Alexander Hamilton knew his own time, and he decided that his refusal of Burr's challenge would be regarded as cowardly, and destroy his prestige and influence. We may say that a morally greater man would nevertheless have dared to refuse it, but we must also consider that Hamilton knew the popular estimate of his own standard of life, and would naturally test his conduct by that standard. He was a soldier and a man of the world of the eighteenth century. Dr. Nott, the echoes of whose famous sermon on Hamilton's death still linger in tradition, might have declined to fight and been justified. He was a clergyman, and popular feeling excused him from resorting to the field of honor. But it is very doubtful if it would have excused Hamilton. He might have urged that Burr had no right to make his demand. But Hamilton knew that he had spoken most strongly of Burr, and he knew that Burr knew it. He thought Burr an unprincipled and dangerous fellow, and he said so plainly. But there was the familiar preface to Hamilton's explanation of the charges against him as Secretary of the Treasury. Could he take the lofty height of moral principle? Or could he stand upon the technical punctilio of the duel? His honor, by which he meant the consistency of his life and the standards that he acknowledged, seemed to him to allow him no alternative, and he was slain by the necessity of what is unquestionably a false sense of honor. A man's honor, in the sense that we may attribute to the lines of Lovelace, is his most precious possession. But it is something which is wholly in his own keeping, and is not at the mercy or whim of another. He can soil it, but except himself the whole world cannot smirch it. If a man had told Dr. Channing that he lied, or had dashed a glass of wine in his face, the honor of Dr. Channing would still have remained unsullied, not because he was a minister, but because of a reason which is equally applicable to all other men--because of his moral rectitude and courage. That a ribald tongue railed at him for lying when he had spoken the truth could not affect him except with pity or wonder. Even if the charge were true and he had told a lie, he would, indeed, have soiled his own honor, but the railer would not have touched it.