also learned that Boston
was the conspicuous head and centre of resistance to the crown, that she
had led the colonies in aggressiveness since the first Stamp Act of 1765
had shocked them from passive subjects into dangerous critics. He had
letters which admitted him to clubs and homes, and he discussed but one
subject during his visit. There were no velvet coats and lace ruffles
here, except in the small group which formed the Governor's court. The
men wore dun-coloured garments, and the women were not much livelier. It
was, perhaps, as well that he did not see John Hancock, that ornamental
head-piece of patriotic New England, or the harmony of the impression
might have been disturbed; but, as it was, every time he saw these men
together, whether sitting undemonstratively in Faneuil Hall while one of
their number spoke, or in church, or in groups on Boston Common, it was
as if he saw men of iron, not of flesh and blood. Every word they
uttered seemed to have been weighed first, and it was impossible to
consider such men giving their time and thought, making ready to offer
up their lives, to any cause which should not merit the attention of all
men. Although Hamilton met many of them, they made no individual
impression on him; he saw them only as a mighty brain, capable of
solving a mighty question, and of a stern and bitter courage.

He returned to New York filled with an intense indignation against the
country which he had believed too ancient and too firm in her highest
principles to make a colossal mistake, and a hot sympathy for the
colonists which was not long resolving itself into as burning a
patriotism as any in the land. It was not in him to do anything by
halves, it is doubtful if he ever realized the half-hearted tendency of
the greater part of mankind. He studied the question from the first
Stamp Act to the Tea Party. The day he was convinced, he ceased to be a
West Indian. The time was not yet come to draw the sword in behalf of
the country for which he conceived a romantic passion, which satisfied
other wants of his soul, but he began at once on a course of reading
which should be of use to her when she was free to avail herself of
patriotic thinkers. He also joined the debating club of the college. His
abrupt advent into this body, with his fiery eloquence and remarkable
logic, was electrical. In a day he became the leader of the patriot
students. There were many royalists in King's, and the president, Dr