Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/206

1804 you will see the matter in the same light with me; if not, I can only regret the circumstance, and must abide the consequences."

These concluding words were the usual form in which men expressed themselves when they intended to accept a challenge to a duel. At first sight, no sufficient reason for accepting a challenge was shown by Hamilton's letter, which disavowed Dr. Cooper's report so far as Burr was warranted in claiming disavowal. Hamilton might without impropriety have declined to give further satisfaction. In truth, not the personal but the political quarrel drew him into the field; he knew that Burr meant to challenge, not the man, but the future political chief, and that an enemy so bent on rule must be met in the same spirit. Hamilton fought to maintain his own right to leadership, so rudely disputed by Burr, Pickering, and Griswold. He devoted some of his moments before the duel to the task of explaining, in a formal document, that he fought only to save his political influence. "The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular."

Always the crisis! Yet this crisis which brought Hamilton in July to the duelling-ground at Weehawken was not the same as that which Pickering and