1804. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE. 59 nization in Africa offered, on the whole, the best permanent solution of our slavery problem.* For Jefferson's theory was emancipation without amalgamation. Jan. 27. Feb. The peaceful acquisition of Louisiana at so trifling a cost greatly enhanced Jefferson's popularity, particularly in the South and West. At a dinner given in honor of the event at Stelle's hotel, on Capitol Hill, which the Republican members of Congress and high officials generally attended, the toasts and general applause indicated that Jefferson would be put forward for a second term; while Burr, who was one of the guests, would be dropped.† Not long after, at a caucus of the Republican Senators and Representatives, Jefferson was re-nominated for President unanimously; with George Clinton as his associate for Vice-President, an honor which had been informally declined by McKean. Put to the personal test Jefferson had now modified his earlier views on the Presidential tenure in favor of a service for eight years, instead of seven, with the liability of being dismissed, so to speak, in four. But of reelections for a third term, or for life, he disapproved as emphatically as ever, trusting that precedent would establish a final limitation in this respect.§ To correct the mischief patent in the last Presidential count a constitutional amendment was duly proposed by Congress and adopted by the legislatures of the requisite three-fourths of the States in good season, which Sept. 25. * Jefferson's Works, November 1801, July 1802, January 21st, 1811. Jefferson had in mind the commercial advantages of such an experiment, if carried out successfully. Motives of humanity impelled him also to the attempt. These negroes, he thought, going from a country with useful arts might implant them among their own people. Jefferson's Anas show that Burr had called upon him the evening before that of the dinner with a view of conciliating his support for renomination. Jefferson was wary, and he had lately received strong testimony as to Burr's bad faith in 1800. It had long been a matter for satirical comment that while Burr went constantly up and down the land few were found to "stick" to him. See Washington Intelligencer; Adams's Gallatin, 312. Jefferson's Writings, January 1805. required electors to distinguish President from Vice-President in their ballots, and provided for the eventual failure of the House to choose from the highest candidates.* Feb. 22. The Federalist members of Congress made their counterdemonstration on the anniversary of Washington's birthday by another dinner at Stelle's, over which Pickering presided. Their candidates, as presently announced, were Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King; but such was the secrecy of their caucus proceedings and their unconcealed dislike to the pending amendment, that the party was left long in the dark as to which of these two respectable citizens should take precedence. Pinckney had made a tour of New England the previous summer, receiving distinguished attentions. King, on his return from Europe, was honored in Boston by a banquet, decidedly anti-administration in character, from which the Adamses took care to absent 1804. themselves.† A disunion project, in fact, was under secret discussion at this time in the Eastern quarter of the Union, among those most hostile to the new order of things; originating, however, in Washington, where the New England coterie in Congress comprised ambitious and disappointed spirits like Pickering and Griswold. Men fallen from power are prone to imagine that the ruin of their country is involved in their own, and the vitality of Federalism in grateful Massachusetts and Connecticut encouraged this little knot of representatives in a singular delusion. An Eastern confederacy, they thought, might be set off from the Union, to embrace all of New England, with New York added, and possibly New Jersey, on the south. Should Canada and Nova Scotia be peaceably annexed at the northward and a commercial alliance made with Great Britain, their position would become impregnable; the liberal imposts collected at their chief seaports would defray all common expenses; and thus might they disconnect themselves utterly and forever from the South, and this Western Scythia, for which they cared nothing. These men hated Jefferson, they * See vol. i., Appendix A. this day. † See newspapers of the day. That Amendment remains in force to 1804. EASTERN CONFEDERACY PLOT. 61 hated this new prate of a government which did not govern. Old-fashioned ideas were good enough for them; the well-bred and educated to rule, the vicious and ignorant to submit. Their flock was leaving the shepherds. They who should. have touched the hat superseded their betters in office. The judiciary was in danger. With the annexation of Louisiana empire would surely pass to the West and South; and New England, gradually depopulated, and without slaves for freemen to represent, must gradually sink into a province for creoles, Spaniards, and half-breeds to rule over. Disunion was a better fate; and disunion they thought practicable, if a legislature and Executive of their party were once elected in each State of the league; the next step being to discontinue elections to Congress and prepare to dissolve constitutional relations. Such were the arguments and such the plan broached in confidence to influential friends in New England, whose general response was discouraging, but not positively unfriendly.