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The Story Of Aaron Burr


There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from

the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public

estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel

in 1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the

white light of history shall have searched them both they will appear as

two remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the same
br /> time his equally undoubted virtues.



Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other--Burr being

a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the

illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of them

was short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical endurance,

courage, and impressive personality. Each as a young man served on

the staff of Washington during the Revolutionary War, and each of them

quarreled with him, though in a different way.



On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of

looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington

leaped to his feet with the exclamation:



"How dare you, Colonel Burr?"



Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:



"Colonel Burr DARE do anything."



This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's

difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious

quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury and

took no part in the war until the end, when he was present at the battle

of Yorktown.



Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of

Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was

shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed

himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but

Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of

musket-balls and grape-shot.



Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a

shattered, feeble thing." He could never obtain an elective office,

and he would have preferred to see the United States transformed into

a kingdom. Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton

Secretary of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his

military service until the war was ended, routing the enemy at

Hackensack, enduring the horrors of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade

at the battle of Monmouth, and heading the defense of the city of New

Haven. He was also attorney-general of New York, was elected to the

United States Senate, was tied with Jefferson for the Presidency, and

then became Vice-President.



Both Hamilton and Burr were effective speakers; but, while Hamilton was

wordy and diffuse, Burr spoke always to the point, with clear and cogent

reasoning. Both were lavish spenders of money, and both were engaged

in duels before the fatal one in which Hamilton fell. Both believed in

dueling as the only way of settling an affair of honor. Neither of them

was averse to love affairs, though it may be said that Hamilton sought

women, while Burr was rather sought by women. When Secretary of the

Treasury, Hamilton was obliged to confess an adulterous amour in order

to save himself from the charge of corrupt practices in public office.

So long as Burr's wife lived he was a devoted, faithful husband to

her. Hamilton was obliged to confess his illicit acts while his wife,

formerly Miss Elizabeth Schuyler, was living. She spent her later years

in buying and destroying the compromising documents which her husband

had published for his countrymen to read.



The most extraordinary thing about Aaron Burr was the magnetic quality

that was felt by every one who approached him. The roots of this

penetrated down into a deep vitality. He was always young, always alert,

polished in manner, courageous with that sort of courage which does not

even recognize the presence of danger, charming in conversation, and

able to adapt it to men or women of any age whatever. His hair was still

dark in his eightieth year. His step was still elastic, his motions were

still as spontaneous and energetic, as those of a youth.



So it was that every one who knew him experienced his fascination. The

rough troops whom he led through the Canadian swamps felt the iron hand

of his discipline; yet they were devoted to him, since he shared all

their toils, faced all their dangers, and ate with them the scraps of

hide which they gnawed to keep the breath of life in their shrunken

bodies.



Burr's discipline was indeed very strict, so that at first raw recruits

rebelled against it. On one occasion the men of an untrained company

resented it so bitterly that they decided to shoot Colonel Burr as he

paraded them for roll-call that evening. Burr somehow got word of it and

contrived to have all the cartridges drawn from their muskets. When the

time for the roll-call came one of the malcontents leaped from the front

line and leveled his weapon at Burr.



"Now is the time, boys!" he shouted.



Like lightning Burr's sword flashed from its scabbard with such a

vigorous stroke as to cut the man's arm completely off and partly to

cleave the musket.



"Take your place in the ranks," said Burr.



The mutineer obeyed, dripping with blood. A month later every man

in that company was devoted to his commander. They had learned that

discipline was the surest source of safety.



But with this high spirit and readiness to fight Burr had a most

pleasing way of meeting every one who came to him. When he was arrested

in the Western forests, charged with high treason, the sound of his

voice won from jury after jury verdicts of acquittal. Often the sheriffs

would not arrest him. One grand jury not merely exonerated him from all

public misdemeanors, but brought in a strong presentment against the

officers of the government for molesting him.



It was the same everywhere. Burr made friends and devoted allies among

all sorts of men. During his stay in France, England, Germany, and

Sweden he interested such men as Charles Lamb, Jeremy Bentham, Sir

Walter Scott, Goethe, and Heeren. They found his mind able to meet

with theirs on equal terms. Burr, indeed, had graduated as a youth

with honors from Princeton, and had continued his studies there after

graduation, which was then a most unusual thing to do. But, of course,

he learned most from his contact with men and women of the world.



Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in The Minister's Wooing, has given what is

probably an exact likeness of Aaron Burr, with his brilliant gifts and

some of his defects. It is strong testimony to the character of Burr

that Mrs. Stowe set out to paint him as a villain; but before she had

written long she felt his fascination and made her readers, in their

own despite, admirers of this remarkable man. There are many parallels,

indeed, between him and Napoleon--in the quickness of his intellect, the

ready use of his resources, and his power over men, while he was more

than Napoleon in his delightful gift of conversation and the easy play

of his cultured mind.



Those who are full of charm are willing also to be charmed. All his life

Burr was abstemious in food and drink. His tastes were most refined. It

is difficult to believe that such a man could have been an unmitigated

profligate.



In his twentieth year there seems to have begun the first of the

romances that run through the story of his long career. Perhaps one

ought not to call it the first romance, for at eighteen, while he was

studying law at Litchfield, a girl, whose name has been suppressed, made

an open avowal of love for him. Almost at the same time an heiress with

a large fortune would have married him had he been willing to accept her

hand. But at this period he was only a boy and did not take such things

seriously.



Two years later, after Burr had seen hard service at Quebec and on

Manhattan Island, his name was associated with that of a very beautiful

girl named Margaret Moncrieffe. She was the daughter of a British major,

but in some way she had been captured while within the American lines.

Her captivity was regarded as little more than a joke; but while she was

thus a prisoner she saw a great deal of Burr. For several months they

were comrades, after which General Putnam sent her with his compliments

to her father.



Margaret Moncrieffe had a most emotional nature. There can be no doubt

that she deeply loved the handsome young American officer, whom she

never saw again. It is doubtful how far their intimacy was carried.

Later she married a Mr. Coghlan. After reaching middle life she wrote

of Burr in a way which shows that neither years nor the obligations of

marriage could make her forget that young soldier, whom she speaks of

as "the conqueror of her soul." In the rather florid style of those days

the once youthful Margaret Moncrieffe expresses herself as follows:



Oh, may these pages one day meet the eye of him who subdued my virgin

heart, whom the immutable, unerring laws of nature had pointed out for

my husband, but whose sacred decree the barbarous customs of society

fatally violated!



Commenting on this paragraph, Mr. H. C. Merwin justly remarks that,

whatever may have been Burr's conduct toward Margaret Moncrieffe, the

lady herself, who was the person chiefly concerned, had no complaint

to make of it. It certainly was no very serious affair, since in the

following year Burr met a lady who, while she lived, was the only woman

for whom he ever really cared.



This was Theodosia Prevost, the wife of a major in the British army.

Burr met her first in 1777, while she was living with her sister in

Westchester County. Burr's command was fifteen miles across the river,

but distance and danger made no difference to him. He used to mount a

swift horse, inspect his sentinels and outposts, and then gallop to the

Hudson, where a barge rowed by six soldiers awaited him. The barge was

well supplied with buffalo-skins, upon which the horse was thrown with

his legs bound, and then half an hour's rowing brought them to the

other side. There Burr resumed his horse, galloped to the house of Mrs.

Prevost, and, after spending a few hours with her, returned in the same

way.



Mrs. Prevost was by no means beautiful, but she had an attractiveness

of her own. She was well educated and possessed charming manners, with

a disposition both gentle and affectionate. Her husband died soon after

the beginning of the war, and then Burr married her. No more ideal

family life could be conceived than his, and the letters which passed

between the two are full of adoration. Thus she wrote to him:



Tell me, why do I grow every day more tenacious of your regard? Is it

because each revolving day proves you more deserving?



And thus Burr answered her:



Continue to multiply your letters to me. They are all my solace. The

last six are constantly within my reach. I read them once a day at

least. Write me all that I have asked, and a hundred things which I have

not.



When it is remembered that these letters were written after nine years

of marriage it is hard to believe all the evil things that have been

said of Burr.



His wife died in 1794, and he then gave a double affection to his

daughter Theodosia, whose beauty and accomplishments were known

throughout the country. Burr took the greatest pains in her education,

and believed that she should be trained, as he had been, to be brave,

industrious, and patient. He himself, who has been described as a

voluptuary, delighted in the endurance of cold and heat and of severe

labor.



