In the intervals of these public duties, Hamilton was actively employed in his profession in the higher courts of the State. The late Chancellor Kent afterward recalled his "clear, elegant, and fluent style and commanding manner. He never made any argument in court without displaying his habit of thinking and resorting at once to some well-founded principle of law, and drawing his deductions logically from his premises. Law was always treated by him as a science, founded on established principles. His manners were gentle, affable, and kind. He appeared to be frank, liberal, and courteous in all his professional intercourse."

The last important trial in which Hamilton was engaged, the case of the People against Harry Croswell, in the Supreme Court, a few months before his untimely death, is memorable also for his maintenance of the right of juries to determine the law as well as the fact in cases of libel.

The party politics of the time had been broken up in the simplicity of their outline by the administration of John Adams. Aaron Burr was the most prominent intriguer in the field. He had attained the vice-presidency, and the choice hung for a while suspended between him and Jefferson for the presidency. Between the two, Hamilton, who had formed an unfavorable opinion of the character of Burr, preferred his old antagonist, Jefferson, and cast his influence accordingly. When Burr afterward sought the office of Governor of New York, in a contest with a member of his own Republican party, in which he relied upon the support of the Federalists, he was defeated by Hamilton, who made no secret of his opposition. Smarting under the failure of his intrigue, Burr determined to challenge the honest man who stood in his way to power. He had no ground of personal offence bringing Hamilton within any justifiable pretensions even of the lax code of the duellist. The expressions which he called upon him to avow or disavow, were vague, and were based upon the report of a person who specified neither time, place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was alleged—evidently a wanton provocation to a murderous duel. Burr demanded so broad a retraction from Hamilton of all he might have said, that compliance was impossible. It was an attempt to procure an indorsement of his character at the cost of the moral character of the indorser. Hamilton despised the manœuvre, but perceiving that a meeting was forced upon him, and unhappily determining, contrary to his better judgment, that his usefulness would be destroyed in the public affairs of the times if he avoided the contest, fell into the fatal snare.

He executed his will, in which he made provision for his family and creditors, thinking tenderly of his wife, enjoining his children to bear in mind she had been to them the most devoted and best of mothers. On the night preceding the appointment he wrote a paper declaring his intention to throw away his fire, and acquitting himself before the world of the malice of the duellist, while he rested his conduct upon his usefulness to his country. The next morning, July 11th, they met at Weehawken; the weapons were pistols, the distance ten paces. The duel was fought within a few feet of the shore, in a woodland scene beneath the cliff opposite the present inhabited portion of New York, at a spot now traversed or closely approached by the river road, but then readily accessible only by water. Hamilton fell at the first fire, mortally wounded, his pistol-shot striking at random a twig some seven feet above the head of his antagonist. Burr fled, a wanderer over the earth. Hamilton was carried across the river, supported by Pendleton and Dr. Hosack, to the house of his friend, Mr. Bayard, at Greenwich. He was there enabled to take farewell of his family, and receive the last consolations of religion from the hands of Bishop Moore. He died on the afternoon of Thursday, July 12, 1804.

The reception of the fatal news sent a thrill of horror through the community. The brilliant, fiery youth of Hamilton, which had lighted his countrymen to victory and a place among the nations—Hamilton, the counsellor of Washington, the consummate statesman of the Constitution, the reliance of the State, the hope of the future: visions such as these were contrasted in the popular mind with his wretched fall. We perhaps darken the shades of the picture, for time and proof have added to the greatness of Hamilton, and Burr waited not for death to exhibit the penury of his fame. But the men who knew the heart of Hamilton, who saw in him the bulwark of the State, his contemporaries, wept his fate with no common lamentation. New York gave her public honors to his grave. Gouverneur Morris, with strenuous words, delivered the funeral oration by the side of his bier, under the portico of old Trinity; and Mason, the pulpit orator of his time, thundered his strong sentences at the crime which had robbed the world of Hamilton.[Back to Contents]

COUNT DE MIRABEAU[6]
By Charles S. Hathaway
(1749-1791)

Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Count de Mirabeau, one of the most eminent among the great authors, orators, and statesmen of France, was born on March 9, 1749 on his father's estate at Bignon, near Nemours.

The earliest of Mirabeau's ancestors of whom there is any notable record, was Jean Riquetti, a prominent merchant at Marseilles, who, in 1570, bought the château and estate of Mirabeau, near Pertuis, from the well-known Provençal family of Barras and who, a few years later, acquired the title of Esquire.