Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  Meanwhile, Burr continued to carry on the business of the Senate. In January 1802, Senate Republicans put forward a motion to repeal the Judiciary Act of 1801. This statute infuriated them for good reason: Just before he left office, John Adams had used the act to rush through the appointments of several circuit court justices and to reduce the size of the Supreme Court, making it impossible for Jefferson to put anyone on the high court. Burr kept the repeal motion alive, breaking a tie vote and sending the bill to committee. At the same time, though, he hoped to reduce partisan rancor by giving Federalists an opportunity to review the legislation. He did not dispute the constitutional right of Congress to alter the judiciary system, but he wondered “if it might be constitutionally Moral.” Simply put, he saw the dismissal of the twenty-six judges Adams appointed as unfair—a precedent that would condone partisan acts to overturn the judiciary with each new administration. Debate over the repeal did not go on for long. Soon enough, the party in power had the votes they needed, and the repeal passed—despite the lack of unanimity among Republicans, as crystallized in Burr’s ambivalence about the repeal.57

  Though some admired Burr’s moderation, the rumors of his waning influence only gained momentum. Federalists gloated over Burr’s alienation from the Republican leadership. From both sides now, Burr’s every action was under scrutiny. So his appearance on February 22, 1802, at a Federalist gathering in the national capital to celebrate George Washington’s birthday was bound to cause a stir. Invited to give a toast, Burr raised his glass to “The union of all honest men.” His toast became the talk of the town. Federalists, revisiting their state of mind during the election tie, once again imagined Burr’s words as an offer to “coalesce,” as Robert Troup reported. Congressmen John P. Van Ness of New York, Burr’s friend and supporter, explained that the entire episode had been blown out of proportion. Burr had actually rejected the Federalists’ invitation to dine, dropping by at the conclusion of the meal—by chance, his friend said. Discovering the business at hand, he offered his toast as a courtesy, and then quickly retired.58

  But Federalists were still looking for signs of Burr’s defection. When Hamilton got word of the affair, however, he was furious. And Gouverneur Morris’s assessment hardly comforted him: Burr had “little Chance” to be a “Leader of any Party” because, at this point, members of both parties hated him. Even so, Morris had to admit that Burr possessed “considerable Talents for Government.”59

  Burr’s consciousness of his waning influence in government was not immediately expressed. He wrote his son-in-law Joseph Alston, in early March, suggesting he was no longer able to predict what direction Congress was moving, even though he was head of the Senate. There was a touch of irony in all that he said: “I dine with the president about once a fortnight, and now and then meet the ministers in the street. They are all very busy: quite men of business. The Senate and the vice president are content with each other, and move on with courtesy.” Coolness had settled over Washington, as far as he was concerned. Jefferson was not the same man who, as president-elect in December 1800, told Burr how much he regretted not having him in his cabinet.60

  Burr’s allies were more worried. Congressman Van Ness confided to his brother William in early April that Burr’s “influence and weight with the Administration is in my opinion not such as I could wish.” Van Ness recognized that DeWitt Clinton, now in the Senate, had the ear of the president. By July, Burr was ready to admit that the situation had deteriorated, noting in a letter to Alston that Clinton was the “instigator” behind Cheetham’s publications. Burr warned Pierpont Edwards that his allies were all subject to attack, and it was only a matter of time before Edwards would find himself named as party to “certain imaginary intrigues.” Just as predicted, Edwards did not escape Cheetham’s wrath. “This knot of knaves cannot long hold together,” Burr blasted away to his uncle.61

  The battle intensified on July 31, 1802, when Burr’s loyal friend John Swartwout met DeWitt Clinton on the dueling field in Weehawken, New Jersey, where Burr would eventually face Hamilton. Swartwout accused Clinton of trying to destroy Burr’s reputation in order to advance his own political career. In response, Clinton called Swartwout “a liar, a scoundrel, and a villain.” Refusing to apologize, Clinton seemed eager to force a confrontation. A date was set, and the two men, along with their seconds, rowed across the Hudson from Manhattan. It was not a pretty affair: A total of five rounds were fired, and Swartwout suffered two leg wounds. Carried to Burr’s home, the wounded duelist slowly recovered. But the encounter resolved nothing. Clinton, at one point, offered his hand to Swartwout, but still declared that he would have preferred a chance to shoot at Burr. This affair was not about personal honor; it was a party feud, which Clinton had intentionally provoked. The war of words had now escalated into a confrontation with actual bullets.62

