Читать книгу The Traumatic Colonel - Ed White - Страница 9

Burrology—Extracts

In the case of Mr. Jefferson, there is nothing wonderful; but Mr. Burr’s good fortune surpasses all ordinary rules, and exceeds that of Bonaparte. All the old patriots, all the splendid talents, the long experience, both of federalists and antifederalists, must be subjected to the humiliation of seeing this dexterous gentleman rise, like a balloon, filled with inflammable air, over their heads. And this is not the worst. What a discouragement to all virtuous exertion, and what an encouragement to party intrigue, and corruption!

—John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, 1800

Few men, if any, in the United States have done more to produce the late change in the representation of the people, than colonel burr. His Eagle eye penetrated thro’ every scheme, of the adverse party, and he has combated with success the “evil genius of America.” While some were distracting their brains, with jarring elements and component parts, the capacious soul of Burr, conceived the harmony of the great whole. While others were collecting their materials, he erected his fabric. A man whose active genius is every where & whose goodness of heart and purity of morals have never been impeached, is an admirable second and may be a suitable successor to the sagacious Jefferson.

—Morgan J. Rhees, Esq., Inauguration Day Oration, 1801

What is the language the people of America express in this vote? Why certainly that in their opinion Mr. Jefferson is equal to Colonel Burr, and Colonel Burr equal to Mr. Jefferson!

—Washington Federalist, 1801

It is in the camp of the Enemy that we must look for a Deliverer. In the choice of Mr. Burr, there is yet a remedy for the evils I have enumerated. . . . It is often difficult to trace with precision, the proportion of each, in that compound of motives, by which the conduct of statesmen is usually governed. To borrow a familiar illustration—we can see, as in a changeable silk, that there is a variety of colors; but it is difficult to say where one ends or the other begins.

—Epaminondas, New-York Gazette, 1801

It is time to tear away the veil that hides this monster, and lay open a scene of misery, at which every heart must shudder. Fellow Citizens, read a tale of truth, which must harrow up your sensibility, and excite your keenest resentment. It is, indeed, a tale of truth! And, but for wounding, too deeply, the already lacerated feelings of a parental heart, it could be authenticated by all the formalities of an oath.

—Aaron Burr!, handbill, 1801

Something “is rotten in Denmark”; that under an exterior, which, though not altogether pleasing, is calculated to make false impressions on unsuspicious minds, something exceedingly unpropitious to the freedom of the union, is at this moment contemplated by the vice-president.

—James Cheetham, Narrative of the Suppression, 1802

It cannot escape notice, that in the toasts given by the Anti-Constitutionalists on the anniversary of independence, the vice-president is either omitted, or mentioned with pointed disrespect. In one he is called the “Burr of democracy.”

—New-York Gazette and General Advertiser, July 20, 1802

The lovers of secret history, and those who listen with pleasure to the tales of party intrigues, or smile at the arts of authorship, may find some amusement in the perusal of this pamphlet. As a considerable portion of it is occupied in detailing the contents of the suppressed history, it is unnecessary for us to be particular in our account of it; since, in the next article, the reader will perceive that this same history has, after all, come forth into open day. The author of this narrative makes some very severe strictures on the character and conduct of Mr. burr, and it appears to be the main design of his performance to hold him up to the contempt and detestation of the world. . . . That such accusations should be made by one of the same political party against so distinguished a character as the accused, may, at first sight, be thought unaccountable; and the mystery will disappear to those only who are acquainted with all the subdivisions of party and the springs which influence their political movements.

—American Review, and Literary Journal, 1802

The character faithfully drawn of Mr. Burr in the following pages is so complex, so stript of precise and indelible marks; so mutable, capricious, versatile, unsteady and unfixt, one to which no determinate name can be given, and on which no reliance can be placed, that serious questions may arise from it.

—James Cheetham, A View of the Political Conduct of Aaron Burr, Esq.,1802

To a genius of singular perspicacity, Mr. Burr joins the most bland and conciliating manners. With a versatility of powers, of which, perhaps, America furnishes no other example, he is capable of yielding an undivided attention to a single object of pursuit.

—John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half, 1803

Perhaps no man’s language was ever so apparently explicit, and, at the same time, so covert and indefinite.

