The campaign draws down; it is Adams against Jefferson, Federal against Republican. Hamilton leaves the seat of government, and comes to New York to take personal charge. At that his designs are Janus-faced. He says “Adams,” but he means “Pinckney.” He foresees that, if Adams be given another term, he will defy control. Wherefore he is publicly for Adams, and privately for Pinckney—he looks at Massachusetts but sees only South Carolina. This collision of pretense and purpose, on Hamilton’s false part, gets vastly in the Federal way. That it should do so will instantly occur to curious ones, if they will but seek to go south by heading north.
As Hamilton sets out to take presidential possession of New York, he has no misgivings. He knows little or nothing of Aaron’s designs or what that ingenious gentleman has been about.
“There is the Manhattan Bank of course; but what can it do? There are the Bucktails—who are vulgar clods! There are the Livingstons and the Clintons—he has beaten them before!”
Thus run the reflections of the confident Hamilton. No; he sees only triumph ahead. He gives Aaron and his candidate Jefferson—with their borrel issue of Alien and Sedition—not half the thought that he devotes to ways and means by which he hopes finally to steal the electors from Adams, and produce Pinckney in the White House. That is Hamilton’s dream of power—Pinckney!
Everything pivots on the legislature; since it is the legislature which will select the electors.
Hamilton, bearing in mind his intended steal of the State, prepares his list of candidates for Albany. He does not pick them for either wisdom or moral worth; what he is after are legislators whom he can certainly manhandle to match his designs, and who will give him electors—he himself will furnish the names—of a Pinckney not an Adams complexion. He makes up his slate to that treasonable end; and the swift Aaron gets a copy before the ink is dry.
Aaron smiles when he runs down the ignoble muster of Hamilton’s boneless nonentities.