Burr

by Gore Vidal

  “No doubt. I still have a letter you wrote me when my election was in doubt, proposing that I take a post in your administration. I was honoured by your trust.” I moved straight to the point. “In the course of my career I have never asked anyone a personal favour. Now I must set aside my usual rule. In order that our ranks not be divided, that bitterness not overwhelm our supporters, I should like to step down as vice-president, and take some other post, removing myself entirely from electoral politics.”

  “I see.” The mocking-bird had suddenly flown to the mantelpiece. There was a moment of silence which I vowed I would not be the first to break; nor was I. “Naturally, Colonel, at the time I wrote that letter I recognised your claim to our party’s gratitude. You had given us New York and New York had given us the country. But … well, positions have been filled.”

  “The governorship of Orleans?”

  “Mr. Claiborne has only just taken office.”

  “The governorship of Louisiana?”

  “It is pledged.”

  “The embassy to France?”

  “I must think hard, Colonel.” The shadow of a smile began. “You have taken me by surprise.”

  “I hope you are not surprised by my desire to avoid the appearance of division between us.”

  “No. No. I am most grateful.”

  “Good. Otherwise, if I am not allowed to serve you in some appointive office, I shall return to New York next month and present myself for governor …”

  “As a Republican?” I did not know it then but DeWitt Clinton was already fearful that I might be a candidate, and so was doing everything possible to force his uncle to run again. But old Clinton had no desire to contest an election with me. For one thing, Jefferson had already promised him the vice-presidency. For another, I would beat him. Jefferson’s dilemma was exquisite. He had removed from the contest the one person he believed could defeat me in New York. I later learned that even as we spoke DeWitt Clinton was pleading with Jefferson to bring pressure to bear upon his uncle to make the race against me.

  “Yes, as a Republican. What else? Naturally, if the Clinton faction refuses to support me I shall propose myself as an independent Republican, and look for Federalist support.”

  The mocking-bird made a shrill sound. Jefferson and I both started in our chairs. Then he laughed. “This is not music, I tell the bird.”

  “Perhaps he is deaf.”

  “Ah, he hears. He hears.”

  Jefferson turned the subject to other matters and, as always, other matters invariably included the licentiousness of the press. We had both been suffering considerably that season. Cheetham in New York had been accusing me of extraordinary crimes while in Virginia James Callender had turned on his old employer and revealed to a fascinated world how Jefferson had paid him to slander Washington, Adams and Hamilton.

  Callender had also been quite explicit about Jefferson’s attempted seduction of Mrs. Walker as well as his long affair with the slave Sally Hemings. As it turned out, the nation was more amused than not by this unexpectedly human side to the apostle of democracy who directed our affairs with such solemn self-regard. But our philosopher-king was less than amused by Callender’s libels, “particularly after my goodness to him.”

  “Cheetham is no different …”

  But Jefferson was not in the least interested in my complaints. After all, Cheetham was Jefferson’s creation. “Last summer I was fool enough to give Callender fifty dollars, out of pity, and then he writes me that the fifty dollars was ‘hush-money’! That I paid him hush-money because he knew things! What things he knew I know not nor does anyone. Fortunately, he went and drowned himself. Otherwise I cannot think what I should have done.”

  “You can always invoke the Sedition Act.” As usual, my pleasantry was taken literally.

  “No. No. But,” and the faded mouth became a harsh line in the old pale face, “I am convinced that what we need now are a few prosecutions of the most prominent and offensive editors. Such prosecutions would have a most wholesome effect upon the rest.”

  “But surely the First Amendment protects their freedom …”

  “Is licentiousness freedom?”

  “What is licentious to you may be truth to another.”

  Jefferson’s response was grim, prompt and thought-out. “In 1789 Madison sent me a copy of the proposed amendments to the Constitution, and I wrote him that I thought he should make it clear that although our citizens are allowed to speak or publish whatever they choose, they ought not to be permitted to present false facts which might affect injuriously the life, liberty, property or reputation of others or affect the national peace with regard to foreign nations. Just the other day I reminded Madison of that sad omission in our Constitution, and he agreed that today’s monstrous press is a direct result of the careless way the First Amendment was written.”

