Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  2. See Eleanor Pearson DeLorme, “Gilbert Stuart: Portrait of an Artist,” Winterthur Portfolio 14 (1979): 339–60; and Richard McLanathan, Gilbert Stuart: The Father of American Portraiture (New York, 1986), 49, 63, 78–79.

  3. Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800 (New York, 1982), 208.

  4. Matthew L. Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, 2 vols. (New York, 1836), I: 25–26.

  5. See “To all Independent Electors,” The Corrector, April 26, 1804.

  6. Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754–1757 (New Haven, 1784), 188.

  7. Suzanne Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, Jr: From the Great Awakening to Democratic Politics (New York, 1981), 20, 28, 37, 58–60.

  8. Ibid., 85–86.

  9. Ibid., 87–89, 90; Karlsen and Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 257.

  10. Burr’s sister was named after Esther’s mother, Sarah, but was called Sally. In another entry, she described “Little Aaron” as a “fine quiet child.” See ibid., 198, 247.

  11. Ibid., 228–29.

  12. Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 95–97, 101; Karlsen and Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther Edwards, 295.

  13. Aaron Burr (hereafter AB) to Theodosia Burr, January 4, 1799, in Mark Van Doren, ed., Correspondence of Aaron Burr and his Daughter Theodosia (New York, 1929), 46–47.

  14. Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 97, 101–02; and William H. Edwards, Timothy and Rhoda Ogden Edwards of Stockbridge, Mass., and Their Descendants: A Genealogy (Cincinnati, 1903), 20.

  15. Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 26; Schachner, Aaron Burr, 20; Parton, Life and Times of Aaron Burr, I: 53.

  16. Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 54, 59, 86, 94.

  17. Ibid., 99, 102, 104.

  18. Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 17, 22.

  19. Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 15–16, 98–99.

  20. Ibid., 101, 103; Edwards, Timothy and Rhoda Ogden Edwards, 20.

  21. Carl E. Prince, Mary Lou Lustig, and David William Voorhees, eds., The Papers of William Livingston, Vol. 5: April 1783–August 1790 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1988), V: 562, 589; Maxine N. Lurie, “New Jersey Intellectuals and the United States Constitution,” Journal of Rutgers University Library 49 (1987): 66–67; Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 54–57.

  22. Edwards, Timothy and Rhoda Ogden Edwards, 18; Prince et al., eds., The Papers of William Livingston, V: 570, 572–73; see also Princeton Undergraduate Alumni Index, 1773.

  23. Walter R. Fee, The Transition from Aristocracy to Democracy in New Jersey, 1789–1829 (Somerville, N.J., 1933), 9; Prince et al., eds., The Papers of William Livingston, V: 510–11, 537; Kline, ed., Burr Papers, I: 487–88, 490.

  24. Nathan Schachner, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1946), 28–30.

  25. Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 26–27; and Sheldon S. Cohen and Larry R. Gerlach, “Princeton in the Coming of the American Revolution,” New Jersey History 92 (1974): 71.

  26. Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton, 1746–1896 (Princeton, N.J., 1946), 106–07; Paul Wallace, Princeton Sketches, the Story of Nassau Hall (New York, 1893), 5–8; Frances L. Broderick, “Pulpit, Physics, and Politics: The Curriculum of the College of New Jersey, 1746–1794,” William and Mary Quarterly 6 (January 1949): 43, 62.

  27. Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768–1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Princeton, N.J., 1989), 28; Ashbel Green, The Life of the Revd John Witherspoon, D.D., LL.D. with a brief review of his writings; and a summary estimate of his character and talents, ed. Henry Littleton Savage (Princeton, N.J., 1973), 146–47, 258.

  28. See L. Gordon Tait, “John Witherspoon as Sage: ‘The Druid Essays of 1776,’” New Jersey History 100 (1982): 35; Edward S. Fody, “John Witherspoon: Advisor to the Lovelorn,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 84 (1966): 239–49; Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 52; Green, The Life of Revd John Witherspoon, 266. Witherspoon rejected the argument that piety and politeness were opposed; see Christopher Castiglia, “Pedagogical Discipline and the Creation of White Citizenship: John Witherspoon, Robert Finley, and the Colonization Society,” Early American Literature 33 (1998): 199.

