Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  6. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Jan. 17, 18, 1774, and Joseph Bellamy, Jr. to AB, Aug. 17, 1775, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 111–13.

  7. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Jan. 17, 1774, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  8. Wandell and Minnigerode, Aaron Burr, I: 126. For the stylistic features that Burr imitated in his writing, see Ian Watt, “From the Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding,” in Michael McKeon, ed., Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach (Baltimore and London, 2000), 455–56, and Joanne Cutting-Gray, Woman as “Nobody” and the Novels of Fanny Burney (Gainesville, Fla., 1992), 21–23.

  9. Adam Sisman, Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson (New York, 2000), 29; and see A New Fortune-Book, Being a New Art of Courtship, open’d for Young Men and Maids, Widows, Widowers, and Batchelors (Cirencester, U.K., 1770).

  10. For colonial American attitudes, see Howard P. Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating of an American Subculture (Princeton, N.J., 1999), 21; and “Scipio,” [1784], in Prince et al., eds., The Papers of William Livingston, V: 98–100.

  11. Joseph Bellamy, Jr., to AB, Feb. 8, 1775, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  12. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, July 1775, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  13. AB to Matthias Ogden, Feb. 2, 1775, in Davis, ed., Memoir of Aaron Burr, I: 50–51.

  14. AB to Matthias Ogden, Mar. 12, 1775, in ibid., I: 53.

  15. Ibid., I: 52; on the importance of women as arbiters of young men’s reputation, see Donna DeFabio Curtin, “The gentlest, most polished, most beautiful part of the creation: Men, Women, and Genteel Culture in the Early American Northeast, 1720–1800,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Brown University, 1999.

  16. AB to Matthias Ogden, Mar. 12, 1775, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 52–53.

  17. AB to Matthias Ogden, Feb. 2, 1775, in ibid., I: 51–52.

  18. Greissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 134–35.

  19. Chesterfield did not endorse whoremongering. He also did not believe in showing outright meanness toward women, but he felt little respect for them; women, he believed, had to be indulged. They should never be insulted as a group, but they were mainly social pawns that men had to learn how to manipulate in order to avoid their wrath or secure their sexual favors. See Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son (London, 1806), I: 218, 287, 294–95, 316–17, 371–73.

  20. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, July 1775, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  21. Edward G. Williams, “The Prevosts of the Royal Americans,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, vol. 56, no. 1 (Jan. 1973): 16.

  22. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Sept. 24, 1775, and AB to Sally and Tapping Reeve, Feb. 1776, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; and for camp life, see Mayer, Belonging to the Army, 59.

  23. Mayer, Belonging to the Army, 59–61, 63–64, 66; Royster, A Revolutionary People at War, 59–61; General Court Martial, June 2, 1778, Orderly Book, May 23–June 16, 1778, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 12.

  24. Mayer, Belonging to the Army, 54–56, 147–49, and Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, II: 434; Paul David Nelson, William Alexander, Lord Stirling (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1987), 123; Pierre Etienne DuPonceau, “Autobiography,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 63 (1939): 209, 213.

  25. Ferling, First of Men, 240–41; on the Mischianza, see Jones, History of New York During the Revolutionary War, I: 241–52.

  26. For a discussion of the Galloway incident, see Judith Van Buskirk, “They Didn’t Join the Band: Disaffected Women in Revolutionary Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History 62 (1995): 520.

  27. In a letter to his sister and Tapping Reeve, Burr wrote: “I am in raptures with your confiscating law”—see AB to Sally and Tapping Reeve, Feb. 1776, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  28. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War,” The Hermitage, Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J.

  29. On the property one home was called “The Hermitage,” the second one “Little Hermitage.” Theodosia’s widowed mother, Ann de Visme, purchased the Hermitage, while Theodosia and her husband owned the Little Hermitage. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War”; and Bernard C. Steiner, ed., The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (Cleveland, 1907), 22–23; and Dorothy Valentine Smith, “‘Mrs. Prevost Requests the Honor of His Company,’” Manuscripts XI (Fall 1959): 27, 30.

