Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander
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hear you are chosen a delegate to Congress. Will you forgive me for saying that I would rather have heard that you had not been chosen. If you accept of the office, there is a stop to any further study of the law, which I am desirous you should finish, because a few years practice at the bar would make you independent, and do you more substantial good than all the fugitive honors of Congress. This would put it in your power to obtain them and to hold them with more certainty, should you still be inclined to risque in a troubled sea. The moment you cease to be a candidate for public places, the people will lament your loss and wait with impatience till they can persuade a man of your abilities to serve them. In the mean time, you will be doing justice to your family. Besides, you know that there is nothing at present to be had worthy your acceptance. The negotiators for peace have been long since appointed. The great departments of Government are all filled up. Our foreign ministers sit firm in their seats. It is not to be expected that any new ministers will be created before a peace. And when this comes, be assured, long residence and large possessions in this country will prelude superior merits.
I wish, therefore, my dear friend that I could prevail upon you to avoid a disappointment & a loss which I think I foresee. For, should you go to Congress, you will lose another year of time that is become more precious than ever and retire, perhaps in disgust, to renew your studies and to those domestic endearments which you will regret to have forsaken. How would it vex me to learn that you had exclaimed in the stile of an English cardinal—If I had best served my family as faithfully as I have the public, my affairs would have been today in a very different order.
It appears to me, Hamilton, to be no longer either necessary or a duty, for you and I to go on to sacrifice the small remnant of time that is left us. We have already immolated largely on the altar of liberty. At present, our country neither wants our services in the field or the cabinet, so that it is incumbent upon us to be useful in another line. By pushing your studies to a conclusion, you at once perfect your happiness. But, I wonder, nor recollect, whilst my own life runs on in idleness and small follies that I stand in most need of the advice which I am presuming to offer. You have a wife and an increasing offspring to urge you forward, but I am without either—without your incitements to begin a reform or your perseverance to succeed. Write me, then, what you are doing—What you have done and what you intend to do, that I may endeavor to follow your example. And be full, for I really intend to be wise and you shall be my Apollo.
I have been a second time on the point of gaining immortality by a fever. It seized me a little after the arrival of the French troops here and has only permitted me to come abroad a few days since Mrs. Carter & Miss Peggy' are with us and of course you will think I have been often with them. But I must tell you something of your relations. Mr. Carter is the mere man of business and I am informed has riches enough, with common management, to make the longest life very comfortable. Mrs. Carter is a fine woman. She charms in all companies. No one has seen her, of either sex, who has not been pleased with her, and she pleased every one, chiefly, by means of those qualities which made you the husband of her sister. Peggy, though perhaps a finer woman, is not generally thought so. Her own sex are apprehensive that she considered them poor things, as Swift's Vanessa did, and they, in return, do not scruple to be displeased. In short, Peggy, to be admired as she ought, has only to please the men less and the ladies more. Tell her so. I am sure her good sence will soon place her in her proper station.
My dear Hamilton, adieu. Remember a man who lives in this world, without being satisfied with it. Who strives to seem happy among a people who cannot inspire happiness, but who thinks it unbecoming the dignity of man to leave his part, merely because it does not please him. I am melancholly you perceive. This plaguy fever has torn me to pieces and my mind yet shares in the weakness of my body. But I will recover spirits, as I recover strength. In the meanwhile do not fail to write me. Again my friend and philosopher adieu.
James McHenry.
It is somewhat interesting to note, despite McHenry's warning, that Hamilton not only entered public life, but at the same time made a success at the bar.
Chapter VI
Hamilton, The Lawyer
Hamilton's choice of a profession was made even before the end of the war, for in his well-known letter to General Schuyler, written February 18, 1781, in which he recounted his quarrel with Washington and his future prospects, he said: "If a handsome command in the campaign in the light infantry should offer itself, I shall balance between this and the artillery. My situation in the latter would be more solid and permanent, but as I hope the war will not last long enough to make it progressive, this consideration has less force. A command for the campaign would leave me the winter to prosecute my studies relative to my future career in life." Although it has been stated that after he went to Albany to prepare himself, in 1782, he was admitted to the bar after less than five months' study, there are those who believe that he had, for many years, been accumulating a knowledge of the law, for he could not have accomplished what he did in so short a space of time. Certainly the early literary work in which he engaged, which was called forth by Seabuty's Tory pamphlets, indicated a trained and logical mind. Estabrook, who has written an exceedingly interesting paper, said that Hamilton not only argued like a lawyer, but displayed the knowledge and habits of a lawyer, even as far back as 1774; and his two papers to which reference has been made, namely, "A Full Vindication," and "The Farmer Refuted," bore intrinsic evidences of a familiarity with the law and the authorities of the time, and a capacity for logical deduction quite beyond his years.
While his genius was everywhere apparent, the trend of his mind was always analytical, and-is systematic habits of thought and argument served him in good stead, not only in his chosen calling, but later in the conduct of public affairs. Certainly the observations of De Tocqueville as to the value of legal training as the requirement of a statesman had, in this case, ample proof and illustration. He entered into his new calling with enthusiasm, and although it did not receive his undivided attention, for he was, at the same time, devoting his energies to the construction of the American Constitution, he no doubt had enough lucrative work to do when he left Albany and opened his office at No. 57 Wall Street.
About this time he wrote to Lafayette:
Albany, November 3, 1782.
I have been employed for the last ten months in rocking the cradle and studying the art of fieecing my neighbors. I am now a grave counsellor-at-law, and shall soon be a grave member of Congress. The Legislature, at their last session, took it into their heads to name me, pretty unanimously, as one of their delegates.
I am going to throw away a few months more in public life, and then retire a simple citizen and good paterfamilias. I set out for Philadelphia in a few days. You see the disposition I am in. You are condemned to run the race of ambition all your life. I am already tired of the career, and dare to leave it.
With his partner, Balthazar De Heart, his services were now everywhere in demand. Naturally, many of his cases were connected with the claims of those people who had suffered by the war, and whose property had been taken from them by order of Governor Tryon and other Tories. Among these were claims for damages arising from the seizure of cattle on Long Island, and actions growing out of the trespass law. Again we find that he appeared as counsel in the will cases of Dr. Peter Middleton, Philip Livingston, and Henry Beekman.
Suits for reprisal and claims for damages engaged his attention, and the papers he left, throw much light upon matters connected with the American Revolution, and the unsettled period at its conclusion. It would appear that in those days petty political officers were not above recourse to extortion and graft, which at times since, has distinguished the municipal affairs of the city of New York. We find that during the early part of the Revolution, when the statue of George III was torn down and demolished, and the types of Printer Rivington distributed and condemned for the purpose of making bullets, there was a general levy upon the citizens of New York for the lead in the window-sashes throughout the city for the same purpose, and that subsequently, when restitution was demanded for this form of contribution, it was the custom for the representative