Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  It was in Elizabethtown that Burr may have first crossed paths with his future political rival Hamilton. Both spent time there in 1773, as teenagers. Burr was living in Princeton that year, but regularly visited Elizabethtown, pursuing a leisurely pace of reading while eagerly socializing. Hamilton, recently arrived from his native West Indies in order to attend college, enrolled in the Presbyterian Academy, the same grammar school in which Burr had studied under the tutelage of Tapping Reeve. Here is where Hamilton prepared himself for Princeton, to which he applied a short time later. Once he passed the entrance exam, he proceeded to offend the college president and several trustees by demanding too many exemptions from the rules of promotion and class standing. His request denied, the self-confident Hamilton turned to New York’s King’s College (later Columbia), where he commenced study in late 1773 or early 1774.24

  Elizabethtown was a small community, and Burr most likely retained some connection to the local academy from which he had graduated and where Hamilton studied before moving on to King’s. There is no extant record of their having met here. But it is more than idle speculation to consider what might have happened if Hamilton had matriculated at Princeton rather than Columbia. Might Hamilton have looked at Burr differently if, under impressionable circumstances, the two had joined the same college club and shared a fraternal bond? That is, would their relationship have been altered if Hamilton had been one of that influential coterie of early Princeton alumni who invariably relied on each other for political and personal favors in later years?

  NASSAU HALL

  Burr submitted an application to the College of New Jersey at the age of eleven. Colonial colleges were more like today’s preparatory schools, and Princeton’s student body had young men of all ages. Though he had the proper academic qualifications, the trustees and faculty still rejected him because of his age. He spent the next two years studying the college curriculum on his own, and in 1769 reapplied for examination and requested to enter as a junior. As with Hamilton’s later request, the trustees turned him down, offering to admit him as a sophomore. At thirteen, Burr was still four years younger than most of his classmates, and his youth set him apart. His college nickname was “Little Burr,” affectionately mocking his unusual precocity as much as his small stature.25

  When the college’s Nassau Hall was completed in 1756, the impressive Georgian-style structure was the largest building in British North America. Three stories high, with sixty rooms, Nassau Hall included everything under one roof—library, chapel, dormitory rooms, and recitation halls. The college was founded as a non-denominational institution. The initial plan for the school was to train “New Light” ministers, but by the time Burr arrived there in 1769, the curriculum had changed. It was no longer a training ground for ministers alone but a place for inspiring young men with enlightened ideals.26

  Leading these reforms was John Witherspoon, the new president of the college. In person, the Presbyterian divine hardly cut a striking figure. One visitor described him as an “intolerably homely Scotchman,” and he was known for his personal eccentricities, such as constantly changing the position of his hands and feet, and pulling his large eyebrows when excited. He always dressed in his clerical gown when he preached at Princeton, and looked like a plump medieval monk. Although his fame derived from his powerful oratory, Witherspoon’s heavy Scottish burr made him almost incomprehensible to those in his audience who were unfamiliar with the accent.27

  As a proponent of “common sense” philosophy, Witherspoon was the embodiment of the Scottish Enlightenment. He believed that the main purpose of education was to cultivate common sense—to join thought to action—and to promote virtuous actions for the improvement of society. His curriculum stressed the practical subjects of history, science, geography, French, and English composition. Whether lecturing on moral philosophy or writing advice to the lovelorn in the Pennsylvania Magazine, Witherspoon advanced an enlightened pedagogy that viewed ethical behavior as a product of human nature rather than the gift of divine grace. His lecture style seemed unconventional to certain observers. He was said to resemble an eloquent lawyer rather than a fire-and-brimstone Presbyterian preacher.28

  Burr found himself deeply immersed in his studies. He and his classmates at Princeton were required to recite in geography, mathematics, and history every day, and were expected to compose and memorize an oration every other week. Burr studied incessantly, up to eighteen hours a day, and like his fellow students, he was restricted to his room during long study periods, forbidden to go out for more than ten minutes at a time.29

