recesses of Weehawken, that, once an Indian wigwam-ground, nestled beneath the beginning of the Palisades; and often when there writing he could have seen, at an oblique angle to the northward, the very spot where in the duel he met his death at the pistol of Aaron Burr. That tragedy has been so dramatically narrated by James Parton in his life of Burr, that no other pen is bold enough to engage in any new account of it. No lawyer versed at examining evidence can peruse that account, or indeed any reliable narrative of the duel given by Hamilton's contemporaries, without arriving at the conclusion that, so far as goes the malice aforethought which is necessary to the old common law definition of murder, Aaron Burr, in adroitly compassing the quarrel or in preparing the challenge, premeditated the murder of Alexander Hamilton—that demoniacal preamble to his after-crimes of endeavoring to snatch the presidency from Thomas Jefferson by an electoral trick, and of treason to his native country.
Whenever Alexander Hamilton is mentioned in the presence of any member of the bar, and is commented upon, as he most generally is, as alone soldier and statesman, let him not omit to proudly exclaim, "Hamilton was also a member of my profession and an honor to it."
But really, no American can contemplate Alexander Hamilton without applying to him the couplet of Dryden that he paraphrased from Juvenal's third satire:—