  I found this assault on the free press amazing, particularly from one who revelled in the name of republican. As usual, Jefferson had a way around the difficulty and, as usual, that way involved the inherent rights of the states. “Since the federal government has no constitutional power over the press, the states can then devise their own laws and …” The usual argument.

  On a pleasant note, we parted. I went back to my house in F Street and wrote to my various supporters at Albany informing them that I was a candidate for governor.

  Twenty-eight

  THIS MORNING AS I WAS about to go into the office, Sam Swartwout came out. He looked most preoccupied. “Ah, Charlie!” I was flattered he remembered my name. “You must come see me at the Port.”

  “Yes, Sir.” I was the eager junior.

  “I can be helpful.” He lumbered off through the shimmering August heat. Helpful in what way?

  The Colonel was standing at the window, holding his hat behind his back in characteristic attitude. He was watching Swartwout. “Poor Sam is a conniver.” The Colonel feigned sadness. “Loyal to me, and no one else. A sign of capital bad judgement, I should say.”

  “At least he is collector of the port.”

  “Yes, I got him that.” The Colonel skimmed his hat across the room and it came to rest neatly on a lamp. “Jackson did me that favour when he became president. Did me a number of favours—by the Eternal!” Burr enjoys growling General Jackson’s favourite epithet. “Unfortunately I cannot get the President to do anything directly for me. Not that I want anything save what is owing to me.”

  I have seen some of the correspondence between the Colonel and the War Department. As a former officer, the Colonel now receives a pension of $600 a year. He claims, however, that he is owed $100,000 not only in pay never collected during the Revolution but in money out of pocket: he spent his entire family inheritance on his soldiers. The government has shown no willingness to pay these arrears.

  On the baize-covered table the duelling pistol still rested. As the Colonel prepared himself for the day’s dictation, he hefted the pistol in a most military way and spun it about his finger, intoning suddenly an ancient bit of doggerel:

  “O, Burr, O Burr, what hast thou done?

  Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton!

  You hid behind a bunch of thistle,

  And shooted him dead with a great hoss pistol.”

  He burst out laughing. I was slightly chilled by the macabre air of the lemonstration. “Well, here’s the ‘hoss pistol’—or a facsimile. The beautiful verse I found attached to a set of waxworks on display up-state at Rhinebeck, a serpents’ nest of Federalism. There was a tall, beautiful, oble Hamilton, all in wax, and a sly, mean Burr, dark as the son of morning. Only the thistle was absent. A sprout in the poet’s head, I fear, awaiting its moment to rhyme, so divinely, with ‘pistol.’ ”

  I copied out the poem. Then the Colonel began to walk up and down the room, enjoying the equatorial heat.

  Memoirs of Aaron Burr–Fifteen

  AMONG MY NUMEROUS CRIMES the chief is supposed to be that I conspired to break up the union. Jefferson wante
d the world to believe that when I went west I was bent on separating the new states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio from their natural ruler Virginia. This was nonsense, and Jefferson knew it was nonsense.

  Ironically, of the two of us, it was Jefferson who believed that any state had the right to dissolve its ties with the others. To him the federal government was always “foreign,” and should the federal government want a state to do something that a majority of the state’s landowners disapproved of (like abolishing slavery), then it was Jefferson’s belief that the state had the right to nullify the federal government’s laws, and if nullification was not effective the state’s proper recourse would then be secession.

  Although I never regarded the union as sacred, my ambitions at the west did not involve secession. I was, however, privy to the plot of 1804 to divide the United States into two parts with the Hudson River as the boundary.

