An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr

“You have said enough, sir,” breaks in Aaron. “I shall deceive no one, tempt no one; not even you. Go, sir; carry what I say to what ring of Federalists you represent. Also, you may consider yourself personally fortunate that I do not ask how far your conduct should have construction as an insult.”

Federalist Bayard hurries away with a red face and a flea in his ear. Gulping his chagrin, he tells his fellow chiefs that the obdurate Aaron will do nothing, consent to nothing, to help himself.

Jefferson does not share Aaron’s chill indifference. While the latter comports himself as carelessly as though a White House is an edifice of every day, the Man of Monticello goes as far the other way, and feels all the uneasy anger of him who is on the brink of being robbed. He calls on the wooden Adams, and demands that the wooden one exert his influence with his party in favor of Aaron’s defeat.

“It is I, sir,” says Jefferson, “whom the people elected; and you should see their will respected.”

Adams grows warm. “Sir,” he retorts, “the event is in your power. Say that you will do justice to the Federalists, and the government will instantly be put into your hands.”

“If such be your answer, sir,” returns Jefferson, equaling, if not surpassing the Adams heat, “I have to tell you that I do not intend to come into the presidency by capitulation.”

Jefferson leaves the White House, while Adams – who is practical, even if high-tempered – begins his preparations to create and fill twenty-three life judgeships, before his successor shall take possession.

As much as the Man of Monticello, however, our wooden Adams is afire at the on-end condition of the times. Only his wrath arises, not over the war between Jefferson and Aaron, but because he himself is to be ousted. The action of the people, in its motive, is beyond his understanding. As unrepublican in his hidebound instincts as any royal Charles, he cannot grasp the reason of his overthrow.

Speaking with Federalist Cabot, he furnishes his angry meditations tongue. “What is this mighty difference,” he cries, “which the public discovers between Jefferson and myself? He is for messages to Congress, I am for speeches; he is for a little White House dinner every day, I am for a big dinner once a week; I am for an occasional reception, he is for a daily levee; he is for straight hair and liberty, while I think a man may curl or cue his hair and still be free. Their Jefferson preference, sir, convinces me that, while men are reasoning, they are not reasonable creatures. The one difference between Jefferson and myself is this: I appeal to men’s reason, he flatters their vanity. The result – a mob result – is that he stands victorious, while I lie prostrate.” Saying which the wooden, angry Adams resumes his arrangements for creating and filling those twenty-three life judgeships – being resolved, in his narrow breast, to make the most of his dying moments as a president.

The day of White House fate arrives; the House comes together. Seats are placed for President and Senate. Also lounges are brought in; for there are members too ill to occupy their regular seats – one is even attended by his wife. Before a vote is taken, the House adopts an order which forbids any other business until a President is chosen and the White House tie determined.

The voice of the House is announced by States; the ballot falls as foreseen by Federalist Bayard. It runs eight for Jefferson, six for Aaron, with Maryland and Vermont voiceless, because of their evenly divided delegations, and a refusal on the part of the House to count half votes for any name. There being no choice – since no name possesses a majority of all the States – another vote is called. The upcome is the same: eight Jefferson, six Aaron, two mute. And so through twenty-nine hours of ceaseless balloting.

Seven House days go by; the vote continues unchanged. At the close of the seventh day, Federalist Bayard – who is the entire delegation from his little State of Delaware, and until then has been casting its vote for Aaron – beholds a light. No one may know the sort of light he sees. It is, however, altogether a Bayard and in no wise a Jefferson light; for the Man of Monticello is of too rigid a probity to entertain so much as the ghost of a bargain. On the seventh day, by that new light, Federalist Bayard changes his vote. Jefferson is named President, with Aaron Vice-President, and that heartbreaking tie is at an end.

The result leaves Aaron as coolly the picture of polished, icy indifference as ever during his icily polished days. The Man of Monticello, who has been gloom one moment and angry impatience the next, feels most a burning hatred of the imperturbable Aaron, whom he blames for what he has gone through. The color of this hatred will deepen, not fade, until a day when it gets trippingly in front of Aaron’s plans to send them sprawling. There is, however, no present hateful indications; for Jefferson, reared in an age of secrets, can lock his breast against the curious and prying. President and Vice-President, he and Aaron go about their duties upon terms which mingle a deal of courtesy with little friendly warmth. This excites no wonder; friendships between President and Vice-President have never been the habit.