  29. Broderick, “Pulpit, Physics, and Politics,” 61.

  30. Ibid., 61–62. The policy of opening the stacks to all students except freshmen preceded Witherspoon. John Davies (president of the college from 1759 to 1761) made the case that “if they have books always in hand to consult upon every subject,” both students and faculty would engage in “a more thoro’ discussion, in their public Disputes, in the Course of their Private Studies, in Conversation,” and this “will enable them to investigate TRUTH thro’ her intricate Recesses” and to “guard against the Strategems and Assaults of Error.” See David W. Robson, Educating Republicans: The College in the Era of the American Revolution, 1750–1800 (Westport, Conn., 1985), 66–67.

  31. Philip Vickers Fithian: Journal and Letters, 1767–1774, ed. John Rogers Williams (Princeton, N.J., 1900), 256–57.

  32. See James McLachlan, “The Choice of Hercules: American Student Societies in the Early 19th Century,” in Lawrence Stone, ed., The University in Society (Princeton, N.J., 1974), II: 472; Leon Jackson, “The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth: Fraternity and Riot at Eighteenth-Century Harvard,” History Higher Education Annual (1995): 30, 32; Wallace J. Williamson III, The Halls: A Brief History of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society of Princeton University (Princeton, N.J., 1947), 6–8.

  33. Burr’s classmates included many destined for prominent political careers: James Madison was elected fourth president of the United States; Paterson and Oliver Ellsworth were both appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court; Reeve was elevated to chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court; nine graduates attended the Constitutional Convention; Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Philip Freneau became newspaper editors and nationally renowned poets; William Bradford was U.S. attorney general under Washington; and Brackenridge was elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature and appointed to a judgeship in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. For the importance of secret confidences, see Jackson, “The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth,” 35; also see Philip Vickers Fithian, 257.

  34. Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 41.

  35. Williamson, The Halls, 10.

  36. Moses Allen to AB, Jan. 23, 1772, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  37. Jackson, “The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth,” 32; Paul Clarkson and R. Samuel Jett, Luther Martin of Maryland (Baltimore, 1970), 16; John E. O’Connor, William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman, 1745–1806 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1979), 23.

  38. Paterson wrote with a touch of irony to Burr: “forbear with me whilst I say, that you cannot speak too slow”—William Paterson to AB, Jan. 17, 1772; for his handwriting, see William Paterson to AB, Oct. 26, 1772, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  39. William Paterson to AB, Oct. 26, 1772; see also Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 46; and Frank Brady, “Tristram Shandy: Sexuality, Morality, and Sensibility,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 4 (Autumn 1970): 44.

  40. Burr, “On Honor” [ca. 1772], Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; the original of this essay is available in Special Collections and Rare Books, Princeton Library, Princeton, N.J. (quotes are from the original). Paterson routinely lent his compositions to other students. This practice was not seen as unethical: the goal of education was to acquire a mastery of the material and gain a command of the language, not to display originality—which was a nineteenth-century romantic ideal. John O’Connor argues that Paterson lent his compositions to curry favor with men from important families. See W. Jay Mills, ed., Gl
impses of Colonial Society and the Life at Princeton College, 1766–1773 (Philadelphia, 1903), 18, 139; and O’Connor, William Paterson, 15, 22.

  41. “On Honor.”

  42. Princeton was “the premier Patriot college.” From Witherspoon’s classes, half of the students fought in the war, and a small number (two of 178) identified themselves as Loyalists; forty-one of this distinguished group went on to hold prominent political posts in state and national governments. See Robson, Educating Republicans, 69–70.

  43. Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 40.

  44. Rush paraphrases one of the maxims of the seventeenth-century French statesman Cardinal Richelieu: “That an unfortunate and an imprudent person were synonymous terms.” See Benjamin Rush to John Adams, Apr. 3, 1807, in John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Calif., 1980), 77.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1. For the identification of Matthias Ogden, see the Key that was sold with the engraving, published in 1798, in John Hill Morgan, ed., Paintings by John Trumbull at Yale University of Historic Scenes and Personages Prominent in the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1926), 32–33. Ogden was wounded at the time Montgomery led the surprise attack on Quebec. See “Journal of Isaac Senter,” in Kenneth Roberts, ed., March to Quebec (New York, 1938), 233–34.

