by Gore Vidal
“For once, Charlie, I wish that I had sired a proper son. There is a good deal to be said for filial piety, no matter how infelicitous. Naturally, I assume that any son of mine would write better than this boy who sounds like a combination of his father at his most windy, and his grandfather Schuyler at his most confused. Well, I shall be my own son—with your help.”
The Colonel puts his feet up on the grate; shuts his eyes as if he expects some inner curtain to rise upon past spectacles. “You asked me about Hamilton.” I had asked him about Van Buren. “Let me recall a scene or two for you.” He closes his throat. “It is November …”
The eyes open for a moment and he glances at a newspaper cutting. “November 25, 1783. I have just come to New York City from Albany, with my wife and daughter. The American states have made peace with England. The British are about to depart. General Washington is to make his triumphant entry into the city.”
I record now the Colonel’s recollections—not as he dictated them to me but as they currently exist after a number of revisions in his own hand.
Memoirs of Aaron Burr–One
AT ABOUT NOON, I arrived with my wife Theodosia at Cape’s Tavern in the Broad Way. The streets were filled with veterans, many drunk, all happy. New York City was a small place in those days but the people, despite a certain Dutchness, were as lively then as now.
The assembly-room of the tavern was crowded with former officers wearing cockades of black and white, as well as sprigs of laurel to attest to our gallantry and patriotism. I knew most of the officers, though not their wives. I particularly recall General McDougall; between the stammer and the Scots burr he was quite incoherent with joy.
Theodosia hung back, intimidated by so many strangers. But then Elizabeth Hamilton took her firmly by the hand, in that effective Schuyler way, and presented her to various ladies. Elizabeth was uncommonly handsome as a girl, if too square-jawed. I have been told that Hamilton used to discuss his infidelities with her. If he did, they must have had a good deal to talk about.
My old friend Troup greeted me; he was now a lawyer like me (after two weeks in the city I had more business than I could handle).
“A great day!” we both agreed and of course it was, despite the fact that the war had been over for some time. Today’s ceremony was a tribute to the dilatoriness of Sir Guy Carleton, the British commander in New York. He kept finding excuses not to go home: the weather was bad, the ships in disrepair, His Excellency indisposed. But now it was finally ended.
As we waited in the tavern, Sir Guy’s troops were slowly embarking from the Battery. At last General Washington could make his “triumphal” entry into the city that he had lost to the British seven years earlier and never, by arms, regained.
Hamilton hurried into the long room, cheeks bright with excitement. He greeted Troup and me warmly. Though rival lawyers, each intent on being first in the town, we were all of us friends that day.
What a vivid, bright, pretty little man Hamilton was! And oh, what a gift he had for making a moral point while destroying the reputation of an adversary. The malice in him was as spontaneous as the brilliance. “He’s in Chatham Street, at the Tea Water Pump!” We knew who he was. “Governor Clinton will escort him here.”
We congratulated one another on our good luck in so soon having the glorious Washington amongst us. But human pageantry is peculiarly vulnerable to the ridiculous. The only time I saw the Emperor Napoleon he was proceeding up the marble stairs of a Paris theatre, moving with all that sombre elegance he had learned from the actor Talma. But then, at the very top of the stairs, as all of us bowed reverently, he shrilly broke wind.
Today’s comedy had been prepared by two British soldiers who had slyly greased the flag pole on the Battery. When our flag and its attendant tried to mount the pole, flag and attendant dropped in a heap to the ground, deeply mortifying General Washington.
Colonel (now Brevet-General) Malcolm joined us. Like so many senior officers who have not seen combat, this good man wanted to discuss the war. But the young men—and Hamilton, Troup and I thought we had invented youth—spoke only of the present and the future.
I twitted Hamilton. “How are your rich and well-born friends?” Hamilton was representing half the wealthy Tories in New York.
“They suffer, too.”
“I wish they would suffer me.” Troup wanted clients.
“I shall send you an occasional rich widow.” Hamilton’s passion for the rich and the well-born was, doubtless, the result of having been born poor and illegitimate.
Although the Constitution and the federal government would not be invented for another five years, the division in our ruling class was already apparent. The Tories who had opposed the Revolution now had no choice but to accept a new American order. But though the army of their king was no longer installed on the Battery, the principles of British government were still very much installed in their minds. They believed that we must have a government in which the privileges of the rulers are as well-defined as are the obligations of the ruled. In other words, we must re-create the British system. Hamilton was so devoted to all things English that if I had been he, I would have set sail for England that afternoon with Sir Guy, gone into British politics, and become prime minister. But Hamilton chose to stay and fight not only the pernicious idea of democracy but the craftiest of all its proponents, Thomas Jefferson—soon to be American minister at Paris, a post to which the Congress hustled him in the wake of his disastrous governorship of Virginia.
