by H. W. Brands
Adams takes little comfort from Jefferson’s philosophizing; Hamilton takes none at all. Hamilton tries to reverse the effect of the New York vote by lobbying the legislature to change the rules for choosing the state’s presidential electors. Jefferson, learning what is afoot, calls on Burr to guarantee the result and with it the election.
Burr blocks Hamilton’s effort, saving the day for the Republicans and further aggrieving Hamilton, who, realizing he cannot touch Jefferson or Burr, perversely vents his rage on Adams. Hamilton has never liked or respected Adams; he now composes a pamphlet explaining why. He intends for the pamphlet to be circulated privately among Federalists, as a means of shifting the party away from Adams. But Burr’s agents procure a copy and arrange the public airing of its most damaging passages. Hamilton’s exposed sabotage sends the Federalists into an uproar and kills what small hopes Adams has retained of being returned to office. The only thing left is the formality of casting the votes for Jefferson.
The Constitution, however, clouds the formality. It specifies that each elector will cast two votes, the candidate with the most votes becoming president, the runner-up vice president. Jefferson, the Republican leader in a contest already secured to the Republican party, expects an easy victory. The Republican members of Congress intend Burr to become vice president in recognition of his good work against Hamilton and in anticipation of similar service in the future. The Republicans’ strategy is to have one of their electors withhold his second vote, giving Jefferson the presidency and Burr the vice presidency.
But confusion fouls the implementation, and Jefferson and Burr finish in a tie, with 73 electors each. This throws the race into the House of Representatives and the parties into a muddle. The Federalists still control the House, where they can determine which Republican—Jefferson or Burr—will become the next president. Most fear Jefferson more than Burr, and some are tempted to tip the election Burr’s way.
Federalists and Republicans recognize that the fate of the nascent republic hangs in the balance. For the first time the American political system is being asked to transfer power from one party to the other. If it can manage the transfer, the prospects for successful self-government in America will improve dramatically. If it can’t, they will plummet—and perhaps plunge the country into the kind of civil strife European skeptics have consistently predicted for the upstart republic.
Burr appreciates the stakes and distances himself from any effort to overrule the obvious will of the people. He tells a Republican member of the House that he doesn’t believe the Federalists will be so base as actually to vote for him over Jefferson. “As to my friends,” he continues, “they would dishonor my views and insult my feelings by a suspicion that I would submit to be instrumental in counteracting the wishes and expectations of the United States. And I now constitute you my proxy to declare these sentiments if the occasion should require.”
The Federalists aren’t listening to Burr. They consult instead their own judgment as to what will cause the most mischief for the Republicans. Some dream that Burr might be won to the Federalist side. Hamilton bitterly warns them off. “It is a vain hope,” he writes to a Federalist ally. “To accomplish his ends, he must lean upon unprincipled men, and will continue to adhere to myrmidons who have hitherto surrounded him. To these he will no doubt add able rogues of the Federal party but he will employ the rogues of all parties to overrule the good men of all parties, and to prosecute projects which wise men of every description will disapprove.” To conspire with Burr will ruin what remains of the Federalists’ future. “He is too cold-blooded and too determined a conspirator ever to change his plan.… Adieu to the Federal Troy if they once introduce this Grecian horse into their citadel.”
Hamilton’s warning quells the spoiling mood among the Federalists, who concede Jefferson the victory the electors have intended to give him. Burr accepts the vice presidency with appropriate grace but remembers Hamilton’s malign remarks.
8
Amid the controversy Theo marries. Her intelligence and accomplishments don’t exempt her from the constraints of the common-law tradition that a woman’s legal existence derives from that of the most significant male in her life: her father, her husband, her eldest son. Theo is too independent-minded to remain the ward of her father, making marriage the only feasible alternative. Perhaps she reckons, as well, that her money-careless father cannot afford to support her forever and therefore that she should marry to lighten the debts that have become his constant companion.
