Rival Caesars

by Desmond Dilg

  “Hamilton! Hamilton! Your mind is seething with suspicions. This is your weakness. You look to the evil side of everything. In this case I assure you on my word of honor that your suspicion is wholly unfounded. I intended to be true to you and was your best friend until you interfered with my military promotion, the very thing I had set my heart upon. Then you insinuated that my wife was a British spy in order to ruin me with Washington. Here is one of the letters you wrote to blast my career. It is marked 'private and confidential,' and is addressed to General Washington.”

  Here Burr handed to Hamilton a copy of the letter printed in Chapter 13, Page 194. Hamilton glanced at the letter in the moonlight and his face turned green, while Burr continued:

  “Now, Hamilton, I am not an angel by any means, nor do I pretend to angel virtues. I am a mortal and possess all an average mortals failings and defects. Therefore, when many years ago I read that infamous letter, I swore in my heart and by all the gods that have ever lived and died, that I would wash out the stigma thereof in your very heart's blood, and I will do it as sure as my name is Aaron Burr.

  “It is over twenty years since that missive was written by your hand and thought out in your brain. During that time I have vindicated my patriotism, and tomorrow morning I will re-vindicate my honor and the memory of my beloved wife, whom you slandered; the best woman and the finest lady I have ever known.”

  Now, Hamilton was thoroughly astounded at this. It took him completely off his guard and he actually trembled before the cruel gaze of his foe. He hadn't the slightest suspicion that Burr possessed this long lost letter. Nevertheless he put on a bold front, and while his heart thumped against his ribs, he coolly replied:

  “Very well, Sir. Let tomorrow morning decide between us. Weehawken ledge is a fit place for men to die.

  “You ask me the reason of my hatred. If you do not already know I will tell you. Over a quarter of a century ago we pledged our honor to each other to aid each other in all things. For years we kept that sacred pledge, and in consequence thereof we prospered mightily.

  “Over the heads of older and perhaps wiser men we pushed our way. We sought for fame and it was ours. We wished for fortune and money poured upon us. We desired love, and the most beautiful women in the land smiled upon us. Before twenty-one we were holding high commands in the most remarkable army on earth. Aye, and successes greater than is ever again possible, were within our reach. A nation, an empire, nay, a Continent was ours, absolutely ours.

  “Who could have stood against us, if we had kept the Covenant of our youth? Who? Not Jefferson! He is the weakest man that ever occupied a Seat of Power, in this or in any other land. He is President because of our quarrel, that, and that alone. As for the others, they are but men of straw, mere mouthing parrots and mimickers of greatness.

  “I might have now been president, you commander-in-chief and Livingston, Clinton, or Roosevelt in the Treasury. All these splendid prospects have been actually thrown away and nullified. Why?”

  “Why?

  “A woman came between us. Thus I learned to hate you, Burr. You took from me the woman I loved, the woman I would have married if you had been true to me. You turned my blood to gall. 'His friendship,' I said, 'is proven by his deeds, words are as the mist of the morning.'

  “Thereafter, in addition, you entered into public life as the only dangerous organizer of my antagonists, and became the chief conspirator of all those who hate, thwart and accuse me. The secret work of you and your myrmidons made Jefferson's election a possibility in the Northern States.

  “Are you not therefore the man who has ruined my prospects as no one else could do? Have you not made life a burden to me and slew my ambitions? What do I care now for anything?

  “Therefore I long for this meeting between you and me at the dawn. I have planned for it: I have hoped for it: I wish for it. One of us must die even though the Seven had never spake the word of doom. When defeat comes upon a man he should die. Then, I say, is the time to die.”

  “So be it,” answered Burr cooly, as he put the letter carefully away in his pocket. “Adam swapped paradise for a sour apple. Thy will be done.

