It is impossible to know exactly what Burr thought of this letter. Yet within a week, his friends were zealously promoting him as the candidate to replace Adams. Three of Burr’s friends took charge of the negotiations: Melancton Smith, Marinus Willett, and Pennsylvania’s high-flying speculator, John Nicholson. The negotiations had to be handled delicately, because Burr’s name was being floated alongside that of Governor Clinton, who was the Virginians’ first choice for vice president. Pennsylvania Republicans liked Burr, and were unimpressed with Clinton. Nicholson explained in an October 3 letter to James Madison that the New York election controversy had harmed Clinton’s reputation—the governor himself felt it might be wisest not to abandon his post in the aftermath of the canvassers’ scandal. To Nicholson, Burr had a better chance of gaining support from “middle and Eastern States which would not be given to Clinton.” Unless Burr was the Republican candidate, he warned Madison, Pennsylvania could not be counted on for support.86
Jointly writing to Madison and Monroe a few days earlier, Smith and Willett had made a similar case. Smith then traveled from New York to Philadelphia, carrying a letter of introduction from Burr to Nicholson. Designating Smith as “the representative of the republicans in this State,” Burr empowered him as a party agent, a manager “as to men and measures.” Curiously, just five days earlier Clinton had voted to appoint Burr to the state Supreme Court, which would have put Burr out of the running. But Burr did not care to don the judicial robe.87
The governor was not ready to concede the vice-presidential nomination to Burr. But Melancton Smith was. Smith and Willett were Clinton men, now inching toward the Burr camp. Neither man wanted to abandon Clinton so much as they wished to strengthen the ties between Burr and Clinton’s camp. But both felt the younger politician represented the future of New York Republicans. As his “confidential friends,” Smith and Willett regularly loaned Burr money, and constituted the first informal band of Burrites, a collection of men of who backed his political ambitions. At this time, Burr’s stable of supporters included a few stray Federalists like Peter Van Gaasbeek (formerly an Anti-Federalist), as well as New York City Clintonians of the “middling” sort. Burr attracted men without elite family connections such as Smith and Willett—former soldiers and Anti-Federalists whose liberal principles matched Burr’s own.
Yet the role of the Pennsylvanian, Nicholson, was just as significant, because his word carried weight with James Monroe. Nicholson had relied on Monroe in his land deals, and had recently enticed Burr into his Pennsylvania Population Company—Burr ended up as one of its largest shareholders. Nicholson was part of the entrepreneurial-speculator wing of the Republican Party, and he shared the commercial vision of Burr and Smith. Monroe is important here because he apparently did not share Jefferson’s pronounced distaste for “speculating scoundrels”; he had purchased 100,000 acres in the Kentucky Territory and, along with Madison, had pursued an investment scheme in New York land patents. At this time, the two younger Virginians (though not Jefferson) were actively coordinating the campaign against Adams.88
The behind-the-scenes negotiation engineered by Smith, Willett, and Nicholson revealed an unspoken sectional division among Republicans, one that would continue to thwart Burr’s rise in the party. The Virginians had every intention of running the show themselves; perhaps because their state possessed more electoral votes than either New York or Pennsylvania, neither Madison nor Monroe was ready to relinquish control of the candidate selection process to their northern brethren. (Of course, if New York and Pennsylvania worked together, their combined vote would exceed Virginia’s.) At any rate, the two Virginians drafted a carefully worded response to Smith and Willett, arguing that any change in strategy might upset the existing understanding as to the most promising means of unseating Adams—and so they continued to insist on Clinton’s candidacy. Monroe cautiously added that Burr’s “youth” was their rationale for not selecting him.89
