Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive SketchesVarious
History
Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
Various
Historic buildings -- United States; Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
The melancholy event of the duel affected the whole country, and
New-York in particular, with the deepest indignation and grief. The
avenues to the house where Hamilton was carried before he expired, were
thronged with anxious citizens. His funeral was celebrated by a mournful
pageant, and an oration in Trinity Church by Governeur Morris, which
stirred up the people like the speech of Antony over the corpse of
Caesar, to a "sudden flood of mutiny." Burr, with an indictment for
murder hanging over him, fled secretly from the city to the South, where
he remained until the excitement had in a measure subsided. His wretched
end, and the place which history has assigned to him, leave room at
present for no other emotions save those of regret and pity. In the deep
gloom which the death of Hamilton occasioned, his political opponents
almost equally shared. In contemplating his character they seemed to
catch some portion of his own magnanimity, and the animosities of which
he had been so conspicuous an object, were swallowed up in the
conviction that a great and irreparable loss had fallen equally upon
all.
There was not, we think, at that time, a life which might not have been
better spared than that of Hamilton. Certainly no man represented so
well as he, the character and the principles of Washington; and no man
was gifted with an array of qualities which better fitted him either as
a magistrate or a man to control aright the opinions and the actions of
a people like that of the United States. He was a man "built up on every
side." He had received from nature a most capacious and admirable
intellect, which had been exercised and developed by deep study and
large experience in the practical conduct of affairs. His education was
like that which Milton describes as "fitting to a man to perform justly,
skilfully and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private,
of peace and war." His opinions were definite and fixed; were held with
the confidence which is the result of complete conviction; and came from
him recommended by a powerful eloquence, and a persuasive fairness and
magnanimity. The strength of his passions gave him an almost unbounded
influence over the minds of others, which he never perverted to selfish
purposes or unworthy ends.
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