An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr

Aaron goes about the daily concerns of life, making no moan. He does not speak of his loss, but saves his grief for solitude. One day a friend relates a rumor that the schooner was captured by buccaneers, and the lustrous Theo lives. The broken Aaron shakes his head.

“She is dead!” says he. “Thus is severed the last tie that binds me to my kind.”

Aaron hides his heart from friend and foe alike. As though flying from his own thoughts, he plunges more furiously than ever into the law.

While Aaron’s first concern is work, and to earn money for those whom he calls his creditors, he finds time for politics.

“Not that I want office,” he observes; “for he who was Vice-President and tied Jefferson for a presidency, cannot think on place. But I owe debts – debts of gratitude, debts of vengeance. These must be paid.”

Aaron’s foes are in the ascendant. De Witt Clinton is mayor – the aristocrats with the Livingstons, the Schuylers and the Clintons, are everywhere dominant. They control the town; they control the State. At Washington, Madison a marionette President, is in apparent command, while Jefferson pulls the White House wires from Monticello. All these Aaron sees at a glance; he can, however, take up but one at a time.

“We will begin with the town,” says he, to the stubborn, loyal Swartwout. “We must go at the town like a good wife at her house-cleaning. Once that is politically spick and span, we shall clean up the State and the nation.”

Aaron calls about him his old circle of indomitables.

They have been overrun in his absence by the aristocrats – by the Clintons, the Schuylers and the Livingstons. They gather at his rooms in the Jay House – a noble mansion, once the home of Governor Jay.

“I shall make no appearance in your politics,” says he. “It would not fit my years and my past. None the less, I’ll show you the road to victory.” Then, with a smile: “You must do the work; I’ll be the Old Man of the Mountain. From behind a screen I’ll give directions.”

Aaron’s lieutenants include the Swartwouts, Buckmaster, Strong, Prince, Radcliff, Rutgers, Ogden, Davis, Noah, and Van Buren, the last a rising young lawyer from Kinderhook.

“Become a member of Tammany,” is Aaron’s word to young Van Buren. “Our work must be done by Tammany Hall. You must enroll yourself beneath its banner. We must bring about a revival of the old Bucktail spirit.”

Van Buren enters Tammany; the others are already members.

Aaron, through his lieutenants, brings his old Tammany Bucktails together within eight weeks after his return. The Clintons, and their fellow aristocrats are horrified at what they call “his effrontery.” Also, they are somewhat panic-smitten. They fall to vilification. Aaron is “traitor!” “murderer!” “demon!” “fiend!” They pay a phalanx of scribblers to assail him in the press. His band of Bucktail lieutenants are dubbed “Burrites,” “Burr’s Mob,” and “the Tenth Legion.” The epithets go by Aaron like the mindless wind.

The Bucktail spirit revived, the stubborn Swartwout and the others ask:

“What shall we do?”

The popular cry is for war with England. At Washington – Jefferson at Monticello pulling on the peace string – Madison is against war. Mayor De Witt Clinton stands with Jefferson and Marionette Madison. He is for peace, as are his caste of aristocrats – the Schuylers and those other left-over fragments of Federalism, all lovers of England from their cradles.

“What shall we do?” cry the Bucktails.

“Demand war!” says Aaron. Then, calling attention to Clinton and his purple tribe, he adds: “They could not occupy a better position for our purposes. They invite destruction.” Tammany demands war vociferously. It is, indeed, the cry all over the land. The administration is carried off its feet. Jefferson at last orders war; for he sees that otherwise Marionette Madison will be defeated of a second term.

Mayor Clinton and his aristocrats are frantic.

The more frantic, since with “War!” for their watchword, Aaron’s Bucktails conquer the city, and two years later the State. As though by a tidal wave, every Clinton is swept out of official Albany.

Aaron sends for Van Ness, the stubborn Swartwout, and their fellow Bucktails.

