Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  “LAND MATTERS”

  In spite of his dissatisfaction with the law, Aaron Burr recognized that his profession afforded other opportunities. “Land matters,” as he called them, drew him into the risky realm of speculation—which, lest anyone doubt, was the principal pastime of all ambitious men in the early years of the republic. Beginning in the 1780s, the obsession for land speculation was triggered when the states of New York, Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts ceded their western territories to the national government. Land companies quickly multiplied, each promoting grandiose schemes. Both English and French visitors (who rarely agreed on anything) observed that a more suitable name for the United States would be “the land of speculation.”21

  Many have underscored Burr’s unquenchable ambition and extravagant lifestyle—his distressed finances have been reduced to a character flaw. But in truth, his various enterprises actually place him in the minor league of speculators, a secondary player compared to the high rollers of his day. Fated figures such as the once notable Assistant Treasury Secretary William Duer; the so-called financier of the American Revolution Robert Morris; Comptroller-General John Nicholson of Pennsylvania; and Bostonian James Greenleaf devised many of the grand schemes of the 1780s and 1790s, and they lured trusting men like Burr into their web of speculation with promises of easy profits and tremendous wealth.

  This is not to say that Burr was a naive and hapless stooge. His behavior makes sense only if we acknowledge the pervasiveness of speculation among his peers. The “peerless” George Washington became an extremely wealthy man from land-jobbing, acquiring much of present-day West Virginia, and vast tracts of land in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky. As secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton adopted fiscal policies that gained him a dubious title from Chancellor Livingston: “Magnus Apollo of the Speculators.” His 1790 federal plan of assumption (paying 6 percent interest on state debts) set off a speculative frenzy in state debt certificates. The policy provoked vigorous criticism, mainly because so many of Hamilton’s political allies were grabbing up certificates even before the official policy was announced.22

  The staunch Virginia Republican James Monroe speculated in land, buying up property in Paris in the wake of the bloody Revolution there. And among Burr’s circle of New York legal associates, attorneys Robert Troup and Brockholst Livingston “plunged head and ears”—as one of Burr’s contemporaries referred to speculation—into various projects. One of the more sordid deals they backed was the “Million Dollar Bank,” less a legitimate bank than a thinly disguised stock-jobbing scam that fooled no one.23

  Burr’s opportunity to speculate arose from three predictable sources: family, military friends, and clients. During the war, his friend from Litchfield, Peter Colt, dragged Burr into what appears to be his first minor venture. Later, Burr turned to him for investment tips. In 1787, when Burr asked Colt about the exchange rate on Continental Loan Office certificates in Connecticut, his friend lightheartedly admitted that they were of little value except, he tempted, for “speculating on Western Lands.” The redoubtable William Malcolm not only gave Burr advice on confiscated estates; in 1785, the two men jointly invested in a tract of land in Manhattan.24

  Most of Burr’s early land ventures came through family connections. One of Theodosia’s relatives stood out among the rest: Major Augustine Prevost. He was the illegitimate son of General Augustine Prevost (the older brother of Theodosia’s first husband). Like both his father and uncle, Major Prevost served in the Royal American Regiment, remaining a loyal British officer throughout the Revolution. Most of his later legal troubles stemmed from his marriage to Susannah Croghan, the only heir to George Croghan, the legendary Indian agent to the crown. Croghan owned approximately 8 million acres in New York, Pennsylvania, and western Virginia. Susannah may have been the sole legitimate heir, but her father also had an Indian mistress. In this roundabout way, Burr’s marriage connected him with Joseph Brant, the renowned Mohawk chief, educated in London, who married another of George Croghan’s daughters.25