After his death one of his younger admirers was asked what Burr had done

for him. The reply was characteristic.



"He made me iron," was the answer.



No father ever gave more attention to his daughter's welfare. As to

Theodosia's studies he was very strict, making her read Greek and Latin

every day, with drawing and music and history, in addition to French.

Not long before her marriage to Joseph Allston, of South Carolina, Burr

wrote to her:



I really think, my dear Theo, that you will be very soon beyond all

verbal criticism, and that my whole attention will be presently directed

to the improvement of your style.



Theodosia Burr married into a family of good old English stock, where

riches were abundant, and high character was regarded as the best of

all possessions. Every one has heard of the mysterious tragedy which is

associated with her history. In 1812, when her husband had been elected

Governor of his state, her only child--a sturdy boy of eleven--died, and

Theodosia's health was shattered by her sorrow. In the same year Burr

returned from a sojourn in Europe, and his loving daughter embarked from

Charleston on a schooner, the Patriot, to meet her father in New

York. When Burr arrived he was met by a letter which told him that his

grandson was dead and that Theodosia was coming to him.



Weeks sped by, and no news was heard of the ill-fated Patriot. At last

it became evident that she must have gone down or in some other way have

been lost. Burr and Governor Allston wrote to each other letter after

letter, of which each one seems to surpass the agony of the other. At

last all hope was given up. Governor Allston died soon after of a broken

heart; but Burr, as became a Stoic, acted otherwise.



He concealed everything that reminded him of Theodosia. He never spoke

of his lost daughter. His grief was too deep-seated and too terrible for

speech. Only once did he ever allude to her, and this was in a letter

written to an afflicted friend, which contained the words:



Ever since the event which separated me from mankind I have been able

neither to give nor to receive consolation.



In time the crew of a pirate vessel was captured and sentenced to be

hanged. One of the men, who seemed to be less brutal than the rest,

told how, in 1812, they had captured a schooner, and, after their usual

practice, had compelled the passengers to walk the plank. All hesitated

and showed cowardice, except only one--a beautiful woman whose eyes were

as bright and whose bearing was as unconcerned as if she were safe on

shore. She quickly led the way, and, mounting the plank with a certain

scorn of death, said to the others:



"Come, I will show you how to die."



It has always been supposed that this intrepid girl may have been

Theodosia Allston. If so, she only acted as her father would have done

and in strict accordance with his teachings.



This resolute courage, this stern joy in danger, this perfect

equanimity, made Burr especially attractive to women, who love courage,

the more so when it is coupled with gentleness and generosity.



Perhaps no man in our country has been so vehemently accused regarding

his relations with the other sex. The most improbable stories were told

about him, even by his friends. As to his enemies, they took boundless

pains to paint him in the blackest colors. According to them, no woman

was safe from his intrigues. He was a perfect devil in leading them

astray and then casting them aside.



Thus one Matthew L. Davis, in whom Burr had confided as a friend, wrote

of him long afterward a most unjust account--unjust because we have

proofs that it was false in the intensity of its abuse. Davis wrote:



It is truly surprising how any individual could become so eminent as a

soldier, as a statesman, and as a professional man who devoted so much

time to the other sex as was devoted by Colonel Burr. For more than

half a century of his life they seemed to absorb his whole thought.

His intrigues were without number; the sacred bonds of friendship were

unhesitatingly violated when they operated as barriers to the indulgence

of his passions. In this particular Burr appears to have been unfeeling

and heartless.



It is impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of

incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known,

should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality

is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung

promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in our own

country, Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when

Gladstone was more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a

question of a woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London

clubs were humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that

this aged and austere old gentleman was not above seeking common street

amours.



And so with Aaron Burr to a great extent. That he was a man of strict

morality it would be absurd to maintain. That he was a reckless and

licentious profligate would be almost equally untrue. Mr. H. O. Merwin

has very truly said:



Part of Burr's reputation for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that

vanity respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused

to accept the parentage of a child.



"Why do you allow this woman to saddle you with her child when you KNOW

you are not the father of it?" said a friend to him a few months before

his death.