  30. Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies, 73–74.

  31. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War”; see also Ray Swick, An Island Called Eden: The Story of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett (Parkersburg, W.Va., 2002), 35; for one extant letter in French, see Theodosia Prevost to AB, Dec. 24, 1781, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; for his suggestion that she read abbé Mably’s book on the U.S. Constitution in French, then he will not have to read it, see AB to Theodosia, May 22, 1785, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 266.

  32. The story was printed in The Corrector on April 18, 1804. Theodosia’s talents were rare indeed. One historian claims that scant evidence exists for American women playing crambo. See David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Charlottesville, Va., 1997), 165, 168–69.

  33. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War Era.”

  34. James Monroe to Theodosia Prevost, Nov. 8, 1778, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 184–85.

  35. Samuel Bradhurst III was Theodosia’s relative. Dr. Bradhurst was an officer in the New Jersey militia, captured in mid-1777; see “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War Era.” For the practice of giving officers paroles, see Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies, 74, and Nelson, William Alexander, Lord Stirling, 134.

  36. Wandell and Minnigrode, Aaron Burr, I: 88.

  37. See Robert H. Harrison to AB, Aug. 1, 1778; Robert Benson to AB, Aug. 2, 1778; and pass issued by Governor George Clinton for Burr to escort the three men behind enemy lines, with a note by Burr adding the names of Theodosia and Catherine De Visme, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  38. On the gift from the queen of France, see George Washington to the marquis de Lafayette, Aug. 10, 1778, in Louis Gottschalk and Shirley A. Bill, eds., The Letters of Lafayette to Washington, 1777–1791 (Philadelphia, 1976), 136–67, and “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War Era”; on Burr’s account of his escort of the Tories, see AB to George Clinton, Aug. 19, 1778, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  39. William Paterson to AB, Aug. 31, 1780; and for letters from Paterson about Theodosia, see Paterson to AB, Jan. 29, 1779, and Paterson to AB, Sept. 29, 1779, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 148–49, 188, 211–13; see also “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War Era,” and O’Connor, William Paterson, 107.

  40. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War”; and O’Connor, William Paterson, 106–07.

  41. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Apr. 25, 1779, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  42. See Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, Va., 1990), 13–14; Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 128; and Wendell Edward Tripp, Jr., Robert Troup: A Quest for Security in the Turbulent New Nation, 1775–1832 (New York, 1982), 27–30.

  43. AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Nov. 5, 1778, and AB to Sally Burr Reeve, Apr. 25, 1779, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1. In extremely romanticized terms, the depth of Burr’s affections for his sister are evidenced by another letter in which he wrote of the death of his friend Joseph Bellamy: “My faithful Correspondent my best, my, (almost) only Friend, is, alas, no more—J. Bellamy’s death gave me Feelings, which few Deaths can ever renew; But why this to a Sister who feels more for a Brother than herself—my Pen and Heart you know were ever nearly allied.” AB to Sally Burr Reeve, June 8, 1777, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  44. For Troup’s description of hi
s conversation with the Livingston sisters, see Robert Troup to AB, May 23, 1780, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 205; Thaddeus Burr to AB, Aug. 12, 1780, and William Paterson to AB, Mar. 18, 1779, in the Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; and O’Connor, William Paterson, 89.

  45. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary Era”; and Elizabeth Duval to Theodosia Prevost, Nov. 3, 1779, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1. Burr sent a series of letters about his health from the Hermitage between October and December, indicating he was spending a great deal of time there—see AB to Jeremiah Wadsworth, Oct. 22, Oct. 27, and Dec. 1779, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  46. Catherine De Visme to AB, Dec. 30, 1781, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; New York Royal Gazette, Dec. 19, 1781; and “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary Era.”

