The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (60 page)

“ ‘But surely,’ said Mr. Madison, ‘Colonel Burr had designs on New Orleans.’ I said what you used to say: that since the artillery at New Orleans was the property of the French, you felt no compunction about seizing it, as well as what
foreign
shipping you might be able to commandeer on the way to Vera Cruz. My two scribes were disappointed.

“Mr. Jefferson asked, ‘What about Colonel Burr’s plan to separate the west?’ I noticed that his hands trembled as he turned a page of the copy-book. I said there was no such plan.

“ ‘But we know,’ said Mr. Madison, ‘that Colonel Burr proposed such a plan to the Spanish minister.’ I told them the truth, that it was Senator Dayton’s trick to raise money, and that it had failed.

“ ‘What about Colonel Burr’s conversations with the British minister?’ asked the President. I told him a lot of nonsense in order to protect Mr. Merry—told them how England only wanted to aid your Mexican adventure. I ended by advising the President that he would do the United States a great service by promptly declaring war on Spain and allowing you to continue your work. He broke his pen on that. Then Mr. Madison gave me a twenty-page version of what I had said which I read carefully and signed.

“ ‘This paper, Dr. Bollman, will never leave my hand,’ said the President, and he sent me back to prison.”

A writ of
habeas corpus
was issued on Dr. Bollman’s behalf by that poetical lawyer Francis Scott Key. But before it could be properly served, Jefferson hurled a charge of high treason at my associates, and they were kept in jail.

At this point the redoubtable Tory, the drunken, the brilliant, the incomparable Luther Martin (easily the best trial lawyer of our time) came forward to their defence, and applied to the Supreme Court for their deliverance.

February 21, 1807, Chief Justice John Marshall delivered his opinion. After reading Wilkinson’s version of my cipher-letter, as well as the rest of the “hearsay evidence” collected by the government, Marshall was obliged to observe that under the Constitution no act of treason had been committed by anyone. Unfortunately, in his garrulous way he gave a loose and dangerous definition of what constitutes a treasonable act. This
obiter dictum
I will come to in due course. By the Supreme Court’s order Dr. Bollman and Swartwout were freed.

This was the background to my charming season at Richmond where I was able from various places of detention to observe the marvellous flowering spring in that part of the world, to delight in daffodils and dogwood, to indulge myself in the pleasures (never denied me by my gallant gaolers) of knowing Richmond’s elegant ladies.

Jefferson’s ill luck continued (as opposed to his ill luck I must put upon the scales my own far heavier and singularly maleficent destiny!). In his haste to try me in his own state, Jefferson had overlooked the fact that the presiding judge of the circuit court at Richmond was none other than his old enemy the Chief Justice. I
assume
that Jefferson had overlooked this fact. John Marshall, on the other hand, thought that the selection of Richmond was deliberate.

“He wanted to catch me out, just as he tried to catch out Justice Chase,” said Marshall to Luther Martin some years after the trial. “It was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Supreme Court. All I need do was show the slightest favour to Burr, misstep once in the law and Jefferson would have
me
on trial in the Senate, and with me the Constitution.” Fortunately, Marshall was not about to misstep. Nor for that matter was I.

The Chief Justice and I met March 30, 1807, in the tap-room of the Golden Eagle Tavern. This comfortable hostelry was famed for having over its front door the biggest sign in the union: an eight-by-five-foot golden eagle with wide-spread wings, the work of the then unknown Thomas Sully.

The tap-room was crowded with what I suppose was every lawyer in the state. Some of the finest legal talent in the nation was already assembling for my defence. Needless to say, most of them were Federalists. Like it or not, I had become, over night, the symbol of opposition to Jefferson and to his highhanded administration.

As I stepped into the room, I recognised the tall figure of the Chief Justice. He wore dusty riding-clothes (he was even more untidy than his presidential cousin) and his dark hair needed combing. I, on the other hand, wore new small-clothes of black silk and my hair was freshly powdered and queued (I had even got rid of the fleas that had so loyally accompanied me from the west). As I moved through that assemblage, I had for the first time in months the sense of being once more in control of my destiny. Where there is law, I fear no man.

