The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr

by H. W. Brands

  He has declined to inform Theo of the conflict as it develops. “Yesterday we kept Theo’s birthday,” he writes on June 24, as the notes are flying back and forth. “The Laights and half a dozen others laughed an hour, and danced an hour, and drank her health at Richmond Hill. We had your picture in the dining room; but, as it is a profile, and would not look at us, we hung it up and placed Natalie’s at table, which laughs and talks with us.” Theo recently suggested a writing scheme. “Your idea of dressing up pieces of ancient mythology in the form of amusing tales for children is very good,” he responds. “You yourself must write them. Send your performances to me, and, within three weeks after they are received, you shall have them again in print. This will be not only an amusing occupation, but a very useful one to yourself. It will improve your style and your language, give you habits of accuracy, and add a little to your stock of knowledge.” He merely hints of the troubles at hand. “You laugh at me so much and so impudently, that I will not say a word more of certain things till something be concluded. Your permission seems to be that I may hang or drown, or make any other apotheosis I may please. Dear indulgent creature, how I thank thee.”

  A week later, as the crisis approaches, he conveys another hint. “Having been shivering with cold all day, though in perfect health, I have now, just at sunset, had a fire in my library, and am sitting near it and enjoying it, if that word be applicable to anything done in solitude. Some very wise man, however, has exclaimed,

  Oh! fools, who think it solitude to be alone.

  This is but poetry. Let us, therefore, drop the subject, lest it lead to another on which I have imposed silence on myself.”

  But finally he reveals what is afoot. “I have called out General Hamilton, and we meet tomorrow morning,” he writes Alston on July 10. “If it should be my lot to fall, yet I shall live in you and your son. I commit to you all that is most dear to me—my reputation and my daughter. Your talents and your attachment will be the guardian of the one, your kindness and your generosity of the other.” He asks his son-in-law to encourage his wife and child in their intellectual endeavors. “Let me entreat you to stimulate and aid Theodosia in the cultivation of her mind. It is indispensable to her happiness and essential to yours. It is also of the utmost importance to your son. She would presently acquire a critical knowledge of Latin, English, and all branches of natural philosophy. All this would be poured into your son. If you should differ with me as to the importance of this measure, suffer me to ask it of you as a last favor. She will richly compensate your trouble.”

  He saves his last words for Theo. “Having lately written my will, and given my private letters and papers in charge to you,” he writes, “I have no other direction to give you on the subject but to request you to burn all such as, if by accident made public, would injure any person. This is more particularly applicable to the letters of my female correspondents.” One batch is especially sensitive. “Burn immediately a small bundle, tied with a red string, which you will find in the little flat writing-case—that which we used with the curricle.” Other materials should be saved. “All my letters, and copies of letters, of which I have retained copies, are in the six blue boxes. If your husband or anyone else (no one, however, could do it so well as he) should think it worthwhile to write a sketch of my life, some materials will be found among these letters.”

  He asks her to dispose of his property. “My estate will just about pay my debts and no more—I mean, if I should die this year. If I live a few years, it is probable things may be better.” She should look after his few household slaves. He has granted freedom to Peggy and has conveyed to her a small parcel of land. “Give her also fifty dollars in cash as a reward for her fidelity.” A second slave woman, Nancy—“honest, robust, and good-tempered”—should be retained, sold or emancipated as Theo sees fit. A young male slave, Peter, will make a fine servant for Aaron. “Peter is the most intelligent and best-disposed black I have ever known.… I advise you, by all means, to keep him as the valet of your son.”

  His parting sentiment offers his gratitude and benediction. “I am indebted to you, my dearest Theodosia, for a very great portion of the happiness which I have enjoyed in this life. You have completely satisfied all that my heart and affections had hoped or even wished. With a little more perseverance, determination, and industry, you will obtain all that my ambition or vanity had fondly imagined. Let your son have occasion to be proud that he had a mother. Adieu. Adieu.”

