Burr: Portrait of a Dangerous Man

A special despatch to the New York Evening Post, written by Charles Schuyler:

"Shortly before midnight July 1st, 1833, Colonel Aaron Burr, aged 77, married Eliza Jumel, born Bowen 58 years ago (more likely 65, but remember: She is prone to litigation!). The marriage took place at Madam Jumel's mansion on the Washington Heights and was performed by Dr. Bogart (will supply first name later). In attendance were Madam Jumel's niece (some say daughter) and her husband, Nelson Chase, a lawyer from Colonel Burr's Reade Street firm. This was the colonel's second marriage; a half century ago, he married Theodosia Prevost.

"In 1804, Colonel Burr--then Vice-President of the United States--shot and killed General Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Three years after this lamentable affair, Colonel Burr was arrested by order of President Thomas Jefferson and charged with treason for having wanted to break up the United States. A Court presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall found Colonel Burr innocent of treason but guilty of the misdemeanour of proposing an invasion of Spanish territory in order to make himself emperor of Mexico.

"The new Mrs. Aaron Burr is the widow of the wine merchant Stephen Jumel; reputedly, she is the richest woman in New York City, having begun her days humbly but no doubt cheerfully in a brothel at Providence, Rhode Island...."

I don't seem to be able to catch the right tone, but since William Leggett has invited me to write about Colonel Burr for the Evening post, I shall put in everything and look forward to his response: "I don't think"--and he'll gulp air in his consumptive way--"that the managing editor will allow any reference to what he calls 'a disorderly house.' "

Well, the euphemisms can come later. Recently, mysteriously, Leggett has shown a sudden interest in Colonel Burr, although his editor, Mr. Bryant, finds my employer, the colonel, "unsavory" and adds, "Like so many men of the last century, he did not respect the virtue of women."

Because I am younger than Mr. Bryant, I take Colonel Burr's "unsavoriness" as a nice contrast to the canting tone of our own day. The 18th Century man was not like us--and Colonel Burr is an 18th Century man still alive and vigorous, with a new wife up here in Haarlem and an old mistress in Jersey City. He is a man of perfect charm and fascination. A monster, in short. To be destroyed? I think that is what Leggett has in mind. But do I?

I sit now under the eaves of the Jumel mansion. Everyone is asleep--except the bridal couple? Somber thought, all that aged flesh commingled. I put it out of my mind.

• • •

This astonishing day began when Colonel Burr came out of his office and asked me to accompany him to the City Hotel, where he was to meet a friend. As usual, he was mysterious. He makes even a trip to the barber seem as if it were a plot to overthrow the state. Walking down Broad Way, he positively skipped at my side, with no trace of the stroke that half paralyzed him three years ago.

At the corner of Liberty Street, the colonel paused to buy a taffy apple. The applewoman knew him. But then, every New Yorker knows him on sight. The ordinary people greet him warmly, while the respectable folk tend to cut him dead--not that he gives them much opportunity, for he usually walks with eyes downcast or focused on his companion. Yet he sees everything.

"For himself the colonel, and not a dear worm in it!"--obviously a joke between Burr and the old biddy. He answered her graciously. Businessmen hurrying across from Wall Street Quickly took him in with their eyes, then looked away. He affected not to notice the sensation his physical presence still occasions.

"Charley, are you free for an adventure tonight?"

"Yes, sir. What sort of an adventure?"

The large black eyes gave me a mischievous look. "Half the fun of an adventure is the surprise."

In front of the City Hotel an omnibus was stopped, its horses neighing, pissing, groaning. Stout, prosperous men converged on the hotel; sundown is their time to meet, gossip, drink and then go home on foot--because that is faster than going by carriage. Nowadays, lower Broad Way is almost blocked with traffic at this hour and everyone walks; even the decrepit John Jacob Astor can be seen crawling along the street like some ancient snail, his viscous track the allure of money.

Instead of going inside the hotel, the colonel (put off by a group of Tammany sachems standing in the doorway?) turned into the graveyard of Trinity Church. I followed obediently. I am always obedient. What else can a none-too-efficient law clerk be? I cannot think why he keeps me on.

"I know--intimately--more people in this charming cemetery than I do in all of the Broad Way." Burr makes a joke of everything, his manner quite unlike that of other people. Was he always like this or did the years of exile in Europe make him different from the rest of us? Or--new thought--have the manners of New Yorkers changed? I suspect that is the case. But, if we seem strange to him, he is much too polite to say so. Full of the Devil, my quarry.