"Sir," he replied, "when a lady does me the honor to name me the father

of her child I trust I shall always be too gallant to show myself

ungrateful for the favor."



There are two curious legends relating to Aaron Burr. They serve to show

that his reputation became such that he could not enjoy the society of a

woman without having her regarded as his mistress.



When he was United States Senator from New York he lived in Philadelphia

at the lodging-house of a Mrs. Payne, whose daughter, Dorothy Todd, was

the very youthful widow of an officer. This young woman was rather

free in her manners, and Burr was very responsive in his. At the time,

however, nothing was thought of it; but presently Burr brought to the

house the serious and somewhat pedantic James Madison and introduced him

to the hoyden.



Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but

gradually rising to a prominent position in politics--"the great little

Madison," as Burr rather lightly called him. Before very long he had

proposed marriage to the young widow. She hesitated, and some one

referred the matter to President Washington. The Father of his Country

answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the

subject of matrimony. It is worth preserving because it shows that he

had a sense of humor:



For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice

to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage... A woman very

rarely asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her

mind is wholly made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation

of obtaining a sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your

disapproval.



Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish ways

was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her old

association with Burr. At once the story sprang to light that Burr had

been her lover and that he had brought about the match with Madison as

an easy way of getting rid of her.



There is another curious story which makes Martin Van Buren, eighth

President of the United States, to have been the illegitimate son of

Aaron Burr. There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that

Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was

kept by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life

showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was

called by his opponents "the fox of Kinderhook." But, as Van Buren was

born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to

Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember,

as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only

before their marriage, but afterward until her death.



Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited

by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster,

found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please

them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during

his later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect. His

love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case

of his second marriage.



Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he

once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only other

occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated

Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached

Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the

coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his

mistress.



It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his

intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may

be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it

exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women

of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when

otherwise he might never have thought of them.



That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him

may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and

reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a

will in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the same

time he wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:



If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ----,

too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my recollection.

She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.



Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the

course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters

written by aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he had

never burned. Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man

who loved love for its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge

iron-clamped chest, and he instructed Theodosia in case he should die to

burn every letter which might injure any one.



After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.

Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a

means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed them

unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of the man

who trusted him as a friend.



Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years. His

last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating because it

has often been misunderstood.



Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped

with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband

died while she was still quite young, and she then married a French

wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man of

much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in New

York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall he

and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the

salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.



Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel

returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and

paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing

in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own

right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel

returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.



Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he

died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not

very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal

advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr.

She had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now

seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He

was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically

he was straight, active, and vigorous.



A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed

all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead

her in to dinner, he said:



"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours."



These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and

finally proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less

flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to discourage

a man like Aaron Burr.



"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a

clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it."



This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather

liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the

leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's

mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married

him to his first wife fifty years before.



Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a strong

one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The great

house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's advice.

Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination. Therefore she

arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris gowns; the members

of her household and eight servants were called in and the ceremony

was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed. A dozen cobwebbed

bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and the marriage feast

went on merrily until after midnight.



This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was

strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections

of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of

the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another

woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was

told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early

part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a

new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge to

be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.



The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very

long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state

Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge

over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they

brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the

investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in

a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out to

be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the more

so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had been

engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.



She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One

day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was surprised

to see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open carriage.

He came out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to find her in a

violent temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each cushion at her

side.



"What do you wish, madam?" said he, rather mildly.



"What do I wish?" she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr!"



Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end

they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.

When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into

a flood of tears--another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr

exercised through all his checkered life.



It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral

character of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of

recklessness. As a political leader he was almost the equal of Jefferson

and quite superior to Hamilton. As a man of the world he was highly

accomplished, polished in manner, charming in conversation. He made

friends easily, and he forgave his enemies with a broadmindedness that

is unusual.



On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of

insincerity, and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too

often to the injury of those women who could not resist his insinuating

ways and the caressing notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in his

youth, he was devoted, affectionate, and loyal; while as a father he was

little less than worshiped by the daughter whom he reared so carefully.



One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has

been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and

such a daughter as Burr had.



When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias

be summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an

affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or

romance. Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some

degree, even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven

itself.



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