An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr

Brigadier General Wilkinson: Sir: When once the chain of infamy grapples to a knave, every new link creates a fresh sensation of detestation and horror. As it gradually or precipitately unfolds itself, we behold in each succeeding connection, and arising from the same corrupt and contaminated source, the same base and degenerated conduct. I could not have supposed that you would have completed the catalogue of your crimes by adding to the guilt of treachery forgery and perjury the accomplishment of cowardice. Having failed in two different attempts to procure an interview with you, such as no gentleman of honor could refuse, I have only to pronounce and publish you to the world as a coward.

Samuel Swartwout.

The Grand Jury comes into court, and by the shrill mouth of Foreman Randolph reports two indictments against Aaron: one for treason, “as having levied war against the United States,” and one for “having levied war upon a country, to wit, Mexico, with which the United States are at peace” – the latter a misdemeanor.

CHAPTER XX – HOW AARON IS FOUND INNOCENT

THE indictments are read, and Aaron pleads “Not guilty!” Thereupon Luther Martin moves for a subpoena duces tecum against Jefferson, commanding him to bring into court those written orders from the files of the War Department, which he, as President and ex officio commander in chief of the army, issued to the red-nosed Wilkinson. Arguing the motion, the violent Martin proceeds in these words:

“We intend to show that these orders were contrary to the Constitution and the laws. We intend to show that by these orders Colonel Burr’s property and person were to be destroyed; yes, by these tyrannical orders the life and property of an innocent man were to be exposed to destruction. This is a peculiar case, sirs. President Jefferson has undertaken to prejudge my client by declaring that ‘of his guilt there can be no doubt!’ He has assumed to himself the knowledge of the Supreme Being, and pretended to search the heart of my client. He has proclaimed him a traitor in the face of the country. He has let slip the dogs of war, the hell-hounds of persecution, to hunt down my client. And now, would the President of the United States, who has himself raised all this clamor, pretend to keep back the papers wanted for a trial where life itself is at stake? It is a sacred principle that the accused has a right to the evidence needed for his defense, and whosoever – whether he be a president or some lesser man – withholds such evidence is substantially a murderer, and will, be so recorded in the register of heaven.”

Argument ended, Marshall, chief justice, sustains the motion. He holds that the subpoena duces tecum may issue, and goes so far as to say that, if it be necessary to the ends of justice, the personal attendance of Jefferson himself shall be compelled.

The charge is treason, and no bail can be taken; Aaron must be locked up. The Governor of Virginia offers as a place of detention a superb suite of rooms, meant for official occupation, on the third floor of the penitentiary building. Marshall, chief justice, accepting such proffer, orders Aaron’s confinement in the superb official suite. Aaron takes possession, stocks the larder, loads the sideboards, and, with a cloud of servitors, gives a dinner party to twenty friends.

The lustrous Theo arrives, and makes her residence with Aaron in the official suite, as lady of the establishment. Each day a hundred visitors call, among them the aristocracy of the town. Also dinner follows dinner; the official suite assumes a gala, not to say a gallant look, and no one would think it a prison, or dream for one urbane moment that Aaron – that follower of the gospel according to Lord Chesterfield – is fighting for his life.

Following the order for the subpoena duces tecum, and Aaron’s dinner-giving incarceration in the official suite, Marshall, chief justice, directs that court be adjourned until August – a month away.

Wirt, during the vacation, goes over to Washington. He finds Jefferson in a mood of double anger.

“What did I tell you,” cries Jefferson – “what did I tell you of Marshall?” Then he rushes on to the utterances of the violent Luther Martin. “Shall you not move,” he demands, “to commit Martin as particeps criminis with Colonel Burr? There should be evidence to fix upon him misprision of treason, at least. At any rate, such a step would put down our impudent Federal bulldog, and show that the most clamorous defenders of Colonel Burr are one and all his accomplices.”

Meanwhile, the “impudent Federal bulldog” attends a Fourth-of-July dinner in Baltimore. Every man at table, save himself, is an adherent of Jefferson. Eager to demonstrate that loyal fact to the administration, sundry of the guests make speeches full of uncompliment for Martin, and propose a toast:

“Aaron Burr! May his treachery to his country exalt him to the scaffold!”

More speeches, replete of venom, are aimed at Martin; whereupon that undaunted drunkard gets upon his feet.

