Moreover, he had grown up with a
deep reverence for the British Constitution, and his strong aristocratic
prejudices inclined him to all the aloofness of the true conservative.
So while the patriots and royalists of King's were debating, ofttimes
concluding in sequestered nooks, Hamilton remained "The young West
Indian," an alien who cared for naught but book-learning, walking
abstractedly under the great green shade of Batteau Street while Liberty
Boys were shouting, and British soldiers swaggered with a sharp eye for
aggression. This period of philosophic repose in the midst of electric
fire darting from every point in turn and sometimes from all points at
once, endured from the October of his arrival to its decent burial in
Boston shortly after his seventeenth birthday.
Boston was sober and depressed, stonily awaiting the vengeance of the
crown for her dramatic defiance in the matter of tea. Even in that
rumbling interval, Hamilton learned, the Committee of Correspondence,
which had directed the momentous act, had been unexcited and methodical,
restraining the Mohawks day after day, hoping until the last moment that
the Collector of Customs would clear the ships and send the tea whence
it came.
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