by Ron Chernow
While being battered by the press, Burr had to fend off a wave of anonymous broadsides in the streets, his well-known profligacy forming the theme of many of them. Cheetham wrote some of them, including one claiming that the father of a young woman deflowered by Burr had arrived in New York to seek revenge. One by “Sylphid” warned, “Let the disgraceful debauchee who permitted an infamous prostitute to insult and embitter the dying moments of his injured wife—let him look home.”53 Another handbill, signed “A Young German,” accused Burr of looting the estate of a Dutch baker to relieve his own indebtedness of six thousand dollars.54 “An Episcopalian” informed readers that Burr “meditates a violent attack upon the rights of property.”55 Some broadsides even got around to dealing with politics. “The Liar, Caught in His Own Toils” reiterated the familiar refrain that Burr had tried to swipe the 1800 election from Jefferson and now planned to dismember the union.56
At his late January meeting with Jefferson, Burr had identified Hamilton as the author of unsigned broadsides against him, but no evidence of this exists. Even in private letters, Hamilton never referred to specific carnal acts committed by Burr; in that sense, he was quite discreet. Yet Burr may have thought that Hamilton secretly contributed to Federalist slander, even though most of the offensive handbills echoed articles in the American Citizen and probably originated with Republicans. From his campaign literature, it was clear that Burr, like Hamilton, felt persecuted by slander and powerless to stop it. One broadside said indignantly, “Col. Burr has been loaded with almost every epithet of abuse to be found in the English language. He has been represented as a man totally destitute of political principle or integrity.”57
Burr feigned indifference to the “new and amusing libels” published against him, as if nothing could shake his perfect aplomb.58 Unlike his opponents, he ran a clean, if aggressive, campaign from his John Street headquarters. He fought with his usual zest and charm, and his criticisms of Morgan Lewis fell within the bounds of propriety. Criticizing nepotism among the Livingstons and Clintons, he lent his campaign a populist tinge by styling himself “a plain and unostentatious citizen” who ran for office “unaided by the power of innumerable family connections.”59 To elevate Burr in Federalist eyes, his broadsides likened him to Hamilton. One sheet described him as a first-rate lawyer who stood on a par “with Hamilton in point of sound argument, polished shafts and manly nervous eloquence, impressive and convincing reasoning.”60
Despite the propaganda barrage directed against him, Burr thought the race was winnable, and his followers remained sanguine as the April vote approached. Oliver Wolcott, Jr., considered it “most probable that Colo. Burr will succeed. It is certain that he commands a numerous and intrepid party who are not to be intimidated or subdued.”61 Days before the election, Hamilton sounded mournful about the outcome. “I say nothing on politics,” he confided to his brother-in-law Philip Jeremiah Schuyler, “with the course of which I am too much disgusted to give myself any future concern about them.”62 As usual, Hamilton proved too pessimistic. When the votes were counted in late April, Burr had narrowly won New York City, but he was outvoted so heavily upstate that he lost the race by a one-sided margin of 30,829 to 22,139.
This stunning, unexpected defeat seemed to deal a mortal blow to Burr’s career. He had ten months left as vice president, but then what? Hounded from Washington and the Republican party, he had failed to recoup lost ground in New York. Was Hamilton responsible for his loss in the gubernatorial race? Hamilton’s friend Judge Kent dismissed this view, noting that most Federalists had voted for Burr, while the “cold reserve and indignant reproaches of Hamilton may have controlled a few.”63 It is highly unlikely that Hamilton’s waning influence could have made the difference in a landslide election. John Quincy Adams observed that New York Federalists were now “a minority, and of that minority, only a minority were admirers and partisans of Mr. Hamilton.”64 Far more decisive in the outcome was President Jefferson. After assuring Burr that he never intruded in elections, he intimated to two New York congressmen that Burr was officially excommunicated from the Republican party. This view, reported in the New York papers, stigmatized Burr among Republican loyalists.
