LIVES AND TIMES FOUR INFORMAL AMERICAN BIOGRAPHIES

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BERKOWITZ ENVELOPE CO., K. 0., MO,

KANSAS CITY MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY

BY MEADS MINNIGERODE

Laughing House

Oh, Susanna I

The Big Year

The Seven Hills

The Fabulous Forties, 18404850

Lives and Times

Lives and

Four Informal American Biographies

Stephen Jumel, Merchant

William Baton, Hero

Theodosia Burr, Prodigy

Edmond Charles Genet, Citizen

By

Meade Minnigerode

**.../ vaguely know

There were heroes of old,

Troubles more than the heart could hold . . . **

VACHEL LIBTDSAY.

Illustrated

G.P. Putnam* s Sons

>^ewYork & London

thje Knickerbocker flresc

1925

Copyright, 1924

by
Curtis Publishing Co.

Copyright, 1925

by
Meade Minnigerode

a o f

\ :,*

*., r

Made in the United States of America

MA

To

KNIGHT CHENEY COWLES

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT i

II. WILLIAM EATON, HERO 51

III. THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY .... 97
IV. EDMOND CHARLES GEN&I;, CITIZEN . . .151

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

THE STATE HOUSE GARDEN, PHILADELPHIA

Frontispiece

BETSY BOWEN DELACROIX 8

By St.-M&nin.

THE JUMEL MANSION ...... 16

THE TONTINE COFFEE HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY . 32

WALL STREET AND THE BOWLING GREEN, NEW YORK
CITY 40

GENERAL WILLIAM EATON ..... 56

BURNING OF THE U. S. FRIGATE Philadelphia IN THE
HARBOR OF TRIPOLI 64

GENERAL EATON AND HAMET BASHAW ON THE MARCH
TO DERNE ........ 80

THEODOSIA BURR 100

By St.-M&nin.

JOSEPH BRANT 108

From the London Magazine, July, 1776.

THEODOSIA BURR ALSTON 124

By Vanderlyn.

viii ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

BLENNERHASSETT ISLAND I4 o

EDMOND CHARLES GENT

THE BATTERY, NEW YORK CITY, WITH THE FRIGATE

Embuscade

By Drayton, 1793.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Original in the possession of the New York Historical Society.
Unfinished water-color sketch by Robert Field,

THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY . . 186

I

Stephen Jumel, Merchant

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT

STEPHEN JUMEL of Stone, Liberty and Whitehall
Streets at New York was, like his friend and French
fellow-countryman John Jtihel, an importer of wines,
brandies, cordials, spirits, gins and other "choice
fluids."

At his emporium on Stone, and afterwards on
Liberty Street his home was on Whitehall one
found, in the early years of the last century, every
variety of Madeira, Teneriffe and Malaga, Jamaica,
Antigua and St. Croix, Holland rum and York
Anchor, All Fours, Metheglin, Aqua Mirable, Ladies'
Comfort and double distilled Life of Man. They
came, from England and Ireland, from France,
Portugal and*.Spain, from the Canaries and from the
West Indies, in kegs, puncheons and pipes, aboard
his brig, the Stephen, and his barque Eliza.

He was, in 1800, one of the wealthiest merchants
in the port of New York, although he had arrived
there practically penniless only a few years before;
an influential member, no doubt, of the Merchants'
Exchange, in the Tontine Coffee House on the corner
of Wall and Water Streets, where one might board

3

4 LIVES AND TIMES

and lodge at ten shillings a day, and where the books
were kept for entering and clearing vessels; and he
possessed an elegant, two-storied, yellow brick man
sion with dormer windows on the corner of Whitehall
and Pearl, in the most fashionably aristocratic resi
dential district in the city although some were
beginning to prefer State Street. There were dead
cats, and live pigs, and mud in the street, and Pearl
was so narrow that pedestrians going north were
given the right of way over those going south, but
through the doorways of the neighboring houses the
whole social world of New York passed back and
forth in flowered callimancoes, and in tight breeches
and boots.

He knew the Livingstons, and the Clintons, and
perhaps their lately naturalized son-in-law, Citizen
Edmond Gen6t; the Schuylers, the Jays and the
Morrises, General Alexander Hamilton of the Grange
and Colonel Aaron Burr of Richmond Hill; and the
great merchants. Mr. John Jacob Astor who was al
ways talking about furs and accumulating real estate,
and Mr. Archibald Grade who failed in 1812 because
of the orders in council, and Mr. Robert Lenox who
did not; the members of LeRoy, Bayard and Com
pany, a firm already ten years old in 1800 and the
most important counting house in the city, doing an
enormous business with Europe and the West Indies;
and Mr. Jacob Barker who owned more ships than
anyone else in America except Mr. William Gray
with his fleet of thirty running out of Salem and
traded all over the seven seas from Russia, around
both Capes, to China.

