The Conqueror Part 30

"We are three to one," he said rea.s.suringly to his coadjutors. "He is brilliant. I do not deny it. But against a triple power--"

"He is worth any three men I ever knew," said Madison, drearily. "We shall have to work harder than he will."

Jefferson lifted his pen, and squinted thoughtfully at its point.

Monroe, who was the youngest of the trio, laughed aloud.

And these were the forces of which Hamilton felt the shock shortly after the convening of Congress.

XXIII

On the 13th of December Hamilton sent to the House of Representatives his second Report on Public Credit--no longer a nomen of bitter sarcasm--and the Report in favour of a National Bank. Congress was once more on edge. Since his first Great Report, it had considered and wrangled over his successive Reports on State Debits and Credits, West Point, Public Lands, Estimates, and Renewal of Certificates; and it had lived through the hot summer on the prospect of the excitement which the bold and creative Secretary would surely provide. Even his enemies loved Hamilton in their way, for life was torpid when he rested on his labours.

The anti-Federalists, had they needed an additional incentive for the coming battle, a condition to rouse all their strength and mettle, found it in the rapidly increasing prosperity of the country, which had raised Hamilton to a height of popularity from which it would be an historic triumph to drag him down. He was, indeed, almost at the zenith of a reputation which few men have achieved. From end to end of the Union his name was on every lip, sometimes coupled with a hiss, but oftener with every expression of honour and admiration that the language could furnish. Even in the South he had his followers, and in the North and East it was hardly worth a man's nose to abuse him. He was a magician, who could make the fortunes of any man quick enough to seize his opportunities, and the saviour of the national honour and fortunes. His fame obscured that of Washington, and abroad he was by far the most interesting and significant figure in the young country. No wonder the anti-Federalists trembled for the future, and with all the vigour of hardened muscles fought his scheme for allying the moneyed cla.s.ses with the Government.

Hamilton made no secret of his design so closely to attach the wealthy men of the country to the central Government that they must stand or fall with it, coming to its rescue in every crisis; and time has vindicated his far-sighted policy. But when the National Bank was in the preliminary stages of its journey, certain of its hosts in Congress saw but another horrid menace to the liberties of the people, another step toward the final establishment of a monarchy after the British pattern.

The old arguments of subservience to British inst.i.tutions in the matter of funding, and other successful pets of the Secretary, were dragged forth and wrangled over, in connection with this new and doubly pernicious measure of a National Bank.

Hamilton recommended that a number of subscribers should be incorporated into a bank, to be known as the Bank of the United States; the capital to be ten million dollars; the number of shares twenty-five thousand; the par value of each share four hundred dollars; the Government to become a subscriber to the amount of two millions, and to require in return a loan of an equal sum, payable in ten yearly instalments of two hundred thousand dollars each. The rest of the capital stock would be open to the public, to be paid for, one-quarter in gold and silver, and three-quarters in the six or three per cent certificates of the national debt. The life of the bank was to end in 1811. As an inducement for prompt subscriptions a pledge would be given that for twenty years to come Congress would incorporate no other.

It is odd reading for us, with a bank in every street, not only those old diatribes in Congress against banks of all sorts, but Hamilton's elaborate arguments in favour of banks in general, the benefits and conveniences they confer upon individuals as well as nations. But in those days there were but three banks in the Union, and each had been established against violent opposition, Hamilton, in particular, having carried the Bank of New York through by unremitting personal effort. The average man preferred his stocking. Representatives from backwoods districts were used to such circulating mediums as military warrants, guard certificates, horses, cattle, cow-bells, land, and whiskey. They looked askance at a bank as a sort of whirlpool into which wealth would disappear, and bolt out at the bottom into the pockets of a few individuals who understood what was beyond the average intellect. But by far the most disquieting objection brought forward against this plan of the Secretary's was its alleged unconst.i.tutionality.

