Famous Americans of Recent Times Part 25

Life is frequently styled a checkered scene. But it was the peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty-one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune and sorrow. Never had her father's position seemed so strong and enviable as during his tenure of the office of Vice-President; but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious. Holding property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so deeply in debt that nothing but the sacrifice of his landed estate could save him from bankruptcy. At the age of thirty he had permitted himself to be drawn from a lucrative and always increasing professional business to the fascinating but most costly pursuit of political honors. And now; when he stood at a distance of only one step from the highest place, he was pursued by a clamorous host of creditors, and compelled to resort to a hundred expedients to maintain the expensive establishments supposed to be necessary to a Vice-President's dignity. His political position was as hollow as his social eminence. Mr. Jefferson was firmly resolved that Aaron Burr should not be his successor; and the great families of New York, whom Burr had united to win the victory over Federalism, were now united to bar the further advancement of a man whom they chose to regard as an interloper and a parvenu. If Burr's private life had been stainless, if his fortune had been secure, if he had been in his heart a Republican and a Democrat, if he had been a man earnest in the people's cause, if even his talents had been as superior as they were supposed to be, such a combination of powerful families and political influence might have r.e.t.a.r.ded, but could not have prevented, his advancement; for he was still in the prime of his prime, and the people naturally side with a man who is the architect of his own fortunes.

On the 1st of July, 1804, Burr sat in the library of Richmond Hill writing to Theodosia. The day was unseasonably cold, and a fire blazed upon the hearth. The lord of the mansion was chilly and serious. An hour before he had taken the step which made the duel with Hamilton inevitable, though eleven days were to elapse before the actual encounter. He was tempted to prepare the mind of his child for the event, but he forebore. Probably his mind had been wandering into the past, and recalling his boyhood; for he quoted a line of poetry which he had been wont to use in those early days. "Some very wise man has said," he wrote,

"'Oh, fools, who think it solitude to be alone!'

"This is but poetry. Let us, therefore, drop the subject, lest it lead to another, on which I have imposed silence on myself." Then he proceeds, in his usual gay and agreeable manner, again urging her to go on in the pursuit of knowledge. His last thoughts before going to the field were with her and for her. His last request to her husband was that he should do all that in him lay to encourage her to improve her mind.

The b.l.o.o.d.y deed was done. The next news Theodosia received from her father was that he was a fugitive from the sudden abhorrence of his fellow-citizens; that an indictment for murder was hanging over his head; that his career in New York was, in all probability, over forever; and that he was destined to be for a time a wanderer on the earth. Her happy days were at an end. She never blamed her father for this, or for any act of his; on the contrary, she accepted without questioning his own version of the facts, and his own view of the morality of what he had done. He had formed her mind and tutored her conscience. He _was_ her conscience. But though she censured him not, her days and nights were embittered by anxiety from this time to the last day of her life. A few months later her father, black with hundreds of miles of travel in an open canoe, reached her abode in South Carolina, and spent some weeks there before appearing for the last time in the chair of the Senate; for, ruined as he was in fortune and good name, indicted for murder in New York and New Jersey, he was still Vice-President of the United States, and he was resolved to reappear upon the public scene, and do the duty which the Const.i.tution a.s.signed him.

The Mexican scheme followed. Theodosia and her husband were both involved in it. Mr. Alston advanced money for the project, which was never repaid, and which, in his will, he forgave. His entire loss, in consequence of his connection with that affair, may be reckoned at about fifty thousand dollars. Theodosia entirely and warmly approved the dazzling scheme. The throne of Mexico, she thought, was an object worthy of her father's talents, and one which would repay him for the loss of a brief tenure of the Presidency, and be a sufficient triumph over the men who were supposed to have thwarted him. Her boy, too,--would he not be heir-presumptive to a throne?

