Once when all his children were gathered around the bed, he gave them one tender look, and closed his eyes till they had left the room. He retained his usual composure to the last, saying to his wife, frenzied with grief, "Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian." He died at two o'clock on the afternoon of July 12, 1804. The whole nation seemed speechless with sorrow. In New York all business was suspended. At the funeral, a great concourse of people, college societies, political associations, and military companies, joined in the common sorrow. Guns were fired from the British and French ships in the harbor; on a platform in front of Trinity Church, Governor Morris pronounced a eulogy, General Hamilton's four sons, the eldest sixteen and the youngest four, standing beside the speaker. Thus the great life faded from sight in its vigorous manhood, leaving a wonderful record for the aspiring and the patriotic, and a prophecy of what might have been accomplished but for that one fatal mistake. Aaron Burr hastened to the South, to avoid arrest; but public execration followed him. He became implicated in a scheme for putting himself at the head of Mexico, was arrested and tried for treason, and, though legally acquitted, was obliged to flee to England, and from there to Sweden and Germany. Finally he came home, only to hear that Theodosia's beautiful boy of eleven was dead. Poor and friendless, he longed now for the one person who had never forsaken him, his daughter. She started from Charleston in a pilot-boat, for New York, and was never heard from afterwards. Probably all went down in a storm off Cape Hatteras. When it was reported in the papers that the boat had been captured by pirates, Burr said, "No, no, she is indeed dead. Were she alive, all the prisons in the world could not keep her from her father. When I realized the truth of her death, the world became a blank to me, and life had then lost all its value." When he was nearly eighty, he married a lady of wealth; but they were unhappy, and soon separated. He died on Staten Island, cared for at the last by the children of an old friend. His courage and fortitude the world will always admire; but it can never forget the fatal duel by which Alexander Hamilton was taken from his country, in the prime of his life and in the midst of his great work. The name of Hamilton will not be forgotten. The Hon. Chauncey M. Depew of New York, on February 22, 1888, gave the great statesman this well deserved tribute of praise:-- "The political mission of the United States has so far been wrought out by individuals and territorial conditions. Four men of unequal genius have dominated our century, and the growth of the West has revolutionized the republic. The principles which have heretofore controlled the policy of the country have mainly owed their force and acceptance to Hamilton, Jefferson, Webster, and Lincoln.