The noise of cheering caused us to hurry to the windows. Washington the demigod—no, the god!—was dismounting. The crowd waved their hats. He raised his hat once and put it under his arm. Then accompanied by Governor Clinton His Mightiness entered the tavern. Incidentally, when Washington became president he wanted to be styled His Mightiness. The Senate was agreeable. The House of Representatives was not, and referred the other house to the Constitution which speaks of the chief executive as, simply, the president. In fact, the Speaker—the droll Mr. Muhlenberg—went so far as to suggest that perhaps the General would like to be known as “His High and Mightiness.” Muhlenberg’s mild pleasantry was not well received by the greatest man in the world who would very much have enjoyed, I suspect, being king had he not lacked a son, a prince of Virginia, to succeed him.
But that was in the future. At the moment it was quite enough that the most famous man on earth was in the assembly-room of Cape’s Tavern.
We formed two lines. Washington walked slowly between the rows, turning from side to side, his cold slow gaze mitigated by a hesitant almost boyish smile when he chose to favour a particular aide.
He stopped when he came to Hamilton who was standing next to me. Suddenly the General looked positively merry, even animated; for an instant his face like a dull mirror reflected the bright intelligence of the other’s image. “My boy.” He was like a father.
“It is your day, General. Your country.”
“Our day, Sir.” Then the light went from his face as he turned to me and saw himself in a very different sort of mirror.
“Colonel Burr. You are recovered in your health, I trust?”
I said that I was and presented to him his old friend, my new wife. Theodosia curtsied, as to the King.
Washington smiled and lifted her up. “Colonel Burr like the rest of us is …” Words, as usual, failed him. I was embarrassed. Theodosia looked pale. Hamilton did the work Heaven had designed for him. “Bewitched by the mistress of the Hermitage.”
“Just so.” Washington moved on and Hamilton gave me an imperceptible wink—no, flick of his bright blue eyes. What did he really think of Washington? We come to that.
Eleven
COLONEL BURR IS NOW delighted with our sessions, particularly when he re-reads his dictation and makes changes. “It is like preparing a brief—for the defence, of course!”
He is still reading and annotating his copy of The Life of Alexander Hamilton. The ancient rivalry is much on
his mind. “You know, my friend Hamilton thought me ‘equivocal’ on the subject of the Constitution. For once in describing me he used the exact word. I was—I am equivocal. I have told you I did not think the Constitution in its original form would last fifty years. Nor has it. The habit of amendment continues to alter its nature—though not enough.”
He opened a volume of Hamilton’s works; riffled the pages. “No one can say that the Constitution was framed by innocent men. They were—and I knew most of them—as able a group of lawyers as ever argued a client from his rightful place on the gallows. They were most cynical. Listen to Hamilton.” Burr read: “ ‘Men will pursue their interests. It is as easy to change human nature as to oppose the strong current of selfish passions. A wise legislator will gently divert the channel, and direct it, if possible, to the public good.’ I like the ‘if possible.’ What does the wise legislator do if it is not possible? Feather his nest, I fear.”
The Colonel laughed suddenly, and recalled “the time Hamilton made an election speech to a group of mechanics. Unfortunately Hamilton always addressed his inferiors as if they were his inferiors. This is never charming, and I fear the crowd made fun of him. Furious, exasperated, he shouted, ‘You are your own worst enemy!’ What would he think now when ‘the beast,’ as he used to call the generality, governs, or at least we flatter it into thinking that it governs.”
He put down the book. Began the day’s work.
Memoirs of Aaron Burr–Two
IN 1787, I TOOK NO PART in the arguments for and against the Constitution. Like everyone else, I read Publius in the newspapers. Like everyone else, I soon worked out which Publius was Hamilton, which Jay, which Madison. Like everyone else, I knew Hobbes and his extraordinary belief (shared by Hamilton) that any form of government no matter how tyrannous is better than anarchy. I had also read Montesquieu whose work so influenced the three Publiuses. Yet at heart I was more pleased than not by the loose confederation of states that existed between 1783 and 1787. All in all, New York was agreeably governed by the Clinton faction. If certain of the other states were less well-governed, that was their affair; to be set right by them and not be a group of clever lawyers in Philadelphia. Yes, I was equivocal. A degree of anarchy is no bad thing.
Contrary to tradition, the movement for a strong Constitution and federal government began not with Hamilton but with General Washington. It is usual to picture him as a worthy, slow-witted man, a latter-day Cincinnatus only happy on his farm—trying to move that leaden plow he invented. He was of course worthy (if inordinately vain) and slow-witted in matters of the mind. But no man was cleverer when it came to business and to the promotion of his commercial interests. For very practical reasons, he wanted a strong central government with himself at its head. He was from the beginning a perfect federalist, and used Hamilton far more than Hamilton ever used him in order to make safe his investments in land.
Jefferson told me that for all of Washington’s innumerable complaints about the exigencies of public life, he was actually bored to death after the Revolution. “They are making a damned tavern-keeper of me!” he used to swear when yet another party of curious guests descended upon him at Mount Vernon. It should be noted that at the time of Washington’s election he was, as usual, short of cash and his first act as president was to get from the Treasury an advance on his salary.
I recollect only one private interview with Washington after the Revolution. It was in October of 1791, shortly after I arrived in Philadelphia as senator from New York. At the time I was most ambitious to write the true history of the Revolution. Each morning I would get up at five o’clock and go to the State Department, accompanied by a clerk. Together we would study and copy out documents until ten o’clock when I would attend the Senate.