“Who is this Aaron Burr,” he roars, “whose guilt you have pronounced, and for whose blood your parched throats so thirst? Was not he, a few years back, adored by you next to your God? Were not you then his warmest admirers? Did not he then possess every virtue? He was then in power. He had influence. You were proud of his notice. His merest smile brightened all your faces. His merest frown lengthened all your visages. Go, ye holiday, ye sunshine friends! – ye time-servers, ye criers of hosannah to-day and crucifiers to-morrow! – go; hide your heads from the contempt and detestation of every honorable, every right-minded man!”

August: The day of trial arrives. Wirt, with the dull, deferent Hay, has gone over the testimony against Aaron, and arranged the procession of its introduction. Wirt will begin far back. By the mouth of the red-nosed Wilkinson – somewhat in hiding from Swartwout – and by others, he will relate from the beginning Aaron’s dream of Mexican conquest. He will show how the vision grew and expanded until it reacted upon the United States, and the downfall of Washington became as much parcel of Aaron’s design as was the capture of Mexico. He will trace Aaron through his many conferences in Washington, in Marietta, in Nashville, in Cincinnati; and then on to New Orleans, where he is closeted with Merchant Clark and the Bishop of Louisiana.

And so the parties go into court.

The jury being sworn, Marshall, chief justice, at once overthrows those well-laid plans of Wirt.

“You must go to the act, sir,” says Marshall.

“Treason, like murder, is an act. You can’t think treason, you can’t plot treason, you can’t talk treason; you can only act it. In murder you must first prove the killing – the murderous act, before you may offer evidence of an intent. And so in treason. You must begin by proving the overt act of war against the country, before I can permit evidence of an intent which led up to it.”

This ruling throws Wirt abroad in his calculations. The “Federal bulldog” Martin grows vulgarly gleeful, Wirt correspondingly glum.

Being prodded by Marshall, chief justice, Wirt declares that the “act of war” was the assembling of forty armed men, under one Taylor, at Blennerhassett Island. They stopped at the island but a moment, and Aaron himself was in Lexington. None the less there were forty of them; they were armed; they were there by design and plan of Aaron, with an ultimate purpose of levying war against this Government. Wirt urges that constructive war was at that very island moment being waged, with Aaron personally absent but constructively present, and constructively waging such war.

At this setting forth, Marshall, chief justice, puckers his lips, as might one who thinks the argument far-fetched and overfinely spun. Martin, the “Federal bulldog,” does not scruple to laugh outright.

“Was ever heard such hash!” cries Martin. “Men may bear arms without waging war! Forty men no more mean war than four! Men may float down the Ohio, and still no war be waged. Because the hypochondriac Jefferson imagined war, we are to receive the thing as res adjudicata, and now give way while a pleasantly concocted tale, of that carnage of a presidential nightmare, is recited from the witness box. Sirs, you are not to fiddle folk onto a scaffold to any such tune as that, though a president furnish the music.”

Marshall, chief justice, still with pursed lips and knotted forehead, directs Wirt to proceed with his evidence of what, at Blennerhassett Island, he relies upon to constitute, constructively or otherwise, a state of war. Having heard the evidence, he will pass upon the points of law presented.

Wirt, desperate because he may do no better, puts forward one Eaton as a witness. The latter tells a long, involved story, which sounds vastly like fiction and not at all like fact, of conversations with Aaron. Aaron brings out in cross examination, that within ten days after he, Eaton, went with this tale to Jefferson, a claim for ten thousand dollars, which he had been pressing without success against the Government, was paid. Aaron suggests that Eaton, to induce payment of such claim, invented his narrative; and the suggestion is plainly acceptable to the jury.

Following Eaton, Wirt calls Truxton; and next the suspicious Morgan, who first wrote to Jefferson touching Aaron and his plans. Then follow Blennerhassett’s gardener and groom, and one Woodbridge, Blennerhassett’s man of business. Wirt, by these, proves Aaron’s frequent presence on the island; the boats building at Marietta; the advent of Taylor with his forty armed men, and there the relation ends. In all – the testimony, not a knife is ground, not a flint is picked, not a rifle fired; the forty armed men do not so much as indulge in drill. For all they said or did or acted, the forty might have been explorers, or sightseers, or settlers, or any other form of peaceful whatnot.

