Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  Sedgwick had been a witness to Burr’s misfortunes, though he might not have known it at the time. Burr had not let the fact that Sedgwick was in Hamilton’s pocket deter them from maintaining social relations. Clearly, the friendship had cooled somewhat with the heightened partisan rancor, but some of the trust of old times remained. Sedgwick visited Burr in early 1797, and Burr wrote him a friendly note a short while later alluding to the “chaos” in his household. Indeed, his domestic life was soon to be turned upside down as he was forced to mortgage his house and sell his furnishings in a desperate attempt to pay back his creditor-friends and preserve his own reputation.75

  Like everyone else in his cohort, Burr borrowed. His real problem began, however, when he agreed to enter into a partnership with James Greenleaf, one of the most notorious speculators of this frenzied decade. Greenleaf (no relation to the controversial journalist Thomas Greenleaf ) was still in his twenties when he found himself at the center of a speculation craze. Born in Boston, he lived for a time in Philadelphia and then New York, before traveling to Europe in 1788, where he established valuable contacts by selling U.S. securities, gaining additional prestige as a U.S. consul in Holland. He returned to the United States in 1793, and established a company to purchase land in Washington City (the future national capital). His initial partners were two prominent Philadelphia speculators, Pennsylvania senator Robert Morris and the state’s comptroller-general John Nicholson. Burr became involved after he purchased the “Angerstein tract” (north of the Mohawk River and east of Lake Ontario) in north-central New York State in 1796. When he signed the contract, he was forced to take on Greenleaf as a partner. (See map, p. 95.)

  Taking what he thought was only a moderate risk, Burr found himself in the same predicament as the more experienced speculators Morris and Nicholson. Young Greenleaf had betrayed them all. He misappropriated funds and deceived Burr by mortgaging the entire Angerstein tract in order to pay off his own debts. For Burr, this meant that he not only had to pay his share of the tract (£12,000) but Greenleaf’s equal share as well; he had countersigned Greenleaf’s bond for £12,000, which carried a non-payment penalty of £24,000. He suddenly could owe a total of £36,000. Adding insult to financial injury, the original owner of the tract, London merchant John Julius Angerstein, had hired Burr’s nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, to press his claim in court. When a judgment was finally reached in the Court of Chancery on June 4, 1799, Burr was expected to pay £24,000 (approximately $80,000), the amount of the penalty.76

  To make matters still worse, Burr’s friend General John Lamb, collector of customs for the port of New York, faced prosecution, when it was discovered that he was short of funds in 1796. While Lamb was not charged with embezzlement (because it was one of his subordinates who had taken the money), he was still liable to the U.S. government for $150,000 in losses; and his sureties, who had signed a $50,000 bond in order that Lamb could assume his post, were liable as well. These sureties were Burr’s confidential friends Melancton Smith and Marinus Willett. Burr could not but feel for his friends in this situation; Lamb had generously lent Burr $20,000 over several years, and was one of his principal sureties in the Angerstein fiasco. Lamb had been at Burr’s side in the harrowing days of 1775, manning the artillery during the invasion of Quebec. Burr could not ignore his old friend now, regardless of his own troubles.77

  Meanwhile, he watched John Nicholson’s life and reputation crumble. Though he had survived an attempted impeachment as comptroller-general in 1794, Nicholson was constantly hounded by a hornet’s nest of creditors who repeatedly dragged him into court. By May 1797, 125 suits had been brought against him, and several costly judgments left him owing over $300,000. In 1799, Nicholson, once the most powerful speculator in America, joined James Greenleaf and Robert Morris in the Prune Street Prison, in Philadelphia. He died there in December 1800, just as Burr was tied with Jefferson in votes for the presidency.78

  No matter how one looks at it, these were tumultuous times for the unbalanced republic. Investment schemes intertwined the finances of many prominent men, and if one investor suffered major losses, then everyone involved felt the repercussions. In the case of Greenleaf, Burr refused to admit to himself that he had been betrayed. In January 1796, he reassured his erstwhile partner that he had never once doubted his “integrity and honor,” and he made sure that Greenleaf knew that he would “cheerfully seize every opportunity to repeat this.” Burr was more concerned with finding a way to extricate himself from debt than seeking revenge from his less than honest partner. Nicholson’s problems were so complicated that Burr had no chance whatsoever to provide assistance; he did what he could, which was to offer Nicholson legal advice during his impeachment trial. Commiserating, he wrote: “my sympathy with your misfortunes is too sincere to allow me, from any personal considerations, to add a particle to their weight.”79