Monroe, although a new man, and speaking seldom, exerted a systematic opposition in the Senate, and Madison, in the House, argued, with lucidity and persistence, that the Const.i.tution had no power to grant a charter to any such inst.i.tution as the Secretary proposed. Others argued that the success of this new scheme would infringe upon the rights of the States, and still others thundered the everlasting accusations of monarchical design. Nevertheless, the bill for granting the required charter pa.s.sed both Houses by a handsome majority. The able Federalists had contemptuously dissected the arguments against it with greater skill than even Madison could command; and confidence in Hamilton, by this time, practically was a religion. The bill was sent to Washington to sign or veto, and the anti-Federalists, disconcerted and alarmed by their signal defeat in Congress, rested their final hope on Jefferson.

The President, according to law, had but ten days in which to sign or veto a bill: if he hesitated but a moment beyond the const.i.tutional limit, the bill became a law without his signature. It may safely be said that these ten days were the most miserable of Washington's life so far, although they were but the forerunner of many to come.

By this time the Cabinet had acquired the habit of a.s.sembling for conference about a council table in the President's house. Washington sat at the head of the table, with Hamilton on his left, and Jefferson on his right. Knox, who would have frowned upon the Almighty had he contradicted Hamilton, sat beside his Captain. Randolph sat opposite, his principles with Jefferson, but his intellect so given to hair-splitting, that in critical moments this pa.s.sion to weigh every side of a proposition in turn frequently resulted in the wrench of a concession by Hamilton, while Jefferson fumed. As time went on, Washington fell into the habit of extending his long arms upon the table in front of him, and clasping his imposing hands in the manner of a rampart.

Jefferson began a tentative showing of his colours while the bill was fighting its stormy way through Congress, and Hamilton was a brief while perceiving his drift and appreciating his implacable enmity. The first time that Jefferson encountered the lightning in Hamilton's eye, the quivering of his nostril, as he half rose from his chair under the sudden recognition of what he was to expect, his legs slid forward limply, and he turned his head toward the door. Washington suppressed a smile, but it was long before he smiled again, Hamilton would have no hints and innuendoes; he forced his enemy to show his hand. But although he wrung from Jefferson his opposition to the Bank and to every scheme the Secretary of the Treasury had proposed, he could not drag him into the open. Jefferson was deprecating, politely determined to serve the country in his own way, lost in admiration of this opponent's intellect, but forced to admit his mistakes--the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue, the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington.

Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such hate and resentment that Washington elevated his hands an inch. The President sat like a stoic, with a tornado on one side of him and a growling Vesuvius on the other, and exhibited an impartiality, in spite of the fact that Jefferson daily betrayed his hostility to the Administration, which revealed but another of his superhuman attributes.

But there is a psychological manifestation of mental bias, no matter what the control, and some men are sensitive enough to feel it.

Jefferson was quite aware that Washington loved Hamilton and believed in him thoroughly, and he felt the concealed desire to side openly with the Secretary to whom, practically, had been given the reins of government.

Washington, rather than show open favouritism, even to Hamilton, to whom he felt the profoundest grat.i.tude, would have resigned his high office; but the desire was in his head, and Jefferson felt it. The campaign open, he kept up a nagging siege upon Washington's convictions in favour of his aggressive Secretary's measures, finding constant excuses to be alone with the President. Hamilton, on the other hand, dismissed the subject when left alone with Washington, unless responding to a demand.

He frequently remained to the midday meal with the family, and was as gay and lively as if Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were in the limbo to which he gladly would have consigned them. His nature was mercurial in one, at least, of its essences, and a sudden let-down, followed by congenial company, restored his equilibrium at once. But Washington watched the development of the blackness and violence of his deeper pa.s.sions with uneasiness and regret, finally with alarm.