  47. AB to Tapping and Sally Burr Reeve, July 24, 1780, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; “The Provosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary Era.” Dorothy Valentine Smith was one of the first researchers to carefully review the documents relating to Burr’s early relationship with Theodosia. However, writing in the 1950s, she could not accept the idea that Theodosia would have engaged in a sexual affair with Burr. Lomask repeats Dorothy Smith’s conclusion in his 1979 biography, writing that Theodosia kept their “increasingly warm relationship on an intellectual plane.” For some reason, Lomask ignores Paterson’s letter. He claims that Burr knew of Prevost’s poor health a year or more before the announcement of his death. But that does not explain why Paterson talked of marriage long before Prevost contracted yellow fever in Jamaica. See Smith, “Mrs. Prevost Requests,” 30; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to the Vice President, 67, 79–80.

  48. AB to Theodosia Prevost, Dec. 3, 5, 1781, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 232–33.

  49. Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, May 22, 1785, in ibid., I: 267–67.

  50. Witherspoon wrote a series of letters on marriage published in the Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775–76; see Fody, “John Witherspoon: Advisor to the Lovelorn,” 239–49; see also Katherine Sobba Green, The Courtship Novel 1740–1820: A Feminized Genre (Lexington, Ky., 1991), 63–66; and Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), ed. and intro. Miriam Brody (New York, 1992), 51–52, 112–13.

  51. For the invalid reference, see AB to Jeremiah Wadsworth, Oct. 22, 1779, and for “eye trouble,” see AB to John McKesson, July 31, 1790, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; see also Robert Troup to AB, Feb. 19, 1780, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 196; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to the Vice President, 103.

  52. See AB to Paterson, Feb. 16, 1780, Robert Troup to AB, Oct. 23, 1780, and Feb. 19, 1780, and AB to Theodosia Prevost, Dec. 3, Dec. 6, 1781, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 193–94, 214, 232–33.

  53. For a reference to Theodosia’s “incurable disorder of the uterus,” see Joseph Browne to AB, Jan. 13, 1783, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; and for references to her illness and melancholy, see AB to Theodosia Prevost, Dec. 23, 1781, AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Apr. 1785, and May 1785, and Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, May 1785, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 242, 255, 258; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to the Vice President, 103; Schachner, Aaron Burr, 82, 130.

  54. Thomas Smith to AB, March 1, 1781, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 223; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 32–33, 73–75.

  55. AB to Paterson, Feb. 16, 1780, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 193–94.

  56. AB to Peter Colt, July 17, 1782, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  57. Theodosia Prevost to AB, May 1781, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 226–27.

  58. AB to Theodosia Prevost, Dec. 6, 1781, in ibid., I: 234.

  59. Theodosia Prevost to AB, Feb. 12, 1781, in ibid., I: 224–25.

  60. Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 48, 103, 122. After reading this work, which he called a “book of genius,” Burr told Theodosia that the author had “successfully adopted the style of Rousseau’s Emilius”—AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Feb. 16, 1793, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 363.

  61. Ibid., I: 99, 123, 148.

  62. For the eighteenth-century ideal of friendship, popularized by Joseph Addison in The Spectator, see Michael G. Ketcham, Transparent Designs: Reading, Performance, and Form in the “Spectator” Papers (Athens, Ga., 1985), 123; see also AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, May 19, 1785, Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, May 22, 1785, and June 30, 1791, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 264, 267–68, 294.

  63. Marriage certificate of Burr and Theodosia, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to the Vice President, 78–79.

  64. “The Prevosts: Late Colonial and Revolutionary War”; Theodosia Prevost Burr to Sally Burr Reeve [July 1782], and William S. Livingston to AB, July 10, 1782, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1.

  65. Burr first arranged for a tutor before their marriage—see AB to Major R. Alden, Feb. 15, 1781, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, 222; and Theodosia Prevost Burr to Tapping Reeve, Aug. 3, 1788, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 2; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Year from Princeton to the Vice President, 98–100.

  66. Timothy Edwards to AB, Apr. 28, 1783, Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 107–08.

  67. AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Apr. 1785, and Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, Sept. 27, 1785, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 252, 271.