In wielding the Senate gavel, Aaron is an example of the lucidly just. He refuses to be partisan, and presides for the whole Senate, not a half. He knows no friend, no foe, and adds another coat of black to the Jefferson hate, by voting when a tie occurs with the Federalists, against the repeal of those twenty-three engaging life judgeships, which the practical Adams created and filled in his industrious last days.

Not alone does Aaron shine out as the north star of Senate guidance, but his home rivals the White House – which leans toward the simple-severe under Jefferson – as a polite center of society; for baby Theo comes up from South Carolina to preside over it – Theo, loving and lustrous! Aaron, with the lustrous Theo, entertains Jerome Bonaparte, on his way to a Baltimore bride. Also, Theo, during moments informal, lapses into gossip with Dolly Madison, the pair privily deciding that Miss Patterson has no bargain in the Franco-Corsican.

On the lustrous Theo’s second visit to her Vice-Presidential parent, she brings in her arms a small, red-faced, howling bundle, and, putting it proudly into his arms, tells him it bears the name of Aaron Burr Alston. Aaron receives the small red-faced howling bundle even more proudly than it is offered, and hugs it to his heart. From this moment, until a dark one that will come later, little Aaron Burr Alston is to live the focus and central purpose of all his ambitions. It is for this little one he will make his plots, and lay his plans, to become a western Bonaparte and swoop at empire.

During these days of Aaron’s eminence and triumph, the broken, beaten Hamilton mopes about his Grange. Vain, resentful, since politics has turned its fickle back upon him, he does his best to turn his back on politics. For all that, his mortification, while he plays farmer and pretends retirement, finds voice at every chance.

He receives his friend Pinckney, and shows him about his shaven acres. “And when you return home,” he says, imitating the lightsome and doing it poorly, “send me some of your Carolina paroquets. Also a paper of Carolina melon seed for my garden. For a garden, my dear Pinckney” – this, with a sickly smile – “is, as you know, a very usual refuge for your disappointed politician.” It is now, his acute bitterness coming uppermost, he breaks into not over-manly complaint – the complaint of selflove wounded to the heart. “What an odd destiny is mine! No man has done more for the country, sacrificed more for it, than have I. No man than myself has stood more loyally by the Constitution – that frail, worthless fabric which I am still striving to prop up! And yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its foes to pay for it. What can I do better than withdraw from the arena? Each day proves more and more that America, with its republics, was never meant for me.”

CHAPTER XVI – THE SWEETNESS OF REVENGE

WHILE Aaron flourishes with Senate gavel, and Hamilton mourns his downfall at the Grange, new men are springing up and new lines forming. The Federalists disappear in the presidential going down of the wooden Adams; Aaron, by that one crushing victory, annihilated them. The new alignment in New York is personal rather than political, and becomes the merest separation of Aaron’s friends from Aaron’s enemies.

At the head of the latter, De Witt Clinton, nephew to old North-of-Ireland Clinton, takes his stand. Being modern, Clinton starts a newspaper, the American Citizen, and places a scurrilous dog named Cheetham in charge. As a counterweight, Aaron launches the Morning Chronicle, with Peter Irving editor, and his brother, young Washington Irving, as its leading writer. Now descends a war of ink, that is recklessly acrimonious and not at all merry.

Under that spur of feverish ink, the two sides fall to dueling with the utmost assiduity. Hamilton’s son Philip insults Mr. Eaker, a lawyer friend of Aaron; and the insulted Mr. Eaker gives up the law for one day to parade young Hamilton at the conventional ten paces. It is all highly honorable, all highly orthodox; and young Hamilton is killed in a way which reflects credit on those concerned.

Aaron’s lieutenant, John Swartwout, fastens a quarrel upon De Witt Clinton, for sundry ink utterances of the latter’s dog-of-types, Cheetham. The two cross the river to a spot of convenient seclusion.

“I wish it were your chief instead of you!” cries Clinton, who is not fine in his politenesses.

“So do I,” responds Swartwout, being of a rudeness to match Clinton’s. “For he is a dead shot, and would infallibly kill you; while I am the poorest hand with a pistol among the Buck-tails.”

