discrimination cry and asserted vehemently that he, and he alone, had
robbed the poor soldiers. It raked every accusation, past and present,
from its pigeon holes. Jefferson, on the other hand, was held up as a
model of the disinterested statesman, combining virtues before which
those falsely attributed to Washington paled and expired; and as the
only man fit to fill the Executive Chair. Genet accepted all this as
gospel, fortunately, perhaps, for the country; for his own excesses and
impudence, his final threat to appeal from the President to the people,
ruined him with the cooling heads of the Republican party, and finally
lost him even the support of Jefferson.

Meanwhile, after stormy meetings of the Cabinet, Hamilton, in the peace
of his library, with Angelica sorting his pages,--until she went to the
North,--had written a series of papers defending the proclamation. They
were so able and convincing, so demonstrable of the treasonable efforts
of the enemy to undermine the influence of the Administration, so cool
and so brilliant an exposition of the rights and powers of the
Executive, that on July 7th Jefferson wrote to Madison: "For God's sake,
my dear sir, take up your pen. Select the most striking heresies, and
cut him to pieces in the face of the public."

Madison hastened to obey his chief in a series of papers which tickled
the literary nerve, but failed to convince. That the laurels were to
Hamilton was another bitter pill which Jefferson was forced to swallow.
Nevertheless, Hamilton, despite his victories, felt anything but
amiable. He was so exhausted that he was on the verge of a collapse, and
triumphs were drab under the daily harassment of Jefferson, Genet, and
Freneau. Matters came to a climax one day in August, shortly before the
outbreak of yellow fever.

XXXIV

Hamilton laid down a copy of Freneau's _Gazette_, whose editorial
columns were devoted, as usual, to persuading the people of the United
States that they were miserable, and that they owed their misery to the
Secretary of the Treasury. It also contained a shameful assault upon the
President. As he lifted another paper from the pile on his library
table, his eyes fell on the following address to himself:--

O votary of despotism! O abettor of Carthaginian faith! Blush! Can
you for a moment suppose that the hearts of the yeomanry of America
are becoming chilled and insensible to the feelings of insulted
humanity lik