“Go to Albany,” says he. “Demand of Governor Tompkins the removal of Mayor Clinton. Say that he is inefficient and was the friend of England.”

Governor Tompkins – being a politician – hesitates at the bold step. The Bucktails, Aaron-guided, grow menacing. Seeing himself in danger, Governor Tompkins hesitates no longer. Mayor Clinton is ignominiously thrust from office into private life. With him go those hopes of a presidency which for half a decade he has been sedulously cultivating. Under the blight of that removal, those hopes of a future White House wither like uprooted flowers.

Broken of purse and prospects, Clinton is in despair.

“He will never rise again!” exclaims Van Ness.

“My friend,” says Aaron, “he will be your governor. He will never be president, but the governorship is yet to be his; and all by your negligence – yours and your brother Buck-tails.”

“As how?” demands Van Ness.

“You let him declare for the Erie Canal,” returns Aaron. “You were so purblind as to oppose the project. You should have taken the business out of his hands. If I had been here it would have been done. Mark my words! The canal will be dug, and it will make Clinton governor. However, we shall hold the town against him; and, since we have been given a candidate for the presidency, we shall later have Washington also.”

“Who is that presidential candidate to whom you refer?”

“Sir, he is your friend and my friend. Who, but Andrew Jackson? Since New Orleans, it is bound to be he.”

“Andrew Jackson!” exclaims Van Ness. “But, sir, the Congressional caucus at Washington will never consider him. You know the power of Jefferson – he will hold that caucus in the hollow of his hand. It is he who will name Madison’s successor; and, after those street-corner speeches and his friendship for you in Richmond, it can never be Andrew Jackson.”

“I know the Jefferson power,” returns Aaron; “none knows it better. At the head of his Virginia junta he has controlled the country for years. He will control it four years more, perchance eight. Our war upon him and his caucus methods must begin at once. And our candidate should be, and shall be, Andrew Jackson.”

“Whom will Jefferson select to follow Madison?”

“Monroe, sir; he will put forward Monroe.”

“Monroe!” repeats Van Ness. “Has he force? – brains? Some one spoke of him as a soldier.”

“Soldier!” observes Aaron, his lip curling. “Sir, Monroe never commanded so much as a platoon – never was fit to command one. He acted as aide to Lord Stirling, who was a sot, not a soldier. Monroe’s whole duty was to fill his lordship’s tankard, and hear with admiration his drunken lordship’s long tales about himself. As a lawyer, Monroe is below mediocrity. He never rose to the honor of trying a cause wherein so much as one hundred pounds was at stake. He is dull, stupid, illiterate, pusillanimous, hypocritical, and therefore a character suited to the wants of Jefferson and his Virginia coterie. As a man, he is everything that Jackson isn’t and nothing that he is.”

Van Ness and his brother Bucktails do the bidding of Aaron blindly. On every chance they shout for Jackson. Aaron writes “Jackson” letters to all whom, far or near, he calls his friends. Also the better to have New York in political hand, he demands – through Tammany – of Governor Tompkins and Mayor Rad-cliff that every Clinton, every Schuyler, every Livingston, as well as any who has the taint of Federalism about him be relegated to private life. In town as well as country, he sweeps the New York official situation free of opposition.

The Bucktails are in full sway. Aaron privily coaches young Van Buren, who is suave and dexterous, and for politeness almost the urbane peer of Aaron himself, in what local party diplomacies are required, and sends him forward as the apparent controlling spirit of Tammany Hall. What Jefferson is doing with Monroe in Virginia, Aaron duplicates with the compliant Van Buren in New York.