  “Nevertheless Hamilton I deny having ever consciously and deliberately betrayed you. The question of women was never included in the oath of friendship. Besides I am powerless to prohibit women from falling in love with me. They pursue me as a prey. They tear out my life as it were. Fate will have it so. Indeed women have been both the boon and the bane of my life, and I have never, positively never, had an amour in which they did not meet me half way. Under such circumstances he would be more or less than man who did not sin.

  “And you very well know I did not marry until two years after your own marriage. In fact, even then, it was my wife who besieged and married me.”

  “All very plausible, a pretty saying of an evil one,” replied Hamilton with a look of settled malevolence on his broad handsome brow. “If you had not been her lover I could have had her. You took her from me I say—you took her from me. For long years I have dissimulated my animus to you, but I am no longer under any necessity to do so. Hear me then. I hate you, Burr. I hate you with a merciless hatred and tomorrow I will kill you if I can.

  “My mission is ended. Every day proves that this American world was not made for me. My usefulness is past. My work is done. My spirit is aweary. My soul is full of bitterness against men. I feel baffled. I am condemned by the Seven and I do not care whether I live or die.

  “Death!

  “What is death to such as I? How can man die better than in open conflict with a mortal foe?”

  To this the Vice President of the United States replied:

  “Your heartfelt desire shall be granted, Hamilton. It well befits the antagonist of Aaron Burr to die the death of a gentleman. You know what is written on the Brazen Column: 'In blood man is born. By blood he lives. Salvation is by blood. Blood bindeth men unto one another, so doth it unbind them.'

  “Not for nothing have these words been handed down to us. No, not for nothing.”

  “The fact is,” replied Hamilton, “there is not room enough on this continent to hold you and me. We are too much alike in mental equipment to ever live peacefully together. Brothers though they be, two of a kind can never agree.”

  “Exactly,” answered Burr, “the feuds of brothers are ever the bitterest. If two brothers are determined to ride the same horse, one must ride behind.”

  Whereupon Hamilton interjected:

  “I am not the man to ride behind Colonel Burr,”

  “Nor am I the man to ride in the rear of General Hamilton,” replied the Vice President.

  Both men were silent for a time. Then Burr spoke:

  “You were made for an ecclesiastic, Hamilton, you are so full of venom.”

  “You are, I know a good shot, Colonel Burr, but remember so am I,” answered Hamilton stiffly, as much as to intimate that the interview was ended.

  “Now, before we part, Hamilton, there is one more matter I wish to suggest. It is this.” (Thus spake Burr.)

  “One of us must die. That is settled. The fight must be mortuum bellum. I will do my best to kill you, and you I know, will do your best to kill me. Perhaps both of us may die.

  “Now it is said man has a soul that lives forever in another life, a life beyond the grave, a life in the stars. The existence of this Beyond Land is disputed. Some say it is, and some say it is not. Others say that only the souls of some men live and that the great majority of men have no souls, or souls that perish after a brief period.

  “The real facts on this matter will be demonstrated to you or me soon. If the Legend of the Soul is true, one of us shall know it before 24 hours. Permit me, therefore, to make this suggestion.

  “Let him who tomorrow dies promise to return, if that be possible, and inform the survivor as to what is beyond, and the meaning thereof, and if there is any Beyond. I propose that we try to solve this mystery, Hamilton.”

  To this proposi
tion Hamilton replied:

  “I see no objections to your suggestion, Colonel Burr. If I die tomorrow and can return I pledge you my word to do so. But whether in this world or in the next my spirit shall eternally war against thine. You and I are adversaries by nature and mayhap for some beyond-purpose, some purpose that we cannot now clearly see. We may, at it were, be the incarnation of two necessary and elemental forces, ordained to strive against one another from everlasting to everlasting. Conflict is the highest Law of Being as far as I can see. It is in everything from the mote in the sunbeam to the stars in space.”

  To this Burr courteously answered:

  “And should I die and you live, I will return and inform you whether there is or is not an Abode of the Departed. I am convinced that the imaginations of men cannot leap beyond the Real. There may, however, be a basis of substantial truth in this ancient Legend. Prehistoric ages may have known more than we do. Thus the Iron Cross teaches, even in its lower symbolism, and neither you nor I have reached its higher Mystery. Perhaps far off beyond where planets wheel the star-lit Ages reel.”