In the half-light of the cemetery, Burr did resemble the Devil--assuming that the Devil is an inch shorter than I (no more than five feet, six), slender, with tiny feet (hooves?), high forehead (in the fading light, I imagine vestigial horns), bald in front, with his remaining hair piled high and powdered absently in the old style and held in place with a shell comb. Behind him is a monument to the man he murdered.

"I shall want to be buried at Princeton College. Not that there's any immediate hurry." He glanced at Hamilton's tomb. No change of expression in face or voice as he asked, "Do you know the works of Sir Thomas Browne?"

"No, sir. A friend of yours?"

Burr only grinned, a bit of apple peel, red as old blood, on his remaining incisor. "No, Charley, nor was I present when Achilles hid among women." Whatever that meant. I record it all.

"I have always preferred women to men. I think that sets me apart, don't you?"

Knowing exactly what he meant, I agreed. New York gentlemen spend far more time with one another than in mixed company. Lately, they have taken to forming clubs from which women are banned.

"I cannot--simply--be without the company of a woman."

"But you've had no wife--"

"Since before you were born. But then, I have not lacked for ... gentle companionship." He gave me a swift grin; suddenly, in the pale light, he looked to be a randy boy of 14. Then abruptly he became his usual self, full of dignity save for that curious, unexpected wit. I always find his brilliance disturbing. We do not want the old to be sharper than we. It is bad enough that they were there first and got the best things.

"We shall be met presently at the hotel by my old friend Dr. Bogart. He has rented a carriage. We shall then drive to the Haarlem Heights--or Washington Heights, as I believe they are currently known." A fugitive smile.

Burr delights in tomb inscriptions. "Elizabeth! Of all people. Never knew she was dead." Burr slipped on his octagonal glasses. "Died 1810. That explains it. I was still in Europe, a fugitive from injustice." Burr removed the glasses. "I think her birth date has been--as Jeremy Bentham would say--minimized. She was older than I but ... beautiful! Beautiful, Charley." In the churchyard trees, birds chattered, while Broad Way's traffic was at its creaking, rattling worst.

"I know you're writing about my adventurous life." I was startled. Showed it. My face has no guile. "I've observed you taking notes. Don't fret. I don't mind. If I were not so lazy, I would do the job myself, having done part of it already."

"An actual memoir?"

"Bits and pieces. I still have a lingering desire to tell the true story of the Revolution before it is too late--as it may be already, since the schoolbooks seem to have cast the legend of those days in lead. It is quite uncanny how wrong they are about all of us. Why do you see so much of Mr. Leggett at the Evening Post?"

I literally stumbled at the rapidity of his charge; and it was a charge of the sort for which he is celebrated in courtroom cross-examinations. I gabbled. "I see him because--I have known him since I was at Columbia. He used to come there, you know, to talk about literature. About journalism. I'd thought, perhaps, as a career, I might write for the press before I took up the law. ..."

Whatever Burr wanted to get from me he must have got, for he changed the subject as he led me out of the graveyard and into Broad Way, where the flaring, hissing street lamps were now being lit and where passers-by cast flickering, dark shadows. He led on to the barroom of the City Hotel, where we sat down and drank madeira until the arrival of Dr. Bogart, a thin, white old man with a parrot's face and a most birdly manner.

Burr was exuberant, festive. I still had no idea why. "Dominie, you're late! No excuses. We must set out immediately! The tide is at the full." He put down his glass and I did the same, noticing how the gentlemen at the nearest table were straining to hear our every word. Not an easy thing to do, considering the rumble of masculine voices in the smoky room and the sound of the bartender cracking ice with a hammer.

"Heigh-ho!" Burr started briskly to the door, causing a covey of lawyers--some with awed bows of recognition--to scatter. "To the heights, gentlemen." He clapped his hands. "To the heights! Where else?"

• • •

Aaron Burr's recollection:

At about the third week of June 1804, I was sitting in the library of my Richmond Hill house with William Van Ness and his former law clerk, Martin Van Buren. We were going through a number of newspapers just arrived from Upstate and enjoying some of the more fantastical portraits of me (including a learned dissertation on the precise number of women I had ruined) when Van Ness showed me a copy of the Albany Register dated April 24th, 1804. It contained what looked to be a letter from a Dr. Charles Cooper reporting on a dinner party at Albany and stating. "General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared, in substance, that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government."

"That is hardly exceptional," I said. Then I saw what had attracted Van Ness's eye: "I could," wrote Dr. Cooper, "detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr." We looked in vain for that "more despicable opinion," which was nowhere given.

"It is the usual Hamilton diatribe." William did not take the matter seriously. Nor did I at first.

