The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (10 page)

Despite my pleas, curses, threats, I was left alone in the ravine, beside the 2oo-pound body of my commander whose blood looked to be black as it stained the snow. Furiously, irrationally, I decided to return Montgomery’s remains to our side; no doubt hoping, in my madness, to thaw him out, revive him. But I had not dragged the corpse a dozen yards when I was fired on from the blockhouse.

I abandoned the body to the enemy (who not long ago returned it to New York for a pompous re-interment to which I was not invited). Incidentally, Trumbull’s recent and deservedly popular painting memorializing the death of General Montgomery omits me entirely while adding to the poignant scene several officers who at the time were nowhere in the vicinity but who are now, so to speak, everywhere.

Had the men followed me and met with Arnold’s troops (waiting for us in the Lower Town), Canada would today be a part of the United States (happy fate, oh Canada!). But due to the untimely death of Montgomery, the cowardice of Campbell, the defection of Enos, we failed. In 1812 we again tried to conquer Canada; and again failed. This time we were defeated not by the winter but by our own commander James Wilkinson. Poor Jamie was worth a dozen snowstorms to the Canadians.

Two hundred of our men died in that disastrous assault while 300 were captured. Most of the others sustained wounds, among them Colonel Arnold whose foot was badly hurt.

I was promoted to brigade-major and my exploits were reported all over the colonies. I was even mentioned in the Congress while Matt Ogden saw fit to praise me personally to General Washington who, impressed by my precocity, offered me a place on his staff.

I was a hero, and still not twenty-one. Crude woodblock engravings of young Aaron Burr carrying General Montgomery through a snow-storm once edified and inspired an entire generation of American schoolchildren. Had I died at Quebec, would I still be remembered today? Probably not.

WHEN I MENTION to Colonel Burr how much I enjoyed his account of the invasion of Canada, he looks at me as though not knowing to what I refer; pokes the coals in the grate (yes, in midsummer he often has a fire). “I am always cold,” he likes to say. “It is the fault of General Washington.” When Burr smiles he looks like the bust of Voltaire in Leggett’s office. “He disliked me and saw to it that I was always assigned to swampy and malignant places.”

Finally, “Oh, yes. My scribbling about those days. I still make notes from time to time. Pointless activity, I suppose. No one likes truth. For instance, we are now told that Benedict Arnold was a bad general because he was a bad man. But of course he was one of our best commanders. Superior certainly to Washington.”

“That’s not the impression one gets from your account.”

Burr is surprised. “But Arnold was
splendid
! It was Montgomery who made the fatal error at Quebec. Arnold favoured my strategy, which I think was sound. Certainly Montgomery’s plan to attack the Lower Town was not. Arnold’s judgement in the field was excellent.”

Nelson Chase interrupts us with a message from Madame. The Colonel takes it and frowns. He is much distracted these days. Things go badly at the mansion. He has promised to show me his notes on Washington, but every time I ask for them he says he cannot remember where he last put them.

I HAVE GROWN lazy in the heat. August is nearly over. Colonel Burr is absent for days at a time. Sometimes he is at the mansion. Other times in Jersey City. I think he may have gone at least once to his old school Princeton College (his father was its president when it was called The College of New Jersey).

Although he is more than usually secretive, I gather that the Texas land leases may be invalid, and if they are, he has lost his (Madame’s) entire investment.

Nelson Chase tells me that “There are terrible rows up there on the Heights!” Chase has also taken to questioning me about the Colonel’s private life, an unbecoming subject considering how recently the Colonel married Chase’s aunt or whatever she is to him. I say nothing. After all, I
know
nothing except that I have posted a number of letters from Burr to a certain Jane McManus in Jersey City. But
honi soit qui mal y pense
.

Yesterday Burr spent all afternoon with a Mrs. Tompkins and a five-year-old girl who was plainly his daughter though not, I should think, by the elderly Mrs. Tompkins.

Burr is marvellously patient with all children. Talks to them as though they were adult. Teaches them. Plays with them by the hour. Particularly with little girls, for “Women have souls, Charlie! They really do.”

