AARON BURR.*

THIS work will scarcely be accounted a valuable contribution to our political history. The species of interest which was sought to be created for it is not likely to succeed with the American public; and least of all does it hold out a prospect of resuscitation to the extinguished fame of Aaron Burr, or bid fair to reinvest his name and character with the interest which, for the space of a full generation, they have lost with the public. Even the political value which might have attached to such a work seemed merged, on its announcement, in the greater attraction of anticipated details of forgotten liaisons; and in the narrative itself, the solemn moral of Burr's fate, and the instructive spectacle of his career, have been completely lost sight of, in the vain hope of reanimating the political hatreds of a disappointed man, and glossing over events long since adjudicated by the irreversible decision of public opinion. In the pursuit of this weak attempt, the author of these volumes seems to have sacrified even the negative merit of producing a work, possessing the abstract interest which a simple narrative of Burr's career could hardly fail to excite.

There are, besides, many passages which show that the licentious secrets of a man notorious for his immorality, have exerted too strong an influence on the imagination of his biographer; and the 'knowing air' with which an alleged amatory correspondence, and numberless intrigues, are referred to, that they may be ostentatiously withheld, from an affected tenderness to the reputations they would destroy, is alike repulsive to correct morals and correct taste. We select the following passage from the preface, before proceeding with our task—and others might be found in the work-for signal reprobation, as embodying in the most offensive manner these unpleasing peculiarities.

"I entertain a hope that I shall escape the charge of egotism. I have endeavoured to avoid that ground of offence, whatever may have been my literary sins in other respects. It is proper for me, however, in this place, and for a single purpose, to depart from the course pursued in the body of the work. It is a matter of perfect notoriety, that among the papers left in my possession by the late Colonel Burr, there was a mass of letters and copies of letters written or received by him, from time to time, during a long life, indicating no very strict morality in some of his female correspondents. These letters contained matter that would have wounded the feelings of families more extensively than could be imagined. Their publication would have had a most injurious tendency, and created heartburnings that nothing but time could have cured.

*Memoirs of Aaron Burr, with Miscellaneous Selections from his Correspondence, by Mathew L. Davis, 2 vols. 8vo, New-York, 1837.

As soon as they came under my control, I mentioned the subject to Colonel Burr ; but he prohibited the destruction of any part of them during his lifetime. I separated them, however, from other letters in my possession, and placed them in a situation that made their publication next to impossible, whatever might have been my own fate. As soon as Colonel Burr's decease was known, with my own hands I committed to the fire all such correspondence, and not a vestige of it now remains.

It is with unaffected reluctance that this statement of facts is made; and it would never have been made but for circumstances which have transpired since the decease of Colonel Burr. A mere allusion to these circumstances will, it is trusted, furnish ample justification. No sooner had the newspapers announced the fact that the Memoirs of Colonel Burr were to be written by me, than I received letters from various quarters of the country, inquiring into the nature of the revelations that the book would make, and deprecating the introduction of individual cases. These letters came to hand both anonymously and under known signatures, expressing intense solicitude for suppression.

Under such circumstances, am I not only warranted in these remarks, but imperiously called upon to make them? What other mode remained to set the public mind at ease? I have now stated what must hereafter preclude all possibility for cavil on one part, or anxiety on the other. I alone have possessed the private and important papers of Colonel Burr; and I pledge my honor that every one of them, so far as I know and believe, that could have injured the feelings of a female or those of her friends, is destroyed. In order to leave no chance for distrust, I will add, that I never took, or permitted to be taken, a single copy of any of these letters; and, of course, it is quite impossible that any publication hereafter, if any should be made of such papers or letters, can have even the pretence of authenticity.

