The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (45 page)

Suddenly the “wholesome prosecution” had become a most unwholesome attempt on the part of an American president to abridge freedom of speech. It was Hamilton who, unexpectedly, became the defender of liberty against Jefferson the would-be censor.

It was a beautifully comic yet highly significant contest. The first round was won by Jefferson with the aid of New York’s Chief Justice who upheld the doctrine that in such a case truth is not the issue. But the Chief Justice then made the mistake of adding, “I very much regret that the law is not otherwise.” He then directed the jury to determine only whether or not Croswell had published the alleged libels. The jury had no choice but to say that Croswell had indeed published what he had published. Croswell’s counsel asked for a new trial, declaring that the jury had been misdirected, and that truth must be given in evidence.

The second trial took place in February 1804. Although Hamilton had favoured the Sedition Act, he was now, most eloquently, on the other side of the fence. From all accounts, it was Hamilton’s finest moment. In explaining his attitude toward the Sedition Act he declared, disingenuously, that it had only been aimed at what Jefferson liked to refer to as “false facts” (the counter-term, no doubt, for “true lies”).

Now the issue was to be truth-in-libel, and Hamilton elevated the discourse to Miltonic heights. “We ought to resist, resist, resist until we hurl the Demagogues and Tyrants from their imaginary Thrones.” And, “it ought to be distinctly known whether Mr. Jefferson be guilty or not of so foul an act as the one charged.”

I found it singularly delicious that Hamilton the Monocrat should be in a position to accuse Jefferson the Great Leveller of being not only Tyrant, but occupant of a throne!

Since Callender was by then dead, the actual guilt of Jefferson never did become an issue.

The judges divided two to two, and the legislature at Albany then prepared a truth-in-libel bill that is now the law of the land. Hamilton was again the idol of Federalism.

Unfortunately for Hamilton (and for me) I was, in effect, the Federalist candidate for governor and Hamilton could not bear this anomaly. At a dinner party in Albany to celebrate his victory in court, Hamilton indulged himself in a series of libels on my character in which truth, I fear, was hardly an issue.

About the middle of June I was sitting in the upstairs study at Richmond Hill with William Van Ness and his former law clerk Martin Van Buren. With some difficulty, I had just made peace between the two. Van Ness thought Van Buren disloyal for supporting the regular Republican for governor rather than me. I explained, as best I could, that Matty had to do as he did because “he is young and wants a career in politics.” The two men were finally reconciled. But when Van Buren told me that he had supported the regular Republican ticket out of loyalty to his law partner, I told him that personal loyalty was the worst possible reason for doing anything in politics. “The important thing is to begin your career on the winning side. It makes a good impression—if only on the gods.”

We were going through a number of newspapers just arrived from up-state, and enjoying some of the more fantastical portraits of me (including a learned dissertation on the precise number of women I had ruined), when Van Ness showed me a copy of the Albany
Register
dated April 24, 1804. It contained what looked to be a letter from Dr. Charles Cooper, reporting on a dinner party at Albany: “Gen. Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance, that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.”

“That is hardly exceptional,” I said. “Besides, I think Judge Kent voted for me.”

Then I saw what had attracted Van Ness’s eye: “I could,” wrote Dr. Cooper, “detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.” We looked in vain for that “more despicable opinion” but it was not given.

“It is the usual Hamilton diatribe.” Matty did not take the matter seriously. Nor did I at first.

But in the night I began to meditate on just what was meant by “more despicable.” Hamilton had already called me Caesar, Catiline, Bonaparte (while himself dreaming of a crown in Mexico should he fail to subvert Jefferson’s feudal Utopia). What did he now mean by “more despicable”? I fear that my usual equanimity in these matters had been much shaken by the recent election. I did not sleep that night. The next morning I wrote a letter to Hamilton. Then I sent for Van Ness.

“I think this ...
thing
demands an explanation.”

“I agree.” Van Ness was even grimmer than I. He would deliver my letter in person. The letter was short. I asked for “a prompt and unqualified acknowledgement or denial of the use of any expression which could warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper.” I enclosed the newspaper cutting. This was on June 19.

