t for detail, unlimited capacity
for work, genius for creating something out of nothing, marshalled for
more active service than now. He withheld his personal supervision from
nothing; planning forts, preparing codes of tactics, organizing a
commissariat department, drafting bills for Congress, advising M'Henry
upon every point which puzzled that unfinished statesman, were but a few
of the exercises demanded of the organizer of an army from raw material.
The legislation upon one of his bills finally matured a pet project of
many years, the Military Academy at West Point. Philip Church, the
oldest son of Angelica Schuyler, was his aide; John Church, after a
brilliant career as a member of Parliament, having returned to American
citizenship, his wife to as powerful a position as she had held in
London.

It is hardly necessary to inform any one who has followed the fortunes
of Hamilton as far as this that he purposed to command an army of
aggression as well as defence. A war with France unrolled infinite
possibilities. Louisiana and the Floridas should be seized as soon as
war was declared, and he lent a kindly ear to Miranda, who was for
overthrowing the inhuman rule of Spain in South America. "To arrest the
progress of the revolutionary doctrines France was then propagating in
those regions, and to unite the American hemisphere in one great
society of common interests and common principles against the
corruption, the vices, the new theories of Europe," was an alluring
prospect to a man who had given the broadest possible interpretation to
the Constitution, and whose every conception had borne the stamp of an
imperialistic boldness and amplitude.

But these last of his dreams ended in national humiliation. This time he
had sacrificed his private interests, his vital forces, for worse than
nothing. One enemy worked his own ruin, and Louisiana was to add to the
laurels of Jefferson.

Talleyrand, astonished and irritated by these warlike preparations and
the enthusiasm of the infant country, wisely determined to withdraw with
grace while there was yet time. He sent a circuitous hint to President
Adams that an envoy from the United States would be received with proper
respect. For months Adams had been tormented with the vision of Hamilton
borne on the shoulders of a triumphant army straight to the Presidential
chair. His Cabinet were bitterly and uncompromisingly for war; Hamilton
had with difficulty restrained them in th