“It is the difference between the eye and the ear,” says Aaron to his aide, Swartwout. “You might explain the iniquities of Alien and Sedition, and never rouse the people. Show them those iniquities, and they take fire. It is quite natural enough. I tell you of a man crushed by a falling tree; you feel a conventional shock that lasts a minute. Should you some day see a man crushed by a falling tree, you will start in your sleep for a twelvemonth with the pure horror of it. Wherefore, never address the ear when you can appeal to the eye. The gateway to the imagination is the eye.”
The campaign wags to a close; the day of the ballot has its dawning. To the amazed chagrin of Hamilton, Aaron and his Bucktails go over him at the polls with a rousing majority of four hundred and ninety; he is beaten, Aaron is dominant, New York is Jefferson’s. The blow shakes Hamilton to the heart, and for the moment he can neither plan nor act. In the face of such disaster, he sits stricken.
Presently, as though the bad in him is more vivid than the good and quicker at recovery, that old instinct of larceny struggles to its feet. He will steal the State; not from Adams as he planned, but from Jefferson. He scribbles a note to Jay, who is in town at his home, urging him as governor to call a special session of the legislature, a Federal Legislature, and go about the crime. He feels the necessity of justification; for Jay is of a skittish honor. This on his mind, he closes with: “It is the only way by which we can prevent an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of government.”
Jay reads, and draws down his brows in a frown. Hamilton’s messenger is waiting.
“Governor,” says the messenger, “General Hamilton bid me get an answer.”
“Tell General Hamilton there is no answer.” Jay rereads the note. Then he takes quill, writes a sentence on the back, and files it away in a pigeonhole. Years later, when Jay and Hamilton and Adams and Jefferson and Aaron are dead and under the grass roots, hands yet unformed will draw the letter forth and unborn eyes will read: “Proposing a measure for party purposes which I do not think it would become me to adopt. J. J.”
CHAPTER XV—THE INTRIGUE OF THE TIE
HAMILTON writhes and twists like a hurt snake. Helpless in that first effort before the adamantine honesty of Jay, when the breath of his courage returns, he bends himself to consider, whether by other means, fair or foul, the election may not yet be stolen for Pinckney. He sends out a flock of letters to the Federal leaders, whom he addresses loftily as their commander in chief of party.