  14

  He lies down on the couch in his library and sleeps till dawn. A friend finds him slumbering and rouses him. Two other friends arrive, and the group walks down to the Hudson bank, where a boat waits. Oarsmen row them across to Weehawken, New Jersey, to a sheltered ledge that frequently serves as a dueling ground. New Jersey’s legislature has, like New York’s, outlawed dueling, but prosecutions are less certain than in New York. The seconds have arranged for Hamilton to arrive a half-hour later, lest two boats together stir the suspicions of the man who owns the property and vigorously opposes dueling. Whenever he learns of an imminent duel, he races from his house and throws himself between the duelists, refusing to leave until they consent not to shoot each other.

  Burr and Hamilton exchange terse greetings. Their seconds establish the dueling distance—ten paces—and determine by lot the choice of position. Hamilton’s man wins the choice, and for reasons best known to himself has Hamilton face east, into the rising sun.

  The pistols are loaded. The principals take their marks. Hamilton’s second explains that he will ask if they are ready; on their affirmative he will say, “Present.” They may then fire as soon as they wish. Burr and Hamilton nod.

  Hamilton’s second looks to each. “Are you ready?” he asks. They nod again.

  “Present,” he says.

  Burr at once aims and fires. His ball hits Hamilton, who fires convulsively as he falls, his shot going astray. Burr steps toward the slumping Hamilton, ready to offer assistance. But his second, fearing that the gunshots will attract inquisitive persons who might serve as witnesses in the event of a prosecution, grasps his arm and leads him back to the boat. The oarsmen propel them swiftly to Richmond Hill, where he goes into seclusion.

  A doctor tends to Hamilton, who lives, but barely. The wounded man is carried to his boat and likewise transported across the river. He is taken to the home of a friend, ironically near Richmond Hill, and placed on a bed. He drifts in and out of consciousness the rest of that day and through the night. He receives his wife and seven children, who haven’t known of the duel until they learn that the head of their family has been gravely shot. He weakens with the new day but clings to life till early afternoon, when he finally expires.

  15

  “General Hamilton died yesterday,” Burr informs Alston. “The malignant Federalists or Tories, and the embittered Clintonians”—supporters of longtime New York governor George Clinton—“unite in endeavouring to excite public sympathy in his favour and indignation against his antagonist. Thousands of absurd falsehoods are circulated with industry. The most illiberal means are practised in order to produce excitement, and, for the moment, with effect.”

  He is genuinely surprised. Affairs of honor are supposed to be personal matters, but his enemies are exploiting this one for political effect. He hopes the hubbub will diminish, given time. “I propose leaving town for a few days, and meditate also a journey for some weeks,” he tells Alston. “But whither is not resolved.… You will hear from me again in about eight days.”

  He travels to Philadelphia, where a friend takes him in. The hundred miles that now separate him from the scene of the duel provide a necessary cushion. “Our most unprincipled Jacobins”—the extreme Jeffersonians—“are the loudest in their lamentations for the death of General Hamilton, whom, for many years, they have uniformly represented as the most detestable and unprincipled of men,” Burr writes Alston. “The motives are obvious. Every sort of persecution is to be exercised against me. A coron
er’s jury will sit this evening, being the fourth time. The object of this unexampled measure is to obtain an inquest of murder. Upon this a warrant will issue to apprehend me, and, if I should be taken, no bail would probably be allowed. You know enough of the temper and principles of the generality of the officers of our state government to form a judgment of my position.”

  He writes more reassuringly to Theo. “You will have learned, through Mr. Alston, of certain measures pursuing against me in New York. I absent myself from home merely to give a little time for passions to subside, not from any apprehension of the final effects of proceedings in courts of law. They can, by no possibility, eventually affect my person. You will find the papers filled with all manner of nonsense and lies. Among other things, accounts of attempts to assassinate me. These, I assure you, are mere fables. Those who wish me dead prefer to keep at a very respectful distance. No such attempt has been made nor will be made. I walk and ride about here as usual.”