  He was able to do more for John Lamb. Burr convinced Richard Harison, the attorney for New York City, to reduce the amount of security Lamb would have to pay to cover the embezzled funds. By making personal appeals, he was able to delay legal action by the U.S. government, which he hoped would give Lamb enough time to recover the losses from his accounts. In January 1798, he wrote Lamb nobly that he would “superintend the Sales of my own property, until you shall be exonerated.” Burr kept his word. He placed a mortgage on his Richmond Hill estate, and sold other city property he owned, along with his household furnishings. To bolster his modest income, he leased the farmland on his estate.80

  These frantic efforts to rescue Lamb were certainly genuine. Like so many ambitious men in the early republic, Burr and Lamb understood that co-signing a promissory note (a loan agreement) constituted an almost ritualistic bond of friendship. Lamb had been Burr’s major surety, and his decision to endorse Burr’s notes had nothing at all to do with profit and everything to do with honor and friendship. “That your peace of mind should be distressed or personal safety endangered by an act of friendship and generosity to me,” Burr confessed to Lamb, “is the most humiliating event of my life.” Friends’ finances were interconnected; sometimes the tension, in letters, between a lender’s willing sacrifice and his anticipation of trouble was thinly veiled (and powerfully felt by both parties). If Burr had done nothing to help Lamb out of his difficulties, he might have become a man without friends, and this, most certainly, would have doomed his career. In Burr’s world, confidential friends were his society, the very core of his political support. The circle of intimate acquaintances was what made the wheels of politics turn—much more so than any achievement by any singular “great” man.81

  But Burr’s financial difficulties forced him to drastically change his lifestyle. Since 1793, he had occupied the Richmond Hill estate in what later became Greenwich Village, a sprawling property of 160 acres, boasting English-style gardens, meadows extending to the Hudson River, and a man-made pond graced the gateway to the grounds. Richmond Hill mansion was a two-story house with neoclassical features, a portico and Ionic columns, and Chinese Chippendale porch railings. Like other prominent men of his time (think of Jefferson’s Monticello, Washington’s Mount Vernon, or Hamilton’s The Grange), Burr had personally supervised the transformation of his home into a political statement that reflected his rise in New York and the young nation. Like Jefferson, like Hamilton, Burr conceived of his home as an extension of the man, a theatrical space in which he displayed his refinement and social status. Consequently, he took great care to fill his home with the finest furnishings: he had purchased numerous large looking glasses, chintz window curtains, an elegant china tea service, a Dutch liquor case, Brussels carpet, inlaid card tables, pianoforte, and a large bathing tub. For several years, he lived in grand style at the center of New York society.82

  Burr probably moved into the Richmond Hill mansion a year before the death of his wife. Theodosia spent her last days there, and the ambiance resembled her former home in New Jersey, the Hermitage. Burr’s hom
e was designed almost as a French salon, with gracious surroundings meant for entertaining (usually small dinner parties); above all, his goal was to create an enlightened atmosphere of taste and learning. He became the patron of John Vanderlyn, a young American artist destined for celebrity, who joined his household in 1796. With his own artist in residence, Burr commissioned portraits of himself and his daughter, and obliged Vanderlyn to paint close friends like Albert Gallatin. Richmond Hill had a window-lined gallery to display Burr’s art collection, and an extensive library filled with books on various subjects, imported from a London bookseller.83

  Vanderlyn was not Burr’s only project. He readily opened his home to other struggling young artists, offering the Englishman John Davis a room in which to write his engaging travel narrative of the United States, which featured Burr prominently in its pages. Fascinating guests came to dinner, including the chief of the Mohawks, London-educated Joseph Brant. The famed French philosopher-historian Constantin-François Chasseboeuf, comte de Volney, was a regular guest. It was during this period, too, that Burr took in the young French refugee Nathalie de Lage de Volunde as a companion and “foster sister” for Theodosia. His home was more than a status symbol; it was a cosmopolitan entrepôt, a way station for foreign travelers, literati, French exiles, friends, and family. To lose Richmond Hill was to give up far more than a house.84

