The city was en fete, and little business was transacted except at the public houses.  Bands of citizens awoke Hamilton from his sleep, shouting for “Alexander the Great.”  Anti-Federalists got so drunk that they embraced the Federalists, and sang on Hamilton’s doorstep.  The hero retreated to the back room on the top floor.  The climax came on the 5th of August, in the great procession, with which, after the fashion of other triumphant cities, New York was to demonstrate in honour of the victory of the Constitution.

But, unlike its predecessors, this procession was as much in honour of one man as of the triumph of a great principle.  To have persuaded New York, at that time, that Hamilton had not written the Constitution, and secured its ratification in the eleven States of the Union by his unaided efforts, would have been a dissipation of energy in August which even Clinton would not have attempted.  To them Hamilton was the Constitution, Federalism, the genius of the new United States.  And he was their very own.  “Virginia has her Madison,” they reiterated, “Massachusetts her Adamses—­and may she keep them and be damned; other States may think they have produced a giant, and those that do not can fall back on Washington; but Hamilton is ours, we adore him, we are so proud of him we are like to burst, and we can never express our gratitude, try as we may; so we’ll show him an honour that no other State has thought of showing to any particular man.”

And of the sixth of New York’s thirty thousand inhabitants that turned out on that blazing August day and marched for hours, that all the eager city might see, at least two-thirds bore a banner emblazoned with Hamilton’s portrait or name, held on high.  The procession was accompanied by a military escort; and every profession, every trade, was represented.  A large proportion of the men who marched were gentlemen.  Nicolas Fish was on the staff of the grand marshal, with six of his friends.  Robert Troup and two other prominent lawyers bore, on a cushion, the new Constitution, magnificently engrossed.  Nicolas Cruger, Hamilton’s old employer, again a resident of New York, led the farmers, driving a plough drawn by three yoke of oxen.  Baron Polnitz displayed the wonders of the newly perfected threshing-machine.  John Watts, a man who had grown gray in the highest offices of New York, before and since the Revolution, guided a harrow, drawn by horses and oxen.  The president, regents, professors, and students of Columbia College, all in academic dress, were followed by the Chamber of Commerce and the members of the bar.  The many societies, led by the Cincinnati, followed, each bearing an appropriate banner.

And in the very centre of that pageant, gorgeous in colour and costume, from the green of the foresters to the white of the florists, was the great Federal ship, with HAMILTON, HAMILTON, HAMILTON, HAMILTON, emblazoned on every side of it.  In the memory of the youngest present there was to be but one other procession in New York so imposing, and that, too, was in honour of Hamilton.