More than once Hamilton left his seat and went up to the belfry to strain his eyes down the Albany post road or over the Dutchess turnpike, and every afternoon he rode for miles to the east or the south, hoping to meet an express messenger with a letter from Madison, or with the good tidings that New Hampshire had ratified.  Madison wrote every few days, sometimes hopefully, sometimes in gloom, especially if he were not feeling well.  Each letter was from ten to twelve days old, and it seemed to Hamilton sometimes that he should burst with impatience and anxiety.  On the 24th of June, as he was standing in the belfry while Chancellor Livingston rained his sarcasms, he thought he saw an object moving rapidly down the white ribbon which cut the forest from the East.  In five minutes he was on his horse and the Dutchess turnpike.  The object proved to be the messenger from Rufus King, and the letter which Hamilton opened then and there contained the news of the adoption of the Constitution by New Hampshire.

There was now a Nation, and nine States would be governed by the new laws, whether New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island sulked unprotected in the out-skirts, or gracefully entered the league before dragged in or driven.  It was a glittering and two-edged weapon for Hamilton, and he flashed it in the faces of the anti-Federalists until they were well-nigh blinded.  Nevertheless, he did not for a moment underrate Clinton’s great strength, and he longed desperately for good news from Virginia, believing that the entrance of that important State into the Union would have more influence upon the opposition than all the arts of which he was master.

VII

And through it all Hamilton was sensible that someone was working for him, and was not long attributing the influence to its proper source.  Mysterious hints were dropped of political reunions in a house on a thickly wooded hill, a quarter of a mile behind the Governor’s, the fortunate guests to which enchanted abode being sworn to secrecy.  That it was the nightly resort of Clintonians was an open secret, but that Federalism was being intelligently interpreted, albeit with deepest subtlety, was guessed by few of the visitors themselves, and Hamilton divined rather than heard it.  If converts were not actually made, they were at least undergoing a process of education which would make them the more susceptible to Hamilton’s final effort.  Even before he caught a glimpse of radiant hair among the maples, when riding one day along the lane at the foot of the hill, he suspected that Mrs. Croix had preceded the Convention with the deliberate intention of giving him the precious assistance of a woman with a talent for politics and a genius for men.  He was touched, interested, intrigued, but he resisted the temptation to precipitate himself into the eddies of her magnetism.  Croix was in