CHAPTER XXIV – THE DOWNFALL OF KING CAUCUS

Marionette madison is withdrawn from the White House boards at the close of his second term. Jefferson, working the machinery from Monticello, replaces him with Marionette Monroe. It is now Aaron begins his war on the system of Congressional nomination – a system which has obtained since the days of Washington. He writes to Alston:

“Our Virginia junta, beginning with Washington, owning Adams, and controlled by Jefferson, having had possession of the Government for twenty-four years, consider the nation their property, and by bawling, ‘Support the administration!’ have so far succeeded in duping the public. The moment is auspicious for a movement which in the end must break down this degrading system. The best citizens all over the country are impatient of the Virginia rule, and the wrongs wrought under it. Its administrations have been weak; offices have been bestowed merely to preserve power, and without a smallest regard for fitness. If, then, there be in the country a man of firmness and decision and standing, it is your duty to hold him up to public view. There is such a man – Andrew Jackson. He is the hero of the late war, and in the first flush of a boundless popularity. Give him a respectable nomination, by a respectable convention drawn from the party at large, and in the teeth of the caucus system – so beloved of scheming Virginians – his final victory is assured. If it does not come to-day, it will come to-morrow; for ‘caucus,’ which is wrong, must go down; and ‘convention,’ which is right, must prevail. Have your legislature pass resolutions condemning the caucus system; in that way you can educate the sentiment of South Carolina, and the country, too. Later, we will take up the business of the convention, and Jackson’s open nomination.”

Aaron writes in similar strain to Major Lewis, Jackson’s neighbor and man of politics in Tennessee. He winds up his letter with this:

“Jackson ought to be admonished to be passive; for the moment he is announced as a candidate, he will be assailed by the Virginia junta with menaces, and those failing, with insidious promises of boons and favors.”

On the back of this anti-caucus, pro-convention letter-writing, that his candidate Jackson may have a proper début, Aaron pulls a Swartwout string, pushes a Van Ness button. At once the obedient Bucktails proffer a dinner in Jackson’s honor. The hero accepts, and comes to town. The town is rent with joy; Bucktail enthusiasm, even in the cider days and nights of Martling, never mounted more wildly high.

Aaron, from his back parlor in the old Jay house, directs the excitement. It is there Jackson finds him.

“I shall not be at the dinner, general,” says Aaron; “but with Van Buren and Davis and Van Ness and Ogden and Rutgers and Swart-wout and the rest, you will find friends and good company about you.”

“But you?”

“There will be less said by the Clintons and the Livingstons of traitors and murderers if I remain away. I owe it to my past to subdue lies and slanders to a smallest limit. No; I must work my works behind bars and bolts, and in darkened rooms. It is as well – better! After a man sees sixty, the fewer dinners he eats, the better for him. I intend to live to see you President; not on your account, but mine, and for the grief it will bring my enemies. And yet it may take years. Wherefore, I must save myself from wine and late hours – I must keep myself with care.”

Aaron and the general talk for an hour.

“And if I should become President some day,” says Jackson, as they separate, “you may see that Southwestern enterprise of ours revived.”

“It will be too late for me,” responds Aaron. “I am old, and shall be older. All my hopes, and the reasons of them are dead – are in the grave. Still” – and here the black eyes sparkle in the old way – “I shall be glad to have younger men take up the work. It should serve somewhat to wipe ‘treason’ from my fame.”

“Treason!” snorts the fiery Jackson. “Sir, no one, not fool or liar, ever spoke of treason and Colonel Burr in one breath!”

There is a mighty dinner outpouring of Buck-tails, and Jackson – the “hero,” the “conqueror,” the “nation’s hope and pride,” according to orators then and there present and eloquent – is toasted to the skies. At the close of the festival a Clintonite, one Colden, thinks to test the Jackson feeling for Aaron. He will offer the name of Aaron’s arch enemy.

The wily Colden gets upon his feet. Lifting high his glass he loudly gives:

“De Witt Clinton!”