Puzzled by certain military details, I requested an audience with His Mightiness. It was granted me so promptly that I ought to have been suspicious. Not only had I replaced Hamilton’s father-in-law in the Senate, but the French Revolution was under way and I confess to having believed for a time that a new era in the world’s history had begun. Later of course I realized that the same bad old era had simply shown us a new face whose smile would presently reveal bloody fangs. But in 1791 I was, like Jefferson, a devotee of the other Revolution and so anathema to the Federalist faction.
The President received me in his stately office. He had entirely redone the Morris House to make it resemble a royal palace. A diffident young secretary bowed me into the presence.
Washington stood before the fire, as though expecting to be painted. The altogether too famous sallow face was considerably aged. He was also in pain from carbuncles. He greeted me solemnly. Since he remained standing, we faced one another before the fire like ill-matched andirons.
I asked him questions about the Revolution; he made evasive answers. Both questions and answers are now lost. I do recall his cold benediction: “It is a most useful task, Senator Burr, that you are engaged upon.” Plainly he was not happy with my line of questioning which seemed to stress unduly his defeats.
The secretary brought him despatches from the west; he glanced at them, then dismissed the secretary and bade me sit. Slowly, carefully, painfully, Washington arranged himself in a throne-like chair, favouring one huge buttock: the dread carbuncle had erupted in that sensitive fleshy quarter. I commiserated with him over the recent news from the west where his favourite General St. Clair had lost nearly a thousand men to the Indians.
Washington was cold and grim. “I shall presently send the Congress a report on this tragic matter. I firmly believe that if we do not destroy these warlike savage tribes, we shall lose the whole of our new lands west of the Ohio.” He spoke the way one imagined a statue would speak.
But then he sat too far back in his chair. Gasping with pain, he swore mightily. Aware that he was now no longer royal in my eyes but simply a Virginia planter whose bottom hurt, he said, “I deteriorate before your eyes, do I not?”
“You seem most vigorous, Sir.”
“I come from a short-lived family. I do not complain. That is fate. But I did not think that the last stages would be so humiliating.” For the first and only time in our dealings with one another he was almost human—an extraordinary condescension considering that I was not a junior officer enamoured of him but an anti-Federalist senator detested by the beloved Hamilton.
“Glory is a good medicine, Sir.”
“It is palliative.” I caught a glimpse of the wintry dark-toothed smile. “But of course I shall not accept a second term.” As we now know, all presidents talk in this fashion. But at the time none of us understood the nature of the executive disease; after all, we were at the beginning of the adventure.
“Colonel Burr, I dislike the spirit of faction. I cannot fathom why gentlemen of similar interest quarrel so bitterly with one another when they ought to unite in the face of the mob and its excesses.” I was touched by his candour and—for him—ease of manner with someone he had no reason to trust and less to like.
“There are honest differences, Sir, on how best to govern …”
“It has come to my attention, Colonel Burr, that you admire much of what is presently happening in France.”
“I think, Sir, that the reasons for their revolution are understandable and the principles they assert are admirable.”
“Yet were it not for King Louis, the British might still be on this shore.”
“I agree that their treatment of him is deplorable …”
Washington spoke through me, but not to cut me off: he was going deaf and did not hear half what was said to him. “When word came to me of the treasonous acts of a certain Captain Daniel Shays—a dirty fellow once known to me—it was apparent that we must have a strong government to protect our property. Mr. Hamilton concurred with me and we summoned a constitutional convention at which I, at great personal sacrifice, let me say, presided. I regard, Sir, that convention as the most important event of my own career. Because had we not invented thi
s federal government, they would have taken away everything.”
The face was dark with sudden colour. The hands that were stretched to the fire trembled. “By now that Massachusetts rabble would have divided all property amongst the worthless classes. Not even your French have dared go so far. This is not natural, I said at the time. This must be stopped. We did not fight and win a war with a despot across the sea to be in turn tyrannized by a bloody mob whose contribution to our victory, if I may say so, was considerably less than that of those gentlemen who sacrificed all that they had in order that we be a separate nation. So what we won in that war we mean to keep, Colonel Burr. And I am sure that you agree with that sentiment.”
Political theory was the last subject I ever expected to hear from General Washington. He did not read Hobbes or Montesquieu or Plato, or any book at all. But he could add and subtract sums in a ledger, survey a property, recognise with an eagle’s eye the vermin that infest the crops—his crops—and like that eagle pounce and kill.
“I certainly did not support Captain Shays and I do not believe in a promiscuous division of property but …”
“I am relieved to hear you say that.” I was being sounded out. Heaven knows what Hamilton had been telling His Mightiness about me.
“But I favour a looser federal structure.”
“Yes. You are like my old friend Governor Clinton. Such amicable divisions are natural and healthy in a society.”
The secretary slipped into the room, and whispered something in the General’s good ear.
“Send them in.” Washington heaved himself with a groan from his chair. Several liveried Negroes entered the room carrying trays of sample tableware. Washington indicated that the various knives, forks, plates be displayed on a table. “You may give us your opinion, Colonel Burr. I am told that you have redone Richmond Hill in a most splendid way.”