AARON BURR
Undoubtedly some readers are already impatient at the delay in dealing
with Aaron Burr. There was a time when it was the fashion to refer to
Colonel Burr as sufficiently infamous to prove that heredity was of no
appreciable value. As a matter of fact it is rather refreshing to have
one upon whom the imagination can play. It simply intensifies the white
light of the rest of the record.
Colonel Burr was not a saint after the model presented by his father,
the Rev. Dr. Aaron Burr, the godly president of Princeton; by his
grandfather, Jonathan Edwards; or by at least 1,394 of the other members
of the family of Mr. Edwards. There is no purpose to give him saintly
enthronement, but it may not be amiss to suggest that the abuse of him
has been overdone.
Colonel Aaron Burr died at eighty after thirty years of the worst
treatment ever meted out to a man against whom the bitterest enemies and
the most brilliant legal talent could bring no charge that would stand
in the eyes of the law. I have no purpose to lessen the verdict of
prejudice, for the study of the Edwards family is all the more
fascinating because of one such meteor of error. It must be confessed,
however, that a study of the last thirty years of Colonel Burr's life
makes one more exasperated with human nature under a political whip than
with Colonel Burr's mistake.
At forty-nine Aaron Burr was one of the most brilliant, most admired,
and beloved men in the United States. For thirty years his had been a
career with few American parallels. He had but one real and intense
enemy, and that man had hated him all those years. Alexander Hamilton
had never missed an opportunity to vilify Mr. Burr, and his attack had
never been resented. Calmly had Aaron Burr pursued his upward and onward
course, simply smiling at the vituperation of Hamilton. Could those two
men have agreed, they would have been the greatest leaders any nation
ever had. Their hatred was as expensive as was that of Blaine and
Conklin in after years.
Every age must have a political scapegoat, one upon whose head is
placed symbolically the sins of the period, and after he is sent into
the wilderness of obscurity it becomes a social and political crime to
befriend him. There have been several such in our country's history, and
there will be others. Aaron Burr suffered more than any other simply
because the glory from which he departed was greater.
On March 2, 1805, Aaron Burr, vice-president of the United States,
and president of the senate, retired from the chair two days before
his term expired. He made a farewell address, which produced a greater
impression upon that body than any other words ever spoken there. Every
senator was weeping, and for a long time no one could leave his seat or
propose any business. It was a sight for the nation to look upon and
wonder. For fourteen years he had been one of the most conspicuous
members of that body.
Aaron Burr's ultimate ruin was wrought by his colonization experiment in
Louisiana. In popular opinion, there was something traitorous in that
unsuccessful venture of his. In 1805 Mr. Burr paid $50,000 for 400,000
acres of land which had been purchased of Spain in 1800, before it
passed to France and then to the United States in 1803. Of the motive of
Colonel Burr we must always be ignorant; that he was not guilty of any
crime in connection therewith we are certain, for the highest tribunal
of the land acquitted him. President Jefferson and the entire political
force of the administration were bent upon his conviction, but Chief
Justice Marshall, as capable, honorable, and incorruptible a jurist as
the country has known, would not have it so. Unfortunately, the
brilliant arraignment by William Wirt was printed and read for half a
century, while the calm rulings of Chief Justice Marshall never went
beyond the court room.
Why did a man of his capabilities, upon retirement from the
vice-presidency, attempt, at fifty years of age to start life anew under
such unpromising conditions? Because he was suddenly politically and
professionally ruined. Ruined because he had killed Alexander Hamilton
in a duel. Why did he do it? It is a long story.
To make it intelligent, his life must be reviewed. After a brilliant
military career, which began when he was nineteen and left him an
heroic colonel, he studied law and practiced in Albany. At the age
of twenty-eight he was a leader in the New York legislature, and was
chairman of the most important committees, always with the people,
against the aristocracy--an unpardonable mistake in those times.
At thirty-four he was attorney-general of the state, and his great
decisions were accepted by all other states. At thirty-four he
established the Manhattan bank of New York city. He was the only man
with the ability or courage to find a way to establish a bank for the
people, and the solidity of that institution for a hundred years is an
all-sufficient vindication of his plan. At thirty-five he was appointed
and confirmed as a supreme court judge of New York state, but he
declined the honor, and was the same year elected to the United States
senate. He was re-elected, serving in all fourteen years.
At the second presidential election Senator Burr received one vote in
the electoral college, at the third he received thirty, and in the
fourth received seventy-three. Jefferson also received seventy-three and
the election was thrown into the house. This was in 1800 and Mr. Burr
was forty-years of age. The choice lay with New York, which could be
carried by no man but Aaron Burr.
Alexander Hamilton was the leader of the Federalists. He also was of
New York. It was a battle of the giants. These two men measured swords.
The presidency of the United States was the prize both parties--the
Federalists and the Democrats--were seeking. New York had always been
with the Federalists. In this great struggle it went against Hamilton
and for Burr. This ended the political career of Hamilton, and would
have done so had he lived longer. He was one of America's greatest
statesmen, but one of the poorest politicians. No one could get along
with him but Washington, and when he died the political end of Hamilton
came.
