Rival Caesars

by Desmond Dilg

  “You think I don’t know, Mr. Hamilton, of your proposal for the hand of Betsy Schuyler, but I do.” This was her parting shot. He did not reply, for others were listening.

  Then Hamilton relinquished the diplomatic young widow and straightway returned to the seat in the shrubbery. Sitting down he rested his head on his hands and went into deep and sullen thought. He was bitterly vexed with himself and all the world; for this was his first serious reverse.

  After a while he started up suddenly, and walked away in the moonlight, saying unto himself between his clenched teeth:

  “Curse him, the crafty traitor. He is the ruin of all my plans. His apparent honesty and sweetness of disposition is only an ambush. He is my evil shadow. All I take in hand prospers until he appears on the scene. Then everything goes wrong. He alienated Betsy's heart whom I must marry and he is going to wed the very woman I really love. Then again, his martial reputation exceeds mine. He is widely advertised as a capable and daring regimental officer. Curse him, I’ll have to shoot him yet. Shoot him! No, that won’t do either. Have we not sworn eternal friendship. Ah, there again he entrapped me. He disarmed me with that oath of brotherhood. But my turn will come yet. I must lay myself out from this day onward to take revenge. He never was my friend. He and I are foes—born foes. I am mad to believe in the possibility of human integrity anyhow. Every man I meet is capable of treachery and falsehood.

  “I’ve already put my knife into him, though. That last confidential report to Washington will end his military advancement—that is, if Washington remains at the head of the army, which seems certain.

  “It shall never be said that Alexander Hamilton was humiliated and surpassed by the son of a Puritan pedagogue from the wooly wilds of Connecticut. Damn him.”

  Meanwhile Burr had been riding steadily towards his destination, a military camp where his command lay. As he passed a clump of trees by the roadside, he fancied he detected something move therein.

  “Spies,” thought he (for the whole country had been denuded of inhabitants.) Every man found therein therefore was most probably a foe.

  Quick as a flash he turned his horse driving in his left spur and almost dragging the plunging animal around by the left rein—while reaching into the right holster for one of his heavy horse pistols.

  CRACK!

  A pistol shot, from among the trees. The bullet whistled spitefully past Burr's left ear.

  CRACK!

  Another shot. Again the bullet missed him, but embedded itself with a thud in the pummel of his military saddle.

  “Damned narrow shaves,” thought he coolly. Then grasping his sword in his left hand with the reins (and gripping a pistol in his right hand) he dashed into the underbrush from whence the shots came. “The best way to meet sudden danger,” he thought, “is to go straight at it.”

  A tall man seated on a heavily set bay horse leaped out of the foliage, a smoking weapon in each hand. Burr fired point plank. The stranger's horse rocked in the midst of its stride, fell over convulsively and died. The bullet had entered the animal's brain and the blood spurted out of its nostrils like water gushing from the nozzle of a fire engine.

  The rider disengaged himself smartly from the stirrups as the horse tumbled. He was an active man and full of grit. Then he jumped to his feet, and, sword at point, waited Burr's attack in the semi-darkness.

  Burr now drove both his spurs into the raw roan. The roan shied at the quivering body of the dying horse, but leaped forward gallantly. As he did so, Burr lifted his saber and made a shearing cut at his antagonist, but missed.

  Before Burr could wheel his horse again, the stranger's sword penetrated the animal’s intestines. Blood and water gushed forth. The roan, maddened with pain, gave a mighty bound to the right. Burr's body struck against the overhead limb of a dead tree. It swept him off the saddle. He fell backward upon the ground half-stunned. Only for a second however, Swiftly he scrambled to his feet and rushed upon the stranger.

  Neither man spoke a word. They were now fighting for their lives. Their teeth closed savagely. Their eyes flashed. The world spirit was raging within them. (The best man was to be selected).