I bowed to the Chief Justice; he bowed to me. “I think, Colonel, we had best remove yourselves to a more private place.” And so, to the distress of the onlookers, we withdrew to a small side-room where I explained why I had left the Mississippi Territory.

Marshall heard me gravely, without comment. I asked to be set free. The United States attorney George Hay then asked that I be committed over to a grand jury on a charge of misdemeanour for having plotted a war against Spain, and of treason for having plotted a war against the United States.

I was then released on $2,500 bail and the court was adjourned until the next day when we would meet in the state capitol (a pompous pseudo-Greek monstrosity designed, I believe, by Jefferson himself).

The next morning, surrounded by well-wishers, I climbed the steep slope to the classical portico where I was allowed to observe the view of Richmond, lovely in the first yellow-green of the season.

Then pushing past several goats who were feeding on the turf at the foot of the capital’s steps, I followed the sergeant-at-arms to the Chamber of Delegates which resembled the interior of a country church with its rows of uncomfortable pews, each thoughtfully equipped with a box of white sand in which to spit tobacco.

Our first day was spent listening to George Hay press his charges. He wanted me imprisoned and held without bail.

On April 1, Marshall delivered his opinion in this matter. He said that a prisoner could only be let go when it appeared that the charges against him were “wholly groundless.” He did not believe that I fell into that category. On the other hand, he suited firmly that the law may not allow “the hand of malignity” to “grasp any individual against whom its hate may be directed or whom it may capriciously seize, charge him with some secret crime and put him on the proof of his innocence.” Although this was deliberately directed at Jefferson (and was so interpreted by everyone), Marshall later remarked, most demurely, that he had not Jefferson but Wilkinson in mind.

Marshall saw no convincing evidence at this point that I
had assembled troops for a treasonable purpose, and so bailed me in the sum of $10,000, and bade me answer the charge of misdemeanour (plotting a war against Spain). The grand jury was convened for May 22.

Jefferson now took over the prosecution. Day after day he sent messengers to the west to collect (or create) evidence and witnesses. It ought to be noted here that in a number of Jefferson’s private conversations during this period, he admitted quite freely that my designs were obviously on Mexico. Yet, publicly, he persisted in his efforts to mark me as a separatist and so a traitor. Mark me? No, hang me!

During the three weeks before the grand jury met, I was f
ê
ted by the good people of Richmond. Jefferson was not popular amongst the gentry. The common people, however, admired him and I heard a rhetorical tailor drink a toast at the Golden Eagle bar to “the hemp which will be Aaron Burr’s escort to the republic of dust and ashes.”

Almost a week after my release from detention, I was invited to dinner by my chief counsel, John Wick-ham, a charming and gregarious man whose dinner parries for the legal profession of Richmond were celebrated.

“You are to be guest of honour,” said the invitation I received at the Golden Eagle. So on the afternoon named I repaired to the Shockoe Hill district.

As I entered the drawing-room, I was astonished to see that John Marshall was a member of the company. If he was startled to see me, he made no sign. Later Wickham told me that Marshall quite properly questioned the wisdom of a judge dining with a man who must soon appear before him on a grave charge; nevertheless, he had decided to attend the dinner.

We bowed to one another across the room, and I promptly sought the company of my various lawyers (I would have preferred the company of ladies but none ever attended Mr. Wickham’s legal dinners). That season, by the way, was a splendid one for the ladies; or perhaps I should say for their admirers. The so-called Empire fashion had swept America and even the most respectable of maidens (and, alas, the most mature of matrons) wore high bodices two-thirds bare. It is a moot point which issue most concerned the republic in the summer of 1807: my alleged treason or the brazen and ubiquitous baring of breasts that called forth from every pulpit warnings of the wrath of Jehovah. The lascivious press was in an ecstasy: teats and treason—could any other combination be more popular?

After dinner I suddenly realized that John Randolph had sat down next to me. Those huge hollow eyes glared at me and I noticed, as always (and with an involuntary shudder), the curious silky down on his cheeks like that of a young boy, or of a girl who has been too much in the open. “I saw you pass my house, Colonel, some weeks ago.”

“My triumphal procession!”

“Perhaps it was a triumph. We’ll soon know.” The voice in my ear was reedy and disagreeable. Yet on the floor of Congress it could be most beautiful and seductive. The long delicate fingers were dirty; the nails broken and black. “I shall be most curious to learn how you intended to break up the union with only a hundred men ...”