Reading between the lines of this letter, we can detect the Virginians’ belief that the less dynamic Clinton posed little threat to a Jeffersonian-led party. In a June letter to Jefferson (written after the election controversy and before Burr’s candidacy was raised), Monroe admitted that he found Clinton’s “extreme parsimony” and ungenteel manners appalling and “vicious,” but he felt confident that the governor’s lack of sophistication made him manageable. In the end, though he favored Clinton, Monroe still considered Burr an attractive possibility, adding as a postscript in his letter to Madison: “I sho[ul]d not hesitate to aid Burr in opposition to Adams. If he co[ul]d succeed, it might have its good effects and co[ul]d not possibly do any mischief.”90
The 1792 national election results proved that the Virginians would have to make more concessions than they had originally intended. President Washington, of course, stood unopposed. In the contest for vice president, Clinton won the votes of Virginia (21), New York (12), North Carolina (12), and Georgia (4), but among the eleven other states he received only 1 vote. Pennsylvania (with 14 of its 15 votes going to Adams) decided the election: the final tally was Adams 77 and Clinton 50. If Clinton had swept Pennsylvania, he would have won by 1 vote, 64 to 63. Nicholson’s prediction that the Republicans in his state “prefer Burr to Clinton” proved to be the difference in this election, a fact that neither Madison nor Monroe could ignore. Clinton may have been a “safer” candidate for the Virginians, but Burr alone could have given the Republicans their victory. Burr, in fact, received one electoral vote—from South Carolina.91
In the election of 1792, as he would in 1796, and again with even more false righteousness in 1800 –1801, Hamilton unleashed a letter campaign aimed at sinking Burr’s chances. There was nothing subtle about Hamilton’s intentions—there never was. In 1801, when he actively solicited his friends to break the electoral tie in Jefferson’s favor, he would call Burr “desperate and profligate,” a man who “has not principle, public or private.” Here in 1792, writing to an anonymous ally, he made the very same case, favoring Clinton, a man he thoroughly detested (and had mocked for his parsimony) but now praised for his “probity.”92
Over the years, Hamilton’s personal attacks against Burr were consistent, and they all began with his three characterizations in the early 1790s: devoid of principles (“for or against nothing”); privately reckless (financially “embarrassed”); yet personally powerful (capable of becoming “head of a popular party” because he was “bold enterprising and intriguing”). Willing to resort to any ploy if it would convince his reader, Hamilton justified his vilification of Burr by reinforcing it with an ostensible moral impulse: In the fall of 1792, he claimed he had “a religious duty to oppose [Burr’s] career.”93
Religion, of course, had nothing to do with it. As to the charge of fiscal irresponsibility, there were men in Hamilton’s party whose finances were far more desperate than Burr’s. While Hamilton railed against Burr’s “embarrassed . . . circumstances” and “extravagant family” in 1792, Hamilton’s chum William Duer languished in debtor’s prison. No man at this time was better known for his wild speculative schemes, yet Hamilton had seen fit to appoint Duer to the second highest office in the Treasury Department! Though himself the beneficiary of a prudent marriage, nothing would prevent Hamilton from dying in debt.94
All political campaigning, then as now, relies in some way on distortion, on portraying the opposition as a caricature of a negative behavior. That certainly was the case in the 1790s, when Burr and Hamilton competed for favor among New Yorkers, and when Hamilton, a powerful national executive, fearfully envisioned the rise of an anti-administration party. Therefore, his personal feelings toward Aaron Burr could not but be fused with his larger concern about the preservation of Federalist rule.