  They lunged at each other, they smote at each other, they involuntarily hissed at each other between clenched teeth, but they did not speak. There was no time to speak. (Talk is superfluous when blades are drawn). Each believed the other a mortal foe.

  The stranger stood his ground manfully. He did not give way an inch. Decidedly, he was a man of valor.

  Burr now fought more guardedly, feeling he had this time met his match. He received a wound on the hand. It nearly severed a forefinger. The stranger was deeply gashed over the left eye. Blood streamed down half blinding him.

  Overhead the trees swayed in the rising wind. A storm gathered. The heavens became black and threatening. The darkness grew denser. The half moon shone out fitfully from behind the rushing clouds. The owls whooped. The bitterns boomed in the sedges by the swamp along the river.

  Still the two men fought on, both standing in a pool of blood—blood from the two dead horses mingled on the soil with their own blood. Their swords were red. Steel clashed against steel and sparks flashed out. Ten minutes passed. A quarter of an hour. Both were plainly becoming exhausted.

  “I must kill him,” thought Burr, “or he will kill me.”

  “I must kill him,” thought the stranger, “or be killed.”

  The two swords writhed and twisted and clashed. Burr made a false twist of his wrist. In a second the stranger felt his chance. His sword penetrated between Burr's left arm and body. The hilt thumped viciously against the future Vice President's ribs with a resounding thump. Burr staggered. The blow nearly knocked him down. The breath of the stranger blew hot in his face.

  “Ha, now I’ve got him,” thought Burr, recovering himself and (as a sheet of lightning flamed across the sky) he made a rapid backward twirl with the sharp crimsoned blade that literally slashed the stranger's throat from ear to ear.

  The body of the vanquished man sank limply back- wards across a log, and his blood gushed and hissed in two curved streams from the severed veins of the neck.

  Burr stood still and rested, panting for breath. Then he slowly wiped his weapon on a moss-grown stump and looked at it intently—Oh, how intently! While the perspiration of combat dripped from his bare brow and wet hair.

  The joy of absolute and unlimited victory, the grandest and most god-like of all joys, swelled up fiercely within him. Lifting the now clean shiny blade to his lips (his eyes with triumph red) he kissed the naked steel softly, saying, as a clap of thunder burst directly overhead:

  “Good blade! Mighty overcomer! Trusty friend! I salute thee! Verily thou art my savior, my deliverer, my Iron Redeemer! Glorious steel, ruler of earth and ocean, thou wast never a backbiter yet! In the hour of need thou didst not desert me!”

  He reached for his scabbard, inserted the point of the sword carefully and sent the blade home with a smart click and lovingly patted the hilt.

  Thereupon he coolly and methodically bound up his own wounded hand with some linen taken from the saddle bags of the dead stranger.

  Then leaning over the upturned body of the vanquished one, with its open staring eyes, its red gaping throat and distended jaws, he gazed down closely at the features.

  “Great Caesar,” thought he to himself, “as sure as I’m alive and he is dead, it's the same naval officer, who in '75 pinked Hamilton in the arm at Weehawken. There must be something in this. He is a blood relation of the De Lanceys.

  “Before 1775 he was in the king's secret service. I must search him and search him thoroughly. This may be an event for you, Aaron Burr.”

  Then Burr turned the body over, systematically searched it, and found sufficient evidence to show that his dead antagonist was a spy, disguised in the continental uniform.

  Pulling off the saddle from his foeman's dead horse, he rapidly ripped open the lining, removed the hair stuffing, and found (just what he
instinctively expected to find) a packet of letters written in cipher on very thin paper. Among the letters were a series of confidential dispatches addressed to General Washington, General Knox, General Arnold and General Lee.

  By this time daylight began to break. Burr tore open the enclosure, sat down on the rump of one of the dead horses, his feet in a pool of blood and began to read. There were four packets of letters, one within the other, also a partial key to the British cipher.

  (Now, it seemed that an American dispatch-rider had been captured by a British patrol sometime before, and his papers taken.) Thus British and American secret dispatches were both found in the same package.