The bickering pair are placed. They fire and miss. A second, and yet a third time their lead flies shamefully wide. At the fourth shot Clinton saves his credit by wounding Swartwout in the leg. The stubborn Swartwout demands a fifth fire, and Clinton plants a second bullet within two inches of the first.

“Are you satisfied?” asks Mr. Riker, who acts for Clinton.

“I am not,” returns Swartwout the stubborn. “Your man must retract, or continue the fight. Kill or be killed, I am prepared to shoot out the afternoon with him.”

At this, both Clinton’s fortitude and manners break down together, and, refusing to either fight on or apologize, he walks off the field. This nervous extravagance creates a scandal among our folk of hectic sensibilities, and shakes the Clinton standing sorely. He is promptly challenged by Senator Dayton – an adherent of Aaron’s – but evades that statesman at further loss to his reputation.

Meanwhile Robert Swartwout, brother to the wounded Swartwout, calls out Mr. Riker, who acted for Clinton against the stubborn one, and has the pleasure of dangerously wounding that personage. Also, Editor Coleman of the Evening Post, weary with that felon scribe, goes after type-dog Cheetham of Clinton’s American Citizen; whereat dog Cheetham flies yelping.

This last so disturbs Harbor Master Thompson of the Clinton forces, that he offers to take type-dog Cheetham’s place. Editor Coleman being agreeable, they fight in a snowstorm in (inappropriately) Love’s Lane – it will be University Place later – and the port loses a harbor master at the first fire.

Aaron, gaveling the Senate in the way it should legislatively go, pays no apparent heed to the smoky doings of his warlike subordinates. He never takes his eyes from Hamilton, however; and, if that retired publicist, complaining in his garden, would but cast his glance that way, he might read in their black ophidian depths a saving warning. But Hamilton is blind or mad, and thinks only on what he may do to injure Aaron, and never once on what that perilous Vice-President might be carrying on the shoulder of his purposes.

Hamilton devotes his garden leisure to vilifying Aaron. He goes stark staring raving Aaron-mad; at the mention of the name he pours out a muddy stream of slander. In talk, in print, in what letters he indites, Aaron is accused of every infamy. There is nothing so preposterously vile that he does not charge him with it. Aaron looks on and listens with a grim, evil smile, saying nothing. It is as though he but waits for Hamilton’s offenses to ripen in their accumulation, as one waits for apples to ripen on a tree.

At last the hour of harvest comes; Aaron leaves Washington for Richmond Hill, and sends for his friend Van Ness.

“You once marveled at my Hamilton moderation – wondered that I did not stop his slanders with convincing lead?”

“Yes,” says Van Ness.

“You shall wonder no longer, my friend. The hour of his death is about to strike.”

Van Ness breaks into a gale of protest. Hamilton, beaten, disgraced, deposed, is in political exile! Aaron, powerful, victorious, is on the crest of fortune! There is no fairness, no equality in an exchange of shots under such circumstances! Thus runs the opposition of Van Ness.

“In short,” he concludes, “it would be a fight downhill – a fight that you, in justice to yourself, have no right to make. Who is Alexander Hamilton? Nobody – a beaten nobody! Who is Aaron Burr? The second officer of the nation, on his sure way to a White House! Let me say, sir, that you must not risk so much against so little.”

“There is no risk; for I shall kill the man. I shall live and he shall die.”

“Cannot you see? There is the White House! Adams went from the Vice-Presidency to the Presidency; Jefferson went from the Vice-Presidency to the Presidency; you will do the same. It’s as though the White House were already yours. And you would throw it away for a shot at this broken, beaten, disregarded man! For let me tell you, sir; kill Hamilton and you kill your chance of being President. No one may hope to go into the White House on the back of a duel.”

About Aaron’s mouth twinkles a pale smile. It lights up his face with a cold dimness, as a will-o’-the-wisp lights up the midnight blackness of a wood.

“You have a memory only for what I lose. You forget what I gain.”

“What you gain?”

“Ay, friend, what I gain. I shall gain vengeance; and I would sooner be revenged than be President.”

“Now this is midsummer madness!” wails Van Ness. “To throw away a career such as yours is simple frenzy!”

“I do not throw away a career; I begin one.”

