were shattered beyond repair. He felt that he would have won in this battle had it not been for Hamilton, who prevented his receiving

The challenge.

the full Federalist vote. Nor was this the first time that Hamilton had thwarted his ambitions. The more Burr brooded over the matter, the more he blamed Hamilton for all his misfortunes, and he desperately resolved to get rid of his great enemy. He challenged Hamilton to a duel.

Dueling was common in those days. The great public had not yet come to see that the practice is wrong. It smiled on it, applauded it, and branded the man as a coward who refused to meet his antagonist on "the field of honor." And the average man was too much of a real coward to endure being called a coward. Even Hamilton had not the moral courage to defy public opinion and refuse to fight a duel. He accepted the challenge.1

the

In the gray dawn of that sultry summer day in July, 1804, two men with their seconds rowed silently across the Hudson, and as the earliest rays of the rising sun streamed The duel, through the trees, they stood face to face on the old July 11, 1804. dueling ground under the rocky heights of Weehawken. Hamilton seemed undecided and vacillating; Burr was keen-eyed and determined. At the signal to fire, but one shot was heard, and Hamilton fell upon his face, shot through the body. As he fell his pistol was fired into the air some feet above Burr's head, whether accidentally or not was never known. He had said to a friend that he intended to throw away his first fire. His friends now bore the wounded statesman back to his home in the city. Next morning he was dead.

Character of
Hamilton.

Among American statesmen Alexander Hamilton must be placed in the first rank. Born in the West Indies in 1757, of ScotchFrench parentage, he came to the colonies as a boy of fifteen, seeking his fortune. At the outbreak of the Revolution we find him at King's College, in New York, and he left his course unfinished to join the army. He served throughout the war, a large part of the time on the staff of Washington, and he gave evidence of possessing a high order of military ability; but the war closed while he was still a youth, and never afterward did he have an opportunity to display his military powers. He served a short time in the Congress of the Confederation, helped

1 Hamilton claimed that he fought only to save his political influence, but his brain was quite fertile enough to do that without the duel.

BURR-HAMILTON DUEL

391

to frame the Constitution, and became a member of Washington's first Cabinet.

As a financier no public man in our history can compare with Hamilton, and he was the founder of our present financial system. As a lawyer and an orator he stood in the first class; as a controversial political writer he surpassed all other men of his age. "Any man who puts himself on paper with Hamilton is lost," said Burr, some years before their fatal quarrel. Hamilton did a service for America that will never be forgotten; to him above all men we are indebted for national strength. But his usefulness was marred by his egoism and his want of faith in the good sense and good intentions of the masses. Had he been born to a throne, he would have made a great ruler; but, as he himself acknowledged, he was out of place in this western world, where the voice of the people cannot be stifled and must prevail.

Aaron Burr may have felt a thrill of the joy of victory at the fall of his great rival at Weehawken. He did not foresee that his fatal bullet would add a luster for all time to the name of his fallen victim, and would cover his own with indelible dishonor. He did not foresee that the ghost of Hamilton would pursue him like a Nemesis from land to land, would mark his every project with failure, would hound his footsteps for thirty years, until at last, aged and tottering, he would sink into the grave, the victim and not the conqueror of the fatal duel at Weehawken.

New York and the nation were shocked at the death of Hamilton. The great untrained public had applauded dueling, but it was costly sport when such an intellectual light as Hamilton became its victim. This great giant, the public, like a petulant child that takes vengeance on the plaything with which he has injured himself, felt the wound and grew angry and demanded a victim-and Burr became the victim.1

Burr flees.

When the people of New York learned that Burr had practiced with his pistol for some weeks before the duel, with the evident intention, not of retrieving his honor, but of killing his rival, he was denounced as a murderer. He fled to Philadelphia, but here public opinion was equally against him, and he went to the South. Some months later he returned northward, hoping to find public feeling allayed; but not finding it so, he

1 This does not imply a belief that Burr was blameless, but that he was a natural product of a society that encouraged dueling.

decided on a tour of the West. He crossed the mountains to Pittsburg, whence he floated down the Ohio to Marietta. He then visited the long, low island in the river a few miles below Marietta, where lived, with his wife, a romantic Irish gentleman named Blennerhassett. Burr proceeded down the river to the site of Louisville and crossed the country to Nashville, where he was received by Andrew Jackson. Next we find him at New Orleans secretly conferring with some of the leading men of the city.

Burr's conspiracy.

What was Burr's object in making this western tour? Many who knew of his restless ambition fully believed that he was engaged in a conspiracy for selfish ends. -no less than to sever the Mississippi Valley from the East, and to set up an independent nation with himself at its head. Burr had good ground to hope for success in this vast undertaking. There was a widespread belief that the East and the West would at some future time become separate nations. Burr was popular west of the mountains, and even in the East he still had friends in high life. Senators Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, John Smith of Ohio, and General James Wilkinson, commander of the armythese and many men of lesser note readily joined in his plot.'

