AND THE FEDERALIST PARTY 141 



crowds surrounded the bulletins which told of the 

 ebbing of his life, and their sobs and tears were min- 

 gled with fierce oaths and threats against the slayer. 

 As the news slowly spread through the country, the 

 tongue of political enmity was silenced, and the mourn- 

 ing was like that called forth in after years by the mur- 

 der of Abraham Lincoln. It has been thought that the 

 deep and lasting impression produced by this affair 

 had much to do with the discredit into which the 

 practice of duelling speedily fell throughout the 

 Northern states. 



When Alexander Hamilton's life was thus cut 

 short, he was only in his eight-and-fortieth year. 

 Could he have attained such a great age as his rival, 

 John Adams, he might have witnessed the Mexican 

 War and the Wilmot Proviso. Without reaching 

 extreme old age he might have listened to Webster's 

 reply to Hayne, and felt his heart warm at Jackson's 

 autocratic and decisive announcement that the fed- 

 eral Union must be preserved. One may wonder 

 what his political course would have been had he 

 lived longer; but it seems clear that he would soon 

 have parted company with the Federalists. He had 

 already taken the initial step in breaking with them 

 by approving Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana. The 

 narrow sectional policy of Pickering and the New 

 England Federalists was already distasteful to him. 

 As the Republican party became more and more 

 national, he would have found himself inclining 

 toward it as John Adams did, and perhaps might even 

 have come, like Adams in later years, to recognize the 

 merits and virtues of the great man whose name had 

 once seemed to him to typify anarchy and misrule, 