Hamilton, in truth, was roused to his dregs. The sneaking retreat of Madison from his standard and affections, the rancorous enmity of Monroe, with whom he had fought side by side and been well with whenever they had been thrown together in the bitter winters of inaction; the slow, cool, determined, deadly opposition of Jefferson, whom he recognized as a giant in intellect and despised as a man with that hot contempt for the foe who will not strip and fight in the open, which whips a pa.s.sionate nature to the point of fury, had converted Hamilton into a colossus of hate which, as Madison had intimated, far surpa.s.sed the best endeavours of the powerful trio. He hated harder, for he had more to hate with,--stronger and deeper pa.s.sions, ampler resources in his intellect, and an energy of temperament which Jefferson and Madison, recruited by Monroe, could not outweigh. He saw that he was in for the battle of his life, and that its finish might be deferred for years; for he made no such mistake as to underrate the strength and resources of this triple enemy; he knew that it would last until one or the other were worn out. Hamilton had no thought of defeat; he never contemplated it for a moment; his faith in himself and in the wisdom of his measures was absolute; what he looked forward to with the deepest irritation was the persistent opposition, the clogging of his wheels of progress, the constant personal attacks which might weaken him with the country before his mult.i.tudinous objects should be accomplished. He suggested resource after resource to his faithful and brilliant disciples in Congress, and he determined to force Jefferson to leave the Cabinet.

"If he only would take himself out of that room with a defiant admission that he intended to head the opposite party and fight me to the death!"

he exclaimed to Mrs. Croix, one day. "What right has he to sit there at Washington's hand, a member of his Cabinet, ostensibly in its first place, and at war with every measure of the Administration? He cannot oppose me without involving the President, under whom he holds office, and if he had a grain of decent feeling he would resign rather than occupy such an anomalous position."

"He intends to force you to resign."

"You don't mean to say that he is coming here?" asked Hamilton, in disgust. "Who next?"

"Mr. Jefferson succ.u.mbed quite three weeks ago," said Mrs. Croix, gaily.

"He amuses me, and I am instilling the conviction that no human being can force you to do anything you don't want to do, and that the sooner he retreats gracefully the better."

Hamilton shrugged his shoulders and made no answer. He had ceased remonstrance long since. If it pleased her to think she was fighting the battles he was forced to fight with undiminished vigour himself, he should be the last to interfere with her amus.e.m.e.nt. She was a born intrigante, and would have been miserable freckling her complexion in the open sunlight. He was too grateful to her at this time to risk a quarrel, or to condemn her for any of her violations of masculine standards. It was to her he poured out his wrath, after an encounter with Jefferson which had roused him too viciously for reaction at Washington's board or at his own. His wife he spared in every way. Not only was her delicate health taxed to the utmost with social duties which could not be avoided, the management of her household affairs, and an absorbing and frequently ailing family, but he would have controlled himself had he burst, before he would have terrified her with a glimpse of pa.s.sions of whose existence she had not a suspicion. To her and his family he was ever the most amiable and indulgent of men, giving them every spare moment he could command, and as delighted as a schoolboy with a holiday, when he could spend an hour in the nursery, an evening with his wife, or take a ramble through the woods with his boys. He took a deep pride in his son Philip, directed his studies and habits, and was as pleased with every evidence of his progress as had he seen Madison riding a rail in a coat of tar and feathers. He coddled and petted the entire family, particularly his little daughter Angelica, and they adored him, and knew naught of his depths.

But Mrs. Croix knew them. In her management of Hamilton she made few mistakes, pa.s.sionately as she loved him. It was in her secluded presence he stormed himself cool, was indignantly sympathized with first, then advised, then soothed. He was made to understand that the more he revealed the black and implacable deeps of his nature, the more was he worshipped, the more keen the response from other and not dissimilar deeps. His wife was necessary to him in many ways, his Egeria in many more. Although he would have sacrificed the last to the first, had it come to an issue, he would have felt as if one-half of him had been cruelly divorced. Few women understand this dual nature in men, and few are the men who do not. It has been known to exist in those who make no pretensions to genius, and in Hamilton was as natural as the versatility of his intellect. When with one he locked the other in the recesses of his mind as successfully as when at college he had accomplished herculean feats of mental acc.u.mulation by keeping but one thing before his thought at a time. What he wanted he would have, so long as his family were in no way affected; and had it not been for Mrs. Croix at this time, it might have been worse for Betsey. She cooled his fevers; her counsel was always sound. And her rooms and herself were beautiful.