Van Ness delivered the letter to Hamilton who saw immediately the seriousness of the matter. “I shall answer Colonel Burr later today.” But later that day Hamilton called on Van Ness and asked if he might have another day in which to prepare his reply.

On June 21, I received a letter from Hamilton. It was long. There was a good deal of quibbling as to the precise meaning of “despicable.” He then declared that he could not be held responsible for the inferences that others might draw from anything he had said “of a political opponent in the course of fifteen years’ competition.”

I answered him the same day, remarking that “political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honour.” I pointed out that the accepted meaning of the word “despicable” conveys the idea of dishonour. I asked for a definite reply.

The next day Hamilton called on a friend and gave him a second letter to give Van Ness when he called. In this letter Hamilton complained of my peremptory style. He could not, he decided, give me a reply any more definite than the one he had put forward in his first letter. That of course was no reply at all. Meanwhile Hamilton’s friend told Van Ness that he was authorized to say that Hamilton’s recollection of the dinner party at Albany was somewhat hazy but to the extent that Colonel Burr was at all discussed the context was entirely political and bore upon the current election for governor. Apparently no reflections upon Colonel Burr’s
private
character were made by General Hamilton.

It was at about this time that I learned exactly what it was that Hamilton had said of me, and knew that this world was far too narrow a place to contain the two of us.

Hamilton’s friend made one further attempt to get him off the hook but only further impaled the slanderer by remarking that should Colonel Burr wish to enquire of any
other
conversation of Hamilton concerning Burr, a prompt and frank avowal or denial would be given. This was too much. I told Van Ness to set a time and place for an interview.

The friend made one last attempt to save his principal on the peculiar ground that General Hamilton did not believe himself to be the
original
author of any of the unpleasant rumours currently circulating about Colonel Burr, excepting one which had been cleared up years before: this had to do with my supposedly thrusting, as it were, Eliza Bowen into Hamilton’s bed in order to learn his secrets. Actually she thrust herself there, with his aid. And though she did give me a copy of the pamphlet he had written attacking John Adams, he was forced to agree that I had in no way solicited it.

Hamilton then complained of my “predetermined hostility” to him. Van Ness replied for me, pointing out that the phrase “predetermined hostility” was insult added to injury and that the evasive length of Hamilton’s correspondence seemed very like guilt.

It was determined that we would meet across the river in New Jersey, on the heights known as Wee-hawk. Nathaniel Pendleton would be second to Hamilton. Van Ness would be second to me. Pistols would be our weapons. Hamilton then asked that we delay the interview until after the close of the Circuit Court. It was agreed that we meet in two weeks’ time on July 11, 1804.

For two weeks we kept our secret from all but a handful of intimates. I put my affairs in order; wrote letters to Theodosia; prepared a will. I worried a good deal about the debts I would leave behind if I were killed. No doubt, Hamilton was in the same frame of mind. If anything, he was in a far worse position than I: he was deeply in debt largely due to The Grange, a pretentious country seat he was preparing for himself several miles above Richmond Hill. He also had seven children. Fortunately for them, his wife was a Schuyler so the poorhouse would never claim these relics.

I soon discovered that I had made a mistake granting Hamilton a two weeks’ delay. He immediately arranged for one Samuel Bradhurst to challenge me to a duel with swords. I had no choice but to answer this gentleman. We fought near Hoboken. I was at a considerable disadvantage since Mr. Bradhurst’s arms were about three inches longer than mine. It was Hamilton’s design that I be, at the least, so cut up by Mr. Bradhurst that I would not be in any condition to succeed in our interview on July 11. Fortunately, I drew blood immediately. Mr. Bradhurst withdrew from the field of honour, leaving me unscratched.

On the evening of July 4, I attended the celebration of the Society of the Cincinnati at Fraunces’ Tavern.

Hamilton was most poised. In fact, I have seldom seen him so charming. “I must congratulate you on a successful interview,” he murmured as we bowed to one another in the tap-room.