But in the night, I began to meditate on just what was meant by "more despicable." Hamilton had already called me Caesar, Catiline, Bonaparte (while himself dreaming of a crown in Mexico, should he fail to subvert Jefferson's feudal utopia). What did he now mean by more despicable? I fear that my usual equanimity in such matters had been shaken by the recent election. I did not sleep that night.

The next morning, June 18th, I wrote a letter to Hamilton asking for "a prompt and unqualified acknowledgment or denial of the use of any expressions which could warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper." I enclosed the newspaper cutting. Van Ness, looking very grim, went off to deliver it to Hamilton.

On June 21st, I received a long reply from him in which there was a good deal of quibbling as to the precise meaning of despicable. He then declared that he could not be held responsible for the inferences that others might draw from anything he had said "of a political opponent in the course of a 15 years' competition."

I answered him the same day, remarking that "political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honour." I pointed out that the accepted meaning of the word despicable conveys the idea of dishonor. I asked for a definite reply.

The next day, Hamilton gave another letter to a friend of his--complaining of my peremptory style but refusing to be any more definite than before--and authorized this friend to tell Van Ness something in addition. Hamilton's recollection of the dinner, it seemed, was somewhat hazy, but, to the extent that Colonel Burr was discussed, the context was entirely political and bore upon the current election for governor. Apparently, no reflections upon Colonel Burr's private character were made by General Hamilton.

It was about this time that I learned exactly what it was that Hamilton had said of me and I knew that this world was now far too narrow a place to contain the two of us.

Hamilton's friend made one further attempt to get him off the hook but only further impaled the slanderer by remarking that should Colonel Burr wish to inquire of any other conversation of Hamilton's concerning Burr, a prompt and frank avowal or denial would be given. This was too much. I told Van Ness to set a time and place for an interview.

It was determined that we would meet across the river in New Jersey, on the heights known as Weehawk. Nathaniel Pendleton would be second to Hamilton. Van Ness would be second to me. Pistols would be our weapons. Hamilton then asked that we delay the interview until after the close of the circuit court. It was agreed that we meet in two weeks' time, on July 11th, 1804.

For two weeks, we kept our secret from all but a handful of intimates. I put my affairs in order; wrote letters to Theodosia; prepared a will. I worried a good deal about the debts I would leave behind if I were killed. No doubt, Hamilton was in the same frame of mind. If anything, he was in a far worse position than I: He was deeply in debt, largely due to The Grange, a pretentious country seat he had prepared for himself several miles above Richmond Hill. He also had seven children. Fortunately for them, his wife was a Schuyler, so the poorhouse would never claim these relicts.

I soon discovered that I had made a mistake granting Hamilton a two-week delay. He immediately arranged for one Samuel Bradhurst to challenge me to a duel with swords. I had no choice but to answer this gentleman. We fought near Hoboken. I was at a considerable disadvantage, since Mr. Bradhurst's arms were about three inches longer than mine. It was Hamilton's design that I be, at the least, so cut up by Mr. Bradhurst that I (continued on page 176) Burr (continued from page 146) would not be in any condition to succeed in our interview on July 11th. Fortunately, I drew blood immediately. Mr. Bradhurst withdrew from the field of honor, leaving me unscratched.

On the evening of July fourth, I attended the celebration of the Society of the Cincinnati at Fraunces' Tavern.

Hamilton was most poised. In fact, I have seldom seen him so charming. "I must congratulate you on a successful interview," he murmured as we bowed to each other in the taproom.

"I hope your friend Mr. Bradhurst will make a swift recovery." I turned away.

Despite Hamilton's notorious arrogance and shortness with those whose minds worked less swiftly than his own, he had the gift of enchanting others when he chose. Suspecting that this might well be his last public appearance, he meant for all the world to remember him as he was that night, still handsome despite the fleshiness of too much good living, still able to delight with subtle flattery those older than himself, to dazzle with his brilliance those younger.

As we sat at table in the long room--a group of middle-aged men who shared nothing but the fact that we had all been young at the same time and had fought as officers in the Revolution--I, too, had the sense that this might be my last appearance upon the republic's brightest stage. There was a good chance that I would be killed. There was an even better chance that Hamilton would be killed. But whatever happened, nothing would ever be the same again in a week's time.

I felt curiously detached as I sat in the place of honor (despite my recent electoral defeat, I was still Vice-President of the United States); saw myself as from a great distance already a carnival waxworks and no longer real.

Others have written that I was moody and distant that night. Obviously, I was not in full command of myself. But then the ultimate encounter was at hand. The man who had set himself the task of ruining me during "15 years' competition" was now about to complete his work, and I must have known in some instinctive way that he would again succeed, no matter what happened on the Weehawk Heights.

