Burr

by Gore Vidal

  Chancellor Livingston wondered if perhaps the Secretary of State was exaggerating.

  The bright hazel eyes grew round as a child’s and the voice dropped so low that we were all leaning forward across our Madeira glasses to hear his sudden warning. “Gentlemen, there is—I assure you—a plot at the highest level of this country to change our institutions. To make them over in England’s image. Once, in my presence, Hamilton described our Constitution as a ‘shilly-shally affair.’ Oh, his contempt for this republic is as brazen as that of any Catiline!”

  Little did I know then that in time’s womb the classic traitor’s name would be used to describe me, with Jefferson himself as happy midwife at that so unnatural birth. But ignorant of the future, I listened raptly to the beautiful low voice describe Hamilton’s habit of giving speculator friends secret Treasury information, all the while attempting to set up a monarchy with British gold. In retrospect, this sort of talk sounds perfect madness. At the time, it sounded perfectly plausible.

  Freneau was obviously much taken with this discourse. So was I. There was something in Jefferson’s manner that held me as no other man was ever able to do. Even after I came to know well his recklessness with the truth, I never failed to respond to that hushed voice, to those bright child’s eyes, to his every fanatical notion, to his every rich slander. He was a kind of wizard, no doubt of it.

  The Chancellor teased Jefferson about his famous remark during Shays’s rebellion—that from time to time the tree of liberty’s proper manure is blood. Jefferson responded with all seriousness. “I meant only that we should congratulate ourselves that in two hundred years we have had only one such internal uprising. It is a tribute to our sense of justice that redress comes before rebellion.”

  “Even so, you are now the hero of all the Shaysites.” At heart the Chancellor was a Federalist, forced to pose as a Republican. Had he not been passed over for chief justice, he would have found the ideas—if not the company—of Jefferson most uncongenial.

  “We met many of these poor men in New England.” Jefferson looked mournful. “They were misled by Shays. They had too little faith in our ability to set things right …”

  “Like forty-per-cent interest rates? like crushing taxes? like thousands of men in prison for debt?” Eyes fixed on Jefferson, Freneau resembled a doctor who is waiting to see if the patient will recover or succumb to a radical dosage of mercury.

  “Of course many of their complaints are justified. I find it a frightful business imprisoning men for debt.” As well he might! The one thing that Jefferson, Hamilton and I had in common was indebtedness. We all lived beyond our means and on the highest scale. Hamilton died owing money. Jefferson died a pauper, with Monticello collapsing about his head. Fortunately, unlike the average farmer or mechanic, we could not be jailed for debt. We could indefinitely collect signers and co-signers to our notes until the sordid conditions of our borrowings entirely vanished under the scrolls and flourishes of those wealthy magnates who are always anxious to befriend a man of state.

  Freneau added to the dosage. “In Massachusetts, ninety per cent of those in prisons are debtors. Well, Sir, if I had been a poor man in that state, I would have marched with Daniel Shays.”

  “Mr. Freneau!” The Chancellor was appalled. “Surely you do not favour what that man favoured? Surely you do not want all property evenly divided among the citizens?”

  There was an expectant moment at the table. From the drawing-room we could hear the harsh rather unlovely laughter of the lovely Mrs. Colden.

  Jefferson slumped down on his spine, shoulders hunched, head to one side, freckled hands covering the lower part of his face. He did not intervene.

  Freneau chose lightness. “I would let your family keep Clermont, Chancellor. But Mr. Jefferson would have to give up Monticello for he believes in democracy and you do not.”

  Jefferson laughed a bit too merrily. The others pretended to enjoy a joke that amused no one present. Two years later such a joke would have been impossible; by then the excesses of the French Revolution had made of the dream of Daniel Shays a nightmare. In fact, with the murders in Paris, no serious person in the United States has ever again suggested a division of wealth.

  When the party ended, Jefferson and I walked out into Hanover Square. A waning moon was visible in the west. In the pale glow, Jefferson seemed to hang over me like a tree or like the sharp rise of some cliff (yes, and wait for the avalanche to bury you alive). He suffered from chronic headache, and used to wonder why. “Perhaps,” I said in response to the familiar complaint, “it is your height. You are too close to heaven, to the thunder and lightning.” Instead of smiling at this pleasantry, he frowned. “Do you think so? I must ask Dr. Rush.”

  Jefferson walked loosely, in a shambling way—he was, I should note, very much the French exquisite during this period. His clothes were sumptuous; there was always a good deal of red, of silver, of lace about his long person, and a huge golden topaz on his finger. Later when he became president and the leader of the democracy, he took to wearing old slippers and frayed jackets in the presidential palace. Like Napoleon, he was a fascinating actor but far more subtle than the Corsican and ultimately far more successful.

  “You speak of Montesquieu,” said Jefferson, taking my arm. “At worst he is a bit too English in his bias. Yet on most issues I find him congenial and wise. Certainly he is a true republican.” We made our way around a family of sleeping pigs in the Broad Way. Darkness was almost total; the moon had gone; the streets were empty.