The object of her affections is Joseph Alston, the son of a wealthy South Carolina planter. Alston seems not to be intimidated by Theo, as many potential suitors are. He enjoys matching wits with her, and she delights in testing him. “My father laughs at my impatience to hear from you, and says I am in love,” she writes him. “But I do not believe that to be a fair deduction, for the post is really very irregular and slow—enough so to provoke anybody.” Alston is impatient, too, and presses her to marry him, though she is only seventeen and he twenty-one. She replies matter-of-factly: “I had not intended to marry this twelvemonth.” But she allows him to make his case. “Aristotle says that ‘a man should not marry before he is six-and-thirty.’ Pray, Mr. Alston, what arguments have you to oppose to such authority?”
“Hear me, Miss Burr,” he responds. “It has always been my practice, whether from a natural independence of mind, from pride, or what other cause I will not pretend to say, never to adopt the opinion of any one, however respectable his authority, unless thoroughly convinced by his arguments. The ‘ipse dixit,’ as logicians term it, even of Cicero, who stands higher in my estimation than any other author, would not have the least weight with me. You must therefore, till you offer better reasons in support of his opinion than the Grecian sage himself has done, excuse my differing from him.” The sound objections to early marriage arise solely from want of fortune or want of discretion, Alston says. Fortune is no issue in the present case, he observes. As for discretion: “The age of discretion is wholly uncertain, some men reaching it at twenty, others at thirty, some again not till fifty, and many not at all.… To fix such or such a period as the proper one for marrying is ridiculous.” But even allowing a general rule to exist, are there not exceptions? “Suppose (for instance, merely) a young man nearly two-and-twenty, already of the greatest discretion, with an ample fortune, were to be passionately in love with a young lady almost eighteen, equally discreet with himself, and who had a ‘sincere friendship’ for him—do you think it would be necessary to make him wait till thirty, particularly where the friends on both sides were pleased with the match?”
Moving from the (barely) hypothetical to the demonstrable, Alston sketches his upbringing, as it bears on the question at hand. In certain respects it has mirrored hers. “From my father’s plan of education for me, I may properly be called a hot-bed plant. Introduced from my infancy into the society of men, while yet a boy I was accustomed to think and act like a man. On every occasion, however important, I was left to decide for myself; I do not recollect a single instance where I was controlled even by advice; for it was my father’s invariable maxim, that the best way of strengthening the judgment was to suffer it to be constantly exercised. Before seventeen I finished my college education; before twenty I was admitted to the bar. Since that time I have been constantly travelling through different parts of the United States; to what purpose I leave you to determine.”
The prejudice against marrying young is indeed a prejudice, Alston explains, and in fact is the opposite of wisdom. Theo has cited Aristotle; Alston adduces a source closer to their own era and country. “Dr. Franklin, a very strong advocate for my system, and, I think, at least as good authority as Aristotle, very aptly compares those who marry early to two young trees joined together by the hand of the gardener:
Trunk knit with trunk, and branch with branch intwined,
Advancing still, more closely they are join’d;
At length, full grown, no dif
ference we see,
But, ’stead of two, behold a single tree!
9
Impressed by his logic as well as his passion, Theo accepts Alston’s arguments, and the couple are wed at the beginning of 1801. Burr blesses the union and lays plans to visit his daughter at her new South Carolina home. “I am to be detained here yet a week,” he writes Theo from Washington shortly after being sworn in as vice president. “On my return to New York I shall prepare for a tour to Georgetown or Charleston, probably a water passage.” He has taken to confiding his amours to Theo, who appreciates his humor when he promises: “Nothing but matrimony will prevent my voyage to Charleston and Georgetown; and even so great an event shall only postpone, but not defeat, the project. I am sorry, however, to add that I have no expectations or decided views on this subject. I mean Hymen.”
Other gods, however—of the storm—conspire against him. “On Wednesday, the 18th, I left the great city,” he writes in late March. “At the Susquehanna the wind was rude; the river, swollen by recent rains, was rapid. The ferrymen pronounced it to be impossible to pass with horses, and unsafe to attempt it. By the logic of money and brandy I persuaded them to attempt it. We embarked; the wind was, indeed, too mighty for us, and we drove on the rocks; but the boat did not bilge or fill, as in all reason it ought to have done. I left Alexis and Harry”—two traveling companions—“to work out their way; got my precious carcass transported in a skiff, and went on in a stage to pass a day with ‘thee and thou’ ”—the Quakers of Pennsylvania. He finds their calm, quiet outlook impressive. “How charming, how enviable is this equanimity, if real. There is one invaluable attainment in the education of this sect, one which you and I never thought of: it is tacere”—to be silent. He teases her: “How particularly desirable this in a wife.”