* Burr was sounded by those most earnest in this business. The silent but persistent determination of Jefferson's friends to force him into retirement produced bitter feuds in New York, where the Vice-President had a nest of young followers gaping in vain for office. He felt the affront put upon him, and in private conversation spoke bitterly of the Virginia influence. Clinton, the new nominee for the Vice-Presidency, having declined a re-election as Governor of New York, Burr was put * See William Plumer's Life, 298; Cabot's Life; Adams's New England Federalism, in which the correspondence, or such fragmentary portion as remains, has been carefully gathered. John Quincy Adams found Burr a man of very insinuating manners and address, who, for some reason, seemed to be cultivating him. Diary, January, 1804. Neither Adams nor Tracy favored the separation scheme, though they gained knowledge of it. Adams afterwards gave out that Hamilton was intended for the military leader in case of a separation. Those in Congress most strongly committed to separation are seen to be Pickering and Griswold; Sedgwick, also Reeve of Connecticut, favor it strongly in correspondence; Plumer, Senator from New Hampshire, likes the idea, but it is known that his views changed afterwards. Cabot and Stephen Higginson think the time has not yet arrived. Wolcott, Ames, and others were sounded; also Judge Peters, who plainly disapproved of the scheme. forward as a candidate. His Republican opponents proposed Lansing. It was an earnest State canvass, and Burr knew he was politically ruined unless he won. The Federalists of that State were thought to hold the balance of power. Before Congress adjourned the Eastern separatists conferred with Burr, who, with real or feigned interest, listened to this project of dismemberment; but they could not win King or Hamilton to their views, and for the present the New York and New England confederacy awaited events, its projectors hoping for Burr's election, but perceiving no way to promote it.* Lansing declined the contest. But from this Burr's adherents made little profit; for the regular Republicans proceeded to nominate Chief Justice Lewis, a connection of the Livingstons, and a jurist highly respected. The election was triumphantly carried by the united friends of the national administration and the Clintons and Livingstons, Lewis receiving 35,000 votes, and Burr, with such assistance as the Federalists gave him, only 28,000.† Thrust out of influence, bankrupt in purse and prospects, politically discarded by the State and national Republican party, his Federal coalition a failure, Burr now sought a desperate revenge. Of all men none had so marred his fortune as Hamilton, his rival at the bar and constant enemy. Of Hamilton's exposures in 1801 he knew something. On this State campaign Hamilton had resolutely held back his fellow-Federalists by a similar course while avoiding the canvass as much as possible. Unable to make specific charges Burr demanded imperiously of Hamilton a broad disavowal of all offensive expressions concerning him, or else the satisfaction usual among gentlemen. Finding Burr inflexible, Hamilton chose the latter alternative; reason and conscience Feb. * See 7 J C. Hamilton's Republic. Griswold had an interview with Burr, in April, by appointment. Pickering tried to draw over King and Hamilton. A Connecticut newspaper had written up dismemberment of the Union in 1796, and the party press sought in various quarters to turn New England against Virginia influence, Louisiana and the new constitutional amendment relating to Presidential elections. 7 J. C. Hamilton's Republic; current newspapers; 5 Hildreth. See J. C. Hamilton's Republic; Hamilton's Works. 1804. DUEL BETWEEN BURR AND HAMILTON. July 11. 63 protesting against an encounter to which his romantic sense of honor impelled him, and which he hoped to justify by sparing in any event the life of the man who sought his blood. He was not without presentiment that he would be a victim; and Burr, who felt no compunction, practiced carefully at a mark to make sure of it. The duel, postponed to an opportunity mutually convenient, took place in the gray of a July morning, on the Jersey shore. The parties were prompt with their seconds and attendants. On the signal Burr raised his arm, took aim with coolness and precision, and shot Hamilton in the right side. Hamilton's pistol went off in the air as if involuntarily, and he fell upon his face mortally wounded. On the same ground, and nearly on the same spot, fell Hamilton's eldest son, in a miserable political duel, three years before. Burr fled; his fainting victim was conveyed across the river by boat once more; and in the house of his second, after suffering great agony of mind and body, he expired the next day.* July 12. Thus unhappily was flung away one of the most vivacious spirits ever yet vouchsafed to this New World. Hamilton's soaring greatness, his energy, his fertility in resources, and the faults of his remarkable character we have sought faithfully to depict in the course of this narrative. As his views on political subjects were expressed plainly in writing on every emergency, exploring from top to bottom, so to speak, and his writings have been published, only they need misunderstand Hamilton at this day who rely upon the exaggerated phrase of contemporaries, of those on the one hand who felt that the Union could not endure with him, and of those on the other who were assured that it could not last without him. No estimate, however, of Hamilton can be complete which fails to take into account the precocity of his intellect and the almost juvenile stage of that career which was so illustrious under all discouragements. This prodigy of executive ability; this Cæsar of a commonplace world, which yielded, unfortunately for the scope of his powers, more to laws than to individuals; this financier, whose feats with the public credit had * 7 J. C. Hamilton's Republic; Parton's Burr. |