Part 7 (2/2)
In 1804 came the historic quarrel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Since this chapter is the story of Richmond Hill and not the life of Aaron Burr, I shall not concern myself with the whys or the wherefores of that disastrous affair.
Histories must perforce deal with the political aims, successes and failures of men; must cover a big canvas and sing a large and impersonal song. But just here we have only to think of these old-time phantoms of ours as they affect or are affected by the old-time regions in which for the nonce we are interested. To Richmond Hill--with its white columns and shadow-flinging portico, its gardens and its oak trees and its silver pond--it was of small import that the master just missed being President of the United States, that he did become Vice-president, and President of the Senate, and that he was probably as able a jurist as ever distinguished the Bar of New York; also that he made almost as many enemies as he did friends. But it was decidedly the concern of the sweet and imposing old house on Richmond Hill that it was from its arms, so to speak, that he went out in a cold, white rage to the duel with his chief enemy; that he returned, broken and heartsick, doubly defeated in that he had chanced to be the victor, to the protection of Richmond Hill.
I cannot help believing that the household G.o.ds of a man take a very special interest and a very personal part in what fortunes befall him.
More than any deities of old, they live with and in him; they at once go forth with him to battle, and welcome him home. I can conceive of some hushed and gracious home-spirit walking restless by night because the heart and head of the house was afar or in danger. And a house so charged with personality as that on Richmond Hall must have had many a ghost,--of fireside and of garden close,--who wept for fallen fortunes as they had rejoiced for gaiety and bright enterprise.
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were born antagonists: their personalities, their ideals, their methods, were as diverse and as implacably divergent as the poles. Hamilton, as a statesman, believed that Burr was dangerous; and so he was: sky rockets and geniuses usually are. Hamilton did his brilliant best to destroy the other's power (it was chiefly due to his efforts that Burr missed the Presidency), and, being a notably courageous man, he was not afraid to go on warning America against him.
And so it all came about:--the exchange of letters--haughty, courteously insolent, utterly unyielding on both sides--then the challenge, and finally the duel.
I am glad to think that Theo Alston was safe among her husband's rice fields at that time. She wors.h.i.+pped her father, and everything that hurt him stabbed her to her devoted heart.
It was in an early, fragrant dawn--Friday the sixth of July, 1804--that Burr and his seconds left our beautiful Richmond Hill, where the birds were singing and the pond just waking to the morning light, for Weehawken Heights on the Jersey sh.o.r.e.
At about seven, Burr reached the ground which had been appointed. Just after came Hamilton with his seconds, and the surgeon, Dr. Hosack. The distance was punctiliously measured, and these directions read solemnly to the princ.i.p.als:
”The parties, being placed at their stations, shall present and fire when they please. If one fires before the other, the opposite second shall say 1--2--3--fire; and he shall then fire or lose his fire.”
Then came the word ”Present!” from one of the witnesses. Both duellists fired and Hamilton dropped. Burr was untouched. He stood for a second looking at his fallen adversary, and then (as the story goes), ”with a gesture of profound regret, left the ground....”
Back to Richmond Hill and the troubled household G.o.ds. Burr was no butcher, and he did not dislike Hamilton personally. I wonder how many times he paced the cool dining-room with the balcony outside, and how many times he refused meat or drink, before he despatched his note to Dr. Hosack? Here it is:
”Mr. Burr's respectful compliments.--He requests Dr. Hosack to inform him of the present state of General H., and of the hopes which are entertained of his recovery.
”Mr. Burr begs to know at what hour of the day the Dr. may most probably be found at home, that he may repeat his enquiries. He would take it very kind if the Dr. would take the trouble of calling on him, as he returns from Mr.
Bayard's.”
On the thirteenth, the New York _Herald_ published:
”With emotions that we have not a hand to inscribe, have we to announce the death of _Alexander Hamilton_.
”He was suddenly cut off in the forty-eighth year of his age, in the full vigour of his faculties and in the midst of all his usefulness.”
The inquest which followed presented many and mixed views. Samuel Lorenzo Knapp, writing in 1835, and evidently a somewhat prejudiced friend, says that ”the jury of inquest at last were reluctantly dragooned into a return of murder.”
Meanwhile, for eleven long black days, Burr stayed indoors at Richmond Hill. He was afraid to go out, for he knew that popular feeling was, in the main, against him. Dark times for the household G.o.ds! At last, one starless, cloudy night, having heard of the murder verdict, he stole away.
His faithful servant and friend, John Swartwout, went with him, and a small barge lay waiting for him on the Hudson just below his Richmond Hill estate, with a discreet crew. They rowed all night, and at breakfast time, he turned up at the country place of Commodore Truxton, at Perth Amboy.
Haggard and worn, he greeted his friend the Commodore with all his usual _sang-froid_, and suggested nonchalantly that he had ”spent the night on the water, and a dish of coffee would not come amiss!”
He never went back to Richmond Hill to live again, though he later returned to New York and dwelt there for many years. He went, for a time, to Theo in the South, fearing arrest, but as a matter of fact, verdict or no verdict, the matter of Hamilton's death was never followed up. Burr came calmly back to the Capitol and finished his term as Vice-president. In his farewell speech to the Senate he said he did not remember the names of all the people who had slandered him and intrigued against him, since ”he thanked G.o.d he had no memory for injuries!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE b.u.t.tERICK BUILDING. A stone's throw from the site of the once-glorious house of Richmond Hill.]
The year after the duel he evolved his monstrous and hare-brained plan of establis.h.i.+ng a Southern Republic with New Orleans as Capital and himself as President. Mexico was in it too. In fact, President Jefferson himself wrote of the project: ”He wanted to overthrow Congress, corrupt the navy, take the throne of Montezuma and seize New Orleans.... It is the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote!...”
General Wetmore loyally declares the scheme to have been ”a justifiable enterprise for the conquest of one of the provinces of Southern America.” But no one in the whole world really knows all about it. The sum of the matter is that he was tried for treason, and that, though he was acquitted, he was henceforward completely dead politically. Through all, Theo stood by him, and her husband too. They went to prison with him, and shared all his humiliation and disappointment. Affection? Blind, confident adoration? Never was man born who could win it more completely!
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