Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 23

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The assault on Quebec had ended in failure. Montgomery was dead, Arnold wounded, and Morgan, who had finally returned with reinforcements—too late—had found his command cut to pieces and himself compelled to surrender. When morning came, the American forces counted their losses. They were staggering. More than half had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Arnold, incapacitated, attempted to retire the command in favor of Colonel Campbell, but he was unacceptable to the other officers. It was he who had ordered the retreat at Près de Ville in the face of Burr’s attempt to rally the column and press to the attack, and they felt that his prudence—or timidity—had lost them Quebec. Unanimously they elected Arnold.

The campaign was over, but the siege stubbornly carried on until May. Huddled behind breastworks, themselves fearing attack from the besieged, decimated by smallpox, hampered by heavy snowstorms and the severe cold, torn by internal dissensions and wrangling, they held on. Arnold quit to go to Montreal in April for treatment of his leg. Wooster took over, then Thomas. Finally, in May, 1776, by which time the British had been overwhelmingly reinforced, the fruitless siege was raised.

Captain Burr’s gallantry in this ill-fated action elicited a sheaf of praise and commendation. Arnold declared he had “behaved extremely well” and appointed him Brigade Major.^[76] General Wooster lauded him; his friend Bradford exulted that “your praise is now in every man’s mouth ... I make no doubt but your promotion will be taken care of. The gentlemen of the Congress speak highly of you.”^[77] Judge Reeve wrote with relieved anxiety. “Dear Burr, Amid the lamentations of a country for the loss of a brave, enterprising general, your escape from such imminent danger, to which you have been exposed, has afforded us the greatest satisfaction. The news of the unfortunate attack upon Quebec arrived among us on the 13th of this month. I concealed it from your sister [Sally] until the 18th, when she found it out; but, in less than half an hour, I received letters from Albany, acquainting me that you were in safety, and had gained great honour by your intrepid conduct.”^[78]

Meanwhile Matthias Ogden had left the army while it still huddled hopelessly before Quebec, and returned to New York. There he received an appointment as Lieutenant-Colonel in the 1st Jersey Battalion, and wrote forthwith to his friend that he had heard of a vacancy in General Washington’s official family, and was pulling wires to obtain it for him.^[79]

Burr felt the inactivity of the Canadian campaign keenly. It was dragging out to wretched failure, and he was, he told his sister, “dirty, ragged, moneyless and friendless.” Nor had he conceived any particular esteem for his superior, General Arnold. He had thought him a bit more regardful of his own comforts than of the privations of his men during the Wilderness trek, and, while paying tribute to his undoubted bravery, considered him somewhat unprincipled on the moral side.

In April, 1776, Burr accompanied Arnold to Montreal, then on to Camp Sorrel, and by May he was at Fort Chambly, desperately eager to get home, to see his friends and family, to participate in a war once more.

So anxious indeed was he that Davis terms it desertion! But a letter from Burr to his sister, dated Fort Chambly, May 26, 1776, seems to put the quietus on this legend also.

“I have this Moment arrived from the Camp at Sorrel all well,” he tells her. “I rec’d a Letter from you while at that Place—heard of another taken Prisoner in Quebec and several more strolling about the Country for the entertainment of the Army ... Write me no more till you hear from me again which I hope will be from Albany. I shall if nothing extraordinary intervenes start for the Southward the Beginning of next Week. As I go on Public Business I shall not probably have time to see you as I go down. I intend after that to make a week or two and enjoy it at Litchfield with the best of sisters.”^[80]

En route through Albany, Burr heard that it would be agreeable for General Washington to see him in New York. Ogden, now a Colonel, had pulled his wires to good effect. Burr arrived in New York about the second week in June. Davis sets the date as May 20, 1776. But this is impossible. On May 26th, he was still at Fort Chambly, and on June 5th he and Ogden, who had been detailed to Fort George, missed each other on the road at Lake George, the one coming down and the other going up.^[81]

In any event he saw Washington and was invited to join his staff, pending a satisfactory appointment. Burr accepted, and was promptly installed at Headquarters, in the old Mortier Mansion at Richmond Hill. Richmond Hill, whose history was already at once venerable and glamorous, and that was to become so much more famous and romantic from further association with the name of the young aide-de-camp.