  All the same, he concludes that a journey farther south is prudent. A friend, Pierce Butler, gives refuge at a plantation on the Georgia coast. “I am now quite settled,” he writes Theo from St. Simon’s in late August. “My establishment consists of a housekeeper, cook, and chambermaid, seamstress, and two footmen. There are, besides, two fishermen and four bargemen always at command. The department of laundress is done abroad. The plantation affords plenty of milk, cream, and butter; turkeys, fowls, kids, pigs, geese, and mutton; fish, of course, in abundance. Of figs, peaches, and melons there are yet a few. Oranges and pomegranates just begin to be eatable. The house affords Madeira wine, brandy, and porter.” The locals are as friendly as can be. “Yesterday my neighbour, Mr. Couper, sent me an assortment of French wines, consisting of Claret, Sauterne, and Champagne, all excellent; and at least a twelve months’ supply of orange shrub, which makes a most delicious punch. Madame Couper added sweetmeats and pickles.” He has rarely enjoyed such a holiday; he writes Theo that he has landed almost in paradise. “We have not a fly, moscheto, or bug. I can sit a whole evening, with open windows and lighted candles, without the least annoyance from insects; a circumstance which I have never beheld in any other place. I have not even seen a cockroach.”

  He arrived in the lee of a hurricane. “The cotton in this neighbourhood, on the coast southward to the extremity of Florida, and northward as far as we have heard, has been totally destroyed. The crop of Mr. C. was supposed to be worth one hundred thousand dollars, and not an extravagant estimate, for he has eight hundred slaves. He will not get enough to pay half the expenses of the plantation. Yet he laughs about it with good humour and without affectation. Butler suffers about half this loss. Part of his force had been turned to rice.”

  Two weeks later a second hurricane slams the island. Burr has heard that Couper is ill, and he goes to visit him. “When about to return in the evening, the wind had risen so that, after an ineffectual attempt, I was obliged to give it up, and remain at Mr. C.’s,” he writes Theo. “In the morning the wind was still higher. It continued to rise, and by noon blew a gale from the north, which, together with the swelling of the water, became alarming. From twelve to three, several of the out-houses had been destroyed; most of the trees about the house were blown down. The house in which we were shook and rocked so much that Mr. C. began to express his apprehensions for our safety. Before three, part of the piazza was carried away; two or three of the windows bursted in. The house was inundated with water, and presently one of the chimneys fell. Mr. C. then commanded a retreat to a storehouse about fifty yards off, and we decamped, men, women, and children. You may imagine, in this scene of confusion and dismay, a good many incidents to amuse one if one had dared to be amused in a moment of much anxiety. The house, however, did not blow down. The storm continued till four, and then very suddenly abated, and in ten minutes it was almost a calm. I seized the moment to return home.”

  But this was merely the eye of the hurricane. “Before I had got quite over, the gale rose from the southeast and threatened new destruction. It lasted a great part of the night, but did not attain the violence of that from the north; yet it contributed to raise still higher the water, which was the principal instrument of devastation. The flood was about seven feet above the height of an ordinary high tide. This has been sufficient to inundate a great part of the coast; to destroy all the rice; to carry off most of the buildings which were on low lands, and to destroy the lives of many blacks. The roads are rendered impassable, and scarcely a boat has been preserved.… Major Butler has lost nineteen negroes (drowned), and I fear his whole crop of rice, being about two hundred and sixty acres. Mr. Brailsford, of Charleston, who cultivates in rice an island at the mouth of the Alatamaha, has lost, reports say, seventy-four blacks.”

  Burr hoped to travel still farther south, but the storms change his plans. “To get to Florida seems now impracticable; nor do any present means occur of getting from this island in any direction.” Neither is it likely the mail will get through. Burr closes his letter to Theo by explaining the trials its carrier will have to overcome. “This letter goes to Savannah by a negro who has to swim half a dozen creeks, in one of which, at least, it is probable he may drown.” She will hear from him when conditions improve.