  By the time of his death in 1782, Croghan’s wealth was indefinable. Forced to mortgage much of what he owned because of mounting debts, he left his daughter and son-in-law with a legal nightmare of contested land claims. Hired as Prevost’s attorney, Burr channeled his main energies into protecting Prevost’s interest in the Otsego Patent in New York’s Mohawk Valley. Burr and Hamilton were retained by the contending parties, and, in 1785, two very powerful speculators entered the fray: William Cooper (of Cooperstown renown) and Andrew Craig, who urged Hamilton to find a way for the land to be sold. Burr tried to stop the sale by getting an injunction. Serious accusations were hurled at the sheriff for blatantly ignoring the injunction (that prohibited the sale), and then rigging the auction so that Cooper acquired the land—without his having made the highest bid.26

  Despite Burr’s failure to protect Prevost’s claim, in ensuing years Burr and Prevost grew even closer. Twelve years Burr’s senior, the generous and good-natured major relied on his younger relative for advice on his business enterprises. And Burr no doubt admired his friend’s genteel lifestyle. Surrounded by a large and loving family, Prevost resided at Mill Grove, an estate outside Philadelphia. Burr even professed to Prevost that he had “serious thoughts of moving into the country . . . with the hope of being your neighbor.”27

  Augustine Prevost embodied another species of ambition that Burr found irresistible: He pictured himself owning a vast estate on western land. After his first wife died in 1790, Prevost sold Mill Grove, building a country estate in upstate New York. Burr was actively involved in surveying and overseeing (and possibly speculating in) these “Katskills lands,” near the banks of the Hudson west of Albany. But Prevost’s vision did not stop there. He had inherited from his father some 10,000 acres in Mississippi and Louisiana, lying close to Natchez. This is the land Burr would revisit in 1805 to much lasting notoriety.28

  Burr’s own family had their sights set on land in New York State. His three maternal uncles—Timothy Edwards, Jonathan Edwards, Jr., and Pierpont Edwards—drew their nephew into various ventures. One of the most important was the Boston Ten Townships in New York’s “Southern Tier,” just north of the Susquehanna River, along the boundary with Pennsylvania. This portion of New York was a contested domain: Massachusetts had claims to millions of acres in what is now western New York. In 1786, a two-state commission (on which Uncle Timothy sat) reached an agreement by which Massachusetts gained full preemption rights to land between the Oswego and Chanango Rivers, and west of a line drawn from Lake Ontario to the boundary with Pennsylvania. New York retained sovereignty over the vast territory, but Massachusetts could make treaties with Indians to purchase lands. Before the ink was dry on the agreement, Timothy and Jonathan Junior began negotiating to buy 230,400 acres from the Indians on the Chanango, using a land company known as the Ten Townships.29

  Controversy plagued the venture, especially when it came to partitioning land among the investors. The Edwards brothers owned over one fifth of the tract—more than any other single investor—and wanted their share as one large parcel. When the other major associates reneged on this arrangement, the Edwardses turned to their nephew, hoping for a favorable ruling from the New York legislature or courts. After a long, drawn out battle, Burr could not get them what they wanted, but he did his best to protect their interests. Meanwhile, Burr himself invested in a smaller land venture north of Troy, New York, another pet project of Uncle Timothy.30

  Speculation was in the blood of the Edwards line: Burr’s grandfather—the great Jonathan Edwards—had been a missionary to the Indians in western Massachusetts, and he paved the way for land profiteering among his less religious sons. Like so many other speculators, Timothy Edwards prepared for a career in speculation by serving as an agent for an army supply contractor during the war. Thus, Timothy hardly appears the stern Puritan guardian that most of Burr’s biographers have identified. On t
he contrary, he was an adventurer, an ambitious merchant, who gave up his ministry to cash in on the western land grab. Burr was merely carrying on a family tradition.31