  I mention Jefferson’s comment on Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois because twenty years later he was to turn fiercely on its author who had maintained that a true republic of the democratic order can exist only on a small scale. Certainly this “ideal” form of government is not practical for an empire of the sort Jefferson gave us when he illegally bought Louisiana—thereby doubling the size of the United States and putting an end once and for all to any hope of our society evolving into a true republic of the sort dreamed of by the Baron de Montesquieu and proclaimed by Jefferson. To justify himself, Jefferson turned on his old idol and attacked him for (favourite and characteristic Jefferson word) “heresy.” But of course it was Jefferson who was the heretic, and Montesquieu the true believer in democracy.

  I got the subject onto political matters. It was already apparent that Adams would succeed Washington. But then what? I feared Hamilton would succeed Adams. The only alternative was Jefferson. I did not rule out myself as leader of the anti-Federalist faction but I was practical enough to realize that as a Virginian, Jefferson would have first call on the presidency once Massachusetts had been served by Adams. But no matter what the future held, I was necessary to Jefferson that summer night as we slipped in the garbage, and tried not to step on sleeping pigs whose shrieks could awaken the dead.

  “We are apparently doomed to political faction.” Jefferson sounded melancholy. “I put the blame on Hamilton. He is corrupt through and through.”

  I did not disagree although my personal feeling for Hamilton was most friendly. (I did not know to what extent he was slandering me even then.) But Jefferson had no illusions about our enemy. “He is driven to make a monarchy out of this republic.”

  “With himself as Alexander the Great?”

  Jefferson had no humour. “With Adams as king, I should think, and himself as permanent prime minister, another Walpole. I must warn you, Colonel Burr, Hamilton is treachery incarnate!”

  I changed the subject. “How did you find Governor Clinton at Albany?” Jefferson tended to obsession on the subject of monarchy, a vice he attributed to anyone who stood in his way. It was Jefferson’s conceit that he alone represented democracy and that all the rest of us from Washington to Adams to Hamilton wanted to wear crowns and tax his cup of tea. Fortunately George Clinton was always a safe subject. He was not a monarchist—he was simply the absolute ruler of New York, and an enemy to the Federalists.

  Jefferson’s soft voice purred when he
discussed his meeting with Clinton. “A vigorous man, don’t you think? With unusual theories about the Hessian fly. Of course your governor is not exactly a man of learning but there is something likeable in his roughness. You know, he is much pleased with your election.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  A night-coach nearly ran us down in front of Trinity Church.

  “I must confess that the loss of Senator Schuyler pleased me quite as much as the knowledge that such a distinguished supporter of the democracy as you would be joining us in Philadelphia.” When Jefferson wanted one’s support, he was shameless in his flattery. “Hamilton may lose his majority in the Senate.”

  “He still has the President.”

  Jefferson sighed. “Our good President thinks that Hamilton is the cleverest man in the world.”

  “Let us hope, Mr. Jefferson, that the President is wrong.”

  Even in the darkness I was aware that those bright eyes were looking down upon me. He did not answer immediately.

  “Perhaps,” he said at last, “it might be useful to form a series of clubs or associations, for those who are devoted to the democracy.”

  “There is the Society of St. Tammany.” Tammany had been founded four years earlier as a patriotic club where solid New York greengrocers and upholsterers pretended to be Indians.

  “But the Tammany membership is mostly Federalist.” Jefferson’s pursuit of the dread Hessian fly had not entirely distracted him from the political realities of the small but crucial New York electorate.

  “Not entirely. Anyway, I have friends in the Society. They can be guided.”

  “It might be useful if our friends were to set up Democratic societies, particularly now when the revolution in France is so popular.”

  I agreed. As we parted, in the dark, Jefferson took my hand in both of his. “We have, dear Colonel Burr, so much to do. So many battles to fight, so many heresies to refute. We must stand by one another.”

  “You may depend on me in all things,” I said. I was sincere. Was he? It is hard to say. Jefferson was a ruthless man who wanted to create a new kind of world, dominated by independent farmers each living on his own rich land, supported by slaves. It is amazing how beguilingly he could present this contradictory vision. But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and those entirely without property), Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants.

  Finally, in his second term, when Jefferson saw that he could not create the Arcadian society he wanted, he settled with suspicious ease for the Hamiltonian order; and like a zealous Federalist proceeded to levy taxes, and to create a navy (admittedly on the cheap—his famed gunboats had to be scrapped), while setting for the west and the south an imperial course as coldly and resourcefully as any Bonaparte. Had Jefferson not been a hypocrite I might have admired him. After all, he was the most successful empire-builder of our century, succeeding where Bonaparte failed. But then Bonaparte was always candid when it came to motive and Jefferson was always dishonest. In the end, candour failed; dishonesty prevailed. I dare not preach a sermon on that text.

  At the beginning of October 1791, I arrived in Philadelphia and took lodging at 130 South Second Street in the house of two elderly widows, one mother to the other, one deafer than the other. Very kindly the ladies suggested that I not strain my senatorial voice in trying to communicate with them. Since I was their only lodger, silence reigned in South Second Street and I slept marvellously well in a back bedroom.

