ELIZABETH HAMILTON.  JAMES A. WASHINGTON.  JA.R.  MACDONALD.

In 1797 Hamilton was forced by treachery and the malignancy of Jacobinism into the most painful and mortifying act of his public career.  He had been hailed by certain enthusiastic Federalists as the legitimate successor of Washington.  It was a noble ambition, and there is no doubt that Hamilton would have cherished it, had he been less of a philosopher, less in the habit of regarding a desire for the impossible as a waste of time.  Not only were older men in the direct line of promotion, but he knew that as the author of the Excise Law he was hated by one section of the Commonwealth, and that as the parent of the manufacturing interest, to say nothing of the Assumption measure, he had incurred the antagonism of the entire South.  Lest these causes for disqualification be obscured by the brilliancy of his reputation, Jefferson’s unresting and ramifying art had indelibly impressed the public mind with the monarchical-aristocratical tendencies and designs of the former Secretary of the Treasury, and of his hatred for a beloved cause overseas.  Hamilton had given an absolute negative to every suggestion to use his name; but one at least had found its way into print, and so terrified the enemy that they determined upon one more powerful blow at his good name.  Monroe had a fresh cause for hatred in his humiliating recall from France, which he ascribed to the influence of Hamilton.  No doubt the trio were well satisfied for a time with their carefully considered scheme.  The pamphlet published in 1797, called “The History of the United States for 1796,” and edited by a disreputable man named Callender, was the concentrated essence of Jacobinical fury and vindictiveness against Alexander Hamilton.  It surpassed any attack yet made on him, while cleverly pretending to be an arraignment of the entire Federalist party; shrieking so loudly at times against Washington, Adams, and Jay, that the casual reader would overlook the sole purport of the pamphlet.  “It is ungenerous to triumph over the ruins of declining fame,” magnanimously finished its attack upon Washington.  “Upon this account not a word more shall be said!”

It omitted a recital of the two Congressional attacks upon Hamilton’s financial integrity, as to refrain from all mention of the vindications would have been impossible; but it raked up everything else for which it had space, sought to prove him a liar by his defence of the Jay treaty in the Camillus papers, and made him insult Washington in language so un-Hamiltonian that to-day it excites pity for the desperation of the Virginians.  When it finally arrived at the pith and marrow of the assault, however, it was with quite an innocent air.  This was a carefully concocted version of the Reynolds affair.  Callender had obtained possession of the papers which Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venable had prepared to submit to the President, before hearing Hamilton’s explanation.  He asserted that this explanation was a lie, and that the Secretary of the Treasury had not only speculated with the public funds, but that he had made thirty thousand pounds by the purchase of army certificates.  It was also alleged that Hamilton ordered his name withdrawn as a Presidential candidate, in consequence of a threat that otherwise these same papers would be published.