  After Swartwout’s dangerous and unproductive interview with Clinton, the Burrites decided to establish their own newspaper. The Morning Chronicle would be edited by Dr. Peter Irving. In August, when the plans for the paper reached Cheetham, he wasted little time in attacking the competition. His chief tactic was to accuse his rival of lacking manliness. He described Irving as a “young man of handsome talents.” But of course, Cheetham did not stop there. Dr. Irving, he said, was a sexual pawn of the seductive Burr. “There is a softness,” he wrote about the vice president, “an insinuating deceitfulness about him admirably calculated to fascinate youth.” By October, Cheetham was directly mocking Irving’s paper for its lack of “manliness,” comparing it to a “Lady’s Weekly Museum.” He now called Irving a “beau,” who was only capable of sputtering “effeminate attacks”; he went so far as to suggest that Irving might be a woman in disguise, whose whining editorials reminded him of one who suffered from a “female complaint.” Making sure everyone understood the insult, in subsequent issues Cheetham would address the physician-editor as “Miss Irving” and “Her Ladyship.” It would be his constant refrain over the next two years. Cheetham called the Morning Chronicle’s output “puerile” and “foolish satire,” and Irving’s prose mere “tea-party” style, suited to the frivolous tastes of the “dandy.”63

  The intemperate editor was relying on a well-established tradition of political insult. According to eighteenth-century caricature, womanish men were fickle and disloyal, while as men of fashion, dandified politicians could be expected to change party affiliation as easily as they changed their clothes. By comparing the Burrites to beaux, dandies, and foppish boys, he associated them with prodigal dissipation and sexual indulgence—the twin vices of luxura and licentia, the antithesis of republican virtue.64

  The theme of sexual inversion, so pronounced in these attacks, conjoined rampant vice and political instability. Add to Cheetham’s charge that effeminacy marked the Burrites as amateurs and imposters his dismissal of their youth. They were, in his words, “an impotent faction,” nothing more than “angry boys of a juvenile society.” One supposedly unsolicited letter to the editor of the American Citizen noted the political aberration of the underage Burrites by identifying the letter writer as “old enough to be a Republican, and too old to be a Burrite.”65

  Sexual deviance was the most scurrilous charge in Cheetham’s grab-bag of insults. Burr’s “precious band,” as he called this unnatural faction, was “actuated by personal attachments.” They idolized Burr, and were “so extremely close” that they formed an emotionally intimate, sexually uncertain alliance. The homosexual overtones were intentional. Cheetham had conjured the specter of a sodomite plot—a theme popular in the conspiratorial satire of eighteenth-century England—in which Cataline, the notorious Roman traitor and seducer of young men, often figured prominently. Burr’s ability to court and corrupt young men endangered the entire party system, polluting the manly bonds that united the Republican Party. The oft-manipulated image of Aaron Burr had reached an unprecedented level of exaggeration.66

  The men around Burr
were an extremely talented group of New Yorkers. Peter Irving had a reputation as a literary scholar, and was active in several social clubs that attracted ambitious young men. He belonged to the “lads of Kilkenny,” which assembled at the coffeehouse near the Park Theatre in lower Manhattan. Cheetham claimed that Dr. Irving was but a child, when he was fully thirty years old in 1802, the same age as Cheetham. Cheetham’s political hero, DeWitt Clinton, was thirty-three, underscoring the fact that age was not really an issue here. What remains most striking about Burr’s core of support is that they were a “band of brothers,” in the most literal sense. Peter Irving recruited his younger brother Washington to write for both the Morning Chronicle and the Corrector, the first significant literary efforts of a man destined to become the most famous American writer of his generation. John Swartwout, age thirty-two, corralled his two younger brothers, Robert and Samuel, into the Burrite fold. Congressman John Van Ness was the same age as John Swartwout; he and his younger brother William were lifelong friends of Burr’s. Matthew Livingston Davis as well convinced his brother John to support Burr, and his father-in-law was equally devoted to the cause.67