  2. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, “The Death of General Montgomery, in Storming the City of Quebec. A Tragedy” (Norwich, Conn., 1777), 15, 38; see also Ginger Strand, “The Many Deaths of Montgomery: Audience and Pamphlet Plays of the Revolution,” American Literary History 9 (1997): 14–15.

  3. Brackenridge, “The Death of General Montgomery,” 16, 34–36.

  4. For a description of Congress’s Report on the Memorial for General Montgomery, issued on Jan. 25, 1776, and the earlier discussion on Jan. 18 in which Burr was favorably singled out, see Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (Washington, D.C., 1921), I: 318, 328; Benedict Arnold to General Wooster, Dec. 31, 1775, in Roberts, ed., March to Quebec, 103; and William Bradford, Jr., to AB, Jan. 24, 1776, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 75.

  5. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979), 25, 188; John F. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), 177–78, 200, 225–37, 250–52.

  6. Samuel Spring to AB, May 15, 1772, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 111–13; Timothy Edwards to AB, Feb. 11, 1774, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 46.

  7. Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 58; Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 134–36; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 37.

  8. See John Hancock to Richard Montgomery, Nov. 30, 1775, in Paul H. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, D.C., 1976–88), 2: 414–15; and Michael P. Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero (Madison, N.J., 2002), 12, 72, 85–86, 143, 150, 173–200.

  9. See “On Music” [ca. 1772], in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1. For an account of the sermon, see Joel T. Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (Springfield, Mass., 1861), 91–92.

  10. Though Burr is not mentioned by name as visiting the tomb, he was probably there. Samuel Spring and Burr were close friends from college. His name was probably omitted because Spring and Burr later had a falling out over religious differences. For an account of the visit to Whitefield’s tomb and the bad blood between the two men, see Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution, 93, 106.

  11. Royster, A Revolutionary People at War, 24.

  12. Peter Colt to AB, Sept. 11, 1775, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 64; see also the letter from Dr. James Cogswell to AB, Sept. 9, 1775, ibid., 63–64; and from his brother-in-law, Tapping Reeve to AB, Sept. 9, 1775, and AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Sept. 18, 1775, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  13. Journal of Matthias Ogden in Arnold’s Campaign Against Quebec (Morristown, N.J., 1928), 5, 6–7. Ogden’s spelling and punctuation have been corrected in this printed version. The original is in possession of the Washington Association of New Jersey. Large portions of the journal are reprinted in Wandell and Minnigerode, Aaron Burr, I: 46–50, esp. 48–49.

  14. For his reference to Ogden, see Benedict Arnold to Mr. Jos. Terry, Nov. 20, 1775; it is also obvious that Arnold used Ogden as a messenger before Burr—see Benedict Arnold to Messrs. Prince & Haywood, Nov. 20, 1775; and for for his letter of introduction for Burr, see Benedict Arnold to General Montgomery, Nov. 30, 1775, all in Roberts, ed., March to Quebec, 94, 101; see also Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 66, 69, and Wandell and Meade Minnigerode, Aaron Burr, I: 52–53.

  15. Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 50–54, 56–59, 77.

  16. Washington Irving, The Life of George Washington, Part I (1855–59), in The Works of Washington Irving (New York, 1897), 12: 508; and John Joseph Henry, An Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships and Sufferings of that Band of Heroes, who traversed the Wilderness in the Campaign against Quebec in 1775 (Lancaster, Pa., 1812), 98, 134; for a similar description of Montgomery, see “George Morison’s Journal,” in Roberts, ed., March to Quebec, 534.

  17. Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 108, 125, 148–49.

  18. In a previous letter from Janet Montgomery, she wrote: “Besides, having this opportunity, I would wish to assure Colonel Burr of the very respect I have for those gentlemen whom General Montgomery professed to esteem; among which, sir, I am told you was not the least. To be by him distinguished argues superior merit.” See Janet Montgomery to AB, Dec. 25, 1778, and Mar. 7, 1779, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 139, 169.

  19. Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 115–16, 140.