Nonetheless, Burr’s admirers were adamant that Alexander Hamilton had destroyed his career. “If General Hamilton had not opposed Colonel Burr, I have very little doubt but he would have been elected governor of New York,” wrote Burr’s friend Charles Biddle.65 This view was repeated by an early Burr biographer, who said that Burr had won “the confidence of the more moderate Federalists and nothing but Hamilton’s vehement opposition had prevented that party’s voting for him en masse.”66 This theory ignores the awkward fact that Burr had fared very well indeed among New York Federalists. Burr’s editor, Mary-Jo Kline, has written, “By the week before the election . . . there were signs that the Federalist organization had given A[aron] B[urr] full, if clandestine, support.”67 After the loss, Burr kept up his usual unflappable air. Once the election results were in, he sent a letter full of fake bravado to his daughter, Theodosia, in which he recounted his recent love life. He had been unable to visit a certain mistress named Celeste, he said, but had made time for his New York “inamorata,” identified as “La G.” He praised the latter for being “good-tempered and cheerful” but also faulted her for being “flat-chested.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned the governor’s race, saying that the “election is lost by a great majority: tant mieux [so much the better].”68 This glib insouciance reflected Burr’s lifelong self-protective pose of aristocratic disdain and indifference. Under this urbanity, however, grew a murderous rage against Hamilton. In his eyes, Hamilton had blocked his path to the presidency by supporting Jefferson in 1801. Now Hamilton had blocked his path to the New York governorship. Alexander Hamilton was a curse, a hypocrite, the author of all his misery. At least that’s how Aaron Burr saw things in the spring of 1804.
During the campaign, Hamilton had been troubled by new secession threats among Federalists. Nothing was more antithetical to his conception of Federalism. A friend, Adam Hoops, recalled running into Hamilton in Albany in early March and asking him about the secession rumors. “The idea of disunion he could not hear of without impatience,” recalled Hoops, “and expressed his reprobation of it using strong terms.”69 In a tremendous visionary leap, Hamilton foresaw a civil war between north and south, a war that the north would ultimately win but at a terrible cost: “The result must be destructive to the present Constitution and eventually the establishment of separate governments framed on principles in their nature hostile to civil liberty.”70 Hamilton was so appalled by this specter that he and Hoops talked of it for more than an hour: “The subject had taken such fast hold of him that he could not detach himself from it until a professional engagement called him into court.”71 Hamilton continued to worry about the “bloody anarchy” and the overthrow of the Constitution that might result from Jefferson’s policies.72
That spring, Timothy Pickering, the ex–secretary of state and now a senator from Massachusetts, made the rounds of Federalist leaders in New York, trying to drum up support for a runaway northern confederacy “exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and oppression of the aristocratic Democrats of the South.”73 Without support from the two large mid-Atlantic states, New York and New Jersey, such a federation would be stillborn. Pickering and the so-called Essex Junto hoped to recruit leading local Federalists. Though many New York Federalists feared the dominance of Virginia and the expansion of slavery after the Louisiana Purchase, both Hamilton and Rufus King solidly opposed any secessionist movement. Soon after Pickering’s visit, Major James Fairlie asked Hamilton if he had been approached about the northern confederacy. Fairlie recalled that Hamilton “said that he had been applied to in relation to that subject by some persons from the eastward.” Hamilton then added, “You know there cannot be any political confidence between Mr. Jefferson and his administration and myself. But I view the suggestion of such a
project with horror.”74
The secession campaign had matured to the point that its instigators planned a Boston meeting late that fall, after Jefferson’s presumed reelection. Hamilton agreed to attend, undoubtedly to dissuade participants from this self-destructive act. Some detractors tried to cast Hamilton as a confederate in the plot, when it flew in the face of his life’s overwhelming passion: the strength and stability of the union. Even Jefferson later referred to “the known principle of General Hamilton never, under any views, to break the Union.”75 Hamilton’s dismay about the secessionist threat preoccupied him during the weeks leading up to the duel. His son John Church Hamilton told of one dinner party at the Grange just a week before the fatal encounter. “After dinner, when they were alone, Hamilton turned to [John] Trumbull, and looking at him with deep meaning, said: ‘You are going to Boston. You will see the principal men there. Tell them from ME, at MY request, for God’s sake, to cease these conversations and threatenings about a separation of the Union. It must hang together as long as it can be made to.”76 Since 1787, Hamilton had never wavered in his belief that the Constitution must be preserved as long as possible, nor in his commitment to do everything in his power to make it work. He was not about to change that view now.