The personal dynamic between Burr and Hamilton has inspired virtually all of the accounts of the circumstances that ultimately led to their 1804 duel. But Hamilton’s real reason for wanting to destroy Burr’s career, at leas
t in the early 1790s, was political: Burr’s growing support in New York. Hamilton’s lieutenants, such as Nathaniel Hazard and Robert Troup, had been watching Burr, and observing his increasing popularity. Burr had acquired a political base. He had been assembling a team of influential men, such as Melancton Smith, who could help him organize his own “popular party.” And despite what Hamilton claimed, the men around Burr were attracted to his principles: his belief in promoting commercial opportunities for the middling sort, his advocacy for liberal legal reform, fair elections, and freedom of speech—the last evidenced by his moral stand to defend the silenced and censured printer Thomas Greenleaf.95
In letters to close friends, Hamilton held nothing back in condemning Burr, but in correspondence with casual acquaintances he cleverly pretended that he had only heard rumors disparaging Burr’s behavior. Less than three weeks after Hamilton had written in one letter that Burr was “unprincipled, both as a public and private man,” and in another letter that he was an “embryo Caesar,” he disingenuously wrote to Congressman John Steele, a moderate Federalist, that his “opinion of Mr. Burr is yet to form. . . . Imputations, not favorable to his integrity as a man, rest upon him, but I do not vouch for their authenticity.” Here is clear evidence of Hamilton’s political gamesmanship. He wanted to undermine Burr and to pretend that he had had nothing to do with it.96
It is rather ironic that Hamilton vilified Burr as “unprincipled” in the fall of 1792. For in December of that year, he was forced to defend his own reputation against charges emanating from his private behavior—charges that would certainly drive any modern politician from office.
Gathering intelligence on behalf of the Republican interest, John Beckley brought the sordid details of the “Reynolds Affair” to light. Beckley had heard rumors, which he conveyed to Senator James Monroe, that Treasury Secretary Hamilton had used privileged information in a possible speculation scheme that involved one James Reynolds as his agent. In prison at the time for suborning perjury in another case related to the Treasury Department, Reynolds released the story about Hamilton in the hope that the secretary would drop the charges against him.97
To strengthen Reynolds’s hand, and prove Hamilton’s wrongdoing, Reynolds’s wife, Maria, provided letters indicating that money had changed hands between Hamilton and her husband. Monroe, along with Congressmen Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania and Abraham Venable of Virginia, investigated the charges. On December 15, 1792, they presented the evidence to the treasury secretary. That evening, when Hamilton met with the Republicans, he confessed—but not to any financial impropriety. He had been having an affair with Maria Reynolds, he said, and paying her husband hush money. The Republican delegation agreed to keep the matter confidential. Hamilton’s secret would be not be publicly revealed until 1797, well after he had left the Treasury Department.98
So in 1792, Hamilton was hardly in a position to censure Burr’s moral character. It was Hamilton who was engaged in a low intrigue, making desperate, clandestine payments to protect his reputation. But as Hamilton saw the situation, extramarital sex could be separated easily from financial impropriety. As long as he did not violate the public trust by misusing his office, he could continue to insist that he was an honest man. He did not extend the same courtesy to Burr, exaggerating the significance of his being financially overextended while ignoring the fact that so many of their colleagues were routinely on the verge of debt. Hamilton’s political maneuverings and political motives reveal a man whose objectivity could not be trusted—especially with regard to Burr’s personal character. To be perfectly clear, outside of Hamilton and his cronies, no one was criticizing Burr’s character in 1792.
“THE WITS, THE SALT, THE BRILLIANCY OF SOCIETY”
Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds had begun in 1791, the same year Burr arrived in Philadelphia, the new federal capital. In a strange twist, Burr was drawn into the scandal in 1793, when he agreed to serve as Mrs. Reynolds’s divorce attorney. Later, he would act as ward for her daughter, whom he placed in the home of Congressman William Eustis of Boston so that she might avoid the shame associated with her mother. The legal careers of Burr and Hamilton intersected often, so the connection is not as unusual as it might seem. Of course, it is hard to imagine that Burr could have remained unaware of his client’s liaison with Hamilton (gossip concerning this matter had circulated among the elite after 1792, five long years before the public learned of the affair). Yet Burr’s reasons for taking the case are still unknown. Did he feel pity for an abused wife? Or was he actually protecting Hamilton by freeing Maria from the clutches of her manipulative husband? Burr had already acquired a reputation for handling divorce cases, and throughout his life would assist a long list of orphans and wards just like Maria’s daughter. So his relationship to Hamilton did not have to be the reason why Maria Reynolds approached him. Still, whether they liked it or not, Hamilton and Burr were often privy to each other’s private confidences.99
