The greatest of her men have
abetted me; not one has sought to push me aside and do my work. My only
enemies have been those who would pull my structure down; the most
ambitious and individual men in the Union, of the higher sort, are my
willing followers. To win them I never plotted, nor did I ever seek to
dazzle and blind them. Part of my equipment was the power to convince
them without effort of my superior usefulness; there was no time to
lose. I am nothing but a genius, encased in such human form as would
best serve its purpose; an atom of the vast creative Being beyond the
Universe, loaned for an infinitesimal part of time to the excrescence
calling itself The United States of North America, on the dot called
Earth. Now the part is played, and I am to be withdrawn. That my human
heart is torn with insupportable anguish, matters not at all. I leave
that behind."
Hamilton had been bred in the orthodox religion of his time, and its
picturesqueness, including its ultimates of heaven and hell, had taken
firm hold of his ardent imagination.
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