The recent publication of the "Blennerha.s.sett Papers" appears to dispel all that remained of the mystery which the secretive Burr chose to leave around the object of his scheme. We can now say with almost absolute certainty that Burr's objects were the following: The throne of Mexico for himself and his heirs; the seizure and organization of Texas as preliminary to the grand design. The purchase of lands on the Was.h.i.ta was for the three-fold purpose of veiling the real object, providing a rendezvous, and having the means of tempting and rewarding those of the adventurers who were not in the secret. We can also now discover the designed distribution of honors and places: Aaron L, Emperor; Joseph Alston, Head of the n.o.bility and Chief Minister; Aaron Burr Alston, heir to the throne; Theodosia, Chief Lady of the Court and Empire; Wilkinson, General-in-Chief of the Army; Blennerha.s.sett, Emba.s.sador to the Court of St. James; Commodore Truxton (perhaps), Admiral of the Navy. There is not an atom of new _evidence_ which warrants the supposition that Burr had any design to sever the Western States from the Union. If he himself had ever contemplated such an event, it is almost unquestionable that his followers were ignorant of it.

The scheme exploded. Theodosia and her husband had joined him at the home of the Blennerha.s.setts, and they were near him when the President's proclamation dashed the scheme to atoms, scattered the band of adventurers, and sent Burr a prisoner to Richmond, charged with high treason. Mr. Alston, in a public letter to the Governor of South Carolina, solemnly declared that he was wholly ignorant of any treasonable design on the part of his father-in-law, and repelled with honest warmth the charge of his own complicity with a design so manifestly absurd and hopeless as that of a dismemberment of the Union. Theodosia, stunned with the unexpected blow, returned with her husband to South Carolina, ignorant of her father's fate. He was carried through that State on his way to the North, and there it was that he made his well-known attempt to appeal to the civil authorities and get deliverance from the guard of soldiers. From Richmond he wrote her a hasty note, informing her of his arrest. She and her husband joined him soon, and remained with him during his trial.

At Richmond, during the six months of the trial, Burr tasted the last of the sweets of popularity. The party opposed to Mr. Jefferson made his cause their own, and gathered round the fallen leader with ostentatious sympathy and aid. Ladies sent him bouquets, wine, and dainties for his table, and bestowed upon his daughter the most affectionate and flattering attentions. Old friends from New York and new friends from the West were there to cheer and help the prisoner.

Andrew Jackson was conspicuously his friend and defender, declaiming in the streets upon the tyranny of the Administration and the perfidy of Wilkinson, Burr's chief accuser. Washington Irving, then in the dawn of his great renown, who had given the first efforts of his youthful pen to Burr's newspaper, was present at the trial, full of sympathy for a man whom he believed to be the victim of treachery and political animosity. Doubtless he was not wanting in compa.s.sionate homage to the young matron from South Carolina. Mr. Irving was then a lawyer, and had been retained as one of Burr's counsel; not to render service in the court-room, but in the expectation that his pen would be employed in staying the torrent of public opinion that was setting against his client. Whether or not he wrote in his behalf does not appear. But his private letters, written at Richmond during the trial, show plainly enough that, if his head was puzzled by the confused and contradictory evidence, his heart and his imagination were on the side of the prisoner.

Theodosia's presence at Richmond was of more value to her father than the ablest of his counsel. Every one appears to have loved, admired, and sympathized with her. "You can't think," wrote Mrs.

Blennerha.s.sett, "with what joy and pride I read what Colonel Burr says of his daughter. I never could love one of my own s.e.x as I do her."

Blennerha.s.sett himself was not less her friend. Luther Martin, Burr's chief counsel, almost worshipped her. "I find," wrote Blennerha.s.sett,

"that Luther Martin's idolatrous admiration of Mrs. Alston is almost as excessive as my own, but far more beneficial to his interest and injurious to his judgment, as it is the medium of his blind attachment to her father, whose secrets and views, past, present, or to come, he is and wishes to remain ignorant of. Nor can he see a speck in the character or conduct of Alston, for the best of all reasons with him, namely, that Alston has such a wife."

It plainly appears, too, from the letters and journal of Blennerha.s.sett, that Alston did all in his power to promote the acquittal and aid the fallen fortunes of Burr, and that he did so, not because he believed in him, but because he loved his Theodosia.

Acquitted by the jury, but condemned at the bar of public opinion, denounced by the press, abhorred by the Republican party, and still pursued by his creditors, Burr, in the spring of 1805, lay concealed at New York preparing for a secret flight to Europe. Again his devoted child travelled northward to see him once more before he sailed. For some weeks both were in the city, meeting only by night at the house of some tried friend, but exchanging notes and letters from hour to hour. One whole night they spent together, just before his departure.