In the most corrupt stages of the most corrupt literature, we could not point to a more disgraceful passage. What!-Are the matrons of America interested, even to the extent of their reputation, in the accident of discretion in a writer, who thus delicately reminds them, in the face of the public, of the extremity of their guilt, and the magnanimity of his forbearance? On which of the families with which Colonel Burr, a man mingling in all the distinguished society of his time, was intimate or acquainted,-for all such are equally implicated, and would seem to be intended,—does the insinuation of the most extraordinary passage we have quoted presume to rest? The "no very strict morality" in these female correspondents-so numerous as to affect even "families more extensively than could be imagined"-the "injurious tendency" of their letters and the "heart-burnings" they would create, even still, -the danger that they might have seen the light, so darkly shaddowed forth in the precautions which rendered such a contingency only "next to impossible"--the deprecatory letters, "anonymously and under known signatures"-pouring "from various quarters of the country," upon him who had the fate of so many in his power,— expressing such "intense solicitude" for the "suppression" of these revolting details-would all seem to indicate an extent and a depth of demoralization, in quarters, until the appearance of this libel, intact by suspicion, and where ten thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened with such insult.'

But we may calm our irritation and our fears. The "imperious"

nature of the case has impressed this gentleman also, and demanded of him a sacrifice, to "set the public mind at ease"--and it has been made-made in such a manner as to "preclude all possibility of cavil on one part or anxiety on the other." These parties, (being the men and matrons of America,) can never be sufficiently grateful. Every vestige of this infamous correspondence has been destroyed so effectually, as to leave the barest possible chance, for the cupidity of an unprincipled publisher, to improve upon the shadowed hint of a surreptitious edition'

We are not reading the confessions of some superannuated Faublas, magnifying to its purchasers, with the sagacity of interested candor, the importance of some suppressed narrative of their enormities-but the memoirs of an American statesman, contemporary with our own day. This language has not been used of the debauched society, of the worst periods of the worst courts of Europe, and we question if it could-but of American ladies in our own day! Comment we scorn to make. La Harpe, speaking of La Pucelle, says, "jamais l'impudence du vice et du blasphême n'avait été portée à ce point." We adopt the expression, and pass from the disgusting theme.

Col. Burr's family was highly respectable. His father, who has a place of his own in our biographical records, as one of the most eminent divines of his day, was the first president of Princeton College; his mother was the daughter of its second-the celebrated president Edwards. He was born on the 6th of February, 1756, and his parents died soon after, leaving him and a sister, afterwards married to Judge Tappan Reeve, of Connecticut. Few incidents of his college life are preserved by his biographer. We are told that he was for a time a hard student, and an abstemious liver; but that "during the last year, that he remained in college, he passed a life of idleness, negligence, and in some measure, of dissipation." Some specimens of his juvenile compositions are given, in no respect remarkable. At college, young Burr formed intimacies, some of which ripened into friendship, which, it is honorable to record, lasted throughout life. Some of the youthful correspondence between him, Mathias Ogden, Judge Patterson of the Supreme Court, and others, are among the most pleasing parts of the volume.

In 1774, the letters of Burr and his correspondents give us many interesting glimpses of the premonitory struggles of the revolutionary war, and in July, 1775, after the battle of Bunker's Hill, he joined the army, then lying at Cambridge.

In the fall of 1775, when Arnold undertook to lead an army of patriots through the wilderness, for the purpose of capturing Quebec-the most extraordinary expedition of modern warfare-young Burr resolved to accompany him, and, in spite of every persuasion of his friends, set out with the army. We have, even still, but an

imperfect idea of this wondrous march. Never was daring resolve carried through all the stages from chimerical absurdity to the nicest chance of conflict, with more devoted courage, energy and enthusiasm. And when, in the depth of winter, the unstoried standard of America waved in hostile bravery before the iron fortress of Quebec, and the snows of a Canadian winter were darkened with an array that had toiled to that battle ground, through an unexplored and arctic wilderness,-even the conquest of Wolfe paled in splendor before the defeat of the hardy revolutionists. Certainly, to one who, like Burr, had seen that handful of devoted men, struggling for a space of sixty days, through savage wastes, enduring every conceivable privation of nakedness and hunger, for the only hope of an eager battle with their country's foe, it might have seemed anything but impossible, thirty years afterwards, to wrest the golden spoils of Mexico from their effeminate possessors, by a march, with even a smaller number of hardy adventurers, of a similar school, beneath a southern sun, and through regions of spontaneous fertility.