The move is a surprise. It is like a sword thrust, and Van Buren, Swartwout, Rutgers, and other Bucktail leaders know not how to parry it. Jackson, the guest of honor, is not, however, to be put in the attitude of offering even tacit insult to the absent Aaron. He cannot reply in words, but he manages a retort, obvious and emphatic. As though the word “Clinton” were a signal, he arises from his place and leaves the room. The thing is as unmistakable in its meaning, as it is magnificent in its friendly loyalty to Aaron, and shows that Jackson has not changed since that street-corner Richmond oratory so disturbing to Wirt and Hay. Also, it removes whatever of doubt exists as to what will be Aaron’s place in event of Jackson’s occupation of the White House. The maladroit Colden, intending outrage, brings out compliment; and, as the gaunt Jackson goes stalking from the hall, there descends a storm of Bucktail cheers, and shouts of “Burr! Burr!” with a chorus of hisses for Clinton as the galling background. Throughout the full two terms of Marionette Monroe, Aaron urges his crusade against Jefferson, the Virginia junta, and King Caucus. His war against his old enemies never flags. His demand is for convention nominations; his candidate is Jackson.

In all Aaron asks or works for, the loyal Bucktails are at once his voice and his arm. In requital he shows them how to perpetuate their control of the town. He tells them to break down a property qualification, and extend the voting franchise to every man, whether he be landholder or no.

“Let’s make Jack as good as his master,” says Aaron. “It will please Jack, and hurt his master’s pride – both good things in their way.”

It is a rare strategy, one not only calculated to strengthen Tammany, but drive the knife to the aristocratic hearts of the Clintons, the Livingstons and the Schuylers.

“Better be ruled by a man without an estate, than by an estate without a man!” cries Aaron, and his Bucktails take up the shout.

The proposal becomes a law. With that one stroke of policy, Aaron destroys caste, humbles the pride of his enemies, and gives State and town, bound hand and foot, into the secure fingers of his faithful Bucktails.

Time flows on, and Aaron is triumphant. King Caucus is stricken down; Jefferson, with his Virginians are beaten, and Jackson is named by a convention.

In the four-cornered war that ensues, Jackson runs before the other three, but fails of the constitutional majority in the electoral college. In the House, a deal between Adams and Clay defeats Jackson, and Adams goes to the White House.

Aaron is unmoved.

“I am threescore years and ten,” says he – “the allotted space of man. Now I know that I am to live surely four years more; for I shall yet see Jackson President.”

Adams fears Aaron, as long ago his father feared him. He strives to win his Bucktails from him with a shower of appointments.

“Take them,” says Aaron to his Bucktails. “They are yours, not his – those offices. He but gives you your own.”

Aaron, throughout those four years of Adams, tends the Jackson fires like a devotee. Van Ness is astonished at his enthusiasm.

“I should think you’d rest,” says he.

“Rest? I cannot rest. It is all I live for now.”

“But I don’t understand! You get nothing.”

The black eyes shoot forth the old ophidian sparks. “Sir, I get vengeance – and forget feelings!”

Adams comes to his White House end, and Jackson is elected in his place. Jackson comes to New York, and he and Aaron meet in the latter’s rooms – pleasant rooms, overlooking the Bowling Green. They light their long pipes, and sit opposite one another, smoking like dragons.

Jackson is the one who speaks. Taking the pipe from his lips, he says:

“Colonel Burr, my gratitude is not wholly declamatory.”

“General,” returns Aaron, “the best favor you can show me is show favor to my friends.”

“That I shall do, be sure! Van Ness is to become a judge, Swartwout collector, while Van Buren goes into my Cabinet as Secretary of State. Also I shall say to your enemies – the Clintons and those other proud ones – that he from New York who seeks Andrew Jackson’s appointment, must come with the approval of Colonel Burr.”

Jackson is inaugurated.

“I am through,” says Aaron – “through at four and seventy. Now I shall work a little, play a little, rest a deal; but no more politics – no more politics! My friends are triumphant. As for my foes, I leave them to Providence and Andrew Jackson.”

