The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (38 page)

I RETURNED TO NEW YORK STATE to find George Clinton in a bad mood. He disliked Jefferson, would take no part in the election. I was able to change his mind by telling him that I thought Governor John Jay could be defeated, and that I would be happy to take his place. The thought of me as governor aroused the old man wondrously well. He would have canvassed the Sixth Ward on his knees to get me safely out of the state as vice-president.

The Livingstons were useful allies; and as long as one listened attentively to their advice one was not actually bound to take it. Edward Livingston, in particular, was devoted to me, “and if the presidency should ever be between you and Jefferson, I am for you.” Fortunately for him, I never held him to his promise.

I had my own Little Band: the Swartwout brothers, Matt Davis, the Van Ness brothers (newly arrived in the law office of Peter Van Ness was a young clerk from up-state named Matty Van Buren), the Prevost family, and so on. Through Davis, I also had some support within the Society of St. Tammany.

Suspecting that Hamilton would nominate a number of nonentities for the various legislative seats, I waited until after the Federalist caucus. When I saw Hamilton’s lack-lustre nominations, I knew I would beat him all hollow for I intended to nominate the most famous men in the state as Republican legislators.

General Gates was now living in New York. He still possessed a famous name despite Washington’s best efforts to consign him, like poor Lee, to darkness. Gates agreed to stand. So did Washington’s-postmaster general Samuel Osgood; also Brockholst Livingston—easily the most brilliant member of that family. Finally, I prevailed upon George Clinton to allow his name to go on the ballot. May I say that I could not get these distinguished men to run for such unimportant offices without convincing them first that we were indeed going to win.

“It is madness, Burr, just madness!” Clinton was outraged at having to appear to seek a seat in the legislature. “It looks all wrong for me who am the governor ...”

“The former governor ...”

“For me the governor that was to be going to that Assembly of yours that I never liked, and all for some Frenchified trimmer of an atheist from Virginia. No, Sir. Now if it was you for president, why, it would be well worth it, but not for Massa Tom.”

It took me a long time but, finally, the governor-that-was agreed to have his name on the ballot. “But I won’t work to be elected and if anybody asks me what I think I’ll tell ’em I don’t want to be elected.” Old Clinton was emphatic. He always made me think of a dancing bear on a chain: clumsy, clownish, good-humoured, until he got his arms about you.

I myself stood for election in Orange County where friends looked after my interests, allowing me time to organize the city.

From April 29 to May 1, the polls were open. During this time Hamilton and I shared a number of platforms. Courteously we deferred to one another in public, as each went about the urgent business of defeating the other. A few weeks earlier, as a demonstration of our god-like serenity, we even joined forces to defend a man accused of murder—and we got him off.

By the evening of May 2, it was evident that the Republican party had swept the city, giving us a clear majority in the legislature. All twelve of New York’s electoral votes would now be cast for Jefferson and Burr.

Hamilton’s response was characteristic. He wrote a “secret” letter to Governor Jay, asking him to call an immediate session of the current legislature (with its Federalist majority) in order to change the laws of election. No longer would presidential electors be chosen by the legislature; rather they would be elected directly by the people. It is a nice irony that the only time Hamilton ever sought to broaden the franchise was to steal an election. Aware of the fraudulence of what he was proposing, he assured Jay that “scruples of delicacy and propriety ... ought to yield to the extraordinary nature of the crisis.” To Jay’s credit he ignored the suggestion.

It is curious how Hamilton (who was capable of any illegality including a military coup) should have attached so securely to me the unlikely epithet “embryo-Caesar.” Whatever my ambitions, none was ever the cancellation of a legal election or the overthrow of the Constitution. I suspect that when Hamilton looked at me he saw, in some magical way, himself reflected. And so if one is an embryo-Caesar, accuse the looking-glass of that high treason and divert thereby the wrath of the plebes. Best of all, smash the glass and free the self therein—to range at will.