“I hope your friend Mr. Bradhurst will make a swift recovery.” I turned away.

Despite Hamilton’s notorious arrogance and shortness with those whose minds worked less swiftly than his own, he had the gift of enchanting others when he chose. Suspecting that this might well be his last public appearance, he meant for all the world to remember him as he was that night, still handsome despite the fleshiness of too much good living, still able to delight with subtle flattery those older than himself, to dazzle with his brilliance those younger.

As we sat at table in the long room—a group of middle-aged men who shared nothing but the fact that we had all been young at the same time and had fought as officers in the Revolution—I too had the sense that this might be my last appearance upon the republic’s brightest stage. There was a good chance that I would be killed. There was an even better chance that Hamilton would be killed. But whatever happened, nothing would ever be the same again in a week’s time.

I felt curiously detached as I sat in the place of honour (despite my recent electoral defeat I was still vice-president of the United States); saw myself as from a great distance, already a carnival waxworks and no longer real.

Others have written that I was moody and distant that night. Obviously I was not in full command of myself. But then the ultimate encounter was at hand. The man who had set himself the task of ruining me during “fifteen years’ competition” was now about to complete his work, and I must have known in some instinctive way that he would again succeed no matter what happened on the Weehawk Heights.

I was genuinely moved when at the company’s request General Hamilton got up and in his fine tenor voice sang “The Drum,” a song that no veteran of the Revolution can listen to without sorrow for his lost youth and the dead he loved.

Needless to say, I did not realize with what cunning Hamilton had prepared his departure from this world, and my ruin.

TODAY THE COLONEL was in a most curious and excited mood. “If it amuses you, Charlie, we shall go to the Heights of Weehawk and I shall act out for you the duel of the century, when the infamous Burr slew the noble Hamilton, from behind a thistle—obviously a disparaging allusion to my small stature. Yet Hamilton was less than an inch taller than I though now he looms a giant of legend, with a statue to his divinity in the Merchants’ Exchange, his temple. While for me no statue, no laurel, only thistle!”

I was delighted and somewhat embarrassed. Burr almost never speaks of the duel; and most people, unlike Leggett, are much too nervous of the subject ever to bring it up in his presence even though it is the one thing everyone in the world knows about Aaron Burr, and the one thing it is impossible
not
to think of upon first meeting him.

“
He
killed General Hamilton,” my mother whispered to me when the elegant little old man first came into our Greenwich Village tavern, after his return from Europe. “Take a good look at him. He was a
famous man once.”

As I grew older, I realized that my family admired Burr more than not and that my mother was pleased when he took a fancy to me, gave me books to read, encouraged me to attend Columbia College and take up the law. But my first glimpse of him at a table close to the pump-room fire was of the devil himself, and I half-expected him to leave not by way of the door but up the chimney with the flames.

We walked to Middle Pier at the end of Duane Street. “I’ve ordered my young boatman to stand by.”

The Colonel’s eyes were bright at the prospect of such an unusual adventure—into past time rather than into that airy potential future time where he is most at home.

“It was a hot day like this—thirty years and one month ago. Yet I remember being most unseasonably cold. In fact, I ordered a fire the night of the tenth, and slept in my clothes on a sofa in. the study. Slept very well, I might add. A detail to be added to your
heroic
portrait of me.” An amused glance in my direction. “Around dawn, John Swartwout came to wake me up. I was then joined by Van Ness and Matt Davis. We embarked from Richmond Hill.”

The tall young boatman was waiting for us at the deserted slip. The sun was fierce. We were the only people on the wharf: the whole town has gone away for August.

We got into the boat, and the young man began to row with slow regular strokes up-river to the high green Jersey shore opposite.

“On just such a morning ...” He hummed to himself softly. Then: “My affairs were in order. I had set out six blue boxes, containing enough material for my biography, if anyone was minded to write such a thing. Those boxes now rest at the bottom of the sea.” He was blithe even at this allusion to the beloved daughter: trailed his finger in the river; squinted at the sun. “What, I wonder, do the fishes make of my history?”