avert­ed.

Bet­sey, who had not been well for some time, went to the north­ern forests of her old home to strive for “spring” and colour. She took the chil­dren with her, and Hamil­ton, who hat­ed to live alone, filled his de­sert­ed rooms with Troup, Fish, and Baron Steuben, whose claims he had been press­ing up­on Congress for years, prac­ti­cal­ly sup­port­ing him mean­while. The old sol­dier felt keen­ly the in­grat­itude of the coun­try he had served, but in time it made him am­ple com­pen­sa­tion; mean­while the de­vo­tion of a few friends, and the li­on­iz­ing of so­ci­ety, helped him to bear his lot with con­sid­er­able for­ti­tude. He spent hours in the nurs­ery of the lit­tle Hamil­tons, and was fre­quent­ly seen in the Broad­way with one in his arms and the oth­er three at­tached to his per­son.

All the talk was of Wash­ing­ton and the first ad­min­is­tra­tion, Hamil­ton hav­ing car­ried his point in Congress that New York should be the tem­po­rary seat of gov­ern­ment; there was jeal­ousy and wran­gling over this, as over most oth­er mat­ters in­volv­ing state pride, but Hamil­ton be­lieved that should the prize fall to Philadel­phia, she would not re­lin­quish it as light­ly as New York, which ge­ograph­ical­ly was the more un­fit for a per­ma­nent gath­er­ing, and that the in­con­ve­nience to which most of the mem­bers, in those days of dif­fi­cult trav­el over a vast area, would be sub­ject­ed, would force them the soon­er to agree up­on a cen­tral and com­mon­ly agree­able lo­cal­ity,--one, more­over, which would not meet with the vi­olent op­po­si­tion of New York. Madi­son, who had been in favour of Philadel­phia, fi­nal­ly ac­knowl­edged Hamil­ton's sagac­ity and gave him his in­flu­ence and vote.

That point set­tled, all eyes were turned to Mount Ver­non. The mass­es took for grant­ed that Wash­ing­ton would re­spond to ev­ery call of du­ty the pub­lic chose to make, and it was in­con­ceiv­able that any­one else should fill the first term of that great ex­ec­utive ex­per­iment. The uni­ver­sal con­fi­dence in Wash­ing­ton and be­lief that he was to guide the Con­sti­tu­tion over the more crit­ical of its shoals, had op­er­at­ed more than any oth­er fac­tor in the rat­ifi­ca­tion of that ad­ven­tur­ous in­stru­ment. It was a point up­on which Hamil­ton had harped con­tin­ual­ly. That a whole coun­try should turn, as a mat­ter of course, to a man whom they revered for his virtues rather than for any bril­liant parts he may have ef­fec­tu­al­ly hid­den with­in his cold and silent ex­te­ri­or, their har­mo­nious choice un­bro­ken by an ar­gu­ment against the safe­ty and dig­ni­ty of the coun­try in the hands of such a man, cer­tain­ly is a man­ifest of the same el­eva­tion of tone that we in­fer from the great pop­ular­ity of the writ­ings of Hamil­ton and the def­er­ence to such men as Jay and Philip Schuyler. But al­though they had all the faults of hu­man na­ture, our fore­fa­thers, and were of­ten self­ish and jeal­ous to a de­gree that im­per­illed the coun­try, at least they had the ex­cuse, not on­ly of be­ing mere mor­tals, but of liv­ing in an era of such changes, un­cer­tain­ty, and doubt, that pub­lic and pri­vate in­ter­ests seemed hope­less­ly tan­gled. They were not de­based by po­lit­ical cor­rup­tion un­til Jef­fer­son took them in hand, and sowed the boun­ti­ful crop which has fat­tened so vast and so cu­ri­ous a vari­ation up­on the orig­inal Amer­ican.

The Fed­er­al lead­ers by no means shared the con­fi­dence of the peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton's re­sponse to their call, and they were deeply un­easy. They knew that he had been bom­bard­ed with let­ters for a year, urg­ing up­on him the ac­cep­tance of the great of­fice which would sure­ly be of­fered him, and that he had replied cau­tious­ly to each that he could not share their opin­ion of his in­dis­pens­abil­ity, that he had earned the re­pose he loved af­ter a life­time spent in the ser­vice of his coun­try, and had no de­sire to re­turn to pub­lic life. Hamil­ton, at least, knew the mo­tive that lay be­hind his eva­sion; with­out am­bi­tion, he was very jeal­ous of his fame. That fame now was not on­ly one of the most re­splen­dent in his­to­ry, but as unas­sail­able as it was iso­lat­ed. He feared the un­tried field in which he might fail.