Burr was present at the fatal assault upon Quebec, in which the colonies sustained the greatest loss of the war, in the life of Montgomery, who, from all concurrent testimony, appears to have been endowed with those happy qualities which would have rendered him second only to the Father of his Country, had he lived to assist him in establishing its independence. Upon Arnold, after his death, devolved the duty of leading back the troops, and during the march, Burr with characteristic volatility, deserted the army, in quest, as he said, of more active service. On arriving at New York, his connexions and character procured him an invitation from Gen. Washington to reside with him, which he accepted, but soon felt the restraint of that severe and virtuous eye so irksome, that he became restless and dissatisfied, and meditated, even then, retirement from the service in disgust. He was, however, dissuaded by Governor Hancock, who procured him admission into the staff of good old General Putnam, then in command at New York, as aide-de-camp. Here the brilliant young soldier was more at ease. He had exchanged the unrelaxing duty of head quarters, and the hateful vigilance of Washington's sagacious penetration, for the military ease of the simple Putnam's household, and the congenial license of a large city, under martial law.

Burr, nevertheless, appears to have engaged with ardor in the peculiar studies of the soldier, and, of course, soon acquired distinctien among his more simple companions, as a tactician and disciplinarian. He was present in the action on Long Island Heights, August 28, 1776, and distinguished himself by his coolness and intrepidity during the subsequent night retreat to New York. In the evacuation, soon after, of the city, Burr's intrepid presence of mind was the means of preventing a detachment of the army, under Gen

Knox, from being cut off. In June, 1777, when the army was increased, Burr was appointed Lieut. Col. of Malcolm's regiment, and all the active duty and superintendence of the corps devolved upon him. In September, 1777, in this capacity, he performed the only exploit of his military career. The British having detached a marauding expedition, two thousand strong, for the purpose of plundering the country west of the Hudson river, and capturing the public stores, Burr broke up his quarters, and by forced marches having reached their camp before morning, fell upon their picket with such fury that they retreated in disorder, leaving several prisoners and some dead upon the field, and so alarmed the main body with the fears of a general attack, that they decamped precipitately, leaving their booty behind. In 1777, Burr's regiment, with the rest of the army, wintered at Valley Forge, and in this situation his inauspicious hatred of General Washington seems to have become confirmed. He, of course, adhered to the party of Lee and Gates, and entered actively into their machinations against the commanderin-chief. The following incident, at the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778, (which, by the way, is here stated for the first time,-being no where corroborated in the contemporary accounts of the action) seems to exhibit an instance of a spirit of insubordination, and disposition to assume the responsibility of independent action, to the derangement of the plans of the Commander-in-chief, which is by no means redeemed by the gallantry that might prompt the attempt. A slight insinuation of censure, against the latter, is conveyed,— which, however, springing from the exacerbated feelings of Colonel Burr, falls utterly harmless to the ground. Lieut. Colonel Bunner is, doubtless, meant as the commander of the Pennsylvania detachment. "Shortly after the action had become general, Burr discovered a body of the enemy coming from the borders of a wood to the southward. He instantly put his brigade in motion for the purpose of checking them. It was necessary to cross a morass, over which a bridge was thrown. He ordered Lieutenant-colonel Dummer to advance with the Pennsylvania detachment, and that he would bring up the rear with his own regiment. After a part of the brigade was over the bridge, Colonel Barber, aid to General Washington, rode up, and said that the orders of the commander-inchief were that he should halt. Colonel Burr remonstrated. He said his men, in their present position, were exposed to the fire of the enemy, and that his whole brigade must now cross the bridge before they could halt with any safety. Colonel Barber repeated that the orders of General Washington were peremptory that he should halt, which was accordingly done, and the brigade, in their divided state, suffered severely. Lieutenant-colonel Dummer was killed; Colonel Burr's horse was shot under him; and those who had crossed the bridge were compelled to retreat."

Early in 1779, Burr was appointed to command the lines in Westchester; having a command of about 300 men. The duties of this post he discharged with much vigilance and activity; repressing the predatory habits of the time and place, and restoring order. and confidence to the surrounding country. Three months, however, of this kind of service, tired him thoroughly of revolutionary