He arrives at New York, but, in the absence of his darling, the city holds little cheer. “I approached home as I would approach the sepulchre of all my friends. Dreary, solitary, comfortless. It was no longer home.” He counts the days till he can see her. “I am preparing with all imaginable zeal for a voyage to Charleston.… I hope to be at sea by the 20th of April.… In eight days you shall know more of this.”
On April 15 he writes that he hopes to embark momentarily. “The ship South Carolina is now in port, and will sail on Monday next. I wish to take passage in her.” But complications arise. “A thousand concerns of business and obstacles of various kinds appear to oppose. I shall combat them all with the zeal which my ardent wishes for the voyage inspire; yet I dare hardly hope to succeed. You shall hear again by the mail of Saturday.”
The South Carolina sails without him. Politics, in particular the rivalry between his Republicans and Hamilton’s Federalists, keeps him in New York. “Our election commences to-morrow, and will be open for three days,” he tells Theo. “The Republican members of the assembly for this city”—the city’s delegation to the lower house in Albany—“will be carried by a greater majority than last year, unless some fraud be practised at the polls. The corporation”—the municipal government—“have had the indecent hardiness to appoint known and warm Federalists (and no others) to be inspectors of the election in every ward. Hamilton works day and night with the most intemperate and outrageous zeal, but I think wholly without effect.”
Two days later he confesses defeat—not in politics, where he has triumphed, but in his plans to see her. “This morning will sail the brig Echo, the only vessel in harbor destined for South Carolina. I do not go in her. With unspeakable regret, therefore, the projected visit is abandoned—wholly and absolutely abandoned.” He knows she will be disappointed, but not as much as he is. “The pain of my own disappointment leaves me no room for any sympathy with yours.”
He fills her in, a little, on the other affairs of his heart. “I had like to have forgotten to say a word in reply to your inquiries of matrimony, which would seem to indicate that I have no plan on the subject. Such is the fact. You are or were my projector in this line. If perchance I should have one, it will be executed before you will hear of the design. Yet I ought not to conceal that I have had a most amiable overture from a lady ‘who is always employed in something useful’ ”—an ironic phrase he and Theo share in humor. “She was, you know, a few months past, engaged to another; that other is suspended, if not quite dismissed. If I should meet her, and she should challenge me, I should probably strike at once.”
He comforts himself that though he cannot travel south to see her, she might come north to visit him. She arranges to do so, and he eagerly marks his calendar. “You must not delay your voyage hither,” he says at subsequently hearing of a hitch in the plans. He misses her voice and her face—and her wisdom. “I want your counsel and your exertions in an important negotiation, actually commenced, but not advancing, and which will probably be stationary until your arrival; more probably it may, however, in the mean time, retrograde.” She knows he is speaking of a love affair; he will identify the lady when they meet.
He shows Theo off when she and Alston arrive. His friends and acquaintances grow more admiring than ever. “You made two, perhaps more, conquests on your Northern tour—King Brant and the stage driver; both of whom have been profuse in their eulogies,” he writes after the visit. King Brant is the Mohawk chief. “Brant has written me two letters on the subject. It would have been quite in style if he had scalped your husband and made you Queen of the Mohawks.”
The conversations they conduct in person while she is in New York are continued by mail after she leaves. “You women: it is so with you all,” he writes. “If one wishes to exhibit the best side, one must provoke you. Gratify your wishes and expectations, or, still worse, anticipate them, and it produces a lethargy.” He speaks more specifically: “How have I laboured for three months, working and writing to please a certain lady: nothing comes but inanity and torpor. I provoke her, and behold the effusions of spirit and genius. Be assured that I shall not speedily relapse into the same error. Indeed, I knew all this before. But I thought it was only one’s mistress that was to be thus managed; it is the sex.” He facetiously blames her for the sins of womanhood—and for his rambling on. “This is dull. I had something more cheerful to say; this, however, came first, and would have place. And here am I, at midnight, talking such stuff to bagatelle, and twenty unanswered letters of vast importance before me! Get to bed, you hussy.”
