De Alexander

To such a course Hamilton was bitterly opposed, not only because he distrusted Burr more than he did Jefferson, but because the Federalists should leave the responsibility of a selection to the Republicans and thus in nowise be answerable…

If he be elected by the Federalists against the hearty opposition of the Jacobins, the wounds mutually given and received will probably be incurable.

As to my friends, they would dishonour my views and insult my feelings by a suspicion that I would submit to be instrumental in counteracting the wishes and the expectations of the people of the United States.

Of all men that ever led a political party, therefore, it was Hamilton's duty to sink personal antipathy, but in this attack upon Adams he seems deliberately to have sinned against the light.

It is not easy to suggest the greater sufferer, Burr with his victory, or Hamilton with his defeat.

All this does not lessen the wrong involved in Hamilton's proposed violation of moral ethics, but it places the suggestion in the environment to which it properly belongs, making it appear no worse if no better than the political practices…

On the other hand, Hamilton was an acknowledged orator, diffuse, ornate, full of metaphor, with flashes of poetical genius, revelling in exuberant strength, and endowed with a gift of argumentative eloquence which appealed to the intellect…

If we may accept contemporary judgment, he was a good speaker whom everybody was curious to hear, and from whom no one turned away in disappointment.

Burr was smooth, polished, concise, never diffuse or declamatory, always serious and impressive.

The ridiculous character of these prosecutions is illustrated by a fine of one hundred dollars because one defendant wished that the wadding used in a salute to John Adams had lodged in the ample part of the President's trousers.

Unrestrained by precedent and unruled by fear for the future, he spoke with confidence to a people whom he delighted with the breadth and liberality of his views, lifting them onto heights from which they had never before surveyed their…

The intended effect was to weed out the foreign-born and crush political opponents, and, the better to accomplish this purpose, the Alien Act set aside trial by jury, and the Sedition Act transferred prosecutions from state courts to…

Under the Act of Sedition a citizen could be dragged from his bed at night and taken hundreds of miles from home to be tried for circulating a petition asking that these laws be repealed.

But the fact that Jay carried legislative districts in which Republicans sent DeWitt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer to the Senate, would indicate that confidence in Jay, if not dislike of Livingston, had been the principal factor in this…

This reasoning reduces the governorship to a sort of spring-board from which to vault into the White House, and, although only one man in a century has performed the feat, it has always figured as a popular and potent factor in the…

He reasoned, as every ambitious New York statesman has reasoned from that day to this, that if he could carry the State in an off year, he would be needed in a presidential year.

He lacked the creative genius of Hamilton, the prescient gifts of Jay, and the skill of Burr to marshal men for selfish purposes, but he was at home in debate with the ablest men of his time, a master of sarcasm, of trenchant wit, and of…

He added learning to great natural ability, and brilliancy to profound thought; and although so deaf as to make communication with him difficult, he nearly concealed the defect by his remarkable eloquence and conversational gifts.

Opposition growing out of his famous treaty had entirely subsided, salutary changes in laws comforted the people, and with Hamilton's financial system, then thoroughly understood and appreciated, came unprecedented good times.

Although his influence, even among specialists, has probably faded now, he inspired the scientific thought of his time, and established societies which still exist, and whose history, up to the time of his death in 1831, was largely his…

With Washington and Greene he opposed the Conway cabal; with Jay and Livingston he drafted the Constitution of the State; with Hamilton and Madison he stood for the Federal Constitution, the revision of its style being committed to his pen.

He did not, like Jay, outline a constitution, but he believed, with Jay, in balancing wealth against numbers, and in contending for the protection of the rights of property against the spirit of democracy.

That inherent defect came from his mother, who gave him, also, a brilliancy and versatility that other members of the family did not share, making him more conspicuously active in high places during the exciting days of the Revolution.

It was a strange coincidence, one brother resisting Parliament in Congress, the other resisting Congress in Parliament.

He belonged to that coterie of brilliant young men, noted for bravery and endurance, who quickly found favour with the fighting generals of the Revolution.