One evening, late in Septem­ber, as Hamil­ton and his tem­po­rary house­hold were en­ter­ing the din­ing room, Gou­verneur Mor­ris drove down Wall Street in his usu­al reck­less fash­ion, scat­ter­ing dogs and chil­dren, and pulling his ner­vous sweat­ing hors­es al­most to their haunch­es, as he reached Hamil­ton's door. As he en­tered the house, how­ev­er, and re­ceived the en­thu­si­as­tic wel­come to which he was ac­cus­tomed, his bear­ing was as un­ruf­fled as if he had walked down from Mor­risa­nia read­ing a bre­viary.

“I grow des­per­ate­ly lone­ly and bored out on my an­ces­tral do­main, and long for the glare and glit­ter, the in­trigues and wom­en, of Eu­rope--our ed­ucat­ed ones are so vir­tu­ous, and the oth­ers write such shock­ing­ly un­gram­mat­ical notes,” he an­nounced, as he took his seat at the board. “Ed­ucat­ed virtue is ben­efi­cial for the coun­try, but we will all ad­mit that pol­itics are our on­ly ex­cite­ment, and my blood dances when I think of Eu­rope. How­ev­er, I did not come tear­ing through the woods on a hot night to lament the virtue of the Amer­ican wom­an. I've writ­ten to Wash­ing­ton, and he won't lis­ten to me. We all know how many oth­ers have writ­ten, in­clud­ing Lafayette, I hear. And we all know what the con­se­quences will be if--say John or Sam Adams, Han­cock, or Clin­ton should be our first pres­ident. I long for Paris, but I can­not leave the coun­try while she is threat­ened with as grave a per­il as any that has be­set her. Would that he had a grain of am­bi­tion--of any­thing that a per­former up­on the var­ious chords of hu­man na­ture could im­press. I sup­pose if he were not so des­per­ate­ly per­fect, we should not be in the quandary we are, but he would be far eas­ier to man­age. As I awoke from my sies­ta just two hours ago, my brain was il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the idea that one man alone could per­suade him; and that was Alexan­der Hamil­ton. He likes us, but he loves you. If he has a weak spot, it has yearned over you since you were our in­fant prodi­gy in uni­form, with your curls in your eyes. You must take him in hand.”

“I have men­tioned it to him, when writ­ing of oth­er things.”

“He is on­ly too glad of the ex­cuse to evade a mere men­tion. You must write to him as peremp­to­ri­ly as on­ly you dare to write to that ma­jes­tic pres­ence. Don't mince it. Don't be too re­spect­ful--I was, be­cause he is the one be­ing I am afraid of. So are all the oth­ers. Be­sides, you have the most pow­er­ful and point­ed pen in this coun­try. We have spoiled you un­til you are afraid of no one--if you ev­er were. And you know him as no one else does; you will ap­proach him from pre­cise­ly the right sides. Your du­ty is clear, and the dan­ger is ap­palling. Be­sides, I want to go to Eu­rope. Promise me that you will write to-​night.”

“Very well,” said Hamil­ton, laugh­ing. “I promise.” And, in truth, his mind had opened at once to the cer­tain­ty that the time was come for him to make the fi­nal ef­fort to in­sure Wash­ing­ton's ac­cep­tance. He had felt, dur­ing the last weeks, as if bur­row­ing in the very heart of a moun­tain of work; but his skin chilled as he con­tem­plat­ed the open­ing of the new gov­ern­ment with­out Wash­ing­ton in the pres­iden­tial Chair.

Two hours af­ter din­ner Mor­ris es­cort­ed him to the li­brary and shut him in, then went, with his oth­er friends, to Fraunces' tav­ern, and the house was qui­et. Hamil­ton's thoughts ar­ranged them­selves rapid­ly, and be­fore mid­night he had fin­ished his let­ter. For­tu­nate­ly it has been pre­served, for it is of as vi­tal an in­ter­est as any­thing he ev­er wrote, not on­ly be­cause it was the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in Wash­ing­ton's ac­cep­tance of an of­fice to­ward which he looked with re­luc­tance and dread, but be­cause of its con­sum­mate sagac­ity and of its peremp­to­ry tone, which no man but Hamil­ton would have dared to as­sume to Wash­ing­ton.

It ran:--

NEW YORK, Septem­ber, 1788.