  16

  He is back in Washington by early November. While he presides over the Senate he is immune from prosecution, but the wheels of justice grind forward, anticipating the end of the session. He tries to maintain a sense of humor about his predicament. “You have doubtless heard that there has subsisted for some time a contention of a very singular nature between the states of New York and New Jersey,” he writes Theo. “To what lengths it may go, or how it may terminate, cannot be predicted; but, as you will take some interest in the question, I will state it for your satisfaction and consideration. The subject in dispute is which shall have the honour of hanging the vice-president.” He says he personally hasn’t developed a preference between the two. But he assures her she won’t be kept in the dark. “You shall have due notice of the time and place. Whenever it may be, you may rely on a great concourse of company, much gayety, and many rare sights; such as the lion, the elephant, &c.”

  It doesn’t come to that. Jefferson’s thrashing of Federalist Charles Pinckney in the 1804 election—the tally among the electors, conducted under the provisions of the newly adopted Twelfth Amendment, is 162 for Jefferson and running mate George Clinton to 14 for Pinckney and Rufus King—reminds the Federalists they have greater problems than Burr. The Republicans have no desire to revive Hamilton. The prosecutions are quietly suspended.

  Burr completes his service as vice president with a grace that moves his friends and silences his enemies. He sits as judge in the impeachment trial of Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase, which pits Jefferson’s Republican allies against Chase and the Federalists. Chase’s outspoken opposition to the president and his party has annoyed the Republicans, who have arranged the impeachment as a way of slapping him down. Yet Chase is acquitted, under Burr’s oversight, and the verdict leaves Jefferson frustrated with the Federalists and angry at Burr for failing to remember his Republican roots. “He conducted the trial with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil,” an observer notes.

  Burr takes his leave of the Senate in a speech that reminds members of his rhetorical gifts. “I am sensible that I must at times have wounded the feelings of individual members,” he says. “I avoided entering into explanations at the time, because a moment of irritation is not a moment for explanation.” For his part, he has no injuries to complain of. “If any have been done or attempted, I am ignorant of the authors. If I have ever heard, I have forgotten, for, thank God, I have no memory for injuries.” Where he misstepped, he did so from worthy motives. “My errors, whatever they may have been, were those of rule and principle, and not of caprice.… If, in the opinion of any, the discipline which has been established approached to rigor, you will at least admit that it was uniform and indiscriminate.”<
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  Members might differ on procedure and matters of policy, but all must agree on the Senate’s high purpose. “This house,” he says, “is a sanctuary, a citadel of law, of order, and of liberty. It is here, it is here in this exalted refuge, here if anywhere, that resistance will be made to the storms of political frenzy and the silent arts of corruption.” He bids the members farewell. “Though we separate, we will be engaged in the common cause of disseminating the principles of freedom and social order.”

  Some senators weep; others shake Burr’s hand and clap him on the back. The house resolves unanimously to tender its thanks and entire approbation to its retiring president for the impartiality, dignity and ability with which he has fulfilled his duties.

  17

  He has nowhere to go but west. His creditors, fearing that a defeated politician with famous blood on his hands will attract little law business, force the sale of Richmond Hill. The transaction nets twenty-five thousand dollars, which falls far short of covering his debts. To return to New York risks lawsuits, perhaps debtors’ prison.

  To stay in Washington is even less feasible. The capital city is a caravansary, a stopover for those dispatched to do the people’s business. He has no such business any longer. Jefferson is polite but chilly; other Republicans take their cue from the president. The Federalists would hang him if they could.

  To travel south might sully Theo’s standing. Her friends would welcome him not simply as her father but also as the slayer of the hated Hamilton. Yet he won’t hazard her reputation by bringing his own obloquy near.

  So he turns his face toward the mountains and beyond, as his countrymen have done for centuries. The West is the land of opportunity in part because it is the land of forgiveness. Eastern prosecutors rarely pursue their quarry across the mountains, and western etiquette precludes excessive questioning of eastern antecedents or reasons for migrating. In Burr’s case, he knows that the death of the haughty Hamilton strikes many westerners as a blow for democracy: for government by the people, not merely of the people. Democracy is further advanced in the egalitarian West than in the stratified East; the slayer of Hamilton can expect to find friends there.