Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 47

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The next step in Burr’s political career was one of those wholly unexpected twists of fortune, of a sudden concatenation of events, that appear with strange regularity in the lives of all famous men. It was responsible for the translation of Burr from a purely local celebrity to the national stage, where the eyes of the entire country could be focused upon him, and the basis laid for his subsequent meteoric and sensational rise to prominence.

Philip Schuyler and Rufus King had been appointed the first United States Senators from the State of New York by joint resolution of the Legislature. Schuyler had drawn the short term and his office expired March 4, 1791. Naturally he was a candidate again, and the Legislature being safely Federalist, his reappointment was expected to be a routine affair. There were seemingly no candidates in opposition. He was a man of power and influence, with the prestige of a brilliant Revolutionary record and a great family to back him up. There was Alexander Hamilton, his son-in-law, too. But subtle influences were at work.

To understand these, one must rehearse the story a bit. The Federalists had won the Legislature and barely missed unseating George Clinton in 1789 by a coalition of Schuylers and Livingstons. The Livingstons were Federalist—had they not worked valiantly for the Constitution?—but they were likewise ambitious. They viewed with increasing discontent and a jaundiced eye the manifest tendency of the Schuylers (meaning Hamilton) to arrogate to themselves the spoils of office, both in local and in national affairs, and to dominate almost exclusively the Administration of President Washington.

It had been expected that a Livingston, as well as a Schuyler, would have been chosen to represent the State in the United States Senate. Instead, Hamilton set up Rufus King, only recently arrived from Massachusetts. It had also been expected that the venerable head of the family, the Chancellor, Robert Livingston, was to have been granted the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court of the United States. John Jay was given the honored position. Everywhere they turned they saw the fine Machiavellian hand of Hamilton, exalting the Schuylers and their allies, quietly shoving the too-powerful Livingstons aside. It was an alliance in which there was no comfort.

George Clinton, too, was surveying the scene with political forevision. Alone, the anti-Federalists could not do anything in the Legislature. But if the Livingstons, ostensibly Federalist, were to join....

A vote was taken. Schuyler’s name was the only one proposed. He was rejected. Had the heavens fallen the supporters of Hamilton could not have been more profoundly startled or surprised. But the fact remained—Schuyler had been considered, and emphatically disposed of.

Whereupon Burr’s name was promptly put in nomination. In the Assembly he received a majority of 5; in the Senate, with only 16 voting out of a possible 24, he was chosen by an overwhelming vote of 12 to 4. On January 19, 1791, Aaron Burr, aged not quite thirty-five, thus found himself the next United States Senator from the State of New York!

A good deal of controversy has raged over his particular part in the surprising debacle. It has been held, chiefly by his inveterate enemies, that he had anticipated just such an event, that he had intrigued and insinuated himself into the graces of the individual members of the Legislature. The facts warrant no such interpretation.

The movement had been essentially one against Philip Schuyler on the part of the disgruntled Livingstons, with the efficient cooperation of the Governor. It was a case of beat Hamilton! When it came to the question of a successor, however, there were certain delicate considerations involved. Clinton could not bring forth his own candidate, or an out-and-out anti-Federalist. The Livingstons were in no mood to tear down one group in order to exalt another. Besides, they were still Federalist in politics.

The answer was of course an independent, a moderate, a man of undoubted talents and popularity, a man who had not completely identified himself with any faction and yet whose character and ability would win the approval of the generalty of the voters. Another gubernatorial election, it must be remembered, was impending.

Aaron Burr seemed to be such an available choice. He was anti-Federalist, yet he had supported Yates against Clinton. His term as Attorney General had proved eminently satisfactory. His eminence as a lawyer was unquestioned. He was on good terms with the tribe of Livingstons; he was friendly from college days with Brockholst Livingston and had acted as counsel for Robert G. Livingston, recently deceased, for a good many years. He was acceptable also to Clinton. The old Governor had already appraised the rising young independent, and desired to attach him to his chariot-wheels. In the coming close election he did not wish a recurrence of 1789.

So, out of a complex of forces, Burr emerged into the arena of state and national politics, possibly much to his own surprise. But in the doing he had gained fierce and unrelenting enmities.

General Schuyler and Hamilton were furious. There was no question in their minds that Burr, and Burr alone, had by his arts prepared and fired the mine. Schuyler nursed his wrath in secret and wrote to his son-in-law: “As no good could possibly result from evincing any resentment to Mr. Burr for the part he took last winter, I have on every occasion behaved toward him as if he had not been the principal in the business.”^[185] He did not realize that it was the Livingstons who had betrayed him.

But a secret wrath, nursed under a smiling countenance, bottles to dangerous compressions. Hamilton likewise accepted it as a personal and family affront, as well as a considerable setback to his own political fortunes. He required every vote he could get in the Senate, and he was intimate enough with Burr to know that in the new Senator he had acquired a formidable antagonist. Most of Hamilton’s measures, sponsored by him in pursuit of a definite plan, had squeezed through Congress by the closest of margins and only after extended fighting. Besides, all his well-laid plans for the total assumption of power in New York, the pivotal state of the Union, were wholly upset by this unexpected defeat. No wonder he began to hate Burr from that day on as the author of his misfortunes, and was to pursue him throughout his career and down to the last tragic dénouement with a bitter and personal venom unsurpassed in the history of American politics.

Of all this Burr at the time had no inkling. The grudge was covered with a smiling face, with an outward friendliness, as before. Burr and Hamilton had been necessarily thrown much in each other’s company; they had visited each other and appeared in court as associated counsel or as opponents with an equal courtesy and friendship. But Hamilton’s secret malice was to dog Burr’s footsteps relentlessly, to cross his path time and again, to warp all of Burr’s life in the crucible of a distilled venom, and to terminate abruptly in the death of the maligner. Even that death was to pursue Burr still further like the Erinyes of old.