"I have cried my heart out," said Troup.
The funeral took place from the house of John Church, in Robinson Street, near the upper Park. Express messengers had dashed out from New York the moment Hamilton breathed his last, and every city tolled its bells as it received the news. People flocked into the streets, weeping and indignant to the point of fury. Washington"s death had been followed by sadness and grief, but was unaccompanied by anger, and a loud desire for vengeance. Moreover, Hamilton was still a young man. Few knew of his feeble health; and that dauntless resourceful figure dwelt in the high light of the public imagination, ever ready to deliver the young country in its many times of peril. His death was lamented as a national calamity.
On the day of the funeral, New York was black. Every place of business was closed. The world was in the windows, on the housetops, on the pavements of the streets through which the cortege was to pa.s.s: Robinson, Beekman, Peal, and Broadway to Trinity Church. Those who were to walk in the funeral procession waited, the Sixth Regiment, with the colours and music of the several corps, paraded, in Robinson Street, until the standard of the Cincinnati, shrouded in crepe, was waved before the open door of Mr. Church"s house. The regiment immediately halted and rested on its reversed arms, until the bier had been carried from the house to the centre of the street, when the procession immediately formed. This was the order of it:--
The Military Corps The Society of the Cincinnati Clergy of all Denominations The Body of Hamilton The General"s Horse The Family Physicians The Judges of the Supreme Court (in deep mourning) Mr. Gouverneur Morris in his carriage Gentlemen of the Bar and students at law (in deep mourning) Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the State Mayor and Corporation of the City Members of Congress and Civil Officers of the United States The Minister, Consuls, and Residents of Foreign Powers The Officers of the Army and Navy of the United States Military and Naval Officers of the Foreign Powers Militia Officers of States Presidents, Directors, and Officers of the respective Banks Chamber of Commerce and Merchants Marine Society, Wardens of the Port, and Masters and Officers of the Harbour The President, Professors, and students of Columbia College The different Societies The Citizens in general, including the partisans of Burr
On the coffin were Hamilton"s hat and sword. His boots and spurs were reversed across his horse. The fine gray charger, caparisoned in mourning, was led by two black servants, dressed in white, their turbans trimmed with black.
The military escorted him in single file, with trailing arms, the band playing "The Dead March in Saul," minute guns from the Artillery in the Park answered by the British and French warships in the harbour. But for the solemn music, its still more solemn accompaniment, the tolling of m.u.f.fled bells, and the heavy tramp of many feet, there was no sound; even women of an hysterical habit either controlled themselves or were too impressed to give way to superficial emotion. When the procession after its long march reached Trinity Church the military formed in two columns, extending from the gate to the corners of Wall Street, and the bier was deposited before the entrance. Morris, surrounded by Hamilton"s boys, stood over it, and delivered the most impa.s.sioned address which had ever leapt from that brilliant but erratic mind. It was brief, both because he hardly was able to control himself, and because he feared to incite the people to violence, but it was profoundly moving. "He never lost sight of your interests!" he reiterated; "I declare to you before that G.o.d in whose presence we are now so especially a.s.sembled, that in his most private and confidential conversations, his sole subject of discussion was your freedom and happiness. Although he was compelled to abandon public life, never for a moment did he abandon the public service. He never lost sight of your interests. For himself he feared nothing; but he feared that bad men might, by false professions, acquire your confidence and abuse it to your ruin. He was ambitious only of glory, but he was deeply solicitous for you."
The troops formed an extensive hollow square in the churchyard, and terminated the solemnities with three volleys over the coffin in its grave. The immense throng, white, still aghast, and unreconciled, dispersed. The bells tolled until sundown. The city and the people wore mourning for a month, the bar for six weeks. In due time the leading men of the parish decided upon the monument which should mark to future generations the cold and narrow home of him who had been so warm in life, loving as few men had loved, exulted in the wide greatness of the empire he had created.
It bears this inscription:
TO THE MEMORY OF
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
THE CORPORATION OF TRINITY HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT IN TESTIMONY OF THEIR RESPECT FOR THE PATRIOT OF INCORRUPTIBLE INTEGRITY THE SOLDIER OF APPROVED VALOUR THE STATESMAN OF CONSUMMATE WISDOM
WHOSE TALENTS AND VIRTUES WILL BE ADMIRED BY GRATEFUL POSTERITY LONG AFTER THIS MARBLE SHALL HAVE MOULDERED TO DUST
HE DIED JULY 12TH 1804, AGED 47
NOTES
PAGE XI. "Nevis" is p.r.o.nounced Neevis.
PAGE 3. Of the Gingerland estate nothing remains to-day but a negro hamlet named Fawcett. Its inhabitants are, beyond a doubt, the descendants of slaves belonging to Hamilton"s grandparents, for there is no trace of any other family named Fawcett in the Common Records of Nevis.
PAGE 6. This deed of separation is entered in the Common Records of Nevis, 1725-1746, page 429, and is dated the fifth day of February, 1740.