  Burr’s youngest uncle, Pierpont Edwards, was only six years Burr’s senior, and he lived just as precariously as his older siblings. In 1785, he sent Burr a desperate letter, begging for a loan of $500. He claimed that he would sell his house if necessary to cover his debts, because his “honor” was at stake. Pleading for assurances, he added urgently, “Pray don’t fail me in this matter.” But his money woes were only one part of his predicament. In the very next letter to his nephew, Pierpont had another, even more delicate assignment. The man hired to care for his mistress’s child was threatening to return the “bantling,” or bastard, to his doorstep, if he was not paid immediately. Edwards needed Burr to shell out money to the extortionist, and to find a new place for the baby and free Pierpont from this “damned rascally wretch.”32

  Edwards’s sexual escapades put him in a distinct class. The child Burr was sent to rescue was actually Pierpont’s second child with his mistress (and sister-in-law) Mary, who was the much younger sibling of his wife, Frances Ogden Edwards, and still in her teens when she first became pregnant. Everyone in the Edwards family appears to have known about the unusual arrangement. Burr, Theodosia, and another cousin, Timothy Dwight (the future High Federalist theologian and president of Yale), were all involved in finding Pierpont’s “bantling” a new home.33

  Land deals, debt, and illegitimacy were the invisible threads binding Burr’s extended family. Bastardy was clearly not a barrier to social climbing in America, as evidenced by the success of Augustine Prevost. John Adams could call Alexander Hamilton the “bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar,” and yet Hamilton’s obscure family heritage did nothing to undermine his career—his marriage to Elizabeth Schuyler gave him the aristocratic stature he longed for, which enabled him to become one of the most powerful political figures in New York, and President Washington’s top aide. Pierpont Edwards’s career never suffered as a result of his scandalous affair.34

  Land and the acquisition of property through marriage remained the major sources of wealth in the post-Revolutionary era. What changed in the 1780s was an unprecedentedly volatile mixture of speculation and family investment schemes. This made Burr, in a sense, an “ordinary” investor of his time, as we shall soon see in untangling the larger web of government officials and their shady land deals. Burr’s marriage drew him into the adventurous world of Augustine Prevost—a gambler whose own marriage linked him to one of the greatest speculators of the century, George Croghan. Burr’s boyhood guardian, Uncle Timothy, whose speculating ventures derived from his days as an army supply contractor, lured Burr into the game of New York real estate. Pierpont Edwards continually involved Burr in his various land schemes throughout the decade of the 1790s, which only sank his nephew deeper into debt. Yet Pierpont cannot be painted in black and white, as a scoundrel. He followed Burr into the Republican Party, remaining loyal to him even after Burr’s notorious treason trial; years later, one of Pierpont’s sons would care for an aging Burr, and make the payment on his tombstone. Despite the taint of illegitimacy and financial ruin within Burr’s family circle, blood was thicker than water.35

  FOR “THE PEACE, LIBERTY, AND HONOR OF THE STATE”

  Burr did not rush into politics. In fact, he entered the fray with little genuine enthusiasm. In May 1784, he was elected to the New York Assembly, but when the first session opened in October, Burr was not there. He did not appear until three weeks later, and even then, he failed to propose a single bill, engage in debates, or make any impression whatsoever.36

  He had been voted in on a ticket headed by Alexander McDougall, his old military commander, under whom he had served when assigned the tricky task of restoring order to the volatile “Neutral Ground” in Westchester County. As a political candidate, McDougall was attractive as a onetime rabble-rousing “Liberty boy” turned nationalist. At war’s end, he led an important military delegation that demanded from Congress overdue compensation for Continental officers and soldiers. He then became the first president of the Bank of New York, which opened for business in June 1784, and this made him the friend of merchants and future Federalists alike. As a state senator, he vociferously defended poor debtors and veterans, continuing to see himself as a protector of destitute soldiers. His constituency was all-encompassing.37

  McDougall’s appeal was simple enough: he was one of the heroes of ’76. When New Yorkers reclaimed their city from the British on November 25, 1783, he proudly paraded down Broadway behind Governor George Clinton and General George Washington. Burr had the advantage of riding on the coattails of the old warhorse. Besides, Burr had proven himself to be a loyal New Yorker, with his long list of patriotic clients seeking redress under the Trespass Act.38