  One of the documents was signed by a certain “Major Andre” and one by the fashionable wife of General Arnold. There were also a number of other documents, the reading of which opened Burr's eyes to many things—and made him doubt the integrity of officers and congressmen of the highest repute.

  One cipher document was a private and confidential letter from Colonel Alexander Hamilton, addressed to General George Washington at Philadelphia. Thus it ran:

  You ask me confidentially what I think of Colonel Aaron Burr, with regard to a higher military appointment. In reply I desire to state that I believe him to be an unworthy, sinister and dangerous man. That he is an able and brave soldier I do not deny, but his views are those of a Roman Caesar or rather of an impecunious Catiline. He has an ill opinion of Republican principles and forms; and laughs sardonically at the philosophy of Jefferson and Franklin. His ideals are indeed, those of a Stafford or Bolingbroke.

  If vested with high military command, he is therefore very likely to use it (upon occasion) for purposes that you can better imagine than I can prophetically describe. He is also, I understand, constantly visiting surreptitiously the home of a certain widow at Paramous within the British lines. He rides there. I am told, from his own camp at midnight, crossing the Hudson, with his horse fastened in the boat. Then he rides rapidly to her home and returns to camp before morning.

  She is or was the wife of the English officer and Baronet who defended Savannah. By our intelligence department she is suspected of being a secret agent or “go-between.” Burr's loyalty to the Revolution is therefore seriously in doubt. I myself have reason to suspect it, but can prove nothing. I therefore advise strongly against the further advancement of this very suave and ambitious man.

  (Signed) Alexander Hamilton.

  P. S.—Written in Cypher No. 4 D.

  “Et—tu Brute—I thought so,” said Burr to himself. “I half suspected it. My intuition was right. There is no integrity in men. Hamilton is my foe secretly, while openly professing friendship. Now I understand why Congress refused to give me the generalship after I saved Knox's brigade.

  “I must circumspectly continue to watch this West Indian Machiavelli, who writes like a Jesuit and thinks like an Iscariot.

  “Some day I will ram this infernal libel down his accursed throat.

  “Yes! Some day I must shoot that man. I must by God! I must—but not yet—not yet. Don’t be in a hurry Aaron Burr. Select your own time to smite. Don’t be in haste. More haste, less speed.”

  Then Colonel Burr refolded the letter and put it carefully away in his pocket with the others. Two of these others were secret cipher dispatches of a nature that we dare not even mention. One concerned negotiations between Chief Justice De Lancey, Judge Livingston, General Burgoyne, John Laurens and the firm of Roderique Hortalez & Co., of Paris.

  Now Burr, as one time staff officer and secretary to Washington, to Putnam, and to Arnold, and also as initial organizer of the Iron Cross, knew and had himself devised many of the Secret Ciphers used at headquarters.

  “I must shoot him for this,” again said Burr emphatically half aloud as he drew a long breath and strode away through the long wet grass. “By God, I must.

  “This letter is Hamilton’s death warrant. Now I understand him, the crafty doublefaced underminer. His words are smoother than butter, but war is in his heart.

  “Now, indeed, it is 'Mortuum Bellum' and woe to the vanquished.”

  XIV

  Mr. Warwick Hamilton

  Up the rocky mountain,

  Down the wooded glen:

  The man whose thought is iron,

  Is worth 10,000 men.

  And the days and the years rolled on, and other things befell—enough for a dozen romances.

  February 1801. The mercury stood at zero. The sullen darkness of the wintry evening was falling over the great growing city. From out the strong and wrathful north the cold piercing blast howled down. It winnowed the leaves and stripped the branches bare. Frost and snow lay everywhere. It covered the housetops, hung on the trees. Even the pumps were frozen. The streets were iron hard, as were the streams and gutters.

  The wind moaned and whined and blustered around the dreary buildings or whistled shriekingly between the tall ghostly leafless trees by the roadways.

