There was one person who, through her inherited intuitions, understood Hamilton, and that was Angelica.  He had kept her at arm’s length, great as the temptation to have a sympathetic confidant had been, particularly after he had withdrawn from the intimate companionship of Washington; she was so highly wrought and sensitive, so prone to hysteria, that he had never yielded for a moment, even when she turned her head slowly toward him and stared at him with eyes that read his very soul.  On the evening after the elections he had played and sung with her for an hour, then talked for another with Philip, who was the most promising student of Columbia College, a youth of fine endowments and elevated character.  He was the pride and delight of Hamilton, who could throttle both apprehensions and demons while discussing his son’s future, and listening to his college trials and triumphs.  Upon this particular evening Angelica had suddenly burst into tears and left the room.  The next morning Hamilton sent her to Saratoga; and, much as he loved her, it was with profound relief that he arranged her comfortably on the deck of the packet-boat.

On the 7th he wrote to the Governor; but, as he had feared, Jay would take no such audacious leap out of his straight and narrow way.  The letter was published in the Aurora before it reached Albany, and Hamilton had reason to believe that Burr had a spy in the post-office.

Hamilton executed the orders for disbanding the army, then made a tour of several of the New England States, holding conferences and speaking continually.  He found the first-class leaders at one with him as to the danger of entrusting the Executive office to Adams a second time, and favourably inclined to Pinckney.  But the second-rate men of influence were still enthusiastic for the President, and extolling him for saving the country from war.  Hamilton listened to them with no attempt to conceal his impatience.  He pointed out that if Talleyrand had made up his mind that it was best to avoid a war, he would have made a second and regular overture, which could have been accepted without humiliation to the country, and the severance of the Federalist party.

As if Adams had not done enough to rouse the deadly wrath of Hamilton, he announced right and left that the Federalist defeat in New York had been planned by his arch enemy, with the sole purpose of driving himself from office; that there was a British faction in the country and that Hamilton was its chief.  He drove Pickering and M’Henry from his Cabinet with contumely, as the only immediate retaliation he could think of, and Wolcott would have followed, had there been anyone to take his place.  Franklin once said of Adams that he was always honest, sometimes great, and often mad.  Probably so large an amount of truth has never again been condensed into an epigram.  If Adams had not become inflamed with the ambition that has ruined the lives and characters of so many