I was genuinely moved when at the company's request General Hamilton got up and in his fine tenor voice sang The Drum, a song that no veteran of the Revolution can listen to without sorrow for his lost youth and the dead he loved.

Needless to say, I did not realize with what cunning Hamilton had prepared his departure from this world, and my ruin.

• • •

Charles Schuyler's account, continued 1834:

Today the colonel was in a most curious and excited mood. "If it amuses you, Charley, we shall go to the Heights of Weehawk and I shall act out for you the duel of the century, when the infamous Burr slew the noble Hamilton, from behind a thistle--obviously a disparaging allusion to my small stature. Yet Hamilton was less than an inch taller than I, though now he looms a giant of legend, with a statue to his divinity in the Merchants' Exchange, his temple. While for me no statue, no laurel, only thistle!"

I was delighted and somewhat embarrassed. Burr almost never speaks of the duel; and most people, unlike Leggett, are much too nervous of the subject ever to bring it up in his presence, even though it is the one thing everyone in the world knows about Aaron Burr, and the one thing it is impossible not to think of upon first meeting him.

"He killed General Hamilton," my mother whispered to me when the elegant little old man first came into our Greenwich Village tavern, after his return from Europe. "Take a good look at him. He was a famous man once."

As I grew older, I realized that my family admired Burr more than not and that my mother was pleased when he took a fancy to me, and gave me books to read, and encouraged me to attend Columbia College and take up the law. But my first glimpse of him at a table close to the pump-room fire was of the Devil himself, and I half expected him to leave not by way of the door but up the chimney with the flames.

We walked to Middle Pier at the end of Duane Street. "I've ordered my young boatman to stand by."

The colonel's eyes were bright at the prospect of such an unusual adventure--into past time rather than into that airy potential furture time where he is most at home.

"It was a hot day like this--30 years and one month ago. Yet I remember being most unseasonably cold. In fact, I ordered a fire the night of the tenth and slept in my clothes on a sofa in the study. Slept very well, I might add. A detail to be added to your heroic portrait of me." An amused glance in my direction. "Around dawn, John Swartwout came to wake me up. I was then joined by Van Ness and Matt Davis. We embarked from Richmond Hill."

The tall young boatman was waiting for us at the deserted slip. The sun was fierce. We were the only people on the wharf: The whole town had gone away for August.

We got into the boat and the young man began to row with slow, regular strokes upriver to the high green Jersey shore opposite.

"On just such a morning...." He hummed to himself softly. Then: "My affairs were in order. I had set out six blue boxes, containing enough material for my biography, if anyone was so minded to write such a thing. Those boxes now rest at the bottom of the sea. "He was blithe even at this allusion to the beloved daughter: trailed his finger in the river; squinted at the sun. "What, I wonder, do the fishes make of my history?"

I tried to imagine him 30 years ago, with glossy dark hair, an unlined face, a steady hand--the Vice-President on an earrand of honor. But I could not associate this tiny old man with that figure of legend.

"Love letters to me were all discreetly filed, with instructions to be burned, to be returned to owners, to be read at my grave--whatever was fitting. My principal emotion that morning was relief. Everything was arranged. Everything was well finished."

"Did you think you might be killed?"

The colonel shook his head. "When I woke up on the sofa, saw dawn, I knew that I would live to see the sun set, that Hamilton would not." A sudden frown as he turned out of the bright sun; the face went into shadow. "You see, Hamilton deserved to die and at my hands."

I then asked the question I had wanted to ask since yesterday, but Burr only shook his head. "I have no intention of repeating, ever, what it was that Hamilton said of me."

In silence, we watched the steamboat from Albany make its way down the center channel of the river. On the decks, women in bright summer finery twirled parasols; over the water, their voices echoed the gulls that followed in the ship's wake, waiting for food.

Apparently the Weehawk Heights "look just the same now as they did then." The colonel skipped easily onto the rocky shore. While I helped our sailor drag his boat onto the beach, the colonel walked briskly up a narrow footpath to a wooded ledge.

"I deal for its purpose," Burr said when I joined him.

The ledge is about six feet wide and perhaps 30 or 40 feet long, with a steep cliff above and below it. At either end, a green tangle of brush partly screens the view of the river.

The colonel indicates the spires of New York City visible through the green foliage. "That is the last sight many a gentleman saw."

I notice that he is whispering; he notices, too, and laughs. "From habit. When duelists came here, they were always very quiet for fear they'd wake an old man who lived in a hut nearby. He was called the captain and he hated dueling. If he heard you, he would rush onto the scene and thrust himself between the duelists and refuse to budge. Often to everyone's great relief."