“Forty-seven ...”

“Half again as formidable if we are to apply my Cousin Tom’s peculiar method of reckoning.”

What a family to have produced Randolph, Marshall and Jefferson! The first mad, the second eccentric, the third a passionate hypocrite. To add to the complication of shared blood and madness, the three detested one another.

“Let me say, Colonel, that to my mind you have every Constitutional right to
try
to dissolve the union.” Randolph was even more devoted to the integrity of the states than Jefferson. “Cousin Tom ordinarily would agree with you. Are we not all brothers, all Americans?” He mimicked the President cruelly.

I was polite, and non-committal.

As we left the dining-room, Marshall and I spoke to one another for the only time that evening. “I have been reading,” I said, “your life of Washington.” I had indeed been doing my best to navigate the first four volumes of that remarkably tedious work (so deeply reflective of its subject).

“Oh, it is very bad, Colonel.”

Although of all this world’s creatures, the author is the vainest, Marshall was a notable exception. But then perhaps his vanity was the greatest of all: to undertake such a huge work without the slightest qualification.

Despite my flattery, Marshall was adamant in condemning himself. “I was forced to publish too soon. And so there are errors. Worse, parts of it make no sense at all. I have not had time enough what with ...” he gestured diplomatically, “... all this.”

“But you have finished the last volume?”

“Oh, yes. It has gone off to the printer. I deal with Washington’s presidency. It is better than the rest. At least I pray that it is.”

“I found your first volume most original.” The Chief Justice had required a whole book just to get his hero born, like Tristram Shandy.

“No one else does. My publisher tells me that many subscribers are asking for their money back.”

“You had ten thousand subscribers, I am told.”

“Nowhere near so many. Of course there might have been more except ...” Marshall stopped, conscious of indiscretion.

I finished for him. “Except that the Administration regards your work as a political attack on the Republican party.”

Marshall nodded, pleased to have said nothing. Then he added, “You know, books are sold to subscribers through the postmasters. Mysteriously, the Republican postmasters to a man have refused to sell
The Life of Washington
.”

“Most mysterious,” I agreed. Then we joined the others. That is the only “private” conversation I had with John Marshall during the seven months we were together at Richmond. Needless to say, the Republican press made much of our encounter, and demanded that Marshall be—what else?—impeached.

On May 22, 1807, at 12:30 p.m., the United States circuit court for the district of Virginia opened its doors for business in the House of Delegates.

It is like a play, I thought, as I looked about me. Men so crowded the court-room that some were obliged to stand in the open windows (it was to be such a hot summer that even I was sufficiently warm).

There in front of me were the elegants of Richmond society, looking like courtiers to the late French king. Crowded in next to them were frontiersmen and Piedmontese with coon-skin caps and leather jackets, promiscuously spitting jets of tobacco; in such close quarters, they often missed their target, dirtying many an expensive London jacket.

I saw a number of friendly faces. Some known to me, most not. I particularly noticed day after day an enormous, heroically built young man who stood on the huge lock of the main door. Like an avenging angel, he towered over the room. Twenty years later I saw him again at Albany, in the house of Martin Van Buren. It was General Winfield Scott, then a tyro-lawyer. He was most sympathetic. “May I say, Colonel, that I have never seen a man so composed as you were at Richmond? You were as impenetrable, as immoveable as one of Canova’s marbles.”

John Randolph was also there, leaning in his privileged way against the judge’s tribunal, flicking his riding-whip against one long leg, a planter’s hat jammed down on his head.

Most reassuring of all was the presence of Andrew Jackson. He stood at the back of the room, staring balefully at anyone who testified against me.

A few days later Jackson was nearly mobbed when he addressed an anti-Burr crowd in front of a grocery shop on the edge of the capitol green. But he held his ground and, with many an oath, declared that I was the victim of political persecution and that anyone who believed a word James Wilkinson said was a goddamned fool for Wilkinson was a liar, a bastard from Hell, and in the pay of the Spanish government. My poor friend had a difficult time in Richmond and I fear—hard as it is to believe now—that the plebs actually
laughed
at their future idol Andrew Jackson. I at least blessed him for the friend he was.