This evening, at five o’clock, I finally receive the Colonel’s notes on George Washington. “It is a continuation of what you have already read. With some new marginal notes. It is a nice portrait, I think, but I am sure you will find it unrecognisable.”

Burr looks pale and fragile today. This morning in court the judge saw fit to harangue for an hour the murderer of Alexander Hamilton. When at last the judge gave out of breath, the Colonel said with great mildness, “I am sorry that Your Honour is not feeling well today.”

IN THE EARLY SPRING of 1776, I decided that Colonel Arnold was mad. For days on end, he would march our shattered contingent back and forth before the walls of Quebec. Periodically, he would amuse the British with a demand for surrender. Asked to deliver one of these documents, I refused point-blank.

When it came time for me to go, Arnold forbade it. I told him that he could keep me only by force. He did not try to do that.

The middle of June, I arrived at General Washington’s headquarters in the Mortier mansion at Richmond Hill, some two miles north of New York City.

I had never seen a house so fine. It commanded a superb view of the Hudson River. Gardens, pavilions, ponds, a stream (the Minetta which I was later to dam and make a small lake of). A perfect paradise, I thought, as I rode up to the front porch where a dozen officers stood, waiting for admittance.

Above the main door, on the second balcony, the Lady Washington sat with her needlework. She had a benign if somewhat wintry smile and a quiet manner. The face was ordinary—what you could see of it because she was addicted to large hats, usually some years out of fashion. She had been the richest widow in Virginia when the poor but ambitious squire Washington married her.

As I entered the high-ceilinged main hall, I never dreamed—well, perhaps
imagined
for an instant—that I would one day own Richmond Hill.

I was shown by a staff captain into the side parlour where a half-dozen officers were waiting to see the General, who daily held court in an upstairs bedroom (which I was to make into a library, exorcizing, as best I could, that stern mediocre ghost).

Among the officers unknown to me in the parlour was Captain Alexander Hamilton of the New York artillery. We did not actually meet, however, until the end of June. “But I knew right away it was you,” he told me later. “We all did. And I was filled with envy!” When Hamilton chose, his manner could be enormously charming. “There you were, the hero of Quebec, looking like a child while I was just another officer!” As a youth, Hamilton was physically most attractive with red-gold hair, bright if somewhat watery blue eyes and a small but strong body. It was our peculiar tragedy—or glory—to be of an age and quality at a time and place certain to make rivals of us. Yet from the beginning we had a personal liking for one another. We were like brothers (yes, Cain and Abel come to mind with the difference that each was part-Cain, part-Abel). At first meeting I knew Hamilton straight through. I suspect that he knew me as well, and could not endure the knowledge that of the two of us I alone had the means and talent to be what he most wanted to be, the president. He came to hate not only my capacity but my opportunity. Yet I wonder if he knew all along that I would fail, saw the flaw in me as I saw the one in him? Speculation is idle now. Lake brothers, yes; but unlike, too. He was envious. I am not. Thwarted ambition never turned me sour as it did Hamilton, who at the end could not endure the American world I was helping to make and so, quite irrationally, made me out to be that hideous reality incarnate. Curious to think that we would almost certainly have been friends had we not been two young “heroes” at the beginning of a new nation, each aware that at the summit there is a place for only one. As it turned out, neither of us was to reach the highest place. I hurled Hamilton from the mountain-side, and myself fell.

General Washington stood beside his desk as I entered. In response to my salute, he gave me his gravest stare. He was a master of solemnity.

“Major Burr, you are welcome to stay here in the house until you find yourself a proper billet.”

“Thank you, General, I am most sensible of the honour ...” I was about to ask, as tactfully as possible, for a command in the field when Washington began to speak, formally, somewhat hesitantly. Conversation was not easy for him with anyone.

“We have heard excellent reports of you, Major Burr. From every source except Colonel Arnold.”

“Colonel Arnold and I had but one disagreement. I thought it pointless to continue to send insulting messages to the British governor when we were in no position to do him the slightest damage.”