10
“You have learned from the newspapers (which you never read) the death of Philip Hamilton,” he writes her in late 1801. “Shot in a duel with Eacker, the lawyer. Some dispute at a theatre, arising, as is said, out of politics.”
Philip Hamilton was the son of Alexander Hamilton, and his death reveals the emotions aroused by politics as the party system takes hold in the young republic. The traditional forms of deference are giving way to the new dynamics of democracy, but the transition is difficult and at times deadly. Several states, including New York, have outlawed dueling, but the practice persists among those who consider themselves men of honor. Sometimes they fight one another, sometimes they respond to outsiders who deem dueling an entrée to their ranks. The duelists’ friends and families are ambivalent: neither sufficiently supportive to maintain the practice in its old form nor sufficiently shocked to prevent the issue and acceptance of challenges.
Burr pays little attention. He engages in political disputes but tries to keep them in perspective. He also tries to keep busy. His responsibilities as vice president are few, consisting primarily of presiding over the Senate. He wields the gavel with skill and aplomb. But he is rarely consulted by Jefferson, who hopes to groom friend and fellow Virginian Madison for the succession to the presidency. Hamilton hates Burr as much as ever and poisons the minds of all who will listen, limiting Burr’s present prospects further.
More interesting to Burr than the vice presidency is the news that he will be a grandfather. Suddenly Theo is his child again, needing paternal advice. “You must walk a great deal,” he writes her. “It is the
only exercise you can take with safety and advantage, and, being in Charleston, I fear you will neglect it. I do entreat you to get a very stout pair of over shoes, or short boots, to draw on over your shoes. But shoes to come up to the ankle bone, with one button to keep them on, will be best.” Alston will not always be able to walk with her. “You must learn to walk without your husband—alone—or, if you must be in form, with ten negroes at your heels.”
The child, a boy, arrives safely. Theo names him after her father, and Aaron Burr Alston becomes his grandfather’s favorite male person. She avoids the South Carolina summer by traveling north once more, this time bringing little Aaron with her. She revels in the familiar settings. “Never did I behold this island so beautiful,” she writes her husband from Manhattan. “The variety of vivid greens; the finely-cultivated fields and gaudy gardens; the neat, cool air of the city’s boxes, peeping through straight rows of tall poplars, and the elegance of some gentlemen’s seats, commanding a view of the majestic Hudson, and the high, dark shores of New Jersey, altogether form a scene so lively, so touching, and to me now so new, that I was in constant rapture.”
A traveling companion’s fascination with New York highlights her own sense of the virtues of her native environs. “S. appears more pleased with New York than any person I ever saw from South Carolina,” she writes Alston. “With the beauty of the country it is impossible not to be delighted, whether that delight is confessed or not; and every woman cannot fail to prefer the style of society, whatever she may say. If she denies it, she is set down in my mind as insincere and weakly prejudiced.”
She proves herself her father’s daughter when she admonishes Alston to watch his health. “Before my departure you complained grievously of the bad cigars sold in Charleston. In the hope that this city affords better, I send you a box containing a thousand; the seller took some trouble to choose the best for me, and I have added some Vanilla and Tonka beans to them. May the offering please my great Apollo!” The cigars are for health as much as for pleasure. “If you should do so rash a thing as to visit the city during the summer, pray smoke all the time you remain there; it creates an atmosphere round you, and prevents impure air from reaching you.” Any city visits should take place in the afternoon or evening. “I have somewhere heard that persons were less apt to catch infectious disorders at that time than any other, and I believe it.” She explains her reasoning: “Have you never remarked how highly scented the air is before sunrise in a flower garden, so much so as to render the smell of any flower totally imperceptible if you put it to your nose? That is, I suppose, because, when the sun acts with all his force, the air becomes so rarefied, that the quantity of perfume you inhale at a breath can have no effect; while, on the contrary, during the night, the vapours become so condensed that you perceive them in every blast. May not the same be the case with noxious vapours?” She admits that this is only a theory. “Perhaps I am wrong both in my reason and opinion. If so, you are able to correct; only do as you think best, and be prudent. It is all I ask. I imagine the subject worth a reflection, and you cannot err. Montesquieu says he writes to make people think; and why may not Theodosia?”