  “I agree,” said Hamilton.

  “I agree,” said Burr.

  “Let us then finish the business we were commanded by the Seven and part of the Sign,” said Hamilton.

  From behind the shadow of the old pirate hulk the two men stepped out into the moonlight facing one another.

  Each held his naked sword in his left hand and a paper in the right.

  “E La Moot,” spake Hamilton.

  “E La Moot,” replied Burr.

  Each man pushed his sword point through the paper in his right hand. Then both reached out their swords, making the sign of Zoam, and handing over the papers to one another, exactly as they had mutually received them 29 years before. Thus their oath of friendship was formally annulled.

  Thereupon they bowed profoundly saying to one another, “It is ended,” and turning about, they walked away in opposite directions, through the lights and shadows along the sands of the shore.

  As General Hamilton walked to his handsome town residence at 52 Cedar Street, many and terrible were the thoughts that surged and wheeled through his troubled, far-seeing and ambitious brain. He thought of his gentle and loving mother in that far off Carribbean. Isle, of his father, of his half hidden ancestry, of his youthful years by the flashing Spanish Main, of his arrival in Boston, friendless and alone, of his early struggles and dreams, and studies, of his meeting with Burr, of the formation of the Secret Lodge in Judge Livingston’s House, of the war and its deeds of fame and hardship, of the beautiful women who had loved him and the intriguing men who went down before him, of the baseness of politics and law, of his wife and family, of Miss Betsy at her initiation, of the weakness and corruption of man and of mobs, of the fickleness of the feminine, of the “Widow Provost,” of the treachery and jealousy of his friends, of the greatness of his hopes and the meagerness of his rewards and achievements, but ever his mind returned to that supreme subject, his dreaded foe the Vice President.

  “If he lives,” thought Hamilton, “I might as well shoot myself anyhow. He has vanquished me in politics and he has conquered me in love. He is a Vice President and I am a discredited politician. (Curse on that Reynolds business.[*]) God forgive me but shoot him I must. Nevertheless I will slay him to his face. If he is to die he shall die looking at me; at me whom he has baffled, and broken. And if I kill him I have nothing to fear. They will not dare indict me for murder, for all the officials in New York are in my grip.

  “Wouldn’t Jefferson be proud to hear of his death? Ha! If Burr dies it will be the making of me again. Then I shall only have Jefferson to deal with. Jefferson is easy, but Burr is a hard proposition. Burr is the devil. He knows altogether too much.”

  Musing thus he arrived at his home. There he met his wife in the hallway waiting. She was evidently very much agitated. At this period Mrs. Hamilton was a kindly matronly woman, the noble mother of a large family of sons and daughters.

  “What is the matter?” he said kindly to her as he stroked her hair and kissed her tenderly, soothingly.

  “I am filled with a foreboding of evil,” she answered. Then she placed in his hand a square piece of planed pine-board, upon which strange characters had been scrawled with charcoal, in a strong perfect hand.

  He looked at it in astonishment saying: “It is in the cryptogram of the Iron Cross. Whence came it?”

  Mrs. Hamilton answered:

  “Tonight after dark, when sitting by the window in the darkness waiting for you, I saw a strange veiled woman drive up in a splendid coach with two white horses. She alighted from the carriage which had muffled wheels and walked up to our door. Then with one stroke of the hammer (which she carried) she nailed this board on the right door post.

  Hamilton took the board and walked out into the moonlight. He read the cryptogram line by line. Then he read it over again. “It is my own death warrant, he said to himself and Burr's too. Are both of use to die? I wonder what it means.”

  Being interpreted into plain English the message ran:

  Thus saith the Wise One,

  Knowing all things:

  Go forth and Slay—

  Slay, or be slain.

