one
of Hamilton's company was killed. The Liberty Boys spread the alarm and
gathered in a mob, threatening to attack the college and seize its
president, Myles Cooper. Hamilton, who was no friend to riot, little as
he was afraid of discussion or of force, interposed with a speech from
the college steps, while the president, roused from his bed, half naked,
took refuge on the shore, wandering over the island in the night to the
old Stuyvesant mansion, whence he was the next day finally removed from
America in his Majesty's vessel, the Kingfisher. The royal governor,
Tryon, took refuge in the Asia shortly after.

Hamilton now turned his attention in earnest to military affairs, making
choice of the artillery service, in which he gained some instruction
from a British soldier, and by aid of the popular leader, McDougal,
received from the convention the appointment of captain of the
Provincial Company of Artillery. He had only recently completed his
nineteenth year. It was early, but not so very early for a man of
genius; for the child in such cases is the father of the man, and youth
is an additional spur to exertion. But this was not all. The young
captain was engaged, not only in the gymnastics of drilling recruits,
but he was reading, thinking, and working out problems in political
economy for himself--and the future. Dr. Johnson said that he learned
little after eighteen; Hamilton would seem to have laid the foundation
at least, of all his knowledge before twenty. "His military books of
this period," says his son, "give an interesting exhibition of his train
of thought. In the pay-book of his company, amid various general
speculations and extracts from the ancients, chiefly relating to
politics and war, are intermingled tables of political arithmetic,
considerations on commerce, the value of the relative productions which
are its objects, the balance of trade, the progress of population, and
the principles on which depends the value of a circulating medium; and
among his papers there remains a carefully digested outline of a plan
for the political and commercial history of British America, compiled at
this time." There is the germ in all this of the Secretary of the
Treasury.

The battle of Long Island now ensued on the vain attempt to resist the
landing of Howe and his British troops, followed by the masterly retreat
of Washington, in which Hamilton brought up the rear. The subsequent
American proceedings in the ev