  68. AB to Theodosia Prevost, Dec. 7, 1781, Oct. 29, 1784, and Dec. 15, 1791, in ibid., I: 235, 248, 311.

  69. AB and Theodosia Prevost Burr to Tapping Reeve, Aug. 3, 1783, in Burr Papers, microfilm, reel 1; Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, June 30 and July 23, 1791, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I:294, 300.

  70. AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Nov. 14, 1791, Dec. 13, 1791, Feb. 19, 1792, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 306, 310, 315–16.

  71. On patronage, see AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Nov. 14, 1791, and Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, July 27, 1791, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 301, 307. For women’s role in political patronage in general, see Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 128–46; and for an example of a representative’s wife who was politicking at home while her husband sat in Congress, see William C. diGiacomantonio, “A Congressional Wife at Home: The Case of Sarah Thatcher, 1787–1792,” in Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon, eds., Neither Separate Nor Equal: Congress in the 1790s (Athens, Ohio, 2000), 174–76.

  72. AB to Theodosia Burr, July 27, 1791, in Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 301.

  73. AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Dec. 23, 1781, Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, Mar. 25, 1783, Mar. 22, 1784, Sept. 25, 1785, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 242, 245, 248, 271. For the connection between opium and romantic allusions, see Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London, 1968), 24,42, 48.

  74. For Theodosia’s knowledge of Latin, see AB to Theodosia Prevost, June 15, 1781; also AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Dec. 4, 1791, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 230, 308–10.

  75. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (1762), trans. Barbara Foley (New York, 1911) and updated by Grace Roosevelt (New York, 2002), 1–2.

  76. Theodosia Burr to AB, Aug. 28, 1785, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 268–69.

  77. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), 276–79.

  78. AB to Theodosia Burr, Feb. 8, 1793, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 361–62.

  79. AB to Theodosia Burr, May 19, 1785, July 17, 1791, Oct. 30, 1791, and Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, July 23, 1791, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 264, 296–97, 298–99, 304–05; and AB to Theodosia Burr, Dec. 1,
1791, “AB to Theodosia, Plan for Journal,” Dec. 16, 1793, AB to Theodosia Burr, Jan. 16, 1794, Jan. 23, 1794, and June 7, 1794, in Van Doren, ed., Correspondence of Aaron Burr and his Daughter Theodosia, 3, 8, 12–13, 18–19; Geissler, Jonathan Adams to Aaron Burr, 155–56.

  80. AB to Theodosia Burr, Dec. 16, 1793, Jan. 7, 8, 14, 23, 1794, Sept. 28, 1795, in Van Doren, ed., Correspondence of Aaron Burr and his Daughter Theodosia, 7, 12–14, 16–19, 41–42.

  81. AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Feb. 8, 15, 16, 1793, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 362–63.

  82. AB to Theodosia Burr, Sept. 17, 1795, Jan. 4, 1799, Jan. 30, 1800, in Van Doren, ed., Correspondence of Aaron Burr and his Daughter Theodosia, 36, 48, 54.

  83. AB to Theodosia Burr, Jan. 4, 1799, in ibid.; Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftsbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Culture Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, UK, 1994), 6, 98, 146, 211; C. Dallett Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America, 1620–1860 (New York, 1999), 117.

  84. Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 202; Klein, Shaftsebury and the Culture of Politeness, 6, 45, 83.

  85. John Doris to [?], 1798, “Burr’s Brief,” New York Public Library, cited in Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, 158–59.

  86. AB to Theodosia Burr, Sept. 17, 1795, in Van Doren, ed., Correspondence of Aaron Burr and his Daughter, 36.

  87. AB to Theodosia Burr, Jan. 4, 1799, in ibid., 46–47.

  88. It is important to remember that single, propertied women were allowed to vote in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807. AB to Theodosia Prevost Burr, Jan. 23, 1797, in ibid., 44.

  89. AB to Theodosia Burr, Feb. 16, 1793, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 363.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1. Theodosia Prevost Burr to AB, July 23, 1791, in Davis, ed., Memoirs of Aaron Burr, I: 298. For the three factions, see Jabez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York, 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1842), I, 48, and Alfred Young, The Democratic Republicans in New York (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), 34, 36.