  What might appear a harsh or repressive regime for a young teen nevertheless offered clear advantages over other colonial colleges. Princeton embraced the idea of “liberty” far more readily than other institutions. Unlike the presidents at Harvard and Yale, Witherspoon supported the liberal policy of opening the library stacks to the students; he encouraged curiosity, while adding titles on contemporary and social affairs. He allowed students to select their own oration topics, placing less emphasis on Latin oratory, preferring instead speeches on current issues. While his students continued to wear caps and gowns in the Old World tradition, under Witherspoon’s direction, new ideas about society and politics flourished.30

  The colonial college experience involved more than a monkish existence. Students frequently engaged in boyish pranks. Philip Fithian, a member of Burr’s graduating class, recorded in his diary the kinds of shenanigans common on campus. Occasionally his chums might steal “a plump fat Hen” from the neighborhood, or parade prostitutes across the campus, to upset the strait-laced faculty. And some ingenious lads displayed their penchant for discovery by “ogling Women with the Telescope.”31

  The most important socializing occurred in the college clubs. The College of New Jersey had two clubs at this time: the American Whig Society and the Cliosophic Society. Burr was unusual because he belonged to both clubs—the Whigs, until he switched to the Clios. The clubs were what one scholar has called the “college within the college,” offering male camaraderie and competition. Far more than the classroom, clubs polished character, encouraged verbal contests, and created intense, highly emotional fraternal bonds.32

  Amid the pre-Revolutionary political excitement, the clubs served the unique purpose of creating a proving ground for future American statesmen. A president (Madison), a vice president (Burr), several Supreme Court justices, senators, and congressmen all came from Princeton’s fraternal ranks. There is evidence to suggest that college clubs laid the foundation for later political parties. In direct contrast to the dangerous portrait of “factions,” which Madison famously wrote about in Federalist No. 10 in 1787, clubs presented a positive model for male association. United by feelings of brotherhood, the Whigs and Clios shared a set of principles, while they engaged in a public rivalry. Much like the informal rules that sustained the partisan political culture that emerged in the 1790s, club members in the 1770s were bound by secret confidences, a code of honor, and rules of polite deportment. At Princeton, Philip Fithian astutely described the club style as a “secret polite manner.”33

  Burr’s popularity is apparent from an incident that his friends in later years recounted: Taking his turn as the club president, he sat in the customary armchair, one so big that the diminutive Burr had a hard time keeping his two elbows balanced on the wooden arms. A professor arrived at the meeting late, and the good-natured club president spontaneously poked fun at him for being tardy, upsetting the normal teacher-pupil chain of command. Burr was the sort of fellow, at least at this stage in his life, who could turn the tables on his professor and get away with it.34

  The clubs fostered rivalry, which was, unmistakably, preparation for political battles to come. In one typical foray of 1771, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, later known nationally for his satirical talent, directed his venom against one Samuel Spring, considered “the Poet-Laureate of Clio.” Brackenridge engaged in an unremitting barra
ge of ridicule, calling the college as a whole a “den of scribing boys and wicked men.” He mocked Spring for his lack of literary finesse and his caustic temper. Brackenridge charged that Spring was both childish and boring, because Spring was trying to “put a stop to Whiggish writing by roaring, snoring, swearing, and fighting.” Spring had challenged Brackenridge to a fight for insulting him. Then the cowardly poet had run to a tutor for safety, and was rescued just as the fight was about to begin.35

  “MY DEAR LITTLE FELLOW”