“Why did we not take Quebec?”

“May I speak candidly?”

His answer came smoothly, from much practice. “I have always laid it down as a maxim to represent facts freely and impartially.”

“We failed, General, because my plan was not followed.” I saw no reason not to go down firing.

“
Your
plan, Sir?” The small dull eyes in their vast sockets stared at me with wonder.

I told him in detail my strategy for scaling Cap Diamond. He was not impressed. “Wiser heads no doubt prevailed.”

“One of those wiser heads, Sir, was shot off. I was at General Montgomery’s side when he was killed. The other wise head now commands a depleted and broken force.”

“You are most certain, Major, of your military gift.”

“No, Sir. But it is a fact that the other strategy failed. I had hoped only to imitate the same tactic King Frederick set in motion during the siege of Dresden.” Young and opinionated, I hoped to impress my commander not only with my own military prowess but with my wide knowledge of modern warfare. Like so many young officers in those days, I had studied closely the campaigns of Frederick the Great.

General Washington, however, did not read books; he knew as little of Frederick as I did of tobacco farming, a business in which he had only recently failed. The wealth of his wife notwithstanding, Washington was in some financial difficulty when he took command of the army. He had not done well farming despite all sorts of theories about river mud being the best of manures (it is not), and the invention of a plough (shades of Jefferson!) which proved to be so heavy that two horses could not budge it even in moist earth.

Although Washington was always short of money, he lived grandly. Later in the war, we were all startled and amused when his mother put it about that son George had robbed her of everything and so, being destitute, she was forced to apply to the Virginia Assembly for a pension. I am reasonably certain that Washington was innocent in this matter. He was, apparently, a dutiful son and the mother a source of much distress to him. When word came of her son’s “victory” at Trenton, the virago was quoted as saying, “Here is too much flattery.” It is plain she always disliked her son and he must, finally, have hated her. How odd not to like one’s own mother! I always thought I would have adored mine, who saw fit to die before we could properly meet.

General Washington rang a bell. A staff colonel entered.

“Please instruct Major Burr in his duties. He will stay here, until billetted in the town.” The General turned to me. “I shall want a full report of what happened at Quebec.”

Interview ended, the General crossed to a long table covered with papers and began, at random I rather think, to read. From the back his heroic figure was only somewhat disfigured by a huge rump. Neither of us knew that even as we spoke, Montreal had been recaptured by the British, and our Canadian adventure was a failure.

Longing for military glory, I found myself seated at a desk for ten hours a day copying out letters from Washington to the Congress. Although defective in grammar and spelling, owing to a poor education, the General was uncommonly shrewd in the way he flattered congressmen. But then he had not spent fifteen years as a burgess in the Virginia Assembly without learning something of politics. Ultimately, I think, he must be judged as an excellent politician who had no gift for warfare. History, as usual, has got it all backward.

After ten days in which my most useful work was the examination of several bales of under-sized blankets from France, I was happy to receive from John Hancock an appointment as aide to General Israel Putnam ... yes, I had gone over General Washington’s head to the president of Congress. I had no choice if I was to serve usefully in the war. In fact, as I pointed out to Hancock, I would rather be out of the army than clerk to a Virginia land-surveyor.

There are of course many legends about my relations with Washington during those two weeks I spent at Richmond Hill. He is supposed to have been shocked by my licentiousness. I daresay he would have been had he known how I and a number of other young officers conducted ourselves on those rare occasions when we were free to visit New York City. But he knew nothing of such matters. It is true, however, that he was most puritanical.

Soon after I arrived a soldier named Hickey had been hanged for treason, to the delight of 20,000 New Yorkers. I was not present at the execution but I did read with amusement Washington’s statement to the troops. According to our commander, the English-born Hickey had gone over to the British not for money but because
he was a life-long prey to lewd women
! It was a sermon worthy of my grandfather. Incidentally, the private soldiers disliked Washington as much as he disdained them. On the other hand, the young officers (with at least one exception) adored their commander, and it is the young officer not the private soldier who eventually decides what is history.