—William Plumer, Memorandum, 1804

I trust . . . that the world will do me the justice to believe that I have not censured him on light grounds nor from unworthy inducements. I certainly have had strong reasons for what I have said, though it is possible that in some particulars I may have been influenced by misconstruction or misinformation.

—Alexander Hamilton, statement before the duel, 1804

O thou agent of our sorrows! who by the people’s voice wast raised so near the highest honors thy nation could bestow, couldst thou not forgive? . . . Where is that honor now thou heldest so dear? Gone; for ever gone. . . . Honor, at best, is but a noisy breath.—Methinks if ever re-applied to thy sinking name, it will be emptier than a puff of air.

—Hezekiah N. Woodruff, sermon at Scipio, NY, 1804

Doctor! Doctor! help, help!—the people want your bolusses, your panacea’s and your remedies—The Multitude want your skill—they are sorely afflicted, with an itching for Col. Burr—and you have a sovereign remedy that will cure half a million a minute—I will vouch for your pills being genuine, and that one box will cure all the infected—Your skill is more famous than the man, who advertises that secrecy and honor may be depended on, on moderate terms!—And as this famous empiric is famous for curing the ——, I think you may fairly be put in competition with him as the curer of the Burr-itch.

—P.Q., American Citizen, 1804

On Monday evening last, the day preceding the commencement of the election, Mr. Burr had assembled at this house, by special invitation, a considerable number of gentlemen of colour—upwards of twenty. These gentlemen were headed by a celebrated perfumer in Broadway. They were invited by Mr. Burr to a ball and supper, in his own house, and the federal candidate, the rejected Vice-President, did himself the honor of superintending their elegant amusements. This, as the reader will perceive, was to the court the favour of the people of colour in aid of his election.

—American Citizen, 1804

the modern cain.

The last account we have seen of the murderer burr, is a paragraph in a New York paper, stating on the authority of a letter from Mr. Burr himself, that he is now in Spanish America. Who would suffer the goadings of this man’s conscience for the high rank in this democratick administration which he has occupied?

—Repertory, September 21, 1804

To analise his face with physiognomical scrutiny, you may discover many unimportant traits; but upon the first blush, or a superficial view, they are obscured like the spots in the sun, by a radiance that dazzles and fascinates the sight.

—Port Folio, 1805

They would often meet together at sun-down in the woods and caves, and hold kintikoys, where they drank largely of the Burr decoction; stripped themselves star[k] naked, and sung, and fiddled, and capered, and danced, and played the fool all night long. They would mark themselves too in the day time, and dress themselves up like mountebanks, jugglers, and rope dancers. Then they would run along upon the tops of the fences, tumble in the dirt, act pantomimes and make speeches, with many other diverting tricks, to the amusement of the bye-standers. At such times too they had a remarkable fondness for filth, and would lie down in the drains and ditches, and smear and daub themselves all, and throw nasty matter at the travelers.

—American Citizen, 1805

Thus Mr. Burr, for aye intriguing,

With this side, and with that side leaguing,

Has late contriv’d a scheme quite handy,

To make himself, for life, a grandee.

—Thomas Fessenden, “Democracy Unveiled,” 1805

There is a chain of connection through the continent—of which Burr has been and still is the master link.

—Aurora, October, 13, 1806

This is indeed a deep, dark, and widespread conspiracy, embracing the young and the old, the Democrat and the Federalist, the native and the foreigner, the patriot of ’76 and the exotic of yesterday, the opulent and the needy, the “ins” and “outs”; and I fear it will receive strong support in New Orleans from a quarter little suspected.

—General James Wilkinson to President Thomas Jefferson, November 1806

Col. Osmun and Lyman Harding Esq. were bound in the sum of 2500 dols. as sureties of Burr. It is a singular fact that the late Vice President of the United States, is now advertised in all the public places in this Territory, as well as in the Newspapers, as a runaway.

—Trenton Federalist, 1807

The debate on the bill to prohibit the importation of slaves was resumed, but seemed to have lost all its interest.

—memoirs of John Quincy Adams, January 26, 1807

Mr. Burr and his conspiracy have begun to occupy our attention.

—John Quincy Adams to John Adams, January 27, 1807

I never, indeed thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or stroke you could never be sure of.

—Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1807

A gentleman, the other day, remarked to another, as a singular fact, that the initials of the name of A. Burr, were those of the two greatest conquerors that had ever spread ruin and devastation over the face of the earth, to wit, Alexander and Buonaparte. It is by no means singular, retorted his facetious friend; they will stand for the vilest traitor that ever disgraced humanity, Benedict Arnold, but in fact they will stand for any body.

—Miller’s Weekly (Pendleton, SC), 1807

Colonel Burr (quantum mutates ab illo!) passed by my door the day before yesterday, under a strong guard. So I am told, for I did not see him, and nobody hereabouts is acquainted with his person. . . . To guard against inquiry as much as possible he was accoutered in a shabby suit of homespun, with an old white hat flapped over his face, the dress in which he was apprehended. . . . His very manner of traveling, although under arrest, was characteristic of the man, enveloped in mystery.

—John Randolph to Joseph H. Nicholson, 1807

I am anxious to see the Progress of Burr’s Tryal; not from any Love or hatred I bear to the Man, for I cannot say that I feel either. He is, as you say a Nondescript in natural History. But I think something must come out on the Tryal, which will strengthen or weaken our Confidence in the General Union. I hope something will appear to determine clearly, whether any foreign Power has or has not been tampering with our Union. If it should appear that he is guilty of Treason and in Concert with any foreign Power, you and your twelve thousand Copetitioners might petition as earnestly as you did for Fries, if I was President, and the Gallows should not lose its prey. An ignorant Idiot of a German, is a very different Being from a Vice President of the United States. The one knew not what Treason was; the other knows all about it. The one was instigated by Virginians and Pensilvanians who deserved to be hanged much more than he did. The other could be instigated only by his own ambition, avarice or Revenge. But I hope his Innocence will be made to appear, and that he will be fairly acquitted.

—Benjamin Rush to John Adams, 1807

A stranger presents himself. It is Aaron Burr. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. . . . Such was the state of Eden, when the serpent entered its bowers!

—William Wirt, for the prosecution against Aaron Burr, 1807

If I were to name this, I would call it the Will o’ wisp treason. For though it is said to be here and there and everywhere, yet it is nowhere. It only exists in the newspapers and in the mouths of the enemies of the gentleman for whom I appear; who get it put in the newspapers.

—Luther Martin, in defense of Aaron Burr, 1807

The rebellion had been crushed, it was said, in the womb of speculation; the armies of Colonel Burr were defeated before they were raised.

—Edward Livingston, A Faithful Picture, 1808

And there was the fascinating colonel Burr. A man born to be great—brave as Cæsar, polished as Chesterfield, eloquent as Cicero. Lifted by the strong arm of his country, he rose fast, and bade fair soon to fill the place where Washington had sat. But alas! lacking religion, he could not wait the spontaneous fall of the rich honors ripening over his head, but in an evil hour stretched forth his hand to the forbidden fruit, and by that fatal act was cast out from the Eden of our republic, and amerced of greatness for ever.

—Mason Weems, Life of George Washington, 6th ed., 1808

Of Burr I will say nothing, because I know nothing with certainty.

—John Adams to James Lloyd, 1815

For more than thirty years Colonel Burr has been assailed and abused in public journals, at home and abroad. Some of them have misrepresented him from ignorance of the facts; others from party purposes or malicious feelings. It is sometimes amusing to read some of these misrepresentations. It is not Mr. Wirt alone who has gained fame by indulging the imagination on the wonderful sorceries of Colonel Burr. Others have given him the eye of the basilisk, from whose glance it was impossible to recede, and that when once fixed on an object the destruction of it was certain. They have represented his voice as sweeter than that of the Sirens, and that he used this charm as successfully as the fabled enchantresses. Even his gait had something of necromancy about it, and reminded these lovers of the wonderful of the stealthy step of Tarquin approaching the couch of the chaste Lucretia. In their legends, he was more successful in his intrigues than Apollo, for no Diana could interfere between him and the object of his pursuit. These exaggerations and fictions often reached his ear, but did not disturb him. He took no pains to make explanations or excuses. When asked in a proper manner for his opinions, he always gave a direct and prompt answer to the inquirer, but never permitted any one to put a supercilious interrogatory to him.

