and older men saw only the extraordinary and mature
brain, their judgement quite unaffected by the boyish face and figure.
Those who would not admit his great gifts were few, for except in the
instances where he incurred jealous hate, he won everybody he met by his
charming manner and an entire absence of conceit. He was conscious of
his powers, but took them as a matter of course, and thought only of
what he would do with them, having no leisure to dwell on their quality.
In consequence, he already had a large following of unhesitating
admirers, many of them men twice his age, and was accepted as the
leading political philosopher of the country.

Dr. Cooper sent for him after his third pamphlet. He, too, was a patriot
in his way, and although he bristled whenever Hamilton's name was
mentioned, he had come in contact with too many minds not to recognize
ability of any sort; he knew that Hamilton would be invaluable to the
Royalist cause.

"Ask your own price, sir," he said, after suggesting the higher service
to which he could devote his pen. "You will find us more liberal--" But
Hamilton had bolted. It is impossible to knock down one's venerable
president, and his temper was still an active member in the family of
his faculties. To the numerous other offers he received from the Tory
side he made no reply, beyond inserting an additional sting into his pen
when writing for Holt's _Journal_. In the press he was referred to, now,
as "The Vindicator of Congress," and it was generally conceded that he
had done more to hasten matters to a climax, by preparing and whetting
the public mind, than anyone else in America.

There is no doubt that the swiftness and suddenness of Hamilton's
conversion, his abrupt descent from a background of study and alien
indifference, gave him a clearer and more comprehensive view of the
wrongs and needs of the colonists than they possessed themselves. They
had been muttering ever since the passage of the first stamp tax,
threatening, permitting themselves to be placated, hoping, despairing,
hoping again. Hamilton, from the first moment he grasped the subject,
saw that there was no hope in ministerial England, no hope in anything
but war. Moreover, his courage, naturally of the finest temper, and an
audacity which no one had ever discouraged, leapt out from that far
background of the West Indies into an arena where the natives moved in
an atmosphere whose damps of doubt and discouragement had co