Ness under an umbrella, hurried from the scene, while Hamilton,
conveyed in his boat to the city, gradually recovered consciousness.
"My vision is indistinct," he murmured; but soon after, catching
sight of a pistol near him, cautioned them to take care of it. "It is
undischarged and still cocked," he said; "it may go off and do harm.
Pendleton knows I did not intend to fire at him." As the boat neared
the wharf, he asked that Mrs. Hamilton be sent for. "Let the event be
gradually broken to her," he said, "but give her hopes." Thus he
lingered for thirty-one hours in great agony, but retaining his
self-command to the last, and dying in the midst of his stricken
family and sorrowing friends.

If Washington and Lincoln be excepted, it is doubtful if an American
was ever more deeply mourned. Had he been President, he could not have
been buried with greater pomp, or with manifestations of more profound
sorrow. Although he had been hated by his enemies, and at times
misunderstood by some of his friends, at his death the people, without
division, instantly recognised that his life had been passionately
devoted to his country, and they paid him the tribute only accorded
the memory of a most illustrious patriot. Such demonstrations were not
confined to New York. The sorrow became national; speeches, sermons,
and poems without number, were composed in his honour; in every State,
some county or town received his name; wherever an American lived, an
expression of sympathy found record. It was the consensus of opinion
that the life which began in January, 1757 and ended in July, 1804,
held in the compass of its forty-seven years the epitome of what
America meant for Americans in the days of its greatest peril and its
greatest glory. "Had he lived twenty years longer," said Chancellor
Kent, "I have very little doubt he would have rivalled Socrates or
Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times, in
researches after truth and in benevolence to mankind. The active and
profound statesman, the learned and eloquent lawyer, would probably
have disappeared in a great degree before the character of the sage
and philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom, and elevating the
country by his example."[149]

[Footnote 149: William Kent, _Life of James Kent_, appendix, p. 328.]

Burr became a name of horror.[150] When Hamilton's death was announced
there came a cry of execration on his murderer, which the publication
of the