  He sold his belongings on June 27, 1797, and from that moment on, the estate was used to raise collateral for loans to cover his debts. If he could have seen into the future, he would have regretted his decision. The next owner of the Richmond Hill property was John Jacob Astor, who purchased it for $32,000. Astor would reap millions after dividing the land into smaller lots in what would become the real estate gold mine of Greenwich Village.85

  Burr’s financial misadventures had lasting consequences. Nothing in his life was left untouched by the hovering threat of financial ruin. His stepson Frederick Prevost was forced to sell his house and farm to cover a bond he signed for his stepfather. In 1799, sixteen-year-old Theodosia was horrified. Writing her other stepbrother, John Bartow, she wondered “whether it is determined that some misery should constantly attend us.” Acknowledging her father’s responsibility, she added, “how little [Frederick] deserves such a fate.”86

  Only two months earlier, she had urgently asked John Bartow if he had the means to repay his debts. She wished she could rescue him: “Oh dear brother; that I had a large fortune it should be yours to pay what you owe.” Theodosia’s desire to have a “large fortune” even suggests why she might consider a less than ideal marriage. Her friends in New York would repeat less than flattering descriptions of Theodosia’s future husband, Joseph Alston, a South Carolinian due to inherit over 6,000 acres and 253 slaves, and to become an exceedingly wealthy rice plantation owner. Maria Nicholson blamed Burr outright. After learning of the 1801 marriage she asked her sister Hannah Gallatin: “Can it be that the father has sacrificed a daughter to affluence and influential connections?” Theodosia’s constant concern over her family’s debts offers the best explanation for why a gifted, independent-minded woman would, at the age of seventeen, marry a man she barely knew. The only available means for any female to acquire a “large fortune” at this time was by marriage or inheritance. By tying the knot with Alston, Theodosia could realistically assist her financially troubled family.87

  Burr was well aware of all he stood to lose politically. Writing John Lamb, he begged “that the scraps which I write you may not go out of your hands.” And to Pierpont Edwards: “I beg you to make no unnecessary confidences about our Concerns. It will only give pleasure to those who wish well to neither of us.” Any hint of scandal would circulate quickly.88

  During the presidential election of 1796, Burr had already been taken to task for his involvement with Greenleaf and Nicholson. Hamilton could not resist blabbing to his fellow Federalists about the Angerstein suit. Federalist William Smith wrote to a friend, at Burr’s expense: what “a charming character to be sure for V. President! . . . sued here [Philadelphia] for 5,000 at the Bank and in N.Y. for £12,000 Sterl[ing] for land speculation.” In the election of 1800, Hamilton would again make capital use of the Angerstein suit, arguing that this was indisputable proof that Burr was a dangerous man. It bears repeating: Four years later, at the time of his death, Hamilton would be deeply in debt, owing close to the amount that Burr had to pay for the Angerstein debacle.89

  Burr’s political notoriety aroused suspicion in this suspicious decade, so that Burr did not even have to undertake questionable actions to get into trouble. In the most bizarre of his speculative ventures in the 1790s, he became inadvertently linked to a group of disaffected Germans in western New York who were negotiating to leave the United States and resettle in Upper Canada. By the time Canadian authorities smelled a takeover of a portion of their territory by American interests, the name of Aaron Burr was invoked as the force behind the proposed action, a proposition that, at least in his mind, never even existed.