  Burr was very much a part of this club world. It was the camaraderie, much more than the spirited competition, that drew him. In 1772, a “brother” Clio and classmate, Moses Allen, characterized club friendships in a letter to Burr. He mentioned the plight of Samuel McCorkle, whom he described as “much dejected” at the idea of graduating, for the very thought of “leaving the Society kills him.” Allen stressed the commitment, the benevolence, which fellow Clios gamely upheld: “We, being brothers, should submit to some inconveniences, for the peace and happiness of each other.” Allen openly expressed his affection: “I long, My Dear little fellow, (pardon the expression of fondness) for an opportunity to requite your kindness, and make you sensible of my tender regard.”36

  In other fraternal societies, as in the Cliosophic club, there surfaced, according to one member, a “relish for friendship” that was “like a violent appetite.” Luther Martin and William Paterson, both Clios, confessed their strong feelings for classmate John MacPherson. As Martin put it, “few brothers were ever bound together by stronger bonds of affection.” Paterson maintained a correspondence with MacPherson after graduation, pestering his friend for more letters: “He knows I love him, he knows I am pleased to hear of his good fortune . . . why is he so remiss in answering my last letter?” Both men gossiped about friends in their correspondence. MacPherson, for his part, shared the scandalous story of a classmate who had been forced to the altar. Having “made free” with a doctor’s daughter, MacPherson wrote, his friend had sadly suffered the fate for his “known virility.”37

  This kind of male banter was a crucial element in solidifying club relations. Though he graduated Princeton in 1763, earning a master’s degree in 1766, Paterson was a permanent fixture in the life of the Clios right up to the Revolution. His role as unofficial mentor to younger members was unique. By the time he took Burr under his wing, there was an eleven-year gap between graduate mentor and student protégé. Paterson shared compositions with Burr, and wrote gossipy letters when Burr went home, gently mocking his handwriting, and giving the youth practical advice about speaking too fast. In one letter, Paterson claimed that Burr’s “hand” was too “sleek, & lady-like,” and that anyone who saw a letter addressed by him would assume a woman had written it.38

  In this way, sexual innuendo was often a part of club members’ playful prose. In the same letter in which he ridiculed Burr’s feminine hand, Paterson, who remained a bachelor for fourteen years after his graduation, compared his own “scribbling” to masturbation: “When the state of scribbling seizes me I hardly know when to stop. The fits indeed seldom comes upon me; but when it does, though I sit down with the desire to be short, yet my letter immeasurably slides into length & swells perhaps into an enormous size. I know not how it happens, but on such occasions I have a knack of throwing myself out on paper, that I cannot readily get the letter off.” This punning exchange was not unusual. The most popular English novelist of the day, Laurence Sterne, author of the risqué, multivolume Tristram Shandy (1760–67), routinely made sexual allusions to “rash jerks” and “squirts,” and “spurting ink about on thy table and thy books.”39

  In the Clio Society, Burr was fondly called “My Dear little fellow” by Allen, and was made a confidant of Paterson’s sexual fantasies. Theirs was a male-centered world: men like Paterson, who clearly preferred the company of men to women, fostered platonic friendships through their literary exercises, combining witty banter and sexual gossip. Intense same-sex friendships temporarily substituted for the emotional ties that these same young men would go on to forge with women when they were of an age to marry and have children.

  Young men’s banter was not a temporary phenomenon—it stayed with Burr’s cohort as they went off to war and eventually sought political careers. From his Revolutionary exploits to his quest for national office, Aaron Burr would always be associated with intense fraternal bonds, and his name linked to a kind of hypersexuality that conveniently explained his appeal to young and politically aggressive men. The same label would ultimately be used to tar him as a devious and untrustworthy libertine—and traitor.