Van Ness stares; Aaron goes slowly on, as though he desires every word to make an impression.

“Listen, my friend; I’ve been preparing. Last week I closed out all my houses and lands! to John Jacob Astor for one hundred and forty thousand dollars. The one lone thing I own is Richmond Hill – the roof we sit beneath. I’d have sold this, but I did not care to attract attention. There would have come questions which I’m not ready to answer.”

Van Ness fills a glass of Cape, and settles himself to hear; he sees that this is but the beginning.

Aaron proceeds: “As we sit here to-night, Napoleon has been declared hereditary Emperor of the French. It has been on its way for months, and the next packet will bring us the news.”

“And what have the Corsican and his empire to do with us?”

“A President,” continues Aaron, ignoring the question, “is not comparable to an emperor. The Presidential term is but a stunted thing – in four years, eight at the most, your President comes to his end. And what is an ex-President? Look at Adams, peevish, disgruntled – unhappy in what he is, because he remembers what he was. To be a President is well enough. To be an ex-President is to seek to satisfy present hunger with the memories of banquets eaten years ago. For myself, I would sooner be an emperor; his throne is his for life, and becomes his son’s or his grandson’s after him.”

“What does this lead to?” asks Van Ness, vastly puzzled. “Admitting your imperial preferences, how are they applicable here and now?”

“Let me show you,” responds Aaron, still slow and measured and impressive. “What is possible in the East is possible in the West; what has been done in Europe may be done in America. Napoleon comes to Paris – lean, epileptic, poor, unknown, not even French. To-day he is emperor. Also” – this with a laugh which, however, does not prevent Van Ness from seeing that Aaron is deeply serious – “also, he is two inches shorter than myself.”

Van Ness leans back and makes a little gesture with his hand, as who should say: “Continue!”

“Very well! Would it be a stranger story if I, Aaron Burr, were to found an empire in the West – if I became Aaron I, as the Corsican has become Napoleon I?”

“You do not talk of overturning our government?” This in tones of wonder, and not without some flash of angry horror.

“Don’t hold me so dull. The people of this country are unfitted for king or emperor. They would throw down a thousand thrones while you set up one. I’ve studied races and peoples. Let me give you a word; it will serve should you go to nation building. Never talk of crowns or thrones to blue-eyed or gray-eyed men. They are inimical, in the very seeds of their natures, to thrones and crowns.”

“England?”

“England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland are monarchies only in name. In fact and spirit they are republics. If you would have king or emperor in very truth, you must go to your black-eyed folk. Setting this country aside, if you cast a glance toward the southwest, you will behold a people who should be the very raw materials of an empire.”

“Mexico!” exclaims the astonished Van Ness.

“Ay, Mexico! There is nothing which Napoleon Bonaparte has done in France, which Aaron Burr may not do in Mexico. I would have the flower of this country at my back. Indeed, it should be easier to ascend the throne of the Montezumas than of the Bourbons. I believe, too – for I think he would feel safer with a brother emperor in the West – I might count on Napoleon’s help for that climbing. However, we overrun the hunt” – Aaron seems to recall himself like one who comes out of a dream – “I am thinking not on empire, but vengeance. I have thrown out a rude picture of my plans, however, because I hope to have your company in them. Also, I wanted to show how utterly in my heart I have given up America and an American career. It is Mexico and the throne of an emperor, not Washington and the chair of a President, at which I aim. I am laying my foundations, not for four years, not for eight years, but for life. I shall be Aaron I, Emperor of Mexico; with my grandson, Aaron Burr Alston, to follow me as Aaron II. There; that should do for ‘Aaron and empire.’” This, with a return to the cynical: “Now let us get to Hamilton and vengeance. The scoundrel has spat his toad-venom on my name and fame for twenty years; the turn shall now be mine.”

Van Ness is silent; the glimpses he has been given of Aaron’s high designs have tied his tongue.

Aaron gets out a letter. “Here,” he says; “you will please carry that to Hamilton. It marks the beginning of my revenge. I base it on excerpts taken from a printed letter written by Dr. Cooper, who says: ‘General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they look upon Colonel Burr as a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government. I could detail a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Colonel Burr.’ I demand,” concludes Aaron, “that he explain or account to me for having furnished such an ‘opinion’ to Dr. Cooper.”