Late in the year 1805 Burr returned to the East, and during his few months' stay he made prodigious efforts to enlist recruits for his project. He visited the English minister, and sought to secure Great Britain's aid in his project, but without success. He called upon old friends, army and navy officials, and on many whom he believed to have some grievance against the government. His success was meager, however, and he returned to the Ohio Valley in August, 1806, taking with him his charming daughter, Theodosia, now Mrs. Alston, wife of the governor of South Carolina. Leaving her with Mrs. Blennerhassett, whose husband was deeply involved in his plot, Burr, with great energy, began building boats and arming men for his expedition against Mexico, as he led the rank and file to believe. Everything seemed to promise success, when suddenly, as by a thunderbolt from a clear sky, the whole plan was shattered and annihilated. The explosion came in the form of a presidential proclamation.

1 Mr. W. F. McCaleb in his "Aaron Burr Conspiracy," 1903, reaches a different conclusion from that commonly believed. He claims that Burr sought only to head a filibustering expedition against Spanish possessions, that he had no design of severing the Union, and that the charges of treason rested on the testimony of Wilkinson, who was more at fault than Burr.

President Jefferson had been slow to believe that anything serious was going on; but when he was at length convinced of Burr's

perfidy, he issued a proclamation calling for the arrest The arrest. of all persons engaged in the scheme. Wilkinson then

betrayed Burr, whom he had promised to support, and others followed his example until Burr found himself abandoned and a fugitive from the hand of the law. He floated down the Mississippi to a point near Natchez, where he learned that Wilkinson, who was at New Orleans, had betrayed him and was planning for his arrest. Burr now saw that the game was up, and sought only to escape. He landed on the east bank of the river, exchanged clothes with a boatman, and with a single guide attempted to make his way through the wilderness to the seacoast, whence he hoped to embark for a foreign land. But he was captured in northern Alabama and carried to Richmond, Virginia, for trial.1

The famous prisoner arrived in Richmond in March, 1807, and the great trial in the United States Circuit Court, Chief Justice John Marshall in the chair, was begun some weeks later. The administration became the prosecutor, while the Federalists, true to their instincts of opposition, generally sided with the accused. The contest almost became a personal one between President Jefferson and Chief Justice Marshall, who bore each other no good will. Marshall summoned the President to be a witness, but the latter refused to leave his public duties. This action of the Chief Justice was generally condemned, even by his friends.

The trial.

Burr was a lawyer of great ability, and besides, he secured able. legal talent led by Edmund Randolph, a former member of Washington's Cabinet, and Luther Martin, the rugged "bulldog" statesman from Maryland. The leader of the opposite side was the brilliant young lawyer, William Wirt. The outcome of the trial was believed to lie largely in the hands of Marshall, and his rulings were generally favorable to Burr. The jury acquitted the prisoner on technical grounds, nor was it possible to convict him of a misdemeanor.

Jefferson was deeply disappointed at the result. He believed that Marshall had brought it about from pure dislike of himself. It is a strange fact that these two great Virginians, whose memory America still delights to honor, were ever suspicious of each other, and neither ever valued the other at his real worth.

1 For a fuller account see Elson's "Side Lights," Series I, Chap. VII.

Of Burr's guilt few had any doubt, but for want of proof he was acquitted by the jury. His reputation, however, was utterly blasted, and from this time, if not from the time of Hamilton's death, he was despised above all public men in America. After the trial he went to Baltimore and stayed with a friend, but he fled from the city by night to escape the fury of a gathering mob. Finding no rest for the sole of his foot in America, he took ship for Europe under an assumed name. There he wandered for four years; but his Nemesis pursued him. He found neither friends nor rest, and at times he was in want of the necessaries of life. Returning to his native land in the spring of 1812, he found at last that the public, now about to engage in a war with England, took little notice of him, and he engaged quietly in his profession, earning a fair living until old age and disease disabled him; but he never regained the confidence of the public.

IMPRESSMENT OF SEAMEN

The reelection of Jefferson in 1804 was a grand triumph of the democracy; and yet not wholly this, for Jefferson had already proved himself not only a Democrat, not only a state-rights Republican, but also a nationalist. The purchase of Louisiana was an act of national sovereignty such as the most ardent Federalist would scarcely have dreamed of five years before. By this act, as well as by his conciliatory policy, Jefferson won thousands of his opponents without alienating the members of his own party. Of all the presidential elections save one, since the days of Washington, that of 1805 came nearest being unanimous. Jefferson and his colleague, George Clinton, received all the electoral votes except fourteen, which were cast for the Federalist candidates, C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King. But the trying time in the life of the President was yet to come, and that was in connection with our foreign relations. France had failed to give boundaries to the great tract of land that she had sold to the United States. Livingston was at first chagrined that he had acquired the west bank only of the Mississippi when he had been authorized to purchase the east bank. But he soon found a way out of his dilemma by claiming the east bank, or West Florida, also, as a part of Louisiana. His example was followed by the administration; and thus began a series of negotiations that covered several years. Spain protested vehemently against this claim of the United States, but Spain lay prostrate at the feet of