  Violent the world is—

  All fame is fey:—

  The slain man shall

  The slayer slay.

  Hamilton went back into the house and attempted to comfort his wife as best he could, stating that the strange writing only meant a political trick by some of his opponents.

  He did not go to bed that night. He felt no desire for sleep. He sat up burning papers and writing letters: and Alexander Hamilton ever wrote with a view to ulterior publicity.

  He had a strong and not unreasonable presentment that he was about to die and this nerved him to write and re-write much cleverly thought out self-vindicatory matter.

  “Ha!” he thought. “If I do die I will die fighting hard. I will leave written words behind to pursue him with my vengeance and make his future career a waste. I will war against him even in the grave. Aye 'the slain man shall the slayer slay.'”

  And so through the small hours he wrote on and on, ever with a view to prove in after years how he had fought not because

  Of rancour, spite, or passion

  But only to obey the laws

  Of custom and of fashion.

  After concluding his apology (for the vote-howling multitude to read in after years) he went out into the morning air and walked up and down (to quieten his nerves) until 6 o'clock, when he ordered an early cup of coffee and set off to the appointed battle ground, accompanied by his second, Judge Pendleton and (part of the way) by Bayard of Delaware.

  * * * * *

  When the Vice President parted from Hamilton he walked rapidly to Water Street (where his coach was waiting for him) and drove home to Richmond Hill. There he found every one in bed, but his negro butler, (who had once been the property of Carroll, he— who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Carrol upon whose property the City and Capitol of Washington now stands.) The black slave handed to him a piece of board that had been affixed during the afternoon to one of the Avenue trees, by a veiled woman who drove up in a carriage drawn by two white stallions.

  Burr took the board and carefully deciphered the writing traced upon it. He saw at a glance that it was in the secret cypher of the Iron Cross. After considerable trouble he translated it and thus it read:

  Be thou a Proud One

  A Strong One faring—

  Naught is ungodlike

  To Power and Daring.

  By the Sign of Iron

  Slay, or be slain:

  It giveth Dominion—

  It taketh again.

  Burr put it down and began to think. “This is the final Command of the Seven,” he thought, “but it is more than that: it is an omen to me, an omen of Evil. The Iron Cross is going to cast me aside because of my failure to win the Presidency for it. That is what's the matter. And
who have I to thank for that? Hamilton. But tomorrow I will be even with him. Tomorrow I will kill him as sure as the sun shines in heaven. Nothing can deliver that man from my vengeance. Good shot though he be, his hand shall tremble when he looks into my eye. He is not a man of nerve.”

  Then he leaned back in his cushioned library chair and half closed his eyes. As a moving panorama his whole life seemed to pass before him in review, scene by scene.

  He saw himself at Princeton confuting (with a word), the profoundest professors. He saw Margaret Moncrieffe the Never Forgotten One; and Betsy in all her youthful vivacity and charm; also his wife Theodosia in the Silken Turban; and Kate; and Leonora; and Clara; and Charlotte; and Helen; and dozens more.

  He saw the Princely Montgomery (Margaret Moncrieffe's uncle) riddled by grapeshot at Quebec, falling back dead into his arms.

  He saw himself trudging through the snows, hidden in the Convent of the Three Rivers, or leading his ragged regiment in a hundred fights, for home and Fatherland—his heart and body full of youthful strength, enthusiasm and pride, an “Apollo of Revolution.”

  He saw himself hailed and acclaimed by his countrymen as a conquering hero, a Chief among Many; and a patriot of the noblest resolve.

  He saw his beloved wife die in his arms. He saw his little daughter born, and saw her married. He saw himself a legislator, a senator, an attorney general, and finally elected to the Presidency. Then he saw himself hurled down, down, down, into almost irretrievable defeat and bankruptcy by the wiliness, craft and morbid jealousy of the “man and brother,” who had once sworn eternal friendship to him, and who thereafter had stabbed him in the back on every opportunity, the “smiler with the knife beneath his cloak.”