Burr crosses to the marble obelisk at the center of the ledge. "I have not seen this before." The monument is dedicated to the memory of Alexander Hamilton. Parts have been chipped away, while the rest is scribbled over with lovers' names. The colonel makes no comment.

Then he crosses slowly to a large cedar tree, pushing aside weeds, kicking pebbles from his path. At the base of the tree, he stops and takes off his black jacket. He stares down at the river. I grow uneasy: cannot think why. I tell myself that there are no ghosts.

When Burr finally speaks, his voice is matter of fact. "Just before seven o'clock, Hamilton and his second, Pendleton, and the good Dr. Hosack--Hamilton was always fearful for his health--arrive. Just down there." Burr points. I look, half expecting to see the dead disembark. But there is only river below us.

"Pendleton carries an umbrella. So does Van Ness. Which looks most peculiar on a summer morning, but the umbrellas are to disguise our features. We are now about to break the law."

Burr leaves his post at the cedar tree, walks to the end of the ledge. "Now General Hamilton arrives there, with his second."

For an instant I almost see the rust-colored hair of Hamilton, shining in summer sun. I have the sense of being trapped in someone else's dream, caught in a constant circular unceasing present. It is a horrible sensation.

Burr bows. "Good morning, General. Mr. Pendleton, good morning." Burr turns and walks toward me. "Billy," I swear he now thinks me Van Ness. "You and Pendleton draw lots to see who has choice of position and who will give the word to fire."

With blind eyes, the colonel indicates for me to cross to the upper end of the ledge.

"Your principal has won both choices, Mr. Pendleton." A pause. "He wants to stand there?" A slight note of surprise in Burr's voice.

I realize suddenly that I am now standing where Hamilton stood. The Sun is in my eyes; through green leaves water reflects brightness.

Burr has now taken up his position ten full paces opposite me. I think I am going to faint. Burr has the best position, facing the heights. I know that I am going to die. I want to scream but dare not.

"I am ready." The colonel seems to hold in his hand a heavy pistol. "What?" He looks at me, lowers the pistol. "You require your glasses? Of course, General. I shall wait."

"Is General Hamilton satisfied?" Burr then asks. "Good, I am ready, too."

I stand transfixed with terror as Burr takes aim and shouts, "Present!"

And I am killed.

Burr starts toward me, arms outstretched. I feel my legs give way; feel the sting, the burning of the bullet in my belly; feel myself begin to die. Just in time, Burr stops. He becomes his usual self, and so do I.

"Hamilton fired first. I fired an instant later. Hamilton's bullet broke a branch from this tree." Burr indicated the tall cedar. "My bullet pierced his liver and spine. He drew himself up on his toes. Like this." Burr rose like a dancer. "Then fell to a half-sitting position. Pendleton propped him up. 'I am a dead man,' Hamilton said. I started toward him, but Van Ness stopped me. Dr. Hosack was coming. So we left.

"But ... but I would've stayed and gone to you, had it not been for what I saw in your face." Again the blind look in Burr's eyes. Again he sees me as Hamilton. And again I start to die, the bullet burns.

"I saw terror in your face, terror at the evil you had done me. And that is why I could not go to you or give you any comfort. Why I could do nothing but what I did. Aim to kill, and kill."

Burr sat down at the edge of the monument. Rubbed his eyes. The vision--or whatever this lunacy was--passed. In a quiet voice, he continued, "As usual with me, the world saw fit to believe a different story. The night before our meeting, Hamilton wrote a letter to posterity. An astonishing work reminiscent of a penitent monk's last confession. He would reserve his first fire, he declared, and perhaps his second, because, morally, he disapproved of dueling. Then, of course, he fired first. As for his disapproval of dueling, he had issued at least three challenges--that I know of. But Hamilton realized better than anyone that the world--our American world, at least--loves a canting hypocrite."

Burr got to his feet. Started toward the path. I followed dumbly.

"Hamilton lived for a day and a half. He was in character to the very last. He told Bishop Moore that he felt no ill will toward me. That he had met me with a fixed resolution to do me no harm. What a contemptible thing to say!"

Burr started down the path. I staggered after him. At the river's edge, he paused and looked across the slow water toward the flowery rise of Staten Island. "I had forgot how lovely this place was, if I had ever noticed."

We got into the boat. "You know, I made Hamilton a giant by killing him. If he had lived, he would have continued his decline. He would have been quite forgotten by now. Like me." This was said without emotion. "While that might have been my monument up there, all scribbled over."

"i knew that this world was now far too narrow a place to contain the two of us"