Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/209

190 Burr appeared to better advantage than his opponent. In New England a wail of despair arose. Even the clergy, though shocked that Hamilton should have offered the evil example of duelling, felt that they had lost their champion and sword of defence. "In those crises of our public affairs which seemed likely to happen," Hamilton's genius in council and in the field had been their main reliance; he was to bo their Washington, with more than Washington's genius,—their Bonaparte, with Washington's virtues. The whole body of Federalists, who had paid little regard to Hamilton's wishes in life, went into mourning for his death, and held funeral services such as had been granted to no man of New England birth. Orators, ministers, and newspapers exhausted themselves in execration of Burr. During the whole summer and autumn, undisturbed by a breath of discord or danger, except such as their own fears created, they bewailed their loss as the most fatal blow yet given to the hopes of society.

The death of Hamilton cleared for a time the murky atmosphere of New York and New England politics. Pickering and Griswold, Tracy and Plumer, and their associates retired into the background. Burr disappeared from New York, and left a field for De Witt Clinton to sacrifice in his turn the public good to private ambition. The bloody feuds of Burr's time never again recurred. The death of Hamilton and the Vice-President's flight, with their accessories of summer-morning sunlight on rocky and wooded