  “ON HONOR”

  In the letter Burr received from Moses Allen, another phrase stands out: “Be happy in life and glorious in death.” The subject was honor. This friend was alluding to Burr’s oration “On Honor,” delivered in 1772 to his classmates. William Paterson had generously lent his own oration on this subject, from which Burr cribbed freely. In Burr’s version (as in Paterson’s), the pacifistic ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment somehow merged with a prophetic militancy. Burr’s rather undemocratic theme was that “Men of action,” as a political elect, were the divinely called and naturally gifted leaders of society. These specially chosen men of action “nourish those hidden sparks of genius . . . so capable of enlightening the world.” As enlightened prophets given a calling, such men of honor deserved to occupy the public stage; they combined noble ambition with discretion. Doing everything to avoid the stigma of dishonor, they even, in Burr’s words, concealed their “natural defects” from the “scorn and ridicule of the less honorable part of mankind.” The teenage Burr fully agreed with Witherspoon’s assumptions that men of genius and action could become “invincible.”40

  The concluding thought in Burr’s oration is worth repeating, because it takes as its subject the practice of dueling. The parable concerns a certain Colonel Gardiner, a man of action who best displayed the virtues of “the Christian hero and the true warlike man.” Gardiner refused to engage in a duel with a man who had challenged him on a trivial matter. “With all the boldness and intrepidity of a warrior and all the godlike reverence of the Christian,” Burr explained, the colonel briskly replied to his rash antagonist: “You know . . . that I have courage to fight with a feeble man but I am afraid to sin against almighty God.”41

  What is striking about this passage, besides its reference to dueling, is Burr’s selection of the qualities he feels are suited to a political leader. Colonel Gardiner embodied manly courage, common sense, and Christian heroism. Gardiner’s reason and respect for God informed his sense of honor, enabling his self-respect, yet he refused to engage in a senseless duel. Manly dignity overrode brute aggression. Honor was never simply a matter of revenge over a personal grievance. Rather, it was meant to comprise one’s public duty, in following at once the dictates of reason and a higher moral law.

  This Christian martial spirit and Burr’s faith in common sense were nurtured at Princeton, where in 1770, students openly joined in public protests against the British Parliament. In support of the boycott of British goods, Princetonians denounced tea and textiles. The graduating class of 1770 made homespun their choice of apparel for commencement. In 1774, after Burr had graduated, students would take even bolder action, burning the Massachusetts royal governor Thomas Hutchison in effigy, before gathering the college’s store of tea and setting it afire. By February 1774, Princeton students had formed their own militia. And in 1775, as Burr and Matthias Ogden headed to Boston to join the Continental Army, many of their former classmates left college in droves to join the New Jersey militia.42

  MARKS OF DESTINY

  In his speech on honor, Burr did not contemplate what happened when bold and intrepid Christian warriors and statesmen faced disappointment or failure. What should occur if one of the elect was denied the public stage that he truly deserved? What if his reputation could not be preserved, despite his repeat attempts to “conce
al his natural defects” from the ridicule of the masses?

  During his last oration as an undergraduate, Burr explored this dilemma. His commencement address, “Building Castles in the Air,” was a secular jeremiad against the dangers of wild dreams and far-fetched schemes. His mentor William Paterson reported favorably on Burr’s performance to another classmate: “Our young friend Burr made a graceful appearance; he was excelled by none, except perhaps Bradford”—that is, William Bradford, destined to be George Washington’s second attorney general.43

  Many years later, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and another graduate of Princeton, remembered Burr’s “elegant oration” differently. Thinking back from the perspective of 1807, when Burr was standing trial for treason, the wild dreams and far-fetched schemes seemed to have augured ill. “There is often something said or done by men in their youth that marks their destiny,” Rush told John Adams, as he listed every political defeat in Burr’s career. “To be unfortunate,” Rush observed, “is to be imprudent.” He imagined signs of future missteps in the ancient oration.44

  But in 1772, Burr was neither a tragic figure nor a fallen angel. He was imbued with heroic ideals and the duty of leadership. At this point, he still considered that he would follow his father’s calling and enter the ministry. So he spent an additional year of study at Princeton, and then pursued a rigorous regime of theological training with the Presbyterian divine Joseph Bellamy, accomplishing all of this before he reached the age of twenty. Burr left college at a proud moment, with the support of friends and family.