To her he committed his papers, the acc.u.mulation of thirty busy years; and it was she who was to collect the debts due him, and thus provide for his maintenance in Europe.

Burr was gay and confident to the last, for he was strong in the belief that the British Ministry would adopt his scheme and aid in tearing Mexico from the grasp of Napoleon. Theodosia was sick and sorrowful, but bore bravely up and won her father's commendation for her fort.i.tude. In one of the early days of June father and daughter parted, to meet no more on earth.

The four years of Burr's fruitless exile were to Theodosia years of misery. She could not collect the debts on which they had relied. The embargo reduced the rice-planters to extreme embarra.s.sment. Her husband no longer sympathized with her in her yearning love for her father, though loving her as tenderly as ever. Old friends in New York cooled toward her. Her health was precarious. Months pa.s.sed without bringing a word from over the sea; and the letters that did reach her, lively and jovial as they were, contained no good news. She saw her father expelled from England, wandering aimless in Sweden and Germany, almost a prisoner in Paris, reduced to live on potatoes and dry bread; while his own countrymen showed no signs of relenting toward him. In many a tender pa.s.sage she praised his fort.i.tude. "I witness," she wrote, in a well-known letter,

"your extraordinary fort.i.tude with new wonder at every new misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject, you appear to me so superior, so elevated above all other men; I contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility, admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that very little superst.i.tion would be necessary to make me worship you as a superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite in me. When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my best qualities appear! My vanity would be greater if I had not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is our relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter of such a man."

Mr. Madison was President then. In other days her father had been on terms of peculiar intimacy with Madison and his beautiful and accomplished wife. Burr, in his later years, used to say that it was he who had brought about the match which made Mrs. Madison an inmate of the Presidential mansion. With the members of Madison's Cabinet, too, he had been socially and politically familiar. When Theodosia perceived that her father had no longer a hope of success in his Mexican project, she became anxious for his return to America. But against this was the probability that the Administration would again arrest him and bring him to trial for the third time. Theodosia ventured to write to her old friend, Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, asking him to interpose on her father's behalf. A letter still more interesting than this has recently come to light. It was addressed by Theodosia to Mrs. Madison. The coldest heart cannot read this eloquent and pathetic production without emotion. She writes:--

"MADAM,--You may perhaps be surprised at receiving a letter from one with whom you have had so little intercourse for the last few years. But your surprise will cease when you recollect that my father, once your friend, is now in exile; and that the President only can restore him to me and his country.

"Ever since the choice of the people was first declared in favor of Mr. Madison, my heart, amid the universal joy, has beat with the hope that I, too, should soon have reason to rejoice. Convinced that Mr. Madison would neither feel nor judge from the feelings or judgment of others, I had no doubt of his hastening to relieve a man whose character he had been enabled to appreciate during a confidential intercourse of long continuance, and whom [he] must know incapable of the designs attributed to him. My anxiety on this subject, has, however, become too painful to be alleviated by antic.i.p.ations which no events have yet tended to justify; and in this state of intolerable suspense I have determined to address myself to you, and request that you will, _in my name_, apply to the President for a removal of the prosecution now existing against AARON BURR. I still expect it from him as a man of feeling and candor, as one acting for the world and for posterity.

"Statesmen, I am aware, deem it necessary that sentiments of liberality, and even justice, should yield to considerations of policy; but what policy can require the absence of my father at present? Even had he contemplated the project for which he stands arraigned, evidently to pursue it any further would now be impossible. There is not left one pretext of alarm even to calumny; for bereft of fortune, of popular favor, and almost of friends, what could he accomplish? And whatever may be the apprehensions or the clamors of the ignorant and the interested, surely the timid, illiberal system which would sacrifice a man to a remote and unreasonable possibility that he might infringe some law founded on an unjust, unwarrantable suspicion that he would desire it, cannot be approved by Mr. Madison, and must be unnecessary to a President so loved, so honored.

Why, then, is my father banished from a country for which he has encountered wounds and dangers and fatigue for years?

Why is he driven from his friends, from an only child, to pa.s.s an unlimited time in exile, and that, too, at an age when others are reaping the harvest of past toils, or ought at least to be providing seriously for the comfort of ensuing years? I do not seek to soften you by this recapitulation. I only wish to remind you of all the injuries which are inflicted on one of the first characters the United States ever produced.

