Burr

  “Many would rather take no Virginian!”

  “I see.” I suppose that he did.

  “You are also thought to be an atheist.”

  “My life has been devoted to guaranteeing religious freedom for all people.” I feared that he would tell me more; but he cut himself short. “I know that religious bigotry is more acceptable than tolerance at the north where the clergy still govern.”

  “Then be prepared for their attacks. You are also thought to be a Jacobin who wants to level society, to destroy the rich …”

  “That rumour will not cost us a vote.”

  “I agree. You will also be attacked as a libertine.”

  “By Hamilton?” The scorn was perfect. “By the lover of Mrs. Reynolds?”

  “No. By a Mr. John Walker of Virginia.”

  The pale face blushed suddenly. “I am used to such attacks.” He neither answered nor denied the charge. Later he confessed that he had been guilty on one occasion, and only one, of having “offered love” to a beautiful lady—who happened to be the wife of an old friend. At this time I knew nothing of his affair in France with a Mrs. Cosway whose husband, a miniaturist, had been (no doubt in a very small way) complaisant. Eventually all things are known. And few matter.

  Having put Jefferson on the defensive, I moved to secure what was mine by honourable agreement: the Republican candidacy for vice-president.

  “We have discussed this matter once before, Mr. Jefferson, and I do not mean to weary you, but I shall expect all of Virginia’s votes to be cast for me, just as you will receive all of New York’s votes.”

  Jefferson stared at the side of the Franklin stove. The iron glowed red in patches; as if a black man were blushing red. “I think that this business of party is demeaning to all of us.”

  “None of us likes it. But since you helped devise the rules of the game you must now play accordingly.” As if I needed to give the subtlest of our politicians any advice at all. He had already out-played me but I did not know it.

  “Am I to understand that you are making a condition, Colonel Burr?” I had the full gaze at last.

  “I am living up to an earlier agreement, Mr. Jefferson. I expect you to do the same.”

  “I live up to all agreements to the best of my ability.” The gaze stayed upon me. He had made some inner resolve to overcome his natural shiftiness, and stare me down. This was not possible.

  “Then you will support me for vice-president.”

  “I have not that much influence, Colonel Burr.”

  “What influence you do possess, would you be so good as to bring to bear. Just as my friend Madison—whose word I entirely trust—also intends to do.”

  The mouth set in precisely the same way it had set when he had beaten so savagely the horse at Monticello. “Influence is not measurable, Sir. I cannot speak for the consciences of other men.”

  “Then, Mr. Jefferson, you must take your chance as I shall take mine.” I played the last of my cards.

  “You would oppose me for president.” I still recall how the freckles were suddenly as dark as plague spots in that ashen face.

  “I do not want to oppose you. After all, there is time for me. But if I am again betrayed …” The word was said. The response was electric.

  “You will have your Virginia votes, Colonel Burr.” The eyes left my face. The contest was over. The war had begun.

  “And you will have the votes of New York state and the presidency.” I humoured him. “I shall simply be your vice-president, waiting to be asked to dinner, to take pleasure in your company which is about all a vice-president can do, as you know better than I. Fortunately, I would rather listen to you talk than to all the music in the world.”

  Jefferson took me quite seriously; became warm and confiding; led me on. Led me on!

  Twenty

  I HAVE TAKEN to writing pieces for the Evening Post under the pseudonym Old Patroon, a very conservative, very angry, very censorious old New Yorker. Mr. Bryant is delighted, Leggett is amused. “I never thought that beneath your stolid Dutch exterior there was so much fire and fury.”

  “Nor did I.” Apparently everything offends me, including the voices of women raised in song. I have always hated the custom of the ladies coming forward to sing at polite evening parties (of the sort I seldom attend). They shout the house down; they screech; they have no sense of music—worse, they have no shame. They compete with one another to see who can holler the loudest; and we are expected to sit quietly and look as we do in church, beautifully elevated and inspired. My attack on lady singers distressed Mr. Bryant, but yesterday he allowed it to appear and everyone is angry. “The best response,” said Leggett.