“I suppose,” observes Marshall, chief justice, bending his black eyes warningly upon Wirt – “I suppose it unnecessary to instruct counsel that guilt will not be presumed?”

Wirt replies stiffly that counsel for the Government, at least, require no instructions; whereat Martin the “Federal bulldog” barks hoarsely up, that what counsel for the Government most require, and are most deficient in, is a case and the evidence of it. Wirt pays no heed to the jeer, but announces that under the ruling of the court, made before evidence was introduced, he has nothing more to offer touching acts of overt war. He rests his case, he says, on that point; and thereupon, the defense take issue with him. The Government, Aaron declares, has failed to make out even the shadow of a treason. There is nothing which demands reply; he will call no witnesses.

Marshall, chief justice, directs that the arguments to the jury be proceeded with. Wirt is heard. Being imaginative, and having no facts, he unchains his fancy and paints a paradise, whereof Aaron is the serpent and Blennerhassett and his moon-visaged spouse are Adam and Eve. It is a beautiful picture, and might be effective did it carry any grain of truth. However, it is well received by the jury as a romance full of entertaining glow and glitter; and then it is put aside from serious consideration.

While Wirt the fanciful is thus coloring his invented paradise, with Aaron as the serpent and the Blennerhassetts the betrayed Adam and Eve, the “betrayed” Blennerhassett, sitting by Aaron’s side, is reading the “serpent” a letter, that day received from Madam Blennerhassett. The missive closes:

“Apprise Colonel Burr of my warmest acknowledgments for his own and Theo’s kind remembrances. Tell him to assure her that she has inspired me with a warmth of attachment that never can diminish.”

On the oratorical back of Wirt come Wickham, Hay, Randolph, Botts, and McRae. Lastly Martin is heard, the “Federal bulldog” seizing the occasion to bay Jefferson even more violently than before. When they are done, Marshall, chief justice, lays down the law as to what should constitute an “overt act of war”; and, since it is plain, even to the court crier, that no such act has been proven, the jury hurry forward a finding:

“Not guilty!”

Jefferson, full of prejudice, hears the news. He writes wrathfully to Wirt:

“Let no witness depart without taking a copy of his evidence, which is now more important than ever. The criminal Burr is preserved, it seems, to become the rallying point of all the disaffected and worthless of the United States, and to be the pivot on which all the conspiracies and intrigues, that foreign governments may wish to disturb us with, are to turn. There is still, however, the misdemeanor; and, if he be convicted of that, Judge Marshall must, for very decency, give us some respite by a confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short.” There is a day’s recess; then the charge of “levying war against Mexico” is called. The red-nosed Wilkinson now tells his story; and is made to admit – the painful sweat standing in great drops upon his purple visage – that he has altered in important respects several of Aaron’s letters. Being, by his own mouth, a forger, the jury marks its estimate of the red-nosed one by again acquitting Aaron, and pronouncing a second finding: “Not guilty!”

Thus ends the great trial which has rocked a continent. Aaron is free; his friends crowd about him jubilantly, while the loving, lustrous Theo weeps upon his shoulder.

CHAPTER XXI – THE SAILING AWAY OF AARON

SIX months creep by; May is painting Manhattan with its flowers. The house of the stubborn, loyal Swartwout is in Stone Street. Long ago, in the old Dutch beaver-peltry days, the home of the poet Steen-dam was there. Now it is the dwelling place of John Swartwout, and Aaron is his guest.

The lustrous Theo is with Aaron this sunny afternoon, luster something dimmed; for the hour is one sad and tearful with parting. It is a last parting; though the pair – the loving father! the adoring, clinging daughter! – hopefully, happily blind, believe otherwise.

“Yes,” Aaron is saying, “I must sail tonight. The ship is at anchor in the lower bay.” Theo, the lustrous, is too bravely the child of Aaron to break into lamentation, though the wrung heart fills her eyes with tears. “And should your plans fail,” she says, “you will come to us at the ‘Oaks.’ Joseph, you know, is no longer ‘Mr. Alston,’ but ‘Governor Alston.’ As father to the Governor of the State, and with your own high name, you may take what place you will in South Carolina. You promise, do you not? If by any trip of fortune your prospects are overthrown, you will come to us in the South?”