—Samuel Lorenzo Knapp, The Life of Aaron Burr, 1835

Remembering what has been said of the power of Burr’s personal influence, his art to tempt men, his might to subdue them, and the fascination that enabled him, though cold at heart, to win the love of woman, we gaze at this production of his pen as into his own inscrutable eyes, seeking for the mystery of his nature. How singular that a character, imperfect, ruined, blasted, as this man’s was, excites a stronger interest than if it had reached the highest earthly perfection of which its original elements would admit! It is by the diabolical part of Burr’s character, that he produces his effect on the imagination.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, “A Book of Autographs,” 1844

Sprang from the best Puritan blood of New England, identified with the only genuine Pilgrim aristocracy—that of the clergy—and, with this prestige, ushered into active life at the close of the French and opening of the American War, with that band of select heroes and statesmen now idolized as the purest constellation in the firmament of history; he, who called Jonathan Edwards grand-father, in whose fraternity fell the gallant Montgomery, who had been domesticated with Washington, and Vice President of the United States,—who had extended manorial hospitality to a king,—hunted as a felon, sleeping on a garret floor in Paris, and skulking back to his native land in disguise—offers one of those rare instances of extreme and violent contradictions which win historians to antithetical rhetoric, and yield the novelist hints “stranger than fiction.” —review of James Parton’s Life and Times of Aaron Burr, in the Southern Literary Messenger, May 1858

He was one of those persons who systematically managed and played upon himself and others, as a skillful musician on an instrument.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister’s Wooing, 1859

His eyes were of a dark hazel, so dark, no sign of a pupil could be seen, and the expression of them, when he chose, was wonderful—they could be likened only to those of a snake, for their fascination was irresistible.

—Charles Burdett, Margaret Moncrieffe: The First Love of Aaron Burr: A Romance of the Revolution, 1860

What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none of our business just now.

—Edward Everett Hale, “The Man without a Country,” 1863

My material is enormous, and I now fear that the task of compression will be painful. Burr alone is good for a volume.

—Henry Adams to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 1880

If I find [John] Randolph easy, I don’t know but what I will volunteer for Burr. Randolph is the type of a political charlatan who had something in him. Burr is the type of a political charlatan pure and simple, a very Jim Crow of melodramatic wind-bags.

—Henry Adams to John T. Morse, Jr., April 1881

The idea implied a bargain and an intrigue on terms such as in the Middle Ages the Devil was believed to impose upon the ambitious and reckless. Pickering and Griswold could win their game only by bartering their souls; they must invoke the Mephistopheles of politics, Aaron Burr.

—Henry Adams, History of the Jefferson Administration, 1889

I regard any concession to popular illusion as a blemish; but just as I abandoned so large a space to Burr—a mere Jeremy Diddler—because the public felt an undue interest in him, so I think it best to give the public a full dose of General Jackson.

—Henry Adams to Charles Scribner, May 1890

“What a head!” was the phrenologist’s first whisper. . . . “His head is indeed a study—a strange, contradictory head.”

—James Parton, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr, 1892

Aaron Burr, whose homicidal (?) and treasonable (?) deeds have been thrown into the shade by more splendid achievements of the kind in our day, was certainly in advance of the men of his time in his ideas on the capacity and education of women.

—Grace Greenwood in The Aaron Burr Memorial, 1903

Some time ago, I received a letter, presumably from an admirer of Alexander Hamilton, in which I was informed that if I did not cease publishing books reflecting upon General Hamilton, his friends would publish some secret memoirs which would reflect more seriously upon the character of Colonel Burr than anything which had yet been published.

—Charles Felton Pidgin in The Aaron Burr Memorial, 1903

Burr was a typical man, the beginning of a new species, destined to become a, if not the dominant one in the future of civilized people.

—Thaddeus Burr Wakeman in The Aaron Burr Memorial, 1903

The Aaron Burr Legion, which has just had a gathering in Newark, the birthplace of Aaron Burr and the old home of his family, was organized to clear the fame of this notable personage, who is one of the betes noirs of American history, from the alleged scandals which blackened his career, and brought it to an ignominious close. The motive of such reconstructive ambition must always be deemed worthy of laudation, and it is a satisfying set-off against the spirit of iconoclasm, which also cuts up such interesting and ingenious capers in historical research. We can even pat that brilliant German on the back who undertakes to set Judas Iscariot on a high pedestal.