  Senator Pickering of Massachusetts led this most respectable cabal in Congress. They wanted to detach New England and New York from the rest of the Virginia-dominated union. For these thoughtful men the purchase of Louisiana had been the last straw. They assumed, correctly, that Jefferson and the Virginia junto would carve up that vast region into a number of slave-holding Republican states and that New England would simply wither away, as the Federalist party was doing. They affected also shock at Jefferson’s disregard for the Constitution at the time of the purchase.

  As Senator Plumer said to me, “If the President has the right to buy a new state then he also has the right to sell an old state.”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “the Canadians would be so good as to buy your own state of New Hampshire.” Senator Plumer was not charmed by this pleasantry.

  My relations with the cabal were cordial but non-committal. Yet Pickering was most insistent. “Everything depends on New York, Colonel. If New York secedes with us we shall have a fine nation. Without New York, we shall be a backwater like Ireland.”

  “Certainly New England has suffered at the hands of Virginia and, as certainly, if you in New England are to survive you must dominate Virginia.” This was the extent of my collusion.

  “We intend to support you for governor of New York.”

  “I shall need all the support I can get.”

  “If elected, you would be in a position to lead your state into secession with us.”

  “Senator, I can assure you that my administration of New York will do justice to all Federalists.” Beyond that I did not commit myself. Pickering was disappointed but he promised to use what influence he had to make me governor.

  In March I was fairly certain of election. But by the beginning of April I knew that I was being damaged not so much by my Republican opponent but by that retired politician, that would-be Diocletian, the ineffable Alexander Hamilton who like the phoenix now rose from the ashes of the Reynolds affair to save the union.

  Whether or not Hamilton was sincere in his desire to preserve the union, I do not know. I do know that he was horrified to find me, in effect, the standard-bearer of his own party in New York state.

  Once again the slanders began to wheel about my head like so many bats at sundown. Apparently the brothels of New York were filled to bursting with women I had ruined. I was Caesar, Catiline.… It was a campaign of singular viciousness.

  Yet at one point Hamilton came to Richmond Hill for dinner with Charles Biddle of Philadelphia and I have never found him so amiable. When I mentioned the libels of Cheetham in the press, Hamilton said, “Let the pistol decide. Call him out.”

  “I cannot. He is not a gentleman.”

  “Of course. Of course.” Hamilton quickly changed the subject. I knew of course that he was doing everything possible to prevent my election but I did not think him capable of resorting to personal slander.

  At this dinner I had Alexis produce a portrait of Theodosia (a great favourite of Biddle) so that we could toast her in absentia. Hamilton’s toast was the most eloquent and enchanting.

  I shall say no more of the election than that I lost it. I did carry New York City by a hundred votes but up-state the vote was heavily against me.

  I had a number of projects at hand. I could return to the practice of law, and perhaps regain my place in politics (and my fortune!). Or I could go to the west where I was most popular. It would not have been difficult for me to be returned as a senator from either Kentucky or Tennessee, or as congressional delegate from the Indiana Territory. Best of all was the perennially interesting project to undertake the liberation of Mexico from Spain. To a man the people of the United States wanted the Spanish Dons driven from our hemisphere. Not even Hamilton could have found anything sinister in such a design for he too had secretly been dealing with various Latin worthies, hoping to be their leader. Hamilton dreamed of a Mexican empire for himself in alliance with England. I dreamed of one for myself, in alliance with the United States. Once again we were in competition; this time fatally.

  I still possess a number of issues of a Federalist newspaper called The Wasp that was printed at Hudson, New York, under the editorship of a young man named Harry Croswell. During 1802 and 1803, young Master Croswell launched a series of attacks upon Jefferson.

  Here is one: “Mr. Jefferson has for years past while his wife was living and does now since she is dead, keep a woolly headed concubine” (for the record, the hair of the concubine was not at all woolly but uncommonly fine and fair), “by the name of Sally—that by her he had several children, and that one by the name of Tom has since his father’s election taken upon himself many airs of importance, and boasted his extraction from a president.” The would-be seduction of Mrs. Walker was again retold. Most damaging, however, was the accusation that Jefferson had subsidized Callender when he was writing “The Prospect Before Us” (in which Washington was called “a perjurer, a robber and a traitor”). This was dangerous stuff because it was true: Jefferson had indeed given Callender money as well as private information.