“But, dearling, my plans will not fail. I have had letters from Lords Mulgrave and Castlereagh, I bear with me the indorsement of the British Minister in Washington. Openly or secretly, England will support my project with men and money and ships. If, in some caprice of politics or a changing cabinet, she should refuse, I shall seek Napoleon. Mexico and an empire! – that should match finely the native color of his Corsican feeling.”

Night draws on; Aaron and the lustrous Theo say the sorrowful words of separation, and within the hour he is aboard the Clarissa, outward bound for England.

In London, full of new fire, Aaron throws away no time. Each day he is closeted with Mulgrave, Castlereagh and Canning. He goes to Holland House, and its noble master is seized with the fever for Montezuman conquest. The inventive Earl of Bridgewater – who is radical and goes readily to novel enterprises – catches the Mexican fury. The spirit of Cortez is abroad; the nobility of England fall quickly in with Aaron’s Western design. It will mean an augmentation of the world’s peerage. Also, Mexico should furnish an admirable grazing ground for second sons. Aaron’s affairs go swimmingly; he is full of hopeful anticipation. He writes the lustrous Theo at the “Oaks” that, “save for the unforeseen,” little Aaron Burr Alston shall yet wear an imperial crown as Aaron II.

Save for the unforeseen! The reservation is well put in. As Aaron sits in conference, one foggy London evening, with Mulgrave and Castlereagh, who have become principal figures in those Mexican designs, Canning comes hurriedly in.

“I am from the Foreign Office,” says he, “and I come with bad news. There is a lion in our path – two lions. Secret news was just received that Napoleon has driven the king and queen from Madrid, and established his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. Mexico by that: stroke belongs to the Bonapartes; they will hardly consent to its loss.”

“That is one lion,” observes Mulgrave; “now for the other.”

“The other is England,” proceeds Canning. “Already we are mustering our forces, and enlisting ships, to drive the Corsican out of Spain. We are to become the allies of the royal outcasts, and restore them to Spanish power. I need not draw the inference. As Spain’s ally, fighting her battles against the French in the Peninsula, England will no more permit the loss of Mexico than will Napoleon.”

Aaron listens; a chill of disappointment touches his strong heart. He understands how wholly lost are his hopes, even before Canning is through talking. He had two strings to his bow; both have snapped. No chance now of either France or England aiding him. His prospects, so bright but the moment before, are on the instant darkened.

“Delay! always delay!” he murmurs. Then his courage mounts again; the chill is driven from his heart. He is too thoroughbred to despond, and quickly pulls himself together. “Yes,” says he, “the word you bring shuts double doors against us. The best we may do is wait – wait for Napoleon to win or lose in Spain. Should England hurl him back across the Pyrenees, we may resume our plans again.”

“Indubitably,” returns Canning. “Should England save Spain from the Corsican, she might well lay claim to the right of disposing of Mexico as a recompense for her exertions.”

Thus, for the time, by force of events in far-off Spain, is Aaron compelled to fold away his ambitions.

While waiting the turn of fortune’s wheel in Spain, Aaron fills in his leisure with society. Everywhere he is the lion. “The celebrated Colonel Burr!” is the phrase by which he is presented. Entertained as well as instructed by what he sees and hears, he begins to keep a journal. It shall one day be read with interest by the lustrous Theo, he thinks.

Jeremy Bentham – honest, fussy, sprightly, full of dreams for bettering governments – finds out Aaron. The honest, fussy Bentham loves admiration and the folk who furnish it. He has heard from letter-writing friends in America that “the celebrated Colonel Burr” reads his works with satisfaction. That is enough for honest, fussy, praise-loving Bentham, and he drags Aaron off to live with him at Barrow Green.

“You,” cries the delighted Bentham, when he has the “celebrated Colonel Burr” as a member of his family – “you and Albert Gallatin are the only two in the United States who appreciate my ideas. For the common mind – which is as dull and crawling as a tortoise – my theories travel too fast.”

Aaron lives with Bentham – fussy, kindly, pragmatical Bentham – now at Barrow Green, now at the philosopher’s London house in Queen Square Place. From this latter high vantage he sallies forth and meets William Godwin; and Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, carry him off to tea with Charles and Mary Lamb. He writes in his journal:

“Go with the Godwins to Mr. Lamb’s. He is a writer, and lives with a maiden sister, also literary, up four pairs of stairs.”