... I should be deeply pained, my dear sir, if your scru­ples in re­gard to a cer­tain sta­tion should be ma­tured in­to a res­olu­tion to de­cline it; though I am nei­ther sur­prised at their ex­is­tence, nor can I but agree in opin­ion, that the cau­tion you ob­serve in de­fer­ring an ul­ti­mate de­ter­mi­na­tion, is pru­dent. I have, how­ev­er, re­flect­ed ma­ture­ly on the sub­ject, and have come to a con­clu­sion (in which I feel no hes­ita­tion), that ev­ery pub­lic and per­son­al con­sid­er­ation will de­mand from you an ac­qui­es­cence in what will _cer­tain­ly_ be the unan­imous wish of your coun­try. The ab­so­lute re­treat which you med­itat­ed at the close of the late war was nat­ural, and prop­er. Had the Gov­ern­ment pro­duced by the Rev­olu­tion gone on in a _tol­er­able_ train, it would have been most ad­vis­able to have per­sist­ed in that re­treat. But I am clear­ly of opin­ion that the cri­sis which brought you again in­to pub­lic view, left you no al­ter­na­tive but to com­ply; and I am equal­ly clear in the opin­ion, that you are by that act _pledged_ to take a part in the ex­ecu­tion of the Gov­ern­ment. I am not less con­vinced, that the im­pres­sion of this ne­ces­si­ty of your fill­ing the sta­tion in ques­tion is so uni­ver­sal, that you run no risk of any un­can­did im­pu­ta­tion by sub­mit­ting to it. But even if this were not the case, a re­gard to your own rep­uta­tion, as well as to the pub­lic good, calls up­on you in the strongest man­ner, to run that risk.

It can­not be con­sid­ered as a com­pli­ment to say, that on your ac­cep­tance of the of­fice of Pres­ident, the suc­cess of the new Gov­ern­ment, in its com­mence­ment, may ma­te­ri­al­ly de­pend. Your agen­cy and in­flu­ence will be not less im­por­tant in pre­serv­ing it from the fu­ture at­tacks of its en­emies, than they have been in rec­om­mend­ing it, in the first in­stance, to the adop­tion of the peo­ple. In­de­pen­dent of all con­sid­er­ations drawn from this source, the point of light in which you stand at home and abroad will make an in­fi­nite dif­fer­ence in the re­spectabil­ity with which the Gov­ern­ment will be­gin its op­er­ations, in the al­ter­na­tive of your be­ing or not be­ing at the head of it. I for­bear to urge con­sid­er­ations which might have a more per­son­al ap­pli­ca­tion. What I have said will suf­fice for the in­fer­ences I mean to draw.

First. In a mat­ter so es­sen­tial to the well be­ing of so­ci­ety, as the pros­per­ity of a new­ly in­sti­tut­ed gov­ern­ment, a cit­izen, of so much con­se­quence as your­self to its suc­cess, has no op­tion but to lend his ser­vices if called for. Per­mit me to say it would be in­glo­ri­ous, in such a sit­ua­tion, not to haz­ard the glo­ry, how­ev­er great, which he might have pre­vi­ous­ly ac­quired.

Sec­ond­ly. Your sig­na­ture to the pro­posed sys­tem pledges your judge­ment for its be­ing such an one as, up­on the whole, was wor­thy of the pub­lic ap­pro­ba­tion. If it should mis­car­ry (as men com­mon­ly de­cide from suc­cess, or the want of it), the blame will, in all prob­abil­ity, be laid on the sys­tem it­self; and the framers of it will have to en­counter the dis­re­pute of hav­ing brought about a rev­olu­tion in gov­ern­ment, with­out sub­sti­tut­ing any­thing that was wor­thy of the ef­fort. They pulled down one Utopia, it will be said, to build up an­oth­er. This view of the sub­ject, if I mis­take not, my dear sir, will sug­gest to your mind greater haz­ard to that fame, which must be and ought to be dear to you, in re­fus­ing your fu­ture aid to the sys­tem, than in af­ford­ing it. I will on­ly add, that in my es­ti­mate of the mat­ter, that aid is in­dis­pens­able.

I have tak­en the lib­er­ty to ex­press these sen­ti­ments, and to lay be­fore you my view of the sub­ject. I doubt not the con­sid­er­ations men­tioned have ful­ly oc­curred to you, and I trust they will fi­nal­ly pro­duce in your mind the same re­sult which ex­ists in mine. I flat­ter my­self the frank­ness with which I have de­liv­ered my­self will not be dis­pleas­ing to you. It has been prompt­ed by mo­tives which you could not dis­ap­prove. I re­main, my dear sir,

With the sin­cer­est re­spect and re­gard,

Your obe­di­ent and hum­ble ser­vant,

A. HAMIL­TON.