ilton
brought down his heavy hand on both of them promptly, and the fight
settled into a bitter struggle between Adams and Clinton. The latter's
strength in the State of New York was still very great, and he was as
hardy a fighter as ever. But his political past was studded with
vulnerable points, and the Federalists spared him not.

It is impossible, whatever one's predilections, not to admire Clinton
for his superb fighting qualities. He was indomitable, and in ability
and resourcefulness second only to Hamilton himself, in party management
far superior; for he had greater patience, a tenderer and more intimate
concern for his meaner followers, and less trust in his own unaided
efforts and the right of his cause. Hamilton by no means was blind to
the pettier side of human nature, but he despised it; instead of
truckling and manipulating, he would scatter it before him or grind it
to pulp. There is no possible doubt that if Hamilton had happened into a
country at war with itself, but with strong monarchical proclivities, he
would have seized the crown and made one of the wisest and kindest of
autocrats. His lines cast in a land alight from end to end with
republican fires, he accepted the situation with his inherent
philosophy, burned with a patriotism as steady as Washington's own, but
ruled it in his own way, forced upon it measures in whose wisdom he
implicitly believed, and which, in every instance, time has vindicated.
But his instinct was that of the amiable despot, and he had no
conciliation in him.

His opponents saw only the despot, for time had not given them range of
vision. Therefore, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Clinton, and his other
formidable enemies have a large measure of excuse for their conduct,
especially as they were seldom unstung by mortifying defeat. It is
doubtful if the first three, at least, ever admitted to themselves or
each other that they hated Hamilton, and were determined for purely
personal reasons to pull him down. Every man knows how easy it is to
persuade himself that he is entirely in the right, his opponent, or even
he who differs from him, entirely in the wrong. The Virginian trio had
by this, at all events, talked themselves into the belief that Hamilton
was a menace to the permanence of the Union, and that it was their pious
duty to relegate him to the shades of private life. That in public life
he would infallibly interfere with their contemplated twenty-four years
Chair Tru