prairie.  Everywhere the example of Boston was followed, meetings were held, committees appointed, and memorials against the treaty sent to the President.  In New York Hamilton was stoned when he attempted to speak in favor of ratification; and less illustrious persons, who ventured to differ from the crowd, were ducked and otherwise maltreated.  Jay was hanged and burned in effigy in every way that imagination could devise, and copies of his treaty suffered the same fate at the hands of the hangman.  Feeling ran highest in the larger towns where there was a mob, but even some of the smaller places and those most Federal in their politics were carried away.  The excitement seems also to have been confined for the most part to the seaboard, but after all that was where the bulk of the population lived.  The crowd, moreover, was not led by obscure agitators or by violent and irresponsible partisans.  The Livingstons in New York, Rodney in Delaware, Gadsden and the Rutledges in South Carolina, were some of the men who guided the meetings and denounced the treaty.  On the other hand, the friends and supporters of the administration appeared stunned, and for weeks no opposition to the popular movement except that attempted by Hamilton was apparent.  Even the administration was divided, for Randolph was as hostile to the treaty as it was possible for a man of his temperament to be.

The crisis was indeed a serious one.  There have been worse in our history, but this was one of the gravest; and never did a President stand, so far as any one could see, so utterly alone.  With his own party silenced and even divided, with the opposition rampant, and with popular excitement at fever heat, Washington was left to take his course alone and unsupported.  It was the severest trial of his political life, but he met it, as he met the reverses of 1776, calmly and without flinching.  He was always glad to have advice and suggestions.  No man ever sought them or benefited from them more than he; yet no man ever lived so little dependent on others and so perfectly capable of standing alone as Washington.  After the Senate had acted, he made up his mind to conditional ratification.  He withheld his signature on hearing of the provision order, and was ready to sign as soon as that order was withdrawn.  Whether he would make its withdrawal another condition of his signature he had not determined when he left Philadelphia for Mount Vernon, and on his arrival he wrote to Randolph:  “The conditional ratification (if the late order, which we have heard of, respecting provision vessels is not in operation) may, on all fit occasions, be spoken of as my determination.  Unless, from anything you have heard or met with since I left you, it should be thought more advisable to communicate further with me on the subject, my opinion respecting the treaty is the same now that it was, namely, not favorable to it; but that it is better to ratify it in the manner the Senate have advised, and with the reservation