Jefferson and Burr each received seventy-three votes for president, and
Adams received sixty-five. New York had twelve votes, so that if she
had remained with the Federalist candidate Adams, he would have won,
seventy-seven to sixty-one. This defeat angered Hamilton beyond
endurance. He and Burr had been deadly rivals for thirty years, first
for the love of woman, then for military preferment, and later in the
political arena. When Burr established the Manhattan bank, Hamilton's
brother-in-law, inspired by Hamilton, attacked Burr's motive, with the
result of a duel in which neither was harmed.
Notwithstanding Hamilton's greatness, he was always in trouble with men
and women. He never ceased his abuse of Burr, whose election as senator
angered him. Later, when Burr was the choice of congress as minister to
Paris, backed especially by Madison and Monroe, Hamilton succeeded in
compassing his defeat. Again, when Adams had decided upon some important
appointment for Burr, Hamilton succeeded in defeating him. This made
Burr's promotion to the vice-presidency and his own downfall the more
exasperating to Hamilton.
Four years passed. Burr won high honor as president of the senate,
and the party nominated him for governor of New York with practical
unanimity. This was too much for Hamilton, who had nothing to lose by
indulging his enmity to the full. The campaign against Burr was one of
the basest on record. It was one of vilification. Being vice-president,
he was at a disadvantage when it came to conducting the campaign, and he
was defeated.
There were many features of this campaign that were peculiarly annoying
to Burr, and for the second time in his life he resorted to the duel,
and Hamilton was killed. Had Burr died in that hour, history would have
a different place for him as well as for Hamilton, but in his death
Hamilton was glorified. The most preposterous stories, such as his
firing into the air, were invented and believed. The time and the
conditions were as bad as they could be for Burr. The North never
condoned a duel that ended fatally, and then less than ever. I have no
word of apology to offer for the duel. It was weakness, as it always is,
and from it came all the ills that befell Aaron Burr.
Censure him all you choose, and then look at the conditions of his
childhood and wonder that he lived to fifty years of age before the lack
of early care brought forth its fruit. Aaron Burr received as good an
intellectual and moral legacy as any one of the 1,400 of the Edwards
family. His father and mother, grandfather and grandmother would have
given him as good an environment and training as any one of them
enjoyed, but--his father died before he was two years old, and his
mother, grandfather, and grandmother died when he was two years old, and
he and his sister, four years old, went to live with his oldest uncle,
Timothy Edwards, who was only twenty. This uncle was also bringing up
two younger brothers aged eight and thirteen, and three young sisters.
While Timothy Edwards made an eminently worthy citizen and reared a
family of noble sons and daughters, he was not prepared at nineteen to
support so many younger children and give a two-year-old boy the
attention that he needed.
At twelve years of age Aaron Burr went to college, and after this time
he never had even the apology of a home, indeed he never had a home such
as his nature demanded. There are three pictures of the child which
satisfy me that the right training would have enabled Aaron Burr to go
into history as the noblest Roman of them all.
At four years of age he was at school, where the treatment was so severe
that he ran away from school and home and could not be found for three
days.
At seven years of age he was up in a cherry tree when a very prim and
disagreeable spinster came to call, and he indulged in the childish
luxury of throwing cherries at her. She sought "Uncle Timothy," who
took the seven-year-old child into the house, gave him a long and severe
lecture, offered a long prayer of warning, and then "licked me like a
sack."
At ten years of age he ran away from the severity of his uncle, and went
to New York and shipped as cabin boy. His uncle followed him, and when
the little fellow saw him he went to the top of the masthead and refused
to come down until his uncle agreed not to punish him. It is easy to see
that his uncle aroused in him all the characteristics that should have
been calmed, and gave him none of that care which father or mother would
have provided him.
At twelve he entered Princeton, and graduated with honors at sixteen.
College life had its temptations, but he conducted himself with unusual
decorum, and upon graduation went to study with an eminent clergyman.
Apparently he expected to enter the ministry, but the theology of Dr.
Bellamy did not commend itself to him, and even less did the spirit with
which the theologian met his queries, so that for the remaining sixty
odd years of life he would not talk about theology. Here was a brilliant
lad, fresh from college, with the inheritance of Burr and Edwards, who
might have been led into a glorious career, but was instead repelled,
and went back to his uncle's home, with no profession and no plan for
life, with no one to advise him.
The battle of Bunker hill aroused Burr to patriotic purpose, and, though
but nineteen, he started for Cambridge to enlist. He was stricken with
fever, however, and before he was recovered he heard of Arnold's
proposed expedition to Quebec, and, though he had better be in bed, he
took his musket and walked to Newburyport, 30 miles, in season to ship
with the troops. Two men were there ahead of him awaiting his arrival
with instructions from his uncle to bring him back to New Jersey. This
was too much for young Burr, who did not recognize the right of his
uncle to interfere, and he expressed his mind so vigorously as to
command the admiration of the soldiers and arouse the fears of the two
messengers, who returned without him. This was the last of his uncle's
interference. Who that reads of the childhood life of this orphan can
wonder that he lacked patience under the severe reverse of political
fortune at fifty years of age? That he is the one illustrious exception
among the 1,400 need cause no surprise.