FORTY-ONE
A DESPICABLE OPINION
Sometime in March 1804, Hamilton dined in Albany at the home of Judge John Tayler, a Republican merchant and former state assemblyman who was working for the election of Morgan Lewis. Both Judge Tayler and Hamilton
expressed their dread at having Aaron Burr as governor. “You can have no conception of the exertions that are [being made] for Burr,” Tayler had told De Witt Clinton. “Every artifice that can be devised is used to promote his cause.”1
This private dinner on State Street triggered a chain of events that led inexorably to Hamilton’s duel with Burr. Present at Tayler’s table was Dr. Charles D. Cooper, a physician who had married Tayler’s adopted daughter. Contemptuous of Burr, Cooper was delighted to sit back and listen to two of New York’s most illustrious Federalists, Hamilton and James Kent, denounce him bluntly at the table. So exhilarated was Cooper by this virulent talk that on April 12 he dashed off an account to his friend Andrew Brown, telling him that Hamilton had spoken of Burr “as a dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted.”2 Cooper asked a friend to deliver the letter; he later claimed it was purloined and opened. This may have been a cover story, though people often pored over private letters at local inns that served as post offices; it was not uncommon for letters to be intercepted and then turn up unexpectedly in print.
Before Cooper knew it, excerpts from his letter had appeared in the New-York Evening Post. Editor William Coleman evidently thought Cooper’s words had been published in a handbill and needed to be refuted. He reminded readers that Hamilton had “repeatedly declared” his neutrality in the race between Burr and Lewis.3 To drive home the point, Coleman ran a letter from Philip Schuyler repeating Hamilton’s pledge to stay aloof from the race and saying that he could never have made the statement attributed to him about Burr. By writing this letter, Schuyler, unwittingly, became the agent of his cherished son-in-law’s death.
Cooper took umbrage at Schuyler’s insinuation that he had invented the story and on April 23 wrote a second letter, this time to Schuyler, substantiating his claim that Hamilton had traduced Burr: “Gen. 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.”4 Cooper noted that in February Hamilton had said as much publicly when Federalists met at the City Tavern in Albany to choose a gubernatorial candidate. But it was Cooper’s next assertion that pushed relations between Hamilton and Burr past the breaking point. Far from being irresponsible, said Cooper, he had been “unusually cautious” in recounting the dinner at Tayler’s, “for really, sir, I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.”5 This letter, which changed so many lives, appeared in the Albany Register on April 24, 1804.
On June 18, seven weeks after his election defeat, Burr received a copy of the upstate paper with Cooper’s letter. Whether it was sent by an irate friend or a malicious enemy, we do not know. In his cool, disdainful style, Burr had prided himself on sloughing off allegations and not dignifying them with responses. But now, banished to the political wilderness, Burr was no longer immune to criticism, and he flew into a rage. Like many people who hide hostility behind charming facades, Burr was, at bottom, a captive of his temper. With his insatiable appetite for political gossip, he knew that Hamilton had been maligning him for years. On two previous occasions, they had nearly entered into affairs of honor over Hamilton’s statements. During his feverish efforts to prevent Burr from becoming president during the 1801 election tie, Hamilton had called him profligate, bankrupt, corrupt, and unprincipled and had accused him of trying to cheat Jefferson out of the presidency. In October 1802, Hamilton had averted a duel over this by admitting that he had “no personal knowledge” of such machinations.6 Burr later told a friend:
It is too well known that Genl. H[amilton] had long indulged himself in illiberal freedoms with my character. He had a peculiar talent of saying things improper and offensive in such a manner as could not well be taken hold of. On two different occasions, however, having reason to apprehend that he had gone so far as to afford me fair occasion for calling on him, he anticipated me by coming forward voluntarily and making apologies and concessions. From delicacy to him and from a sincere desire for peace, I have never mentioned these circumstances, always hoping that the generosity of my conduct would have some influence on his.7
Some Burr admirers have noted that while Hamilton made scathing comments about Burr, he never responded in kind. This may say less about Burr’s ethics than his style. Where Hamilton was outspoken in denunciations of people, the wily Burr tended to cultivate a wary silence, a studied ambiguity, in his comments about political figures.
