PAGE 196. This verse was found in a little bag on Mrs. Hamilton's neck when she died at the age of ninety-seven.
PAGE 208. "At the age of three and twenty he had already formed well-defined, profound, and comprehensive views on the situation and wants of these states. He had clearly discerned the practicability of forming a confederated government and adapting it to their peculiar condition, resources, and exigencies. He had wrought out for himself a political system, far in advance of the conceptions of his contemporaries, and one which in the case of those who most opposed him in life, became, when he was laid in a premature grave, the basis on which this government was consolidated; on which to the present day it has been administered; and on which, alone, it can safely rest in that future which seems to stretch out its unending glories before us."—GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.
PAGE 209. This letter from Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler, from which this extract is taken, was first published in Martha Lamb's "History of New York," A.S. Barnes & Co., New York.
PAGE 226. Burr was aide-de-camp to Washington for six weeks, beginning the last week in May, 1776. He hated the work and left abruptly, incurring Washington's contempt and dislike. The charge of his friends that Hamilton poisoned the Chief's mind against him is wholly unfounded. Washington made up his own mind about men, and there is no evidence that the two young men met except in the most casual manner before this spring of 1782. Of course it is possible that a diligent reading of obscure correspondence might bring to light an earlier acquaintance, but the matter is not worth the waste of time. Matthew Davis, the only responsible biographer of Burr, gives two years as the time consumed by Burr for his legal studies. Parton was wholly indifferent to facts and has no serious position as a biographer; but possessing a picturesque and entertaining style, he has been widely read, and his estimate of Burr accepted by the ignorant.
PAGE 233. Madison was born in 1751, Morris in 1752.
PAGE 257. "A long chapter might be written about Hamilton's other labours in the State legislature;… he laboured hard to prevent legislation in contravention of the treaty of peace; he corrected gross theoretical blunders in a proposed system of regulating elections, and strove hard though not altogether successfully to eliminate religious restrictions; he succeeded in preventing the disfranchisement of a great number of persons for having been interested, often unwillingly, in privateering ventures; he stayed some absurd laws proposed concerning the proposed qualifications of candidates for office; in the matter of taxation he substituted for the old method of an arbitrary official assessment, with all its gross risks of error and partiality, the principle of allowing the individual to return under oath his taxable property; he laboured hard to promote public education by statutory regulations; his 'first great object was to place a book in the hand of every American child,' and he evolved a system which served as the model of that promulgated in France by the imperial decree of 1808; he had much to do with the legislation concerning the relations of debtor and creditor, then threatening to dissever the whole frame of society; he was obliged to give no little attention to the department of criminal law; finally he had to play a chief part in settling the long and perilous struggle concerning the 'New Hampshire Grants,' the region now constituting the State of Vermont: his efforts in this matter chiefly averted war and brought the first new state into the Union."—MORSE'S "Life of Hamilton," Vol. I.
PAGE 265. The classic narrative of the Constitutional Convention is by George Ticknor Curtis, and there have been few more fascinating chronicles of any subject. Of the condensed narratives the most coherent and vivid is in Roosevelt's "Life of Gouverneur Morris."
PAGE 268. Hamilton also invited Gouverneur Morris to collaborate, but that erratic gentleman was otherwise engaged.
PAGE 269. I take this apportionment from a copy of "The Federalist" presented by Hamilton to his nephew Philip Church, and kindly lent to me by Mr. Richard Church. In this copy one of Hamilton's sons, at his father's dictation, wrote the initial of the writer or writers after each essay. To Jay are allotted Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 54. To Madison, 10, 14, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. To Hamilton and Madison jointly: 13, 19, 20. The rest to Hamilton.
PAGE 271. "'The Federalist,' written principally by Hamilton, exhibits an extent and precision of information, a profundity of research, and an accurateness of understanding, which would have done honour to the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or modern times."—Edinburgh Review, No. 24.