—Newark News, 1903

Since a child, forty-five years ago, I have been interested in Colonel Burr’s character, and in spite of all the prejudiced flings by writers, I have held and maintained that he was not a traitor to our Government, but one of its patriots. I read Parton’s “Life of Burr” when a boy, and before I enlisted in the Confederate Army. It is the only book in Burr’s favor that I have ever read. When will the memorial volume be issued? I wish to get one. I am a Mississippian and know very well the vicinity in which he resided when arrested.

—W. W. Mangum in The Aaron Burr Memorial, 1903

The Aaron Burr Legion is devoted to the rehabilitation of Aaron Burr. It probably wants to vote him in the primaries with the dead dogs and four-year-old negroes.

—Memphis Commercial Appeal, 1903

New Jersey has an “Aaron Burr Legion” whose object is to “clear the name of Colonel Burr” and to erect a monument to him at Newark, where he was born. That is, they talk about the monument after the “clearing” has been done. Funny what fads folks will foster just because they have nothing else to do. The Legion should have for a motto: “The devil isn’t as black as he’s painted.”

—Brooklyn Standard Union, 1903

As the transports began to arrive and the eleven hundred disembarked, Captain Howard, commandant of Fort Westward, came up from the landing with the most notable of the guests. It was upon the reckless, dashing Arnold that all eyes were turned. Jacataqua’s Abenakis stood in the same stolid silence, still a group apart, but the maiden herself, for once yielding to the wild pulses of her heart, stepped between the sturdy squires to a point of vantage whence she might gaze upon the warrior whom all men seemed to honor. One swift glance she gave the hero, then her black eyes met a pair as dark and flashing as her own, met and were held. She turned to the man at her side. “That, that Anglese! Who?” “Thet? Thet’s young Burr, the one Cushing said got off a sick bed to come.” Startled, she stepped back among her people.

—William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain, 1925

But where are the facts?

His enterprise in Mexico.

Not yet. That one thorn on which they did impale him was a later growth. It did not come until the end of years of vicious enmity by Hamilton and might well be called a deed of desperation.

It proved the soundness of their logic.

They hounded him to it to prove their logic.

—William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain, 1925

He might have talked in another language, in which there was nothing but evocation. When he was seen so plainly, all his movements and his looks seemed part of a devotion that was curiously patient and had the illusion of wisdom all about it. Lights shone in his eyes like travelers’ fires seen far out on the river. Always he talked, his talking was his appearance, as if there were no eyes, nose, or mouth to remember; in his face there was every subtlety and eloquence, and no features, no kindness, for there was no awareness whatever of the present. Looking up from the floor at his speaking face, Joel knew all at once some secret of temptation and an anguish that would reach out after it like a closing hand. He would allow Burr to take him with him wherever it was that he was meant to go.

—Eudora Welty, “First Love,” 1943

Burr’s letter’s like, “You dissed me!” And then, Hamilton writes back like, “Dude lighten up.” . . . The thing I love about writing about history and, especially historical reenactments is that . . . no one ever says what it’s about, they never say the thing, which is like: They’re morons. These are two of the smartest guys in the history of the country being total idiots. . . . Yeah, [the reenactment] was totally accurate, like Burr was a black woman.

—Sarah Vowell, interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on July 14, 2004

You can call me Aaron Burr from the way I’m droppin’ Hamiltons.

—Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell, “Lazy Sunday,” 2005

Cheney’s shooting of his friend is a lot easier to explain than Burr’s shooting of Hamilton: the Vice President was drinking while “hunting” semi-domesticated birds, and got so excited when he heard a quail fluttering for its life that he whirled and fired with complete disregard for the human beings standing around him. . . . Quite un-Burr-like, you see.

—Unitary Moobat (blog), November 18, 2007

Biden thinks Cheney is the most dangerous vice president we’ve ever had? What about Burr? —Ramesh Ponnuru, 2008

Until I was reading this snotty novel called “Burr,” by Gore Vidal, and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers. And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, “You know what? What he’s writing about, this mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend—just like every one of you in this room would, and as many of you in this room have when you wore the uniform of this great country—I knew that that was not representative of my country.”

—Michelle Bachman, Michigan speech, 2010

“Fortunately his name is not Alexander Hamilton, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson,” he said. “That’s helped my budget.”

—Brian D. Hardison, quoted in “Making a Case to Remember Burr,” 2012