The Conqueror

XXV

Congress ad­journed while the ex­cite­ment was at its height. Wash­ing­ton went to Mount Ver­non, the Cab­inet scat­tered, and there was an in­ter­val of peace. Philadel­phia in sum­mer was al­ways un­healthy, and li­able to an out­break of fever at any mo­ment. Hamil­ton sent his fam­ily to the Schuyler es­tate at Sarato­ga. Mrs. Croix had gone as ear­ly as May to the New Eng­land coast; for even her mag­nif­icent con­sti­tu­tion had felt the strain of that ex­cit­ing ses­sion, and Philadel­phia was not too in­vig­orat­ing in win­ter. Hamil­ton re­mained alone in his home, glad of the abun­dant leisure which the emp­ty city af­ford­ed to catch up with the ar­rears of his work, to de­sign meth­ods for fi­nan­cial re­lief against the time to ap­ply them, and to pre­pare his Re­port on Man­ufac­tures, a pa­per des­tined to be­come as cel­ebrat­ed and al­most as widespread in its in­flu­ence as the great Re­port on Pub­lic Cred­it. It re­quired days and nights of think­ing, re­search, cor­re­spon­dence, com­par­ison, and writ­ing; and how in the midst of all this mass of busi­ness, this keen anx­iety re­gard­ing the whirl­wind of spec­ula­tion--which was in­volv­ing some of the lead­ing men in the coun­try, and threat­en­ing the young Gov­ern­ment with a new dis­as­ter; how, while sit­ting up half the night with his fin­ger on the pub­lic pulse, wait­ing for the right mo­ment to ap­ply his reme­dies, he man­aged to en­tan­gle him­self in a per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ty, would be an in­scrutable mys­tery, were any man but Alexan­der Hamil­ton in ques­tion.

I shall not en­ter in­to the de­tails of the Reynolds af­fair. No in­trigue was ev­er less in­ter­est­ing. Nor should I make even a pass­ing al­lu­sion to it, were it not for its po­lit­ical ul­ti­mates. A cou­ple of black­mail­ers laid a trap for the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, and he walked in­to it, as the wis­est of men have done be­fore and since, when the wom­an has been suf­fi­cient­ly at­trac­tive at the right mo­ment. This wom­an was com­mon and sor­did, but she was young and hand­some, and her af­fec­ta­tion of vi­olent at­tach­ment, if un­gram­mat­ical, was plau­si­ble enough to con­vince any man ac­cus­tomed to easy con­quest; and the most as­tute of men, pro­vid­ed his pas­sions be strong enough, can be fooled by any wom­an at once de­sign­ing and se­duc­tive. Ar­dent sus­cep­ti­bil­ity was in the very essence of Hamil­ton, with Scot­land and France in his blood, the West In­dies the mould of his youth­ful be­ing, and the stormy in­her­itance of his par­ents.

But al­though Hamil­ton might suc­cumb to a wom­an of Mrs. Reynold's type, she could not hold him. Af­ter lib­er­al­ly re­liev­ing the al­leged pe­cu­niary dis­tress of this charmer, and weary of her so­ci­ety, he did his best to get rid of her. She protest­ed. So did he. It was then that he was made aware of the plot The wom­an's hus­band ap­peared, and an­nounced that on­ly a thou­sand dol­lars would heal his wound­ed hon­our, and that if it were not im­me­di­ate­ly forth­com­ing, he would write to Mrs. Hamil­ton.

Hamil­ton was fu­ri­ous. His first im­pulse was to tell the man to do his worst, for any­thing in the na­ture of co­er­cion stripped him for the fray at once. But an hour of re­flec­tion cooled his blood. No one was to blame but him­self. If he had per­mit­ted him­self to be made a fool of, it was but just that he should take the con­se­quences, and not cru­el­ly wound the wom­an he loved the bet­ter for his va­garies. More­over, such a scan­dal would se­ri­ous­ly af­fect the high of­fice he filled, might in­deed force him to res­ig­na­tion; not on­ly thwart­ing his great am­bi­tions, but de­priv­ing the coun­try of ser­vices which no oth­er man had the abil­ity or the will to ren­der. And a few mo­ments fore­cast of the tri­umph of his en­emies, not on­ly over him­self but pos­si­bly over his par­ty, in case of his down­fall, was suf­fi­cient in it­self to force him to terms. Few are the mo­men­tous oc­ca­sions in which men are gov­erned by a sin­gle mo­tive. Hamil­ton's am­bi­tions were weld­ed in­to the fu­ture hap­pi­ness and glo­ry of the coun­try he had so ar­dent­ly adopt­ed. And if love of pow­er was his rul­ing pas­sion, it cer­tain­ly was di­rect­ed to the lofti­est of ends. To de­sire to cre­ate a na­tion out of the re­sources of a vast un­der­stand­ing, con­trolled by wis­dom and hon­our, is an am­bi­tion which should be dig­ni­fied with a high­er name. Small and pure­ly per­son­al am­bi­tions were un­known to Hamil­ton, his gifts were giv­en him for the el­eva­tion of the hu­man race; but he would rather have reigned in hell than have sunk to in­signif­icance on earth. As he re­marked once to Kit­ty Liv­ingston, the com­plex­ity of man so far ex­ceeds that of the av­er­age wom­an, com­plex­ity be­ing pure­ly a mat­ter of brain and hav­ing no roots what­ev­er in sex, that it were a waste of valu­able time to an­alyze its ram­ifi­ca­tions, and the cross­ings and en­tan­gle­ments of its threads. Hamil­ton paid the mon­ey, yield­ed fur­ther to the ex­tent of sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars, then the peo­ple dis­ap­peared, and he hoped that he had heard the last of them. For­tu­nate­ly his habits were me­thod­ical, the re­sult of his mer­can­tile train­ing on St. Croix, and he pre­served the cor­re­spon­dence.