At the Lambs he encounters Faseli the painter; and thereupon Aaron, the Godwins, Faseli, and the Lambs brew a bowl of punch, and thresh out questions social, artistic, literary, and political until the hours grow small.

Cobbett talks with Aaron; and straight off runs to Bentham with the suggestion that they send him to Parliament. Aaron laughs.

“I’m afraid,” says he, “that whatever may be my genius for law-giving, it would fit but badly with English prejudice and English inclination. You would find me in the British Commons but a sorry case of a square peg in a round hole.”

That Aaron is the fashion at Holland House, which is the gathering point of opposition to Government, does not help him at the Home Office. Also, the Spanish allies of England, through their minister, complain.

“He is fomenting his Mexican design,” cries the Spaniard. “It shows but poorly for England’s friendship that she harbors him, and that he is feted and feasted by her nobility.”

Lord Hawkesbury leans to the Spanish view. He will assert his powers under the “Alien Act.” It will please the Spaniards. Likewise, it will offend Holland House. Two birds; one stone. Hawkesbury sends a request that Aaron call upon him at his office; and Aaron calls.

“This, you will understand,” observes Hawkesbury, “is not a personal but an official interview, Colonel Burr. I might hope to make it more pleasant were it personal. Speaking as one of the crown’s secretaries, I must notify you to quit England.”

“What is your authority for this?” asks Aaron.

“You will find it in the ‘Alien Act.’ Under that statute, Government is invested with power to order the departure of any alien without assigning cause.”

“Precisely! Your Government is now engaged in searching American ships for English sailors. It was, I recall, the basis of bitter complaint in America when I left. In seizing those whom you call English sailors and subjects, you refuse to recognize their naturalization as citizens of America. Do I state the fact?”

“Assuredly! No Englishman has a right to shift his allegiance from his king. That is British doctrine. Once a subject, always a subject.”

“The very point!” returns Aaron. “Once a subject, always a subject. I suppose you will not deny that I was in 1756 born in New Jersey, then a province of England. I was born a British subject, was I not?”

“There is no doubt of that.”

“Then, sir, being born a British subject, under your doctrine of ‘Once a subject, always a subject,’ I am still a British subject. Therefore, I am no alien. Therefore, I do not fall within the description of your ‘Alien Act.’ You can hardly order me to quit England as an alien at the very moment when you say I am a British subject. My lord” – this with a smile like a warning – “the story, if told in the papers, would get your lordship laughed at.”

Hawkesbury falls back baffled. He keeps his face, however, and tells Aaron the matter may rest until he further considers it.

Aaron visits Oxford, and is wined and dined by the grave college heads. He talks Bentham and religion to his hosts, and they fall to amiable disagreement with him.

“We then,” he writes in his journal, “got upon American politics and geography, upon which subjects a most profound and learned ignorance was displayed.”

Birmingham entertains Aaron; Stratford makes him welcome. He travels to Edinburgh, and is the victim of parties, dinners, balls, sermons, assemblies, plays, lectures, and other Scottish dissipations. The bench and bar cannot get too much of him. Mackenzie, who wrote the “Man of Feeling,” and Walter Scott, who is in the “Marmion” stage of his development, seek his acquaintance. Aaron sees a deal of these lettered ones, and sets down in his diary that:

“Mackenzie has twelve children; six of them daughters, all interesting, and two handsome. He is sprightly, amiable, witty. Scott, with less softness, has more animation – talks much and is very agreeable.”

Aaron stays a month with his Scotch friends, and returns to London. He resumes the old round of club and drawing-room, with Holland, Melville, Mulgrave, Castlereagh, Canning, Bentham, Cobbett, Godwin, Lamb, Faseli, and others political, philosophical, social, literary, and artistic.

One day as he returns from breakfast at Holland House, he finds a note on his table. It is from Lord Liverpool. The note is polite, bland, insinuating, flattering. It says, none the less, that “The presence of Colonel Burr in Great Britain is embarrassing to His Majesty’s Government, and it is the wish and expectation of Government that he remove.”

The note continues to the courteous effect that “passports will be furnished Colonel Burr,” and a free passage in an English ship to any port – not English.

Aaron replies to Lord Liverpool’s note, and says that having become, as his Lordship declares, “embarrassing to His Majesty’s Government,” he must, of course, as a gentleman “gratify the wishes of Government by withdrawing.” He adds that Sweden, now he may no longer stay in England, is his preference.