PAGE 11. I have hesitated over the spelling of the name Levine. John Church Hamilton, in his life of Hamilton, spells it Lavine, and in one of Hamilton"s letters, page 7, Vol. 11, of this same Life, it is spelt in the same manner. But four times in the Records of St. Croix it is spelt Levine. The half-brother to whom Hamilton refers in his letter had himself baptized in Christianstadt in the year 1769, and the entry reads: Peter, son of John Michael and Rachael Levine. In the interment entry of Rachael Levine it is spelt in this fashion, and in the government records of Levine"s business transactions. It seems to me probable that in copying Hamilton"s letter the name was misspelled, and although he no doubt mentioned the name freely to his family, it is possible that he did not write it upon any other occasion. I have, therefore, used the method for which there is a considerable authority.
PAGE 29. James Hamilton was the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, Laird of Grange, and his wife, Elizabeth (eldest daughter of Sir Robert Pollock), who were married about 1730. The Hamiltons of Grange belonged to the Cambuskeith branch of the great house of Hamilton, and the founder of this branch, in the fourteenth century, was Walter de Hamilton, a son of Sir Gilbert de Hamilton, who was the common ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton, the Dukes of Abercorn, Earls of Haddington, Viscounts Boyne, Barons Belhaven, several extinct peerages, and of all the Scotch and Irish Hamilton families. He was fifth in descent from Robert, Earl of Mellent, created by Henry I, Earl of Leicester, who married a granddaughter of King Henry I of France and his Queen, who was a daughter of Jeroslaus, Czar of Russia. See "The Lineage of Alexander Hamilton," in the _New York Genealogical and Biographical Review_, for April, 1889, or "The Historical and Genealogical Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, with Genealogical Memoirs of Several Branches of the Family,"
by John Anderson, Edinburgh, 1825, a copy of which is to be found in the British Museum. In the latter work, against the name of James Hamilton, is the following statement: A proprietor in the West Indies, and father of Alexander Hamilton, the celebrated statesman and patriot in the United States of America, who fell, greatly regretted, in a duel with a Mr. Burr.
PAGE 35. There is still so widespread misconception of the term "creole," that it is necessary, even at this late date, to reiterate that it was not invented as a euphemism for coloured blood. In the United States creoles are Southerners of French or Spanish extraction; in the West Indies any person born on one of the islands is a creole, even if he be an undiluted Dane.
PAGE 49. This deed of trust was entered in Vol. X, No. 1, page 180, of the Common Records of St. Christopher, on the fifth day of May, 1756, eight months before the birth of Alexander Hamilton.
PAGE 60. This dialect, or rather this curious misp.r.o.nunciation of words, and inability to make use of certain letters and more than one or two personal p.r.o.nouns, is gathered from old books on the islands, for the coloured people of the present generation in the Caribbees, even those of the lower cla.s.s, now speak, save for their singsong inflection, much like any one else. But in those days there was no education for the blacks, and they spoke the barbarous lingo I have transcribed without embellishment.
PAGE 65. Dr. Hamilton died in June, 1764.
PAGE 68. A piece of eight, then the princ.i.p.al coin in the Danish West Indies, was worth sixty-four cents.
PAGE 69. Hugh Knox married and left two children, Ann Knox, who married James Towers, and John Knox, who, I think, became a clergyman on St.
Thomas.
PAGE 79. The lower story of this fine building, built by Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, is in a state of entire preservation, and is now one of the largest stores in Christiansted.
PAGE 87. The private burying-ground of the Lyttons was on the Grange estate, owned, at the time of Rachael"s death, by Chamberlain Robert Tuite.
PAGE 88. Two candlesticks of this fashion have been preserved in Frederiksted, and are said to have been used by Hamilton while there.
PAGE 91. I am convinced that Hugh Knox baptized Hamilton, and have had the old records of St. Croix, deposited in the archives of Copenhagen, thoroughly searched. But they are in so dilapidated a condition that one might as profitably appeal to the recording angel. In 1782 the French destroyed the church registers of Nevis, but it is hardly likely that Rachael Levine had Hamilton baptized. The islanders were indifferent to baptism under the most amiable conditions, usually waiting until it was reasonable to suppose that their brood was complete, when they took it to the font _en bloc_. But Hugh Knox would have attached great importance to this ceremony.
PAGE 120. There is no doubt in my mind that Hamilton and young Stevens were either first or second cousins, and that the resemblance between them which subsequently, in the United States, gave rise to the gossip that they were brothers, was due to this fact. I was not able to discover that Mrs. Stevens was a daughter of John and Mary Fawcett, but she or her husband might well have been closely related to Hamilton"s grandparents, for the few prominent families of Nevis and St.
Christopher intermarried again and again. The Fawcetts were married at least twenty-two years before Rachael was born, and doubtless had one of the large families of that time.
PAGE 131. "The Fields" was the old name for the City Hall Park.
PAGE 133. I have inferred that the speech Hamilton made on this occasion was a spontaneous outburst of the same thought which he elaborated a few weeks later in his history-making pamphlets. Wherever it has been possible, I have used his own words, for he must have talked much as he wrote.