When Burr set eyes on Cooper’s letter, he was still smarting from his election defeat and the apparent collapse of his career. Before 1800, he could not have acted against Hamilton because of the latter’s immense influence in the Washington and Adams administrations. Then as vice president under Jefferson, Burr knew that his political fate might rest with the Federalists and that he could not antagonize Hamilton. Now, Hamilton was fair game. He still bore the famous name but without the power that once made it so fearsome. Joanne Freeman has written, “Burr was a man with a wounded reputation, a leader who had suffered personal abuse and the public humiliation of a lost election. A duel with Hamilton would redeem his honor and possibly dishonor Hamilton.”8 Sometime that spring, Burr told Charles Biddle that “he was determined to call out the first man of any respectability concerned in the infamous publications concerning him,” recalled Biddle. “He had no idea then of having to call on General Hamilton.”9 Burr was, however, laboring under the misimpression that Hamilton had drafted anonymous broadsides against him. Perhaps Cooper’s letter confirmed his hunch that Hamilton had been making mischief behind the scenes.
The great mystery behind Burr’s challenge to Hamilton lies in what exactly Charles Cooper meant when he said he could detail a “still more despicable opinion” that Hamilton had spouted against Burr. The question has led to two centuries of speculation. Gore Vidal has titillated readers of fiction with his supposition that Hamilton accused Burr of an incestuous liaison with his daughter, Theodosia. But Burr was such a dissipated, libidinous character that Hamilton had a rich field to choose from in assailing his personal reputation. Aaron Burr had been openly accused of every conceivable sin: deflowering virgins, breaking up marriages through adultery, forcing women into prostitution, accepting bribes, fornicating with slaves, looting the estates of legal clients. This grandson of theologian Jonathan Edwards had sampled many forbidden fruits. To give but one recent example of scandal: six months before the dinner at Tayler’s,
Burr had received a letter from a former lover, Mrs. Hayt, that politely requested hush money. She explained that she was “in a state of pregnancy and in want.... [O]nly think what a small sum you gave me, a gentleman of your connections.” She did not wish to expose him, she promised, “but I would thank you if you would be so kind as to send me a little money.”10 If Burr did not pay her, Hayt may have made good on her threat to expose him; if so, New York society would have been abuzz with the story. In the last analysis, however, the specific charge that Cooper had in mind was unimportant, for Burr was now poised to exploit any pretext to strike at Hamilton. Their affair of honor was less about slurs and personal insults than politics and party leadership.
On Monday morning, June 18, after digesting the Cooper letter, Burr asked his friend William P. Van Ness to come immediately to Richmond Hill, his home overlooking the Hudson. Burr was suffering from an ague, and his neck was wrapped in scarves. Many people, Burr told Van Ness, had informed him that “General Hamilton had at different times and upon various occasions used language and expressed opinions highly injurious to [my] reputation.”11 Thus, it was clearly a catalog of cumulative insults, rather than the Cooper letter alone, that had provoked Burr to action. By eleven o’clock that morning, Van Ness materialized at Hamilton’s law office with a letter from Burr, sternly demanding an explanation of the “despicable” act alluded to in Cooper’s letter. Both the tone and substance of Burr’s letter telegraphed to Hamilton that Burr was commencing an affair of honor.