Let us not establish a tyranny! [he wrote to Wolcott].  Energy is a very different thing from violence.  If we make no false step we shall be essentially united; but if we push things to an extreme, we shall then give to faction body and solidity.

In their modified form they were sufficiently menacing to democratic ideals, and Jefferson could have asked for nothing better.  He immediately drafted his famous Kentucky Resolutions, and the obedient Madison did a like service for Virginia.  The Resolutions of Madison, although containing all the seeds of nullification and secession, are tame indeed compared with the performance of a man who, enveloped in the friendly mists of anonymity, was as aggressive and valiant as Hamilton on the warpath.  These Resolutions protested against the unconstitutionality of the Federal Government in exiling foreigners, and curbing the liberty of the press, in arrogating to itself the rights of the States, and assuming the prerogatives of an absolute monarchy.  If Jefferson did not advise nullification, he informed the States of their inalienable rights, and counselled them to resist the centralizing tendency of the Federal Government before it was too late.  Even in the somewhat modified form in which these Resolutions passed the Kentucky legislature, and although rejected by the States to which they were despatched, they created a sensation and accomplished their primary object.  The war excitement had threatened to shove the Alien and Sedition laws beyond the range of the public observation.  The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions roused the country, and sent the Republicans scampering back to their watchful shepherd.  It is one of the master-strokes of political history, and Jefferson culled the fruits and suffered none of the odium.  That these historic Resolutions contained the fecundating germs of the Civil War, is by the way.

Such was the situation on the eve of 1800, the eve of a Presidential election, and of the death struggle of the two great parties.

It was in December of this year of 1799 that Hamilton bent under the most crushing blow that life had dealt him.  He was standing on the street talking to Sedgwick, when a mounted courier dashed by, crying that Washington was dead.  The street was crowded, but Hamilton broke down and wept bitterly.  “America has lost her saviour,” he said; “I, a father.”

BOOK V

THE LAST BATTLE OF THE GIANTS AND THE END

I

The sunlight moved along the table and danced on Hamilton’s papers, flecking them and slanting into his eyes.  He went to the window to draw the shade, and stood laughing, forgetting the grave anxieties which animated his pen this morning.  In the garden without, his son Alexander and young Philip Schuyler, his wife’s orphan nephew, who lived with him, were pounding each other vigorously, while Philip, Angelica, Theodosia Burr, and Gouverneur Morris sat on the fence and applauded.