  Burr described Dr. Irving as a “decided Republican, but not of the persecuting intolerant sort,” whereas Cheetham relied on invective and insinuation. Day by day, the latter’s newspaper read like a soap opera, in which the evil Burr was a “proteus,” a shape-shifter, using black magic to hide his dishonorable doings of plotting against Jefferson. In the early stages, Burr read the insults but refused to respond. Finally, in September 1802, he followed the advice of New Jersey governor Joseph Bloomfield and drafted a letter (published in various newspapers) calling Cheetham’s charges “false and groundless.” He stated unequivocally that he had never “advised or countenanced” any opposition to Mr. Jefferson, nor had he “agreed to any terms with the federal party”; and he had never “assented to be held up in opposition to [ Jefferson] or attempted to withdraw from him the Vote or support of any Man.” Burr said he found it remarkable that “calumny, unsupported by proof or even the authority of Name, could so far receive attention from the public as to require answer or even a denial.”68

  By now, Burr should have known better: slander without proof was pretty much the order of the day. Cheetham claimed he did not even need proof to justify his accusations: “Many, very many, indeed, strongly suspect that [Burr] is guilty of the charge exhibited, but almost all are of the opinion that he has managed the negotiations with so much caution, dexterity, and art, as to defy the production of proof.” Rumors alone could convict Burr.69

  Cheetham claimed that Burr had numerous accomplices in his scheme to steal the presidency: Edward Livingston of New York, James Linn of New Jersey, Abraham Bishop of Connecticut, Pierpont Edwards, Federalist David Ogden—the list went on. During the election tie, Burr and Ogden had traveled on the same stage together, and that was supposed to be evidence enough of a secret deal.70

  In response, Irving employed a clever defensive tactic. In a hilarious spoof called “The Coach!!!” he wrote:

  I am astonished the watchful editor has not yet exposed the nefarious intrigues of the Vice President about the COACH! The main ground of the matter is this: The Vice President purchased a Coach at second-hand from a federalist. A federalist? A federalist! Oh! Proof incontrovertible! But suppose (for I am not quite certain it is the case) he did not purchase it of a federalist; suppose he obtained it from a GOOD REPUBLICAN—still the affair furnishes strong proofs. It shews a manifest desire, by cunning and endeavors, to regain his standing in the opinion of republicans; of which we editors have deprived him. Though he would doubtless prefer purchasing a coach from a federalist, yet he is obliged for the sake of appearances, to give his custom to a republican. Here is proof of his hypocrisy; and surely the man who would dissemble in one instance, would without hesitation, do it in another.71

  William P. Van Ness was perhaps the most formidable defender of the vice president. In December 1803, he penned an anonymous pamphlet, signed “Aristides,” that took George Clinton to task for being under the influence of his haughty and ambitious nephew. It is probable that Burr had a hand in the pamphlet. It circulated nationally and effectively humiliated DeWitt Clinton, who threatened to sue the printer if he did not reveal the author’s name. One thing Van Ness did that was especially pointed was to query why the president had remained silent, refusing to defend his vice president. A few months after “Aristides,” Burr took an additional precaution in trying to defend himself: He initiated a libel suit against Cheetham, primarily so as to collect depositions from any and all who could disprove the editor’s charges. The move would have made sense had the truth still mattered.72

  The real power play against Burr occurred in Washington, as DeWitt Clinton maneuvered behind the scenes to remove Burr from the Republican ticket as preparations began for the 1804 presidential election. At first, Clinton imagined that he himself might be selected as Jefferson’s running mate in 1804, and that his uncle would retain the governorship of New York. His principal ally, John Armstrong, put in motion his own secret scheme: George Clinton would run for both the governorship and vice presidency. After winning the second office, Clinton would resign the first, and Robert Livingston could then fill the seat through a backroom deal negotiated in the New York legislature.73