  The city seemed almost deserted. The homes and shops were closed. It was a Sunday afternoon. Nothing could be heard but the North wind (the wind that makes conquerors) soughing its sullen growl, like the growl of a wild beast. Savagely, it shrieked and roared and rose and fell, even as the notes of some daemoniac Aeolian trumpet.

  BOOM.

  A clock from the Church of the Holy Redeemer sounded forth the hour. Away through the hard cold air the clang rolled for miles.

  BOOM.

  Once, twice, three times it sounded, four times.

  BOOM. BOOM.

  Driven from opposite directions two coaches met as if by pre-arrangement. They stopped under the shelter of a half finished building, over the main entrance of which had been newly chiseled the motto; “Ab uno disce omnes.” The scaffolding stood around the unfinished walls like the basket work of giants.

  Two men wrapped in furry great coats reaching down to their heels; and high collars raised up around their ears, stepped out of the carriages and at Paramous within the British lines. He rides there,

  Their footsteps sounded weirdly, crackling on the frozen snow drift. Of these two men, one was over six foot tall, but loosely built, the other stout and of medium height.

  Judging by their dress they appeared mere ordinary citizens, but their general tone and style betokened men accustomed to command, men of the ruling classes, propertied men, men of assured position.

  The tall man was Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian political philosopher and tobacco planter, who was then the Republican, that is to say, the radical candidate for the presidential chair.

  Mr. Jefferson was generally recognized as the literary inspiration of his party and its most highly respected political chief.

  Like nearly all the leading men of his time he was comparatively wealthy, owned a large estate and 150 negro slaves.

  The other man was General Alexander Hamilton, (Director of the Bank of New York) political chief of the Federal or Conservative element in the nascent nation.

  He had been Washington's favorite Secretary of State and Minister of Finance and met with considerable success in establishing the Inter-State Constitution and the public credit.

  Without doubt he was the brains of his party. As an orator, writer, constitutional lawyer, thinker, and organizer along his own particular lines, he was without a peer or an equal in his own party.

  So true is this that after his death the party he formed and led went absolutely to pieces.

  “Hamilton,” once said the irascible but honest John Adams, “was practically commander-in-chief of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, of the heads of departments (and last of all, if you will) of myself, the President of the United States.” (1796 to 1800.)

  The original Federal Party was a one man power and that one man was Alexander Hamilton.

  Now, Hamilton and Jefferson were strongly opposed to each other, not only as politicians, but also as philosophers and by temperament.

  They represented two great rival schools of thought, two schoo
ls that have existed and contended from the beginning of time, and must exist and contend to the end of time.

  As the rich and poor are with us forever, so are their respective mouthpieces and philosophies.

  Hamilton represented the aristocratic element in the young Republic, the Cincinnati and the old landed gentry; Jefferson, the Democratic or Republican element. Hamilton believed that the masses of men must be ruled over absolutely for their own good (and in this he was somewhat logical). Jefferson believed that they should rule themselves, by electing representatives on a majority basis and in this he was very enthusiastic. Jefferson's chief propositions were based upon the affirmation that three men have a “natural right” to rule and reign over two men, or over one man. Hamilton's fundamental thought was that the Best Men (always few and troublesome to select) should make law for the worst and weakest.

  Jefferson was ceaselessly denouncing Hamilton as an advance agent of despotic government in “this new world,” and Hamilton forever pointed to Jefferson as a demagogue, a menace to security, a disturber of the public tranquility, a Robespierre type of wild re-revolutionist—therefore an enemy of the Best People who wished to live peacefully and prosper with the country.

  Upon this bitter winter afternoon these two rival politicians met: the appointment having been carefully and privately arranged. The preliminaries had been as carefully thought out, as if the two great leaders had been kings or opposing generals arranging for a truce between their armed and bannered hosts. Jefferson was at this period about 60 years of age and Hamilton forty-five.