When Hamilton heard that Adams had asserted that he was the chief of a British faction, he wrote to the President, demanding an explanation; and his note had that brief and frigid courtesy which indicated that he was in his most dangerous temper.  Adams ignored it.  Hamilton waited a reasonable time, then wrote again; but Adams was now too infuriated to care whether or not he committed the unpardonable error of insulting the most distinguished man in the country.  He was in a humour to insult the shade of Washington, and he delighted in every opportunity to wreak vengeance on Hamilton, and would have died by his hand rather than placate him.

Then Hamilton took the step he had meditated for some time past, one which had received the cordial sanction of Wolcott, and the uneasy and grudging acquiescence of Cabot, Ames, Carroll of Carrollton, Bayard, and a few other devoted but conservative supporters.  He wrote, for the benefit of the second-class leaders, who must be persuaded to cast their votes for Pinckney, to vindicate Pickering and M’Henry, and—­it would be foolish to ignore it—­to gratify his deep personal hatred, the pamphlet called “The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States.”  His temper did not flash in it for a second.  It was written in his most concise and pointed, his most lucid and classic, manner; and nothing so damning ever flowed from mortal brain.  He set forth all Adams’s virtues and services with judicial impartiality.  There they were for all to read.  Let no man forget them.  Then he counterbalanced and overbalanced them by the weaknesses, jealousies, and other temperamental defects which had arisen in evidence with the beginnings of the President’s public career.  He drilled holes in poor Adams’s intellect which proved its unsoundness and its unfitness for public duty, and he lashed him without mercy for his public mistakes and for his treatment of his Secretaries and himself.  It was a life history on ivory, and a masterpiece; and there is no friend of Hamilton’s who would not sacrifice the memory of one of his greatest victories for the privilege of unwriting it.

This was one of his creations that he did not read to his wife, but Troup was permitted a glance at the manuscript.  He dropped it to the floor, and his face turned white.  “Do you intend to publish this thing?” he demanded.  “And with your name signed in full?”

“I intend to print it.  I had every intention of scattering it broadcast, but I have yielded to the dissuasions of men whose opinions I am bound to respect, and it will go only to them and to the second-class leaders as yet unconvinced.  To their entreaties that I would not sign my name I have not listened, because such a work, if anonymous, would be both cowardly and futile.  The point is to let those for whom it is intended know that a person in authority is talking; and anonymous performances are legitimate only when published and unmistakable, when given in that form as a concession to the fashion of the age.”