him with an equally determined front, there was nothing for Hamilton to do but to stand his ground; and he stood it.  Washington put an end to the unfortunate controversy.  He gave Adams his choice between submission or the selection of another General-in-chief.  Adams submitted, but Hamilton had in him an enemy no less malignant than Thomas Jefferson himself.  Adams had roused the deep implacability of Hamilton’s nature.  All hope of even an armed truce for party advantage between the two great Federalists was over.  Hamilton had one cause for resentment which alone would have made him ardently desire retaliation:  General Knox, who had loved him devotedly for twenty years, was bitterly alienated, and the breach was never healed.

Hamilton made his headquarters in New York, where he could, after a fashion, attend to his law practice,—­he was now the leading counsel at the bar,—­but he entered upon his new duties with all his old spirit and passionate energy.  Although France might be discomfited by the readiness and resource of the United States, the imposing front erected by a universal indignation, there were reasons which made the reverse possible; and Hamilton thrilled with all the military ardours of his youth at the prospect of realizing those half-forgotten ambitions.  He had, in those days, sacrificed his burning desire for action and glory to a sense of duty which had ruled him through life like a tyrannical deity.  Was he to reap the reward at this late hour? finish his life, perhaps, as he had planned to begin it?  Once more he felt a boundless gratitude for the best friend a mortal ever made.  Washington passed Hamilton over the heads of those superior in military rank, because he knew that he alone was equal to the great task for which himself was too old and infirm; but Hamilton never doubted that he did it with a deep sense of satisfied justice and of gratitude.

Never had Hamilton’s conspicuous talent for detail, unlimited capacity for work, genius for creating something out of nothing, marshalled for more active service than now.  He withheld his personal supervision from nothing; planning forts, preparing codes of tactics, organizing a commissariat department, drafting bills for Congress, advising M’Henry upon every point which puzzled that unfinished statesman, were but a few of the exercises demanded of the organizer of an army from raw material.  The legislation upon one of his bills finally matured a pet project of many years, the Military Academy at West Point.  Philip Church, the oldest son of Angelica Schuyler, was his aide; John Church, after a brilliant career as a member of Parliament, having returned to American citizenship, his wife to as powerful a position as she had held in London.