"Perhaps it may be well to a.s.sure you there is no truth in a report lately circulated, that my father intends returning immediately. He never will return to conceal himself in a country on which he has conferred distinction.

"To whatever fate Mr. Madison may doom this application, I trust it will be treated with delicacy. Of this I am the more desirous as Mr. Alston is ignorant of the step I have taken in writing to you, which, perhaps, nothing could excuse but the warmth of filial affection. If it be an error, attribute it to the indiscreet zeal of a daughter whose soul sinks at the gloomy prospect of a long and indefinite separation from a father almost adored, and who can leave unattempted nothing which offers the slightest hope of procuring him redress. What, indeed, would I not risk once more to see him, to hang upon him, to place my child on his knee, and again spend my days in the happy occupation of endeavoring to antic.i.p.ate all his wishes.

"Let me entreat, my dear Madam, that you will have the consideration and goodness to answer me as speedily as possible; my heart is sore with doubt and patient waiting for something definitive. No apologies are made for giving you this trouble, which I am sure you will not deem irksome to take for a daughter, an affectionate daughter, thus situated. Inclose your letter for me to A.J. Frederic Prevost, Esq., near New Roch.e.l.le, New York.

"That every happiness may attend you,

"Is the sincere wish of

"THEO. BURR ALSTON."

This letter was probably not ineffectual. Certain it is that government offered no serious obstacle to Burr's return, and inst.i.tuted no further proceedings against him. Probably, too, Theodosia received some kind of a.s.surance to this effect, for we find her urging her father, not only to return, but to go boldly to New York among his old friends, and resume there the practice of his profession. The great danger to be apprehended was from his creditors, who then had power to confine a debtor within limits, if not to throw him into prison. "_If the worst comes to the worst_" wrote this fond and devoted daughter, "_I will leave everything to suffer with you_."

The Italics are her own.

He came at length. He landed in Boston, and sent word of his arrival to Theodosia. Rejoiced as she was, she replied vaguely, partly in cipher, fearing lest her letter might be opened on the way, and the secret of her father's arrival be prematurely disclosed. She told him that her own health was tolerable; that her child, then a fine boy of eleven, was well; that "his little soul warmed at the sound of his grandfather's name"; and that his education, under a competent tutor, was proceeding satisfactorily. She gave directions respecting her father's hoped-for journey to South Carolina in the course of the summer; and advised him, in case war should be declared with England, to offer his services to the government. He reached New York in May, 1812, and soon had the pleasure of informing his daughter that his reception had been more friendly than he could have expected, and that in time his prospects were fair of a sufficiently lucrative practice.

Surely, now, after so many years of anxiety and sorrow, Theodosia--still a young woman, not thirty years of age, still enjoying her husband's love---might have reasonably expected a happy life. Alas! there was no more happiness in store for her on this side of the grave. The first letter which Burr received from his son-in-law after his arrival in New York contained news which struck him to the heart.

"A few miserable weeks since," writes Mr. Alston, "and in spite of all the embarra.s.sments, the troubles, and disappointments which have fallen to our lot since we parted, I would have congratulated you on your return in the language of happiness. With my wife on one side and my boy on the other, I felt myself superior to depression. The present was enjoyed, the future was antic.i.p.ated with enthusiasm. One dreadful blow has destroyed us; reduced us to the veriest, the most sublimated wretchedness. That boy, on whom all rested,--our companion, our friend,--he who was to have transmitted down the mingled blood of Theodosia and myself,--he who was to have redeemed all your glory, and shed new l.u.s.tre upon our families,--that boy, at once our happiness and our pride, is taken from us,--_is dead_. We saw him dead. My own hand surrendered him to the grave; yet we are alive. But it is past. I will not conceal from you that life is a burden, which, heavy as it is, we shall both support, if not with dignity, at least with decency and firmness. Theodosia has endured all that a human being could endure; but her admirable mind will triumph. She supports herself in a manner worthy of your daughter."

The mother's heart was almost broken.

"There is no more joy for me," she wrote.

