THE RIVALS: A TALE OF THE TIMES OF AARON BURR, AND ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
BYHON. JERE. CLEMENS,
AUTHOR OF "BERNARD LILE" AND "MUSTANG GRAY."PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1860.Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
COLONEL JOHN READ,
HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA.
MY DEAR SIR:—IN dedicating this volume to you, I have not been influenced by the high character and stern integrity of conduct which have marked a long and useful life. Nor even by the consideration that you are the father of that dear wife who has been to me a solace and a support in every trial and every sorrow which have come upon me. It is a tribute rather to domestic virtues—to the kind and genial nature which makes your fireside the abode of happiness, and consecrates the domestic circle to home enjoyments.
In you, a green and healthy old age has followed a youth of industry and virtue; while your heart, instead of hardening by contact with the world, has grown more gentle with advancing years, and CHARITY, the great virtue of the Apostle, abideth evermore within it. May your days be long in the land, and may my last years of life resemble yours.
JERE. CLEMENS.
PREFACE.
IN the preparation of this work I did not confine myself to the life of Aaron Burr, as written either by Davis or Parton. Both are unjust to him—Parton least so. But even he, while writing with an evident desire to do justice, approaches the subject with a degree of timid hesitation which proves that he dreaded to encounter the tide of undeserved reprobation which is yet beating against the tomb of the illustrious dead. The work of Matthew L. Davis is a libel upon the man he professed to honor, and whom he called his friend in life. I went beyond these and collected many old pamphlets and documents relating to Burr and Hamilton, and endeavored to extract from them enough of the truth to enable me to form a just estimate of the characters of both. That estimate once formed, the book was made to correspond with it, the main historical facts alone being preserved, while all the rest is the offspring of imagination.
The history of the war proves conclusively that there was no better soldier, or more devoted patriot, in the long of revolutionary heroes, than Aaron Burr; and all contemporary testimony agrees that no man ever lived of a more genial, hospitable, and kindly nature. Yet this man, unsurpassed as a soldier, unrivaled as a lawyer, pure, upright, and untarnished as a statesman, became, from the force of circumstances, the object of the page: viii-ix[View Page viii-ix] bitterest calumnies that malice could invent or the blindest prejudice could believe. Persecution dogged him to his grave; and, although the life of a generation has passed away since then, justice still hesitates to approach the spot where the bones of the patriot-soldier repose. Under the garb of fiction, I have endeavored to contribute my mite toward relieving his memory from the unjust aspersions which imbittered his life. If I accomplish nothing more than to induce a portion of the rising generation to search the records of that life, I shall be amply repaid for the labor it has cost.
Of Alexander Hamilton I have written nothing of which I do not believe he was capable, after the fullest examination of his own writings and those of others. That I have entertained strong prejudices against him from boyhood, is true; that those prejudices may have influenced my judgment, is possible; but I tried to discard them, and look at his character in the light of reason alone. The more I studied it the more I became convinced that the world never presented such a combination of greatness and of meanness, of daring courage and of vile malignity, of high aspirings and of low hypocrisy. Shrewd, artful, and unscrupulous, there were no means he would not employ to accomplish his ends—no tool too base to be used when its services were needful. Loose in his own morals, even to licentiousness, he criticised those of Thomas Jefferson with a severity no other antagonist ever equaled. Slander was his favorite weapon, and no one stood in his way who did not feel the venom of his tongue and pen.
All that part of the work now submitted to the public, which is not history, is based upon these views of the characters of the principal actors, and wherever I have trusted to imagination, its flight has been restrained within the boundaries of what I believed each to be capable.
The causes which led me to write this book, and the objects I had in view, other than those stated, are of no concern to the public. It has been composed, for the most part, in the midst of many and pressing engagements, and the last part of it was not even read over before it was sent to the publishers; but I ask no charity on that account. The critic is at full liberty to exhaust his powers of satire upon it; and, so far from being offended at the freedom of his strictures, I will thank him for pointing out defects which I may thus lean to amend in future.
It is my purpose to continue the story of Aaron Burr, from the time of his duel with Hamilton to that of his death. The last days of that remarkable man, it seems to me, present a better field for romance than his earlier career. At all events, it is one that is yet untrodden, and therefore possesses an interest in itself which may cause the reader to overlook any deficiency of plot or any faults of style that would otherwise challenge his criticism.
THE AUTHOR.
AARON BURR.
BY FRANK LEE BENEDICT.
- AY, come to the grave where they laid him to sleep,
- And left him in shame's mocking silence so long;
- The hard and the haughty may now pause to weep,
- To pity his errors and call back the wrong.
- The world's bitter scorn hath so heavily lain,
- And cast down its night on his desolate tomb—
- At least let the broad-visioned Present refrain,
- Nor scatter the ashes that lie in the gloom.
- The spirit of vengeance hath followed the dead,
- And deepened the shadows that slander hath cast;
- Ah! sweep back the mists which have shrouded his bed;
- That the starlight may fall on his bosom at last.
- Remember the anguish, the sorrow, the grief,
- The long years of exile, of darkness and woe;
- The swift-fading sunlight, the glory so brief,
- And weep o'er the grandeur forsaken and low.
- The genius that dazzled—the eagle-like mind,
- The passionate heart which still led them astray,—
- The greatest of earth in its mists wand'ring blind,
- The spirit of fire shackled down by the clay.
- Oh, think of the age that came on in its night,
- And flung down its snow on his greatness o'erthrown;
- Wrecked, wrecked on the ocean—no haven in sight,
- His bark going down in the tempest alone.
- Ah, leave him to slumber, nor, blind in your rage,
- Still desecrate ashes which lie in repose;
- But stamp a new record on history's page,
- That tells of his virtues and numbers his woes.
- Let the mosses that cling o'er the waste of his grave,
- Be types of the tribute which soften his name;
- Like the fragrance of blossoms that over him wave,
- The thought of his sorrows shall brighten his fame.
- The debt should be sacred!—oh,' leave him to rest,
- Nor trample in scorn on the prayer-hallowed sod;
- The green turf is holy that covers his breast—
- Give his faults to the Past—leave his soul to his God.