  After quoting from Jefferson’s first inaugural, extolling Washington, Master Croswell wrote, “There he makes him a demigod—having already paid Callender for making him a devil … will the word hypocrite describe this man? There is not strength enough in the term.” This brought blood from Jefferson’s thin skin.

  The state Attorney-General was instructed to see to it that Croswell was indicted for libel, which he did. When Croswell asked for copies of the indictment before he made reply, access was denied him. When he asked for James Callender to be called as a witness, the Attorney-General stated the principle that what mattered in a libel case was not the truth or falsehood of the statement but whether or not Croswell had published a libel against the President. “The truth,” said Jefferson’s attorney-general, “cannot be given in evidence.”

  Suddenly the “wholesome prosecution” had become a most unwholesome attempt on the part of an American president to abridge freedom of speech. It was Hamilton who, unexpectedly, became the defender of liberty against Jefferson the would-be censor.

  It was a beautifully comic yet highly significant contest. The first round was won by Jefferson with the aid of New York’s Chief Justice who upheld the doctrine that in such a case truth is not the issue. But the Chief Justice then made the mistake of adding, “I very much regret that the law is not otherwise.” He then directed the jury to determine only whether or not Croswell had published the alleged libels. The jury had no choice but to say that Croswell had indeed published what he had published. Croswell’s counsel asked for a new trial, declaring that the jury had been misdirected, and that truth must be given in evidence.

  The second trial took place in February 1804. Although Hamilton had favoured the Sedition Act, he was now, most eloquently, on the other side of the fence. From all accounts, it was Hamilton’s finest moment. In explaining his attitude toward the Sedition Act he declared, disingenuously, that it had only been aimed at what Jefferson liked to refer to as “false facts” (the counter-term, no doubt, for “true lies”).


  Now the issue was to be truth-in-libel, and Hamilton elevated the discourse to Miltonic heights. “We ought to resist, resist, resist until we hur the Demagogues and Tyrants from their imaginary Thrones.” And, “it ought to be distinctly known whether Mr. Jefferson be guilty or not of so foul an act as the one charged.”

  I found it singularly delicious that Hamilton the Monocrat should be in a position to accuse Jefferson the Great Leveller of being not only Tyrant, but occupant of a throne!

  Since Callender was by then dead, the actual guilt of Jefferson never did become an issue.

  The judges divided two to two, and the legislature at Albany then prepared a truth-in-libel bill that is now the law of the land. Hamilton was again the idol of Federalism.

  Unfortunately for Hamilton (and for me) I was, in effect, the Federalist candidate for governor and Hamilton could not bear this anomaly. At a dinner party in Albany to celebrate his victory in court, Hamilton indulged himself in a series of libels on my character in which truth, I fear, was hardly an issue.

  About the middle of June I was sitting in the upstairs study at Richmond Hill with William Van Ness and his former law clerk Martin Van Buren. With some difficulty, I had just made peace between the two. Van Ness thought Van Buren disloyal for supporting the regular Republican for governor rather than me. I explained, as best I could, that Matty had to do as he did because “he is young and wants a career in politics.” The two men were finally reconciled. But when Van Buren told me that he had supported the regular Republican ticket out of loyalty to his law partner, I told him that personal loyalty was the worst possible reason for doing anything in politics. “The important thing is to begin your career on the winning side. It makes a good impression—if only on the gods.”

  We were going through a number of newspapers just arrived from up-state, and enjoying some of the more fantastical portraits of me (including a learned dissertation on the precise number of women I had ruined), when Van Ness showed me a copy of the Albany Register dated April 24, 1804. It contained what looked to be a letter from Dr. Charles Cooper, reporting on a dinner party at Albany: “Gen. Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance, that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.”