  The German Company, so-called, was formed in 1794 and involved his friend Melancton Smith and the land agent Timothy Green, in addition to Burr. The German settlers who first set things in motion believed that the Canadian government would be willing to grant them 2 million acres—much more than they needed. So they hoped to sell the excess land to European investors and reap tremendous profits. John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, at first eager to attract settlers, balked after he began to fear American designs. Simcoe revoked the patents when he saw his colony becoming “the Prey of Land Jobbers” and “Insurgents.” The British minister in the United States, Robert Liston, agreed, nervously writing that if men with “High-flying democratick sentiments” such as Aaron Burr were involved, then it was only a matter of time before they would try to establish an “independent Republick” in Canada.90

  Eventually, a small group of American investors in Canada (who did not include Burr) did what Liston predicted: they plotted to recover the townships that Simcoe had arbitrarily taken away. They met with Burr and Green in 1801, and appealed for their help. It appears that the plotters never really planned anything more than to scare the Canadian government into returning the land earlier offered. One of the organizers claimed that Burr had given him and others encouragement. But that was all. Burr was merely a prop in a staged faux conspiracy. His only interest in Upper Canada was as an economic investment.91

  Still, as we attempt to understand the widespread opportunity, ordinary flexibility, ambiguity, and extralegal temptations associated with land speculation in early America, it is significant how readily speculators turned to filibustering as an “easy,” if not legitimate, form of political expression. The faux rebels were entirely comfortable approaching Burr when he was the sitting vice president with their ploy to pressure the Canadian government to play fair with American speculators in their country. In fact, in the minds of most Americans of this era, filibustering hailed back to the American Revolution and the invasion of Canada—a quest fueled by patriotic and religious ardor. Many Americans believed the same colonial discontent could be kindled elsewhere in North America. Burr was hardly the architect of this rebellion. He was, at best, a curious spectator, though he may well have used the faux rebellion of Upper Canada as a blueprint for his own later filibustering scheme in the American Southwest that would end in a trial for treason.

  “RESENTMENT IS MORE DIGNIFIED WHEN JUSTICE IS RENDERED”

  Despite his financial troubles, Burr did not retreat from the political scene as the Hamiltonian Robert Troup had gleefully predicted. In April 1797, the former senator helped select a slate of Republican candidates from New York City to run for the state legislature. Moreover, he willingly put himself forward for a “lowly” assembly seat. His demotion from the lofty heights of the U.S. Senate to the minor league of state politics did not seem to matter to him. On the contrary, Burr saw an opportunity; in the assembly, he could achieve somet
hing that had previously eluded him: a genuine grassroots base of support. By a two-to-one margin, Burr and his Republican ticket won the election handily.92

  Meanwhile, he solidified his Republican contacts outside the state. His relationship with the Virginians grew stronger. In June, when James Monroe returned from his diplomatic mission in France, Burr, in the company of Jefferson and Gallatin, came aboard ship to welcome him home. Even before this reunion, Jefferson sent him an urgent news brief about disturbing events in Congress; he also solicited Burr’s opinion about the prospects for republicanism in the northern states. In a world of personal and political favors, Jefferson made one more important gesture toward friendship: He asked Burr to take on a legal suit, for a close friend, in the New York courts. And the two men agreed to meet discreetly in Philadelphia, as Burr put it, to discuss “ideas.”93

  Republicans needed to stick together. For the next two years, they were the embattled party. War fever permeated the air. From Philadelphia, Burr received reports about the “present infatuation” for war with France, and he shook his head at the bellicose posturing of the Adams administration. To his friend Dr. William Eustis of Boston, an ardent Anti-Federalist turned Republican, whom Burr had served with during the Revolution, he drolly observed: “Perhaps however the bold Language of the President, and the fierce speeches of [Federalist senators] Harper and Smith may intimidate the French directory.” How, Burr asked, could the United States, a country without a navy or army, scare what was perhaps at this moment the greatest military power in the world? Burr was not opposed to strengthening America’s defenses; he was, however, against a reckless confrontation.94

  James Monroe’s embarrassing dismissal from his post as minister to France served to rally the Republicans. Accused of being too cozy with the French Directory (Washington privately called him a “mere tool in the hands of the French government”), he had been unceremoniously recalled. Monroe was livid over his public humiliation. Adding to his grievances, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering refused to give an “official” reason for his dismissal. Burr sympathized, calling Pickering’s “tergiversation, hypocrisy & equivocation . . . disgraceful.” Showing their approval of Monroe’s conduct, Republicans held two public dinners in his honor in Philadelphia and New York City. Burr was present at both, and at the New York gathering in July, he gave the most rousing toast: “success to the efforts of Republicanism throughout the world.”95