  “I hope so,” said Mr. Bryant. “But let your next Old Patroon subject be more … anodyne.”

  The Colonel is amused by Old Patroon. “You have a nice way with our difficult language. Obviously you are to be a writing-lawyer like Verplanck.”

  I am pleased with the Colonel’s praise; but would prefer to be no lawyer at all.

  Writing-lawyers made him think of Hamilton. He showed me a cartoon of his rival, holding in his arms a blowzy woman identified as Mrs. Reynolds. “There is a mystery to Hamilton, as there is none to Jefferson who simply wanted to rise to the top. Odd how Jefferson is now thought of as a sort of genius, a Virginia Leonardo. It is true he did a great number of things, from playing the fiddle to building houses to inventing dumb-waiters, but the truth is that he never did any one thing particularly well—except of course the pursuit of power. Yet his exuberant mediocrity in the arts is everywhere admired today, and quite unrecognised is his genius for politics.”

  The Colonel laid out on the baize table the papers he would need for the day’s work. “If I were young and,” he grinned, “a writing-lawyer instead of a scheming-lawyer, I would do a life of Hamilton and I would go to the Indies and spend as much time as I could trying to find out about a Mr. Nicholas Cruger. He was a young bachelor with a business in that part of the world. When Alexander became an orphan at twelve or thirteen, Cruger took the boy in. They lived in the same house until Hamilton was seventeen or so and came to America to study. Two things amaze. One, at fourteen, Hamilton was running Cruger’s business. The other, in later life, Hamilton came to detest his original benefactor. Why? A falling out? The way Hamilton always fell out with his surrogate fathers? Most mysterious. I have my theories but …” The Colonel stopped, and before I could get him to expand on those theories he had begun the day’s dictation.

  Memoirs of Aaron Burr–Eleven

  I RETURNED TO NEW YORK STATE to find George Clinton in a bad mood. He disliked Jefferson, would take no part in the election. I was able to change his mind by telling him that I thought Governor John Jay could be defeated, and that I would be happy to take his place. The thought of me as governor aroused the old man wondrously well. He would have canvassed the Sixth Ward on his knees to get me safely out of the state as vice-president.

  The Livingstons were useful allies; and as long as one listened attentively to their advice one was not actually bound to take it. Edward Livingston, in particular, was devoted to me, “and if the presidency should ever be between you and Jefferson, I am for you.” Fortunately for him, I never held him to his promise.

  I had my own Little Band: the Swartwout brothers, Matt Davis, the Van Ness brothers (newly arrived in the law office of Peter Van Ness was a young clerk from up-state named Matty Van Buren), the Prevost family, and so on. Through Davis, I also had some support within the Society of St. Tammany.

  Suspecting that Hamilton would nominate a number of nonentities for the various legislative seats, I waited until after the Federalist caucus. When I saw Hamilton’s lack-lustre nominations, I knew I would beat him all hollow for I intended to nominate the most famous men in the state as Republican legislators.

  General Gates was now living in New York. He still possessed a famous name despite Washington’s best efforts to consign him, like poor Lee, to darkness. Gates
agreed to stand. So did Washington’s postmaster general Samuel Osgood; also Brockholst Livingston—easily the most brilliant member of that family. Finally, I prevailed upon George Clinton to allow his name to go on the ballot. May I say that I could not get these distinguished men to run for such unimportant offices without convincing them first that we were indeed going to win.

  “It is madness, Burr, just madness!” Clinton was outraged at having to appear to seek a seat in the legislature. “It looks all wrong for me who am the governor …”

  “The former governor …”

  “For me the governor that was to be going to that Assembly of yours that I never liked, and all for some Frenchified trimmer of an atheist from Virginia. No, Sir. Now if it was you for president, why, it would be well worth it, but not for Massa Tom.”

  It took me a long time but, finally, the governor-that-was agreed to have his name on the ballot. “But I won’t work to be elected and if anybody asks me what I think I’ll tell ’em I don’t want to be elected.” Old Clinton was emphatic. He always made me think of a dancing bear on a chain: clumsy, clownish, good-humoured, until he got his arms about you.

