Hamilton was not only the most brilliant, resourceful, and unanswerable
orator of his time, but he was gifted with an almost diabolical power
over the emotions of men, which he did not hesitate to use. At this
momentous assembly he kept them in exercise; when he chose, he made his
audience weep; and the Clintonians weakened daily. Had not many years of
trouble and anxiety made their emotions peculiarly susceptible, Hamilton
would have attempted their agitation more sparingly; and had he been
theatrical and rhetorical in his methods, he would have lost his control
of them long before the end of the session. But he rarely indulged in a
trope or a flight, never in bathos nor in bursts of ill-balanced appeal.
Nothing ever was drier than the subjects he elucidated day after day for
three weeks: for he took the Constitution to pieces bit by bit, and
compelled them to listen to an analysis which, if propounded by another,
would have bored them to distraction, vitally interested as they were.
But he not only so illuminated the cold pages of the Constitution that
while they listened they were willing to swear it was more beautiful
than the Bible, but the torrent of his eloquence, never confusing, so
sharp was every feature of the Constitution to his own mind, the magic
of his personality, and his intense humanity in treating the driest
sections of the document, so bewitched his audience that, even when he
talked for six hours without pausing on the subject of taxation, perhaps
the baldest topic which the human understanding is obliged to consider,
there was not a sign of impatience in the ranks of the enemy.
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