AND THE FEDERALIST PARTY 1 17 



mass of spoliation would be prevented in comparison 

 with which the widow's affair was the veriest trifle. 

 Popular sympathy was wholly with the widow and 

 against her Tory opponent, and in acting as counsel 

 for the latter Hamilton showed such moral courage as 

 had hardly been called for in any law case since John 

 Adams and Josiah Quincy defended the British soldiers 

 concerned in the so-called Boston Massacre. That he 

 should have won his case against a hostile court, in 

 such a moment of popular excitement; was hardly to 

 be expected. That he did win it, and in so doing 

 overturn the state law in question, was a marvellous 

 feat, the strongest proof one could wish of his 

 unrivalled power as an advocate. The decision of the 

 court was followed by a war of pamphlets in which 

 Hamilton again won the day, and went far toward 

 changing the public sentiment. At this moment there 

 entered upon his life the ominous shadow of the duel, 

 that social pest, which by and by, under other circum- 

 stances arid at other hands, was to cut him off in the 

 very prime of his powers and usefulness. A club of 

 blatant pothouse politicians proposed to take turns in 

 calling him out until some one of them should have 

 the good fortune to kill him ; but the wild scheme 

 came to naught. 



Two more years elapsed while Hamilton was en- 

 gaged in professional work, and then Virginia, under 

 the lead of Madison, called for a convention of all the 

 states at Annapolis, to consider the feasibility of estab- 

 lishing a uniform system of commercial regulations 

 for the whole country. Here Hamilton saw his oppor- 

 tunity, and succeeded in getting New York to appoint 

 delegates, with himself among them. When the con- 