Van Ness purses up his lips, and knots his forehead cogitatively.

“Why pitch upon this letter of Cooper’s as a casus belli?” he asks at last. “It is ambiguous, and involves a question of Cooper’s construction of English. If we had nothing better it might do; but there is no such pressure. Hamilton, on many recent occasions, in speeches and in print, has applied to you the lowest epithets.”

“You may recall, sir, that I once told you I was an artist of revenge. It is this very ambiguity I’m after. I would hook the fellow – hook him and play him as I would a fish! The man’s a coward. I saw it written on his face that day when, following ‘Long Island,’ he threw away his gun and stores. By coming at him with this ambiguity, he will hope in the beginning to secure himself by evasions. He will write; I shall respond; there will be quite a correspondence. Days will drag along in agony and torment to him. And all the time he cannot escape. From the moment I send him that letter he is mine. It is as if I had him in a narrow lane; he cannot get by me. On the other hand, if I come upon him, as you suggest, with some undeniable charge, it will all be over in a moment. He will be obliged at once to toe the peg. You now understand that I design only in this letter to hook him hard and fast. When I have so played him as to satisfy even my hatred, rest secure I’ll reel him in. He can no more avoid meeting me than he can avoid trembling when he contemplates the dark promise of that meeting. His wife would despise him, his very children cut him dead were he to creep aside.”

Van Ness goes with Aaron’s letter to Hamilton. The latter, as he reads it, cannot repress a start. The blood rushes from his face to his heart and back again; for, as though the blind were made to see, he realizes the snare into which he has walked – a snare that he himself has spread to his own undoing.

With an effort he commands his agitation. “You shall have my answer by the hand of Mr. Pendleton,” he says.

Hamilton’s reply, long and wordy, is two days on its way. As Aaron foretold, it is wholly evasive, and comes in its analysis to be nothing better than a desperate peering about for a hole through which its author may crawl, and drag with him what he calls his honor.

Aaron’s reply closes each last loophole of escape. “Your letter,” he says, “has furnished me new reasons for requiring a definite reply.”

Hamilton reads his doom in this; and yet he cannot consent to the sacrifice, but struggles on. He makes a second response, this time at greater length than before.

Aaron, implacable as Death, reads what Hamilton has written.

“I think we should close the business,” he says to Van Ness, as he gives him Hamilton’s letter. “It has been ten days since I sent my initial note, and I have had enough of vengeance in anticipation. And so for the last act.” Aaron dispatches Van Ness with a peremptory challenge. There being no gateway of relief, Hamilton is driven to accept. Even then comes a cry for time; Hamilton asks that the hour of final meeting be fixed ten further days away. Aaron smiles that pale smile of hatred made content, and grants the prayed-for delay.

The morning following the challenge and its acceptance, Pendleton appears with another note from Hamilton – who obviously prefers pens to pistols for the differences in hand. Aaron, smiling his pale smile of contented hate, refuses to receive it.

“There is,” he observes, “no more to be said on either side, a challenge having been given and accepted. The one thing now is to load the pistols and step off the ground.”

It is four days later, and the fight six days away. Aaron and Hamilton meet at a dinner given on Independence Day. Hamilton is hysterically gay, and sings his famous song, “The Drum.” Also, he never once looks at Aaron, who, dark and lowering and silent, the black serpent sparkle in his eye, seldom shifts his gaze from Hamilton. Aaron’s stare, remorseless, hungrily steadfast, is the stare of the tiger as it sights its prey.

Dr. Hosack calls on Aaron, where the latter sits alone at Richmond Hill. Wine is brought; the good doctor takes a nervous glass. He has a rosy, social face, has the good doctor, a face that tells of friendships and the genial board. Just now, however, he is out of spirits. Desperately setting down his wineglass, he flounders into the business that has brought him.

“I can hardly excuse my coming,” he says, “and I apologize before I state my errand. I would have you believe, too, that my presence here is entirely by my own suggestion.”

Aaron bows.

The good doctor explains that he has been called upon to go, professionally, to the fighting ground with Hamilton.

“That is how I became aware,” he concludes, “of what you have in train. I resolved to see you, and make one last effort at a peaceful solution.”

Aaron coldly shakes his head: “There can be no adjustment.”