She had her way of banishing the world by drawing her soft blue curtains and lighting her many candles. Had she been a fool, Hamilton would have tired of her in a month; as it was, he often thought of her as the most confidential and dispensing of his friends, and no more.

During the preceding two years of their acquaintance there had been many quarrels, caused by furious bursts of temper on the part of the lady, when Hamilton forgot her for a month or more. There were times when she was the solitary woman of Earth, and others when she might have reigned on Mars. He was very busy, and he had countless interests to absorb time and thought. He never pretended to more than a romantic pa.s.sion for her, and deep as was her own infatuation, it was sometimes close to hate; for she was a woman whose vanity was as strong as her pa.s.sions. At this time, however, he felt a frequent need of her, and she made the most of the opportunity.

XXIV

Meanwhile, Washington, deeply disturbed by the arguments in the press and Congress against the const.i.tutionality of the National Bank, had privately asked for the written opinions of Jefferson and Randolph, and for a form of veto from Madison. They were so promptly forthcoming that they might have been biding demand. Washington read them carefully, then, too worried and impatient for formalities, carried them himself to Hamilton's house.

"For G.o.d's sake read them at once and tell me what they amount to," he said, throwing the bundle of papers on the table. "Of course you must prepare me an answer in writing, but I want your opinion at once. I will wait."

Long years after, when Betsey was an old woman, someone asked her if she remembered any incidents in connection with the establishment of the great Bank. She replied, "Yes, I remember it all distinctly. One day General Washington called at the house, looking terribly worried. He shut himself up in the study with my husband for hours, and they talked nearly all the time. When he went away he looked much more cheerful.

That night my husband did not go to bed at all, but sat up writing; and the next day we had a Bank."

Hamilton's answer, both verbally and in a more elaborate form, was so able and sound a refutation of every point advanced by the enemy that Washington hesitated no longer and signed the bill during the last moments remaining to him. Years later, when the same question was raised again, Chief Justice Marshall, the most brilliant ornament, by common consent, the Supreme Court of the United States has had, admitted that he could add nothing to Hamilton's argument. It must, also, have convinced Madison; for while President of the United States, and his opportunity for displaying the consistencies of his intellect, unrivalled, he signed the charter of the Second National Bank. Monroe, whose party was in power, and able to defeat any obnoxious measure of the Federalists, advocated; the second Bank as heartily as he had cursed the first. His defence of his conduct was a mixture of insolent frankness and verbiage. He said: "As to the const.i.tutional objection, it formed no serious obstacle. In voting against the Bank in the first instance, I was governed essentially by policy. The construction I gave to the Const.i.tution I considered a strict one. In the latter instance it was more liberal but, according to my judgement, justified by its powers." If anyone can tell what he meant, doubtless his own shade would be grateful.

Hamilton's second Report on the Public Credit had beer buffeted about quite as mercilessly as the Report in favour of a bank. The customs officers had, during the past year collected $1,900,000, which sufficed to pay two-thirds of the annual expenses of the Government. There was still a deficit of $826,000, and to meet future contingencies of a similar nature, the Secretary of the Treasury urged the pa.s.sage of an Excise Bill.

Even his enemies admired his courage, for no measure could be more unpopular, raise more widespread wrath. It was regarded as a deliberate attempt to deprive man of his most cherished vice; and every argument was brought forth in opposition, from the historic relation of whiskey to health and happiness, to the menace of adopting another British measure. The bill pa.s.sed; but it was a different matter to enforce it, as many an excise officer reflected, uncheerfully, whilst riding a rail.