  Burr had every intention of taking part in the next gubernatorial campaign, and DeWitt Clinton pleaded with Jefferson for a public renunciation of his erstwhile vice president. Jefferson remained detached, denying the younger Clinton immediate gratification. Instead, he deputed Gideon Granger, his postmaster general, to send Clinton a carefully worded letter, assuring him that the president “has requested me to inform you that he never has said he would vote for A.B. [for] vice-prt or Governor. He never has said so.” Jefferson wished for the Clintons to keep Burr out of power, but he also wanted to appear above the fray. “I can therefore only brood in silence over my secret wishes,” he wrote DeWitt Clinton directly. The president tried to have it both ways: appearing aloof while subtly pulling the strings.74

  DeWitt Clinton had no need to worry. When the Republican caucus met on February 25, 1804, not a single Republican voted for Burr to return as vice president. Jefferson’s silence had sent a strong enough message; southern prejudice against Burr “made the people sufficiently ready to receive impressions to his disadvantage,” as one Virginian put it. The caucus went on to nominate the old warhorse Governor George Clinton to replace Burr on the national ticket. And as the Morning Chronicle reported, Clinton was the southern candidate, since he received only one vote “north of the Susquehannah.” Still, Burr had his supporters, one of whom hailed from—of all places—Virginia. In a private letter, Republican mainstay Littleton Tazewell accused the Republican caucus of being the worst kind of aristocracy. Theirs was, he wrote, “an unauthorized meeting undertaken to decide, that one of the old Servants of the people is no longer worthy of their confidence.” They had dismissed Burr, he added, “without specifying any charge against him, or offering any proofs to support it.” It may seem odd that anyone from Virginia would defend Burr. But before his untimely death in 1799, Henry Tazewell (Littleton’s father) had been quite close to Burr, serving with him in the U.S. Senate. From the younger Tazewell’s view, the caucus was guiltier of engaging in intrigue than was the reputedly amoral vice president.75

  The 1804 governor’s election was a nasty and petty campaign. George Clinton refused to run again, and in his place the Clintonians backed Chancellor John Lansing. Other candidates had been considered: New York State Supreme Court Justice Morgan Lewis, and his fellow justice Brockholst Livingston (who had been Burr’s friend and political ally until he suddenly abandoned him for the Clintons); Judge John Taylor of Albany; and, of course, DeWitt Clinton, who seemed to imagine that every available office was within his reach. Lansing was the most appealing of these candidates; as a political moderate, he could attract Federalist voters as well as Re
publicans.76

  On February 18, two days after Lansing accepted the nomination, Burr’s friends gathered at the Tontine Coffee House and announced Burr’s plan to run for governor. To the surprise of many, Lansing withdrew that very day, refusing to compete with the vice president. Clinton’s men were then forced to scramble to find a replacement. They decided on Morgan Lewis. He had married into the Livingston clan, and was one of the last of the Livingstons to abandon the Federalist Party and join the Clinton faction. In that he was, plainly, a lesser light among the Livingstons, Burr’s supporters were optimistic, predicting “certain Success, since the nomination of Lewis.”77

  Burr’s enemies were troubled. Hamilton nervously reported that “Burr’s prospect has extremely brightened” with Lewis, instead of Lansing, in the race. Hamilton had publicly declared his support for Lansing at a February meeting of Federalists. Speaking to a friendly assemblage, he repeated all the old accusations, and adding one new charge: that Burr’s election would encourage New Englanders to endorse the idea of “dismemberment of the Union.” Hamilton obliquely alluded to a plot, recently hatched by Federalist congressmen from New England, to secede from the union. Five prominent men backed this plan: Senators Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, William Plumer of New Hampshire, James Hillhouse and Uriah Tracy of Connecticut, and Representative Roger Griswold of Connecticut. Angered by the extraconstitutional Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and what they saw as the diminishing power of the northern states, they proposed that the New England states ought to attract New York to their idea of a “more perfect union.”78