PAGE 136. "Indeed he was the first to perceive and develop the idea of a real union of the people of the United States"--"History of the Const.i.tution of the United States" by George Ticknor Curtis, who also comments at length upon his having been the chief force in bringing the discontent of the colonists to a head and precipitating the Revolution.
PAGE 145. There is s.p.a.ce only for Hamilton"s share in these battles. I am obliged to a.s.sume that the reader knows his Revolutionary history.
PAGE 165. Nothing can be told here of Laurens"s private history beyond the statements that his too sensitive mind held him responsible for the accidental death of a younger brother, and that he had married a woman in England, whom he had left at the altar, to join, with all possible haste, the fighting forces in America, and whom he never saw again. If this meets the eye of his family and they care to trust me with the necessary papers, I shall be glad to write a life of Laurens.
PAGE 196. This verse was found in a little bag on Mrs. Hamilton"s neck when she died at the age of ninety-seven.
PAGE 208. "At the age of three and twenty he had already formed well-defined, profound, and comprehensive views on the situation and wants of these states. He had clearly discerned the practicability of forming a confederated government and adapting it to their peculiar condition, resources, and exigencies. He had wrought out for himself a political system, far in advance of the conceptions of his contemporaries, and one which in the case of those who most opposed him in life, became, when he was laid in a premature grave, the basis on which this government was consolidated; on which to the present day it has been administered; and on which, alone, it can safely rest in that future which seems to stretch out its unending glories before us."--GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.
PAGE 209. This letter from Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler, from which this extract is taken, was first published in Martha Lamb"s "History of New York," A.S. Barnes & Co., New York.
PAGE 226. Burr was aide-de-camp to Washington for six weeks, beginning the last week in May, 1776. He hated the work and left abruptly, incurring Washington"s contempt and dislike. The charge of his friends that Hamilton poisoned the Chief"s mind against him is wholly unfounded.
Washington made up his own mind about men, and there is no evidence that the two young men met except in the most casual manner before this spring of 1782. Of course it is possible that a diligent reading of obscure correspondence might bring to light an earlier acquaintance, but the matter is not worth the waste of time. Matthew Davis, the only responsible biographer of Burr, gives two years as the time consumed by Burr for his legal studies. Parton was wholly indifferent to facts and has no serious position as a biographer; but possessing a picturesque and entertaining style, he has been widely read, and his estimate of Burr accepted by the ignorant.
PAGE 233. Madison was born in 1751, Morris in 1752.
PAGE 257. "A long chapter might be written about Hamilton"s other labours in the State legislature;... he laboured hard to prevent legislation in contravention of the treaty of peace; he corrected gross theoretical blunders in a proposed system of regulating elections, and strove hard though not altogether successfully to eliminate religious restrictions; he succeeded in preventing the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of a great number of persons for having been interested, often unwillingly, in privateering ventures; he stayed some absurd laws proposed concerning the proposed qualifications of candidates for office; in the matter of taxation he subst.i.tuted for the old method of an arbitrary official a.s.sessment, with all its gross risks of error and partiality, the principle of allowing the individual to return under oath his taxable property; he laboured hard to promote public education by statutory regulations; his "first great object was to place a book in the hand of every American child," and he evolved a system which served as the model of that promulgated in France by the imperial decree of 1808; he had much to do with the legislation concerning the relations of debtor and creditor, then threatening to dissever the whole frame of society; he was obliged to give no little attention to the department of criminal law; finally he had to play a chief part in settling the long and perilous struggle concerning the "New Hampshire Grants," the region now const.i.tuting the State of Vermont: his efforts in this matter chiefly averted war and brought the first new state into the Union."--MORSE"S "Life of Hamilton," Vol. I.
PAGE 265. The cla.s.sic narrative of the Const.i.tutional Convention is by George Ticknor Curtis, and there have been few more fascinating chronicles of any subject. Of the condensed narratives the most coherent and vivid is in Roosevelt"s "Life of Gouverneur Morris."
PAGE 268. Hamilton also invited Gouverneur Morris to collaborate, but that erratic gentleman was otherwise engaged.
PAGE 269. I take this apportionment from a copy of "The Federalist"
presented by Hamilton to his nephew Philip Church, and kindly lent to me by Mr. Richard Church. In this copy one of Hamilton"s sons, at his father"s dictation, wrote the initial of the writer or writers after each essay. To Jay are allotted Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 54. To Madison, 10, 14, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. To Hamilton and Madison jointly: 13, 19, 20. The rest to Hamilton.
PAGE 271. ""The Federalist," written princ.i.p.ally by Hamilton, exhibits an extent and precision of information, a profundity of research, and an accurateness of understanding, which would have done honour to the most ill.u.s.trious statesmen of ancient or modern times."--_Edinburgh Review_, No. 24.
"It is a work altogether, which, for comprehensiveness of design, strength, clearness, and simplicity, has no parallel. We do not even except or overlook Montesquieu and Aristotle among the writings of men."--_Blackwood"s Magazine_, January, 1825.