Critical Essay | Critical Review by L. H. Boutell

Critical Review by L. H. Boutell

SOURCE: "Alexander Hamilton," in The Dial, Chicago, Vol. VI, No. 61, May, 1885, pp. 5-7.

In the excerpt below, Boutell provides a laudatory account of Hamilton's life and works.

When New York ratified the Federal Constitution, the people of that State celebrated the event by a festival procession, in which was borne a flag with the portrait of Washington on one side and that of Hamilton on the other. The enthusiasm of the hour, which recognized these great men as foremost among the founders of the republic—as the men who knew how to build and save a State—has been justified by the political history of succeeding years, and especially by the fierce and bloody struggle of our own time. That we are to-day a united and powerful nation, and not the weak and hostile fragments of a once great republic, is owing to the triumph of those sentiments of nationality...
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