"The world is a blank. I have lost my boy. My child is gone forever. May Heaven, by other blessings, make you some amends for the n.o.ble grandson you have lost! Alas! my dear father, I do live, but how does it happen? Of what am I formed that I live, and why? Of what service can I be in this world, either to you or any one else, with a body reduced to premature old age, and a mind enfeebled and bewildered? Yet, since it is my lot to live, I will endeavor to fulfil my part, and exert myself to my utmost, though this life must henceforth be to me a bed of thorns.

Whichever way I turn, the same anguish still a.s.sails me. You talk of consolation. Ah! you know not what you have lost. I think Omnipotence could give me no equivalent for my boy; no, none,--none."

She could not be comforted. Her health gave way. Her husband thought that if anything could restore her to tranquillity and health it would be the society of her father; and so, at the beginning of winter, it was resolved that she should attempt the dangerous voyage. Her father sent a medical friend from New York to attend her.

"Mr. Alston," wrote this gentleman,

"seemed rather hurt that you should conceive it necessary to send a person here, as he or one of his brothers would attend Mrs. Alston to New York. I told him you had some opinion of my medical talents; that you had learned your daughter was in a low state of health, and required unusual attention, and medical attention on her voyage; that I had torn myself from my family to perform this service for my friend."

And again, a few days after:--

"I have engaged a pa.s.sage to New York for your daughter in a pilot-boat that has been out privateering, but has come in here, and is refitting merely to get to New York. My only fears are that Governor Alston may think the mode of conveyance too undignified, and object to it; but Mrs.

Alston is fully bent on going. You must not be surprised, to see her very low, feeble, and emaciated. Her complaint is an almost incessant nervous fever."

The rest is known. The vessel sailed. Off Cape Hatteras, during a gale that swept the coast from Maine to Georgia, the pilot-boat went down, and not one escaped to tell the tale. The vessel was never heard of more. So perished this n.o.ble, gifted, ill-starred lady.

The agonizing scenes that followed may be imagined. Father and husband were kept long in suspense. Even when many weeks had elapsed without bringing tidings of the vessel, there still remained a forlorn hope that some of her pa.s.sengers might have been rescued by an outward-bound ship, and might return, after a year or two had gone by, from some distant port. Burr, it is said, acquired a habit, when walking upon the Battery, of looking wistfully down the harbor at the arriving ships, as if still cherishing a faint, fond hope that his Theo was coming to him from the other side of the world. When, years after, the tale was brought to him that his daughter had been carried off by pirates and might be still alive, he said: "No, no, no; if my Theo had survived that storm, she would have found her way to me.

Nothing could have kept my Theo from her father."

It was these sad events, the loss of his daughter and her boy, that severed Aaron Burr from the human race. Hope died within him. Ambition died. He yielded to his doom, and walked among men, not melancholy, but indifferent, reckless, and alone. With his daughter and his grandson to live and strive for, he might have done something in his later years to redeem his name and atone for his errors. Bereft of these, he had not in his moral nature that which enables men who have gone astray to repent and begin a better life.

Theodosia's death broke her husband's heart. Few letters are so affecting as the one which he wrote to Burr when, at length, the certainty of her loss could no longer be resisted.

"My boy--my wife--gone both! This, then, is the end of all the hopes we had formed. You may well observe that you feel severed from the human race. She was the last tie that bound us to the species. What have we left? ... Yet, after all, he is a poor actor who cannot sustain his little hour upon the stage, be his part what it may. But the man who has been deemed worthy of the heart of _Theodosia Burr_, and who has felt what it was to be blessed with such a woman's, will never forget his elevation."

He survived his wife four years. Among the papers of Theodosia was found, after her death, a letter which she had written a few years before she died, at a time when she supposed her end was near. Upon the envelope was written,--"My husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this to be read _immediately_, and before my burial."

Her husband never saw it, for he never had the courage to look into the trunk that contained her treasures. But after his death the trunk was sent to Burr, who found and preserved this affecting composition.

We cannot conclude our narrative more fitly than by transcribing the thoughts that burdened the heart of Theodosia in view of her departure from the world. First, she gave directions respecting the disposal of her jewelry and trinkets, giving to each of her friends some token of her love. Then she besought her husband to provide at once for the support of "Peggy," an aged servant of her father, formerly housekeeper at Richmond Hill, to whom, in her father's absence, she had contrived to pay a small pension. She then proceeded in these affecting terms:--