  20. Ibid., 143.

  21. Henry, Band of Heroes, 72–73.

  22. Mills, ed., Glimpses of Colonial Society and Life at Princeton, 22; O’Connor, William Paterson, 23, 26; “John MacPherson,” in James McLachlan, ed., Princetonians, 1748–1768 (Princeton, N.J., 1976), I: 574–78. Montgomery’s trust in MacPherson is indicated by his decision to have him and Arnold, under a flag of truce, deliver the terms of surrender to the governor of Quebec on Dec. 15. See Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 149.

  23. Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 154, 156–58, 161–63; Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 71.

  24. According to British sources, thirteen bodies were recovered from that spot. See Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 162, 166, 171; and Craig L. Symonds, A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution (Baltimore, Md., 1986), 23.

  25. Donald Campbell to Robert R. Livingston, Mar. 28, 1776, printed transcript, Robert R. Livingston Papers (MG 23 B40), National Archives of Canada. I would like to thank the archivist Sandy Ramos for sending me this document.

  26. Everett Somerville Brown, ed., William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807 (London, 1923), 612; see also James Thompson’s Report, Aug. 16, 1828, in New Dominion Monthly 17 (1875): 403; and Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 171.

  27. Henry places Spring in the hospital—Band of Heroes, 116. All biographical studies of Burr have treated Spring’s account as factually accurate, without considering the conflicting accounts of the assault. See Wandell and Minnigerode, Aaron Burr, I: 55; Schachner, Aaron Burr, 42; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 41; and Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 144.

  28. See Davis on Trumbull’s painting and Colonel Richard Platt to Commodore Valentine Morris, Jan. 27, 1814, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 71, 177. Platt’s 1814 letter was part of the certification supporting Burr’s claims for compensation from New York—see Kline, ed., Burr Papers, I: 31, 189, 283–85; II: 194, 1206, 1212–13; see also Henry, Band of Heroes, 181. Campbell wrote in his lette
r: “I could wish not to open the Wounds afresh by entering on the subject, But from the neglect or Design of the Messenger (& others) who was by me Dispatched to Montreal & Congress, in permi[t]ing a false & base insinuation to Appear against me . . . makes it necessary for the Satisfaction of Friends of the Deceased & the Living, to have the Truth & [a] fair State [ment] of that day known.” Campbell was clearly interested in telling his version of the story to defend his honor. See Campbell to Livingston, Mar. 28, 1776; and Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 241, note 39.

  29. Montgomery used the Latin phrase in his letter Adaces Fortuna jubat. Gabriel translates this phrase as “fortune favors the courageous,” but “audacious” is closer to the original Latin meaning—see Gabriel, Major Richard Montgomery, 155, 170. For casualty list, see Roberts, ed., March to Quebec, 27–40.

  30. Reeve had not initially supported Burr’s decision to join the army. See Tapping Reeve to AB, Sept. 9, 1775, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; and Tapping Reeve to AB, Jan. 27, 1776, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 75–76. For “Timothy Edwards . . . design of entering the service,” see John Pierce to AB, Feb. 11, 1776, and Joseph Bellamy to AB, Aug. 17, 1775, and Mar. 3, 1776, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  31. William Bradford to AB, July 30, 1776, and Theodore Sedgwick to AB, Aug. 7, 1776, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1. Bellamy expressed a similar desire to join the army in another letter, claiming that along with his other friend, Jimmy Cogswell, “we should form a happy triumvirate”—see Joseph Bellamy to Burr, Aug. 18, 1775, Burr Papers, reel 1. William Bradford (1755–95) was a member of the prominent family of colonial and Revolutionary printers in Philadelphia; he served as attorney general of Pennsylvania, and in 1794, as U.S. attorney general under President Washington. Theodore Sedgwick (1746–1813) attended Yale College, and was admitted to the bar in 1766. He was elected to the Massachusetts State House of Representatives and state senate, served as a member of the Continental Congress, was sent as a delegate to the state convention that adopted the federal Constitution in 1788, and later was elected to Congress, served in the Senate, and was a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts from 1782 to 1813. Sedgwick, like Bradford, was inspired by Burr’s bravery; he joined the second expedition against Canada in 1776.