  During the second session of the state legislature, Burr was more active. He served as chairman of a joint committee to revise the laws of the state—an assignment suited to the young attorney’s skills and rising reputation. He defended the rights of free blacks at this time, and called for the immediate emancipation of slaves in New York. And yet, after a fairly routine session, he found himself under attack for his opposition to the Mechanics’ Bill, a piece of legislation designed to incorporate a group of tradesmen and skilled laborers. Burr’s political motives are unclear, but he most likely opposed the bill because it granted excessive power to the mayor and alderman of the City of New York, making the mechanics beholden to the city fathers and thus vulnerable to political manipulation.39

  Politics in New York became increasingly fractious over the ensuing years. Though the three ruling families, the Clintons, Livingstons, and Schuylers, maintained their grip over the state, new tensions emerged as a movement grew to increase the strength of the national government. In 1787, the confederated states did not as yet constitute an effective national authority. That was the reason why the Constitutional Convention was called in Philadelphia. Issues before the delegates included the new republic’s structure and balance, the basic question of how to define common problems, agreement on how much power the states would cede to the national entity, and the theoretical challenge of understanding how popular sovereignty could be at the heart of an electoral system when it was to be headed by a single executive. Federalists were comfortable with a strong central authority; the equally patriotic Anti-Federalists dissented, believing that the federal authority would grant too much power to a new elite, and effectively disenfranchise the “middling classes,” as they were called. Questions loomed: Could there be too much democracy? Would all interests be heard? The future was impossible to predict, as each state met in convention to decide whether or not to ratify the Constitution, and sign up for membership in the new federal government. New Yorkers met in Poughkeepsie for this purpose in June 1788.

  At the ratifying convention, New York’s Anti-Federalists had more delegates than their Federalist colleagues, but they had fewer skilled orators. Silver-tongued Federalists Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Chancellor Robert Livingston dominated the Poughkeepsie forum, while Melancton Smith took the stage as the most articulate critic of the Constitution. In New York, as elsewhere, Federalists supported a more energetic national administration with clear authority to tax, enforce treaties, and raise armies. Their opponents felt more comfortable with strong state governments, and local institutions that were more likely to remain responsive to the people’s will. Yet New York Anti-Federalists also reflected the unique conditions of their state: they favored commercial growth while opposing unfair “concentrations” of wealth and political power. Thus, they cannot be dismissed as backward-looking agrarians, nor did they subscribe to an unrealistic vision of republican virtue—the belief that men in power could be trusted to act disinterestedly for the public good.40

  By the end of the convention’s second week, Anti-Federalist delegates were forced to concede when they saw that
New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina were the only three states that had yet to ratify the Constitution. Even so, the delegates endorsed the Constitution by a narrow margin of 30 to 27 votes, and Anti-Federalists insisted that amendments be added—amendments that later became the Bill of Rights. The new ship of state was launched; but not without some New Yorkers still wondering if they had actually formed a “more perfect” union.41

  Where was Burr during this decisive turn of events? He did not attend the Poughkeepsie ratifying convention; so there are no speeches, debates, or notes on the proceedings to tell us his full opinion of the federal Constitution. While he was clearly an opponent of ratification, he quickly aligned himself with men like Judge Robert Yates, an Anti-Federalist leader who wholeheartedly supported the new government once the Constitution became the law of the land. Burr’s only relevant comment appears in a letter to his friend and client Richard Oliver in July 1788: “after the adoption by ten States”—a phrase Burr underlined—“I think it became both politic and necessary that we [New York] should also adopt it.”42

  At least publicly, Burr remained mute. In 1788, he was considered both for the assembly and as a delegate to the Poughkeepsie convention, but he declined to serve in either body. A week before the polls opened, he notified the New-York Journal that “his Name has been given out without his Knowledge or Consent.”43