give him
those reins of power.

It is true that he had but to move his furniture over to Philadelphia to
be welcomed to citizenship with acclamation by that ambitious town; but
not only was his pride bound up in the conquest of New York from
Clintonism to Federalism, but New York left out of the Union, dividing
as she did New England from the South and North, of the highest
commercial importance by virtue of her central position and her harbour,
meant civil war at no remote period, disunion, and the undoing of the
most careful and strenuous labours of the nation's statesmen. That New
York should be forced into the Union at once Hamilton was determined
upon, if he had to resort to a coup which might or might not meet with
the approval of the rest of the country. Nevertheless, he looked forward
to the next few weeks with the deepest anxiety. An accident, an illness,
and the cause was lost, for he made no mistake in estimating himself as
the sole force which could bear Clinton and his magnificent organization
to the ground. Hamilton was no party manipulator. He relied upon his
individual exertions, abetted by those of his lieutenants,--the most
high-minded and the ablest men in the country,--to force his ideas upon
the masses by their own momentum and weight. Indeed, so individual did
he make the management of the Federalist party, that years later, when
the "Republican" leaders determined upon its overthrow, they aimed all
their artillery at him alone: if he fell the party must collapse, on top
of him; did he retain the confidence of the people, he would magnetize
their obedience, no matter what rifts there might be in his ranks.

He had established a horse-express between Virginia and Poughkeepsie,
and between New Hampshire and the little capital. Eight States having
ratified, the signature of New Hampshire, the next in order, would mean
union and a trial of the Constitution, a prospect which could not fail
to influence the thinking men of the anti-Federal party; but it was from
the ratification of Virginia that he hoped the greatest good. This State
occupied much the same position in the South that New York did in the
North, geographically, commercially, historically, and in the
importance of her public men. And she was as bitterly opposed to union,
to what a narrow provincialism held to be the humiliation of the States.
Patrick Henry, her most powerful and eloquent leader, not through the
selfish policy of a Clinton,