At the last moment Hamilton gave us the presidential election just as his inept selection of candidates had given us the state election. Unable, as usual, to resist a public expression of his rage, he wrote a pamphlet (his tombstone should have been carved in the shape of a pen) denouncing John Adams, the leader of his party. Wiser—and more frightened—Federalist heads persuaded Hamilton not to publish. But they could not stop him from printing his pamphlet for private circulation. Fortunately, Eliza Bowen secured for me a copy which I then published in the Republican newspaper
Aurora
.
President Adams was not happy; and Hamilton forever after held me (and poor Eliza) responsible for what
he
had written.

I then travelled through New England and New Jersey to see what support might be forthcoming. Jefferson by now was entirely happy to leave the election in my hands. “You have done,” he wrote to me from Philadelphia, “what I thought could not be done” (he was referring to the Republican majority in the New York legislature) “and so I leave to you the entire undertaking, and will not be surprised to see you turn Massachusetts itself to democracy, clergy and all!”

I did not turn Massachusetts Republican but I did cultivate those Federalists who disliked and mistrusted Hamilton. It was later charged that I did this in order to gain their support for the presidency. The charge is half true. I
always
wooed Federalists in the general interest. For one thing I was trusted by many of their leaders because I was not thought to be a zealot like Jefferson, intent on levelling the rich and exalting the poor.

Jefferson’s later charge that I wanted to take the presidency away from him was not unlike Hamilton seeing in me a military adventurer. Jefferson would never honour an agreement if it was inconvenient and naturally he assumed that I was like himself. But then Jefferson was not, even in Chesterfield’s sense, a gentleman (of the Virginians only Madison qualified); unfortunately, I was one, or did my best to be. I worked only for what we had agreed upon at Philadelphia, the ticket of Jefferson and Burr.

The summer and autumn of 1800 were the busiest time of my life, and a torture to both Jefferson and me, as well as to poor John Adams. I had thought to secure New Jersey to us, but that state went Federalist as did Connecticut. By late autumn the struggle was now centered upon Pennsylvania, where all was confusion, upon Rhode Island which tended to be for us, and upon South Carolina which had the dubious fortune to be the home of the egregious Pinckney brothers, the second of whom was, thanks to Hamilton, an active national candidate.

Jefferson was in despair. I did my best to cheer him: “With Rhode Island, you will still have a majority,” I wrote. But he was no more convinced of the certainty of his election than I was convinced that I could rely on the Virginians to honour their commitment to me. Fortunately, I had an ally in James Madison. He forced the southerners, as a point of honour, to support me.

At the beginning of December, Pennsylvania chose a legislature in which Republicans outnumbered Federalists by a single vote. South Carolina voted last. It was now plain that Jefferson would be president; but if South Carolina voted for their own Pinckney, he (or Adams) would be vice-president. Happily, I had sufficient friends and allies in that charming state. As a result, South Carolina’s electoral votes were cast entirely for Jefferson and me. We had won the election—with the aid of Alexander Hamilton’s busy pen.

I was at Richmond Hill when the word came of South Carolina’s vote. The Little Band was ecstatic. But I was not. I knew something was wrong. I excused myself and went immediately to the upstairs study where I sat down with a copy of Blackstone’s on my knees (my desk had been sold) and began to add up the electoral votes for all the United States. My apprehension was justified. Jefferson: 73. Burr: 73. Adams; 65. Pinckney; 64. Jay: 1.

Jefferson and I had tied, and the Federalist House of Representatives would now have to choose between us for president. A second scrutiny of the figures proved that the election had been decided by the electors of New York state. Without New York, Jefferson was seven votes short of his total in ’96 while Adams, without New York, had gained nine votes. No matter what happened in the House of Representatives, I had carried New York and New York had decided the election.

I slept remarkably well that night, and woke the next morning to find that we had been splendidly snowed in. It was like Revolutionary days, and I was young again.

At about this time Jefferson wrote me one of his most disingenuous letters. He congratulated-me on my victory. Noted that the vice-presidency was a higher post than any he could offer but regretted deeply “the loss we sustain of your aid in our new administration. It leaves a chasm in my arrangements which cannot be adequately filled up. I had endeavoured to compose an administration whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions should at once inspire an unbounded confidence in the public mind. I lose you from the list, and am not sure of all the others.”