  I myself stood for election in Orange County where friends looked after my interests, allowing me time to organize the city.

  From April 29 to May 1, the polls were open. During this time Hamilton and I shared a number of platforms. Courteously we deferred to one another in public, as each went about the urgent business of defeating the other. A few weeks earlier, as a demonstration of our god-like serenity, we even joined forces to defend a man accused of murder—and we got him off.

  By the evening of May 2, it was evident that the Republican party had swept the city, giving us a clear majority in the legislature. All twelve of New York’s electoral votes would now be cast for Jefferson and Burr.

  Hamilton’s response was characteristic. He wrote a “secret” letter to Governor Jay, asking him to call an immediate session of the current legislature (with its Federalist majority) in order to change the laws of election. No longer would presidential electors be chosen by the legislature; rather, they would be elected directly by the people. It is a nice irony that the only time Hamilton ever sought to broaden the franchise was to steal an election. Aware of the fraudulence of what he was proposing, he assured Jay that “scruples of delicacy and propriety … ought to yield to the extraordinary nature of the crisis.” To Jay’s credit he ignored the suggestion.

  It is curious how Hamilton (who was capable of any illegality including a military coup) should have attached so securely to me the unlikely epithet “embryo-Caesar.” Whatever my ambitions, none was ever the cancellation of a legal election or the overthrow of the Constitution. I suspect that when Hamilton looked at me he saw, in some magical way, himself reflected. And so if one is an embryo-Caesar, accuse the looking-glass of that high treason and divert thereby the wrath of the plebes. Best of all, smash the glass and free the self therein—to range at will.

  At the last moment Hamilton gave us the presidential election just as his inept selection of candidates had given us the state election. Unable, as usual, to resist a public expression of his rage, he wrote a pamphlet (his tombstone should have been carved in the shape of a pen) denouncing John Adams, the leader of his party. Wiser—and more frightened—Federalist heads persuaded Hamilton not to publish. But they could not stop him from printing his pamphlet for private circulation. Fortunately, Eliza Bowen secured for me a copy which I then published in the Republican newspaper Aurora. President Adams was not happy; and Hamilton forever after held me (and poor Eliza) responsible for what he had written.

  I then travelled through New England and New Jersey to see what support might be forthcoming. Jefferson by now was entirely happy to leave the election in my hands. “You have done,” he wrote to me from Philadelphia, “what I thought could not be done” (he was referring to the Republican majority in the New York legislature) “and so I leave to you the entire undertaking, and will not be surprised to see you turn Massachusetts itself to democracy, clergy and all!”

  I did not turn Massachusetts Republican but I did cultivate those Federalists who disliked and mistrusted Hamilton. It was later charged that I did this in order to gain their support for the presidency. The charge is half true. I always wooed Federalists in the general interest. For one thing I was trusted by many of their leaders because I was not thought to be a zealot like Jefferson, intent on levelling the rich and exalting the poor.

  Jefferson’s later charge that I wanted to take the presidency away from him was not unlike Hamilton seeing in me a military adventurer. Jefferson would never honour an agreement if it was inconvenient and naturally he assumed that I was like himself. But then Jefferson was not, even in Chesterfield’s sense, a gentleman (of the Virginians only Madison qualified); unfortunately, I was one, or did my best to be. I worked only for what we had agreed upon at Philadelphia, the ticket of Jefferson and Burr.

  The summer and autumn of 1800 were the busiest time of my life, and a torture to both Jefferson and me, as well as to poor John Adams. I had thought to secure New Jersey to us, but that state went Federalist as did Connecticut. By late autumn the struggle was now centred upon Pennsylvania, where all was confusion, upon Rhode Island which tended to be for us, and upon South Carolina which had the dubious fortune to be the home of the egregious Pinckney brothers, the second of whom was, thanks to Hamilton, an active national candidate.