Little went unnoticed in the close-knit community that formed among federal officials and their families in Philadelphia. Residing in the home of two elderly widows on High Street when he first arrived in the city, Burr was just down the street from President Washington and Secretary of State Jefferson; his other neighbors were fellow senators John Langdon of New Hampshire and Pierce Butler of South Carolina. “The city of brotherly love” was the largest in the nation, with 43,000 residents (10,000 more than New York at this time). As a planned city, it was composed of rectangular blocks fanning out from the Delaware to the Schuykill River.100
Philadelphians were proud of their city, the imposing brick buildings, tree-lined streets, and cultural attractions. In 1790, Congress moved into the courthouse—adjacent to the State House—that was renamed Congress Hall. The serpentine promenade behind the two buildings became a prominent social spot, where men and women conversed and displayed the latest fashions. A national elite was emerging: power was not only being exercised in the halls of Congress but outside government as well—at dinner parties and in great mansions. A new class was forming, aligned with the federal government and the Federalist Party, and it linked politics to the display of cultural authority.101
Though Martha Washington continued holding her weekly levees in Philadelphia, she was quickly outclassed by the newly anointed social hostesses of the federal elite: Anne Willing Bingham and Mary White Morris. According to Abigail Adams, Bingham and Morris hosted “one continued scene of parties upon parties.” Mary was the wife of Pennsylvania senator Robert Morris, so-called “financier of the Revolution,” whose grand home became the official residence of President Washington. Bingham hailed from one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia, and her father and Robert Morris had been business partners in a highly successful trading firm. While touring the European courts in the 1780s, Anne’s husband, the merchant turned speculator William Bingham, had actively, transparently sought a diplomatic post. Anne, known for her beauty, became a sensation, charming nobles and diplomats in London and Paris alike.102
On their return to Philadelphia, the Binghams built an extravagant mansion (modeled after the Duke of Manchester’s London home), which served as a stage for political entertainment. Anne Bingham threw lavish dinners in the style of the English aristocracy, including the opulent practice of announcing the arrival of guests. She even had a retinue of female friends and family present at her parties, who accompanied her as she made her weekly rounds of social calls. Anne Bingham purposefully created a code of behavior for the Federalist elite. She provided a social arena in which diplomats, prominent government officials, and ambitious office seekers like her husband vied for distinction and patronage.103
Though Burr has been refashioned into the very type who would have flourished in this environment, he did not, at least not comfortably. After arriving in Philadelphia to attend the Second Congress in October 1791, he admitted to Theodosia that he had received “many attentions and civilities�
� and “invitations to dine,” but had declined such offers. Ill equipped for social visits, he lacked “decent clothes,” as he put it, begging his wife to send him a suitable waistcoat. Resenting what he called “this absurd and irrational mode of life,” he pleaded with her to visit him as soon as possible.104
When Theodosia finally joined him the following March for a short stay, she discovered a city that was “uninhabitable,” for all its “boasted refinement.” In a devilishly witty letter to her son, John Bartow Prevost, she not only ridiculed the “beauties and attractions of Philadelphia” but mocked the pretentious manners of the reigning Federalists, putting particular emphasis on their peculiar obsession with social display:
All our disdained and slighted beaux here are esteemed the wits, the salt, the brilliancy of society. The parties resemble a playhouse before the curtain is drawn up. The ostentatious part is a footman with a silver breadbasket, and the hospitality is proffering a cup of cold tea to a mob—while the lady is fluttering around in utmost apparent dizziness, lest the number of female attendants should not exceed all the household chairs—Should one remain, in the use of a single gentleman, god knows what might be the consequence—sacrilege would not be half so horrid.105
Burr echoed his wife’s complaint, attacking the “frivolity and vacuity” of the fashionable men and women he observed in the homes of Philadelphia high society. Theodosia’s remarks remind us that Burr could never have played the Chesterfield beau—she would not have tolerated it. Rather than revel in the swirl of high society, the Burrs, as self-appointed social critics, seemed more comfortable disparaging it.106
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