On the 28th of January Hamilton sent in his Report in favour of the establishment of a mint, with details so minute that he left the framers of the necessary bill little excuse for delay; but it had the same adventurous and agitated experience of its predecessors, and only limped through, in an amended form, after the wildest outburst of democratic fanaticism which any of the measures of Hamilton had induced. The proposition to stamp the coins with the head of the President was conclusive of an immediate design to place a crown upon the head of Washington. Doubtless the leaders of the Federal party, under the able tuition of their despot, had their t.i.tles ready, their mine laid.

Jefferson, in the Cabinet, protested with such solemn persistence against so dangerous a precedent, and Hamilton perforated him with such arrows of ridicule, that Washington exploded with wrath, and demanded to know if neither never intended to yield a point to the other.

During this session of Congress, Hamilton also sent in Reports on Trade with India and China, and on the Dutch Loan. He was fortunate in being able to forget his enemies for days and even weeks at a time, when his existence was so purely impersonal that every capacity of his mind, save the working, slept soundly. By now, he had his department in perfect running order; and his successors have accepted his legacy, with its infinitude of detail, its unvarying practicality, with grat.i.tude and trifling alterations. When Jefferson disposed himself in the Chair of State, in 1801, he appointed Albert Gallatin--the ablest financier, after Hamilton, the country has produced--Secretary of the Treasury, and begged him to sweep the department clean of the corruption amidst which Hamilton had sat and spun his devilish schemes. Gallatin, after a thorough and conscientious search for political microbes, informed his Chief that in no respect could the department be improved, that there was not a trace of crime, past or present. Jefferson was disconcerted; but, as a matter of fact, his administrations were pa.s.sed complacently amidst Hamilton legacies and inst.i.tutions. Jefferson's hour had come. He could undo all that he had denounced in his rival as monarchical, aristocratical, pernicious to the life of Democracy. But the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, ran from first to last on those Federal wheels which are still in use, protected within and without by Federal inst.i.tutions. But their architect was sent to his grave soon after the rise of his arch-enemy to power, was beyond humiliation or party triumph; it would be folly to war with a spirit, and greater not to let well enough alone. But that is a far cry.

Meanwhile the Bank was being rushed through, and its establishment was antic.i.p.ated with the keenest interest, and followed by a season of crazy speculation, dissatisfaction, and vituperation. But this Hamilton had expected, and he used his pen constantly to point out the criminal folly and inevitable consequences of speculation.

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 const.i.tution 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sions 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 succ.u.mb 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 pa.s.sion, 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.e.x, that it were a waste of valuable time to a.n.a.lyze 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.

XXVI

Hamilton looked forward to the next Congressional term with no delusions. He polished his armour until it was fit to blind his adversaries, tested the temper of every weapon, sharpened every blade, arranged them for immediate availment. In spite of the absorbing and disconcerting interests of the summer, he had followed in thought the mental processes of his enemies, kept a sharp eye out for their new methods of aggression. Themselves had had no more intimate knowledge of their astonishment, humiliation, and impotent fury at the successive victories of the invulnerable Secretary of the Treasury, than had Hamilton himself. He knew that they had confidently hoped to beat him by their combined strength and unremitting industry, and by the growing power of their party, before the finish of the preceding term. The Federalists no longer had their former majority in Congress upon all questions, for many of the men who, under that t.i.tle, had been devoted adherents of the Const.i.tution, were become alarmed at the constant talk of the monarchical tendencies of the Government, of the centralizing aristocratic measures of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the "unrepublican" formalities and elegance of Washington's "Court," at his triumphal progresses through the country, and at the enormous one-man power as exhibited in the person of Hamilton. Upon these minds Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had worked with unremitting subtlety. It was not so much that the early Federalists wished to see Hamilton dragged from his lofty position, for they admired him, and were willing to acknowledge his services to the country; but that the idea grew within them that he must be properly checked, lest they suddenly find themselves subjects again. They realized that they had been running to him for advice upon every matter, great and insignificant, since the new Congress began its sittings, and that they had adopted the greater part of his counsels without question; they believed that Hamilton was becoming the Congress as he already was the Administration; and overlooked the fact that legislative authority as against executive had no such powerful supporter as the Secretary of the Treasury. But it was not an era when men reasoned as exhaustively as they might have done.

