heir own. Congress was come to New York and established in
the City Hall in Wall Street. It had given the final impetus to the
city, struggling under the burden of ruins and debt left by the British;
and society sauntered forth every afternoon in all the glory of velvet
and ruffles, three-cornered hats recklessly laced, brocades, hoopskirts,
and Rohan hats, to promenade past the building where the moribund body
was holding its last sessions. The drive was down the Broadway into the
shades of the Battery, with the magnificent prospect of bay and wooded
shores beyond. Politics, always epidemic among men and women alike, had
recently been animated by Hamilton's coup at Annapolis, and the prospect
of a general convention of the States to consider the reorganization of
a government which had reduced the Confederation to a condition
fearfully close to anarchy, the country to ruin, and brought upon the
thirteen sovereign independent impotent and warring States the contempt
of Europe and the threat of its greed.

A group of men, standing on a corner of Wall Street and the Broadway,
were laughing heartily: a watch was dragging off to jail two citizens
who had fallen upon each other with the venom of political antithesis;
the one, a Nationalist, having called Heaven to witness that Hamilton
was a demi-god, begotten to save the wretched country, the other
vociferating that Hamilton was the devil who would trick the country
into a monarchy, create a vast standing army, which would proclaim him
king and stand upon the heads of a people that had fought and died for
freedom, while the tyrant exercised his abominable functions.

The men in the group were Governor Clinton, Hamilton's bitterest
opponent, but sufficiently amused at the incident; William Livingston,
Governor of New Jersey, now with but a few hairs on the top of his head
and a few at the base, his nose more penetrating, his eye more
disapproving, than ever; James Duane, Mayor of New York; John Jay, the
most faultless character in the Confederation, honoured and unloved, his
cold eyes ever burning with an exalted fire; and John Marshall of
Virginia, munching an apple, his attire in shabby contrast to the
fashionable New Yorkers, the black mane on his splendid head unpowdered
and tossing in the ocean breeze.

"I like your Hamilton," he announced, "and I've come to the conclusion
that I think with him on all matters. He's done more to educate the
people up to a rational form