This was a most gracious tribute from a man who has since claimed that he
always
mistrusted me, and doubted my integrity. The date of the letter was significant: it was just before South Carolina had voted. I am convinced that Jefferson had made an arrangement (or had heard that some arrangement was being made) that would have resulted in my losing the vice-presidency to Adams or Pinckney. The letter was to forestall my anger with the promise of a Cabinet post. Fortunately I was strong in South Carolina, and got the same vote he did.

The Federalists were in a turmoil. There were those who inclined to me on the ground that whatever my faults of character (and Hamilton saw fit to describe these, I later learned, in alarming detail to every congressional leader of weight), I was not a fanatic like Jefferson. At worst, I was suspected of being a Bonaparte. This was bad enough. But Jefferson was suspected of being a Robespierre, and that was worse.

I moved as swiftly as I could to see to it that no one put me forward as a possible alternative to Jefferson. It was of course feared that the Federalists in Congress might entirely go mad and, exploiting the ambiguity of the Constitution, elect a president
pro tem
who would then, if the ambiguity was acceptable, become president instead of Jefferson or me.

Having effectively destroyed Adams and split his party, Hamilton was now forced to choose between Jefferson and me, the two men he most despised and feared. Curiously enough he preferred Jefferson to me, the fanatic leveller to the Caesar-self in the looking-glass. In a perverse and bitter way, denying me the presidency was like denying himself, and he was a born destroyer of his own interest. Yet a sane man choosing between what he thought to be a fanatic and a political adventurer would obviously choose the adventurer who was known to practise the arts of accommodation. In any case, let it be said once and for all, I would have refused the presidency on the practical ground (putting aside honour like a Virginian) that it was plainly the sense of the people of the United States that Jefferson be the president and that to usurp his rightful place would have made it impossible for me to govern. Also, at the age of forty-five, I expected the highest office to come to me in due course as it had come to previous vice-presidents, not to mention as a reward for my having won for the Republican party its first national election. I did not know that once Virginia again had control of the Executive, she would not give it up for a quarter-century.

Finally, with the French republic in the hands of a military despot and our own Constitution looking more absurd than ever, any sudden illegal—or rather immoral—exertion on my part would have torn apart our new republic.

I despatched several letters to Washington. The letter to Samuel Smith of Maryland was published. In this letter I disclaimed firmly all competition with Jefferson. I thought that was that.

In January, I went to Albany to take my seat in the Assembly where my days were devoted to the contemplation of New York’s canals and inland waterways, and my evenings to the charms of boarding-house life. Hardly what an intriguer would have done.

Curiously enough my only serious tempter was Theodosia. The night before she was to be married to Joseph Alston of South Carolina, she came to my room for what I took to be a last meeting with her father as a virgin—this sentence is all wrong, Charlie, but I do like it!

I was closetted with John Swartwout who had also been elected to the Assembly. We were studying the latest newspapers from the south, as well as a long memorandum from a persistent admirer at Washington who wanted me to make myself available to the Federalists, and so become president on the first ballot. Swartwout and I were discussing this letter when Theodosia joined us. John turned to go.

“No, no! Please!” She put her hand on his shoulder: she was like a sister to the three Swartwouts. “I’ve been listening to the two of you in the next room.”

“Then I have failed as a parent.”

“Quite the contrary! You have made me wiser than you.”

“She is to be married tomorrow,” I said to Swartwout, “and so is crazed with vanity. The fit will pass.”

“It will not!” I realized then that this was not her usual banter. She turned to Swartwout. “He must be the president. He has no other choice.”

Swartwout was as taken aback as I by her vehemence.

I remonstrated. “It is not possible.”

“Of course it is possible, if you want it! Write Congressman Bayard tonight, tell him what he wants to hear. He’ll get you Vermont on the first ballot. He can bring you Maryland.”