  Jefferson was in despair. I did my best to cheer him: “With Rhode Island, you will still have a majority,” I wrote. But he was no more convinced of the certainty of his election than I was convinced that I could rely on the Virginians to honour their commitment to me. Fortunately, I had an ally in James Madison. He forced the southerners, as a point of honour, to support me.

  At the beginning of December, Pennsylvania chose a legislature in which Republicans outnumbered Federalists by a single vote. South Carolina voted last. It was now plain that Jefferson would be president; but if South Carolina voted for their own Pinckney, he (or Adams) would be vice-president. Happily, I had sufficient friends and allies in that charming state. As a result, South Carolina’s electoral votes were cast entirely for Jefferson and me. We had won the election—with the aid of Alexander Hamilton’s busy pen.

  I was at Richmond Hill when the word came of South Carolina’s vote. The Little Band was ecstatic. But I was not. I knew something was wrong. I excused myself and went immediately to the upstairs study where I sat down with a copy of Blackstone’s on my knees (my desk had been sold) and began to add up the electoral votes for all the United States. My apprehension was justified. Jefferson: 73. Burr: 73. Adams: 65. Pinckney: 64. Jay: 1.

  Jefferson and I had tied, and the Federalist House of Representatives would now have to choose between us for president. A second scrutiny of the figures proved that the election had been decided by the electors of New York state. Without New York, Jefferson was seven votes short of his total in ’96 while Adams, without New York, had gained nine votes. No matter what happened in the House of Representatives, I had carried New York and New York had decided the election.

  I slept remarkably well that night, and woke the next morning to find that we had been splendidly snowed in. It was like Revolutionary days, and I was young again.

  At about this time Jefferson wrote me one of his most disingenuous letters. He congratulated me on my victory. Noted that the vice-presidency was a higher post than any he could offer but regretted deeply “the loss we sustain of your aid in our new administration. It leaves a chasm in my arrangements which cannot be adequately filled up. I had endeavoured to compose an administration whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions should at once inspire an unbounded confidence in the public mind. I lose you from the list, and am not sure of all the others.”

  This was a most gracious tribute from a man who has since claimed that he always mistrusted me, and doubted my integrity. The date of the letter was significant: it was just before
South Carolina had voted. I am convinced that Jefferson had made an arrangement (or had heard that some arrangement was being made) that would have resulted in my losing the vice-presidency to Adams or Pinckney. The letter was to forestall my anger with the promise of a Cabinet post. Fortunately I was strong in South Carolina, and got the same vote he did.

  The Federalists were in a turmoil. There were those who inclined to me on the ground that whatever my faults of character (and Hamilton saw fit to describe these, I later learned, in alarming detail to every congressional leader of weight), I was not a fanatic like Jefferson. At worst, I was suspected of being a Bonaparte. This was bad enough. But Jefferson was suspected of being a Robespierre, and that was worse.

  I moved as swiftly as I could to see to it that no one put me forward as a possible alternative to Jefferson. It was of course feared that the Federalists in Congress might entirely go mad and, exploiting the ambiguity of the Constitution, elect a president pro tem who would then, if the ambiguity was acceptable, become president instead of Jefferson or me.

  Having effectively destroyed Adams and split his party, Hamilton was now forced to choose between Jefferson and me, the two men he most despised and feared. Curiously enough he preferred Jefferson to me, the fanatic leveller to the Caesar-self in the looking-glass. In a perverse and bitter way, denying me the presidency was like denying himself, and he was a born destroyer of his own interest. Yet a sane man choosing between what he thought to be a fanatic and a political adventurer would obviously choose the adventurer who was known to practise the arts of accommodation. In any case, let it be said once and for all, I would have refused the presidency on the practical ground (putting aside honour like a Virginian) that it was plainly the sense of the people of the United States that Jefferson be the president and that to usurp his rightful place would have made it impossible for me to govern. Also, at the age of forty-five, I expected the highest office to come to me in due course as it had come to previous vice-presidents, not to mention as a reward for my having won for the Republican party its first national election. I did not know that once Virginia again had control of the Executive, she would not give it up for a quarter-century.