  On the 24th of October the Second Congress convened, and the next day President Washington haltingly read to us a message prepared for him by Hamilton. I remember thinking how uncommonly healthy the President looked, his normally sallow face quite ruddy. It was Senator James Monroe of Virginia who enlightened me.

  “He’s taken to painting himself like a tavern sign whenever he appears in public. At home, he looks to be a hundred.” Monroe’s contempt for the father of his country was apparent even then while Washington detested the senator from his home state: thought him a regular Jacobite.

  I was selected by the Senate to respond to the presidential address. After composing some elevated nonsense (fear of the Indian tribes was that session’s crisis), I went with the other members of Congress to the Morris mansion in High Street (called without irony “the palace”).

  Like schoolboys we filed into the great man’s presence. Magnificently dressed, holding a cocked hat, sword at his side, heavily and plausibly painted, George Washington stood before the fireplace with Jefferson to his right and Hamilton to his left. Hamilton looked more than ever like a small ginger terrier at the side of those two giants—each was more than six feet tall; does such physical altitude insure greatness? Even Monroe was tall though constantly stooped.

  Vice-President Adams mumbled a few remarks (he at least was comfortingly small and fat). Slowly and with care, the President inclined his head (when newly applied, the fine white powder he used to dress his hair sometimes gave the startling effect of a cloudy nimbus about that storied head).

  I responded in the name of the Congress to his address, and he responded to me briefly. All the while Hamilton stared at me, smiling a most curious, perhaps involuntary smile. Then doors were flung open and there in the drawing-room stood the Lady Washington surrounded by various Philadelphia ladies. White servants in royal red livery dispensed sweet plum-cake and wine to us loyal commons.

  I found myself with the fiercely republican Senator Maclay (who had lost his seat in March but was still in Philadelphia), an angry figure whose loathing of monarchy made Jefferson seem a mere dilettante on that sore subject.

  “Look at King George!” Scornfully Maclay indicated the President who was stationed now in the centre of the room receiving ladies who curtsied deeply to him. “If the people could see this …”

  “They would be delighted.” It is my view that the people themselves are not democratic; only slave-owning aristocrats like Jefferson can afford to believe in democracy.

  “I am not delighted.” Maclay watched with disgust as Washington inclined his head to each of a number of gentlemen who filed slowly past him. “Note how he never shakes a man’s hand. He deems it vulgar.”

  Then I was taken up by the beautiful Mrs. Bingham (a cousin of Peggy Shippen Arnold). “We expect you later. After this!” Mrs. Bingham’s gesture toward the plump Lady Washington indicated serene condescension. The Washington court was a source of much amusement to Philadelphia’s high society, and particularly to its queen Mrs. Bingham whose mansion on Third Street was the most elaborate private house in the United States. “And you, too, Mr. Hamilton,” for that handsome little figure had suddenly appeared at my elbow.

  I put out my hand in greeting only to realize too late that the Secretary of the Treasury had taken to imitating his chief. He gave me a decorous bow, arms to his side. “It is a pleasure, Colonel Burr, to see you here.”

  We played at friendship. “I regret that my presence should be at the expense of General Schuyler.”

  “There will be other elections.” Hamilton’s curious smile seemed permanently fixed to his lips. “I hope that you and I can avoid the spirit of faction which has begun.”

  “I belong to no faction.” I was blunt, and spoke the truth. “I was chosen by both Federalists and Republicans.”

  “I know, and they could not have chosen more shrewdly.”

  Whatever that meant. But I was as intent as he on playing out the scene, and with the same urbanity. “Yet the divisions here do not seem to me to be to
o deep.”

  “You have just arrived.” The smile went (as did Mrs. Bingham); the succeeding frown was real. “Jefferson is intent on destroying this administration from within.” In a tirade it all came out. Hamilton’s tragedy was also his gift: he was a man of high intellectual passion whose weapon was language. Unable to remain silent on any subject that excited him he, literally, dug his own grave with words.

  “I know that you met with Jefferson and Madison in New York …”

  “Only with Mr. Jefferson. I’m afraid that your informant …”

  “Was a Hessian fly!” Hamilton’s eyes flashed with sudden good humour. He was as mercurial as the weather of that tropical West Indian island from which he came. “I am sure Jefferson did his best to convince you that I want to put a crown on the General’s head.”

  “No, on your own.” If this was to be badinage, I would sustain my end. But it was not.

  The frown returned. “I think, Burr, that Jefferson is mad. Certainly on that subject. First, he has been away too long in France, and has a womanish attachment to that nation. He has also decided that their present form of anarchy is highly desirable—at least to contemplate at a distance. I doubt if he will ever surrender that Virginia farm of his to the people. Oh, Burr, I tell you he is the perfect hypocrite!”

  I was embarrassed by the suddenness of this outburst, particularly since Jefferson was dreamily watching us from the far end of the room; but Hamilton was not to be stopped. “You know what a bloody time of it we had in the last Congress, over my plan for the Bank.” I said that indeed I did. The dispute over the United States Bank was, in effect, the dividing line between two factions which, presently, became—and continue to be—two political parties. The northern states interested in trade and manufactures favoured the Bank. The agricultural southern states detested it; farmers are always short of cash and to a man they fear banks, mortgages, foreclosures.