They were terrified by bogies, and the blood rarely was out of their heads. "Monarchism must be checked," and Hamilton for some months past had watched the rapid welding of the old anti-Federalists and the timid Federalists into what was shortly to be known, for a time, as the Republican party. That Jefferson had been at work all summer, as during the previous term, with his subtle, insinuating, and convincing pen, he well knew, and for what the examples of such men as Jefferson and Madison counted--taking their stand on the high ground of stemming the menace to personal liberties. The Republican party was to be stronger far than the old anti-Federal, for it was to be a direct and constant appeal to the controlling pa.s.sion of man, vanity; and Hamilton believed that did it obtain the reins of power too early in the history of the Nation, confusion, if not anarchy, would result: not only was it too soon to try new experiments, diametrically opposed to those now in operation, but, under the tutelage of Jefferson, the party was in favour of vesting more power in the ma.s.ses. Hamilton had no belief in entrusting power to any man or body of men that had not brains, education, and a developed reasoning capacity. He was a Republican but not a Democrat. He recognized, long before the rival party saw their mistake in nomenclature, that this Jefferson school marked the degeneracy of republicanism into democracy. Knowing how absurd and unfounded was all the hysterical talk about monarchism, and that time would vindicate the first Administration and its party as Republican in its very essence, he watched with deep, and often with impersonal, uneasiness the growth of a party which would denationalize the government, scatter its forces, and interpret the Const.i.tution in a fashion not intended by the most protesting of its framers. Hamilton had in an extraordinary degree the faculty which Spencer calls representativeness; but there were some things he could not foresee, and one was that when the Republicans insinuated themselves to power they would rest on their laurels, let play the inherent conservatism of man, and gladly accept the goods the Federal party had provided them. The three men who wrote and harangued and intrigued against Hamilton for years, were to govern as had they been the humblest of Hamiltonians. But this their great antagonist was in unblest ignorance of, for he, too, reasoned in the heat and height and thick of the fray; and he made himself ready to dispute every inch of the ground, checkmate every move, force Jefferson into retirement, and invigorate and encourage his own ranks. The majority in both Houses was still Federal, if diminished, and he determined that it should remain so.

As early as October his watching eye caught the first flash in the sunlight of a new blade in the enemies' armoury. One Freneau had come to town. He had some reputation as a writer of squibs and verses, and Hamilton knew him to be a political hireling utterly without principle.

When, therefore, he heard incidentally that this man had lately been in correspondence and conference with the Virginian junta, and particularly that he had been "persuaded by his old friend Madison to settle in Philadelphia," had received an appointment as translating clerk in the Department of State, and purposed to start a newspaper called the _National Gazette_ in opposition to Fenno's Administration organ, _The United States Gazette_, he knew what he was to expect. Fenno's paper was devoted to the Administration, and to the Secretary of the Treasury in particular; it was the medium through which Hamilton addressed most of his messages to the people. Naturally it was of little use to his enemies; and that Jefferson and his aides had realized the value of an organ of attack, he divined very quickly. He stated his suspicions to Washington immediately upon the President's arrival, and warned him to expect personal a.s.sault and abuse.

"There is now every evidence of a strong and admirably organized cabal,"

he added. "And to pull us down they will not stop at abuse of even you, if failure haunts them. I shall get the most of it, perhaps all. I hope so, for I am used to it."