CHAPTER XXV – THE SERENE LAST DAYS

AARON goes forward with his business – his cases in court, his conferences with clients. Accurate as an Alvan-ley in dress, slim, light, with the quick step of a boy, no one might guess his years. The bar respects him; his friends crowd about him; his enemies shrink away from the black, unblinking stare of those changeless ophidian eyes. And so with his books and his wine and his pipe he sits through the serene evenings in his rooms by the Bowling Green. He is a lion, and strangers from England and Germany and France ask to be presented. They talk – not always wisely or with taste.

“Was Hamilton a gentleman?” asks a popinjay Frenchman.

Aaron’s black eyes blaze: “Sir,” says he, “I met him!”

“Colonel Burr,” observes a dull, thick Englishman, who imagines himself a student of governments – “Colonel Burr, I have read your Constitution. I find it not always clear. Who is to expound it?”

Aaron leads our student of governments to the window, and points, with a whimsical smile, at the Broadway throngs that march below.

“Sir,” he remarks, “they are the expounders of our Constitution.”

Aaron, at seventy-eight, does a foolish thing; he marries – marries the wealthy Madam Jumel.

They live in the madam’s great mansion on the heights overlooking the Harlem. Three months later they part, and Aaron goes back to his books and his pipe and his wine, in his rooms by the Bowling Green.

It is a bright morning; Aaron and his friend Van Ness are walking in Broadway. Suddenly Aaron halts and leans against the wall of a house – the City Hotel.

“It is a numbness,” says he. “I cannot walk!”

The good, purple, puffy Dr. Hosack comes panting to the rescue. He finds the stricken one in his rooms where Van Ness has brought him.

“Paralysis!” says the good anxious Hosack.

Aaron is out in a fortnight; numbness gone, he says. Six months later comes another stroke; both legs are paralyzed.

There are to be no more strolls in the Battery Park for Aaron. Now and then he rides out. For the most part he sits by his Broadway window and reads or watches the world hurry by. His friends call; he has no lack of company.

The stubborn Swartwout looks in one afternoon; Aaron waves the paper.

“See!” he cries. “Houston has whipped Santa Ana at San Jacinto! That marks the difference between a Jefferson and a Jackson in the White House! Sir, thirty years ago it was treason; to-day, with Jackson, Houston and San Jacinto, it is patriotism.”

Winter disappears in spring, and Aaron’s strength is going. The hubbub, the bustle, the driving, striving warfare of the town’s life wearies. He takes up new quarters on Staten Island, and the salt, fresh air revives him. All day he gazes out upon the gray restless waters of the bay. His visitors are many. Nor do they always cheer him. It is Dr. Hosack who one day brings up the name of Hamilton.

“Colonel, it was an error – a fearful error!” says the doctor.

“Sir,” rejoins Aaron, the old hard uncompromising ring in his tones, “it was not an error, it was justice. When had his slanders rested? He heaped obloquy upon me for years. I stood in his way; I marred his prospects; I mortified his vanity; and so he vilified me. The man was malevolent – cowardly! You have seen what he wrote the night before he fought me. It sounds like the confession of a sick monk. When he stood before me at Weehawken, his eye caught mine and he quailed like a convicted felon. They say he did not fire! Sir, he fired first. I heard the bullet whistle over my head and saw the severed twigs. I have lived more than eighty years; I dwell now in the shadow of death. I shall soon go; and I shall go saying that the destruction of Hamilton was an act of justice.”

“Colonel Burr,” observes the kindly doctor, “I am made sorry by your words – sorry by your manner! Are you to leave us with a heart full of enmity?”

The black eyes do not soften.

“I shall die as I have lived – hating where I’m hated, loving where I’m loved.”

The last day breaks, and Aaron dies – dies

“What lies beyond?” asks one shortly before he goes.

“Who knows?” he returns.

“But do you never ask?”

“Why ask? Who should reply to such a question? – the old, old question ever offered, never answered.”

“But you have hopes?”

“None,” says Aaron steadily. “And I want none. I am resolved to die without fear; and he who would have no fear must have no hope.” So he departs; he, of whom the good Dr. Bellamy said: “He will soar as high to fall as low as any soul alive.”

THE END