ir authorship was discovered, the loyalist party
tried in vain to buy off the formidable youth. He kept up the
pamphlet-war, in the course of which he wofully defeated Dr. Cooper, the
Tory president of the college; but shortly afterward he defended the
doctor's house against an angry mob, until that unpopular gentleman had
succeeded in making his escape to a British ship. Hamilton served in the
army throughout the war, for the most part as aid and secretary to
Washington; but in 1781 he was a colonel in the line, and stormed a
redoubt at Yorktown with distinguished skill and bravery. He married a
daughter of Philip Schuyler, began the practice of law, and in 1782, at
the age of twenty-five, was chosen a delegate to Congress.

[Sidenote: The case of Rutgers _v._ Waddington.]

In 1784, when the Trespass Act threw New York into confusion, Hamilton
had come to be regarded as one of the most powerful advocates in the
country. In the test case which now came before the courts he played a
part of consummate boldness and heroism. Elizabeth Rutgers was a widow,
who had fled from New York after its capture by General Howe. Her
confiscated estate had passed into the hands of Joshua Waddington, a
rich Tory merchant, and she now brought suit under the Trespass Act for
its recovery. It was a case in which popular sympathy was naturally and
strongly enlisted in behalf of the poor widow. That she should have been
turned out of house and home was one of the many gross instances of
wickedness wrought by the war. On the other hand, the disturbance
wrought by the enforcement of the Trespass Act was already creating
fresh wrongs much faster than it was righting old ones; and it is for
such reasons as this that both in the common law and in the law of
nations the principle has been firmly established that "the fruits of
immovables belong to the captor as long as he remains in actual
possession of them." The Trespass Act contravened this principle, and it
also contravened the treaty. It moreover placed the state of New York in
an attitude of defiance toward Congress, which had made the treaty and
expressly urged upon the states to suspend the legislation against the
Tories. On large grounds of public policy, therefore, the Trespass Act
deserved to be set aside by the courts, and when Hamilton was asked to
serve as counsel for the defendant he accepted the odious task without
hesitation. There can be no better proof of his forensic ability tha