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 5

Jumel may not, as a foreigner, have taken a very
active part in American politics, or have gone about
wearing partisan cockades in his hat; but he had
suffered from the consequences of the French Revo
lution, and was a great admirer of Mr. George
Washington, so that he must have been welcome in
the Federalist circles of the town -the "well born/'
" monarchist," Tory circles of the town which so an
noyed Mr- Jefferson, and Mr- Brockholst Livingston,
and the Republicans in general, in whose estimation
Mr. Washington was only a dangerous hypocrite
who longed to make himself king, and all Federalists
tyrants, Anglomaniacs and betrayers of national
liberty. Jumel was a supporter, probably, of the
Bank, of neutrality in European affairs, and of Mr.
'Jay's conrmercial treaty with England; not to be
enlisted by the beautiful, sparkling and otherwise
irresistible Miss Theodosia Burr in the ranks of the
Tenth Legion, or "Burr's Myrmidons" as General
Hamilton called them; a reader of the United States
Gazette, and not of Mr. Benjamin Franklin Bache's
Aurora, in which startlingly scurrilous sheet "Light
ning Rod Junior" saw fit to greet Mr. Washington's
retirement from the Presidency with the following
disparaging paragraphs

"If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the
American nation has been debauched by Washington.
If ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American
nation has been deceived by Washington. Let his
example then be an example to future ages; let it
serve to be a warning that no man may be an idol;
let the history of the Federal Government instruct

6 LIVES AND TIMES

mankind that the mask of patriotism may be worn
to conceal the fondest designs against the liberties of
the people. . . .

"The man who is the source of all the misfortunes
of our country is this day reduced to a level with his
fellow citizens and is no longer possessed of power to
multiply evils upon the United States. If ever there
was a period for rejoicing this is the moment. Every
heart, in unison with the freedom and happiness of
the people, ought to beat high with exultation that
the name of Washington ceases from this day to give
currency to political iniquity and to legalize corrup
tion/ 1

Mr. Washington, it seems, was not popular in
certain circles, with his gilded coach covered with
cupids, and his yellow gloves, and his state sword in
its white velvet scabbard. . . .

Personally, Jumel was a big man. Big physically,
noted for his tall, broad chested, muscular stature;
a handsome, graceful giant who danced divinely at
the City Hotel Assemblies, Large minded, notorious
for the farseeing wisdom of his mercantile operations.
Great hearted, generous, impulsive, a man of wide
sympathies and spontaneous charities although it
is not necessary here to repeat the well used anecdote
of the cartman and the ten dollar piece a kind,
loyal and perhaps rather erratic soul.

One imagines him a trifle boisterous, quite con
spicuous always, a good deal of an elephant at the
ball, a practical joker probably; pleasantly Gallic in
his humor, a terror with the ladies who undoubtedly
adored him, an "uncle" to many neighboring chil
dren although he was never to be the father of any,

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 7

a gentleman who served on committees and to whom
one invariably went first for subscriptions, tinder
whose feet the earth shook when he laughed. A
little sensitive, a little proud, a little quick tempered.
A little hasty sometimes, and not always as wise as
he was good. A shrewd man who, caught in the
wrong mood by the right person, could be monumen
tally imposed upon.

Cultured and well mannered, refined in his tastes
these attributes had not yet become platitudes in his
day prosperous, prominent and popular, for a few
years Stephen Jumel enjoyed the friendship, the
hospitality and the social amenities of his adopted
c fty and then he made the indiscreet mistake of
purchasing a private carriage for a lady. . . .

Jumel had come to New York, in about 1795 it
seems, from Santo Domingo via St. Helena. A
roundabout route, forced upon him by the fact that
he was not in a position to select the destination of
the ship in which he left the former island, since she
picked him up, a fugitive on the beach, with her own
sails already set for that other cheerless isolation in
the South Atlantic. There cannot have been many
ships following such a course, and it was unfortunate
for Jumel that he should have chanced upon that
particular, and one imagines exceptional, vessel; but
he was only too grateful to find himself on her deck,
bound for any port in the world outside of Santo
Domingo, for behind him an entire province was
burning, streaming with blood K roaring with slaves

8 LIVES AND TIMES

risen against the white plantation owners tinder the
banner of Toussaint that Congo chieftain's son
who so annoyed Napoleon finally that he condescend
ed to insult him by calling him the Gilded African,
and honored him at the last with death in a mountain
fortress of the Jura, where there were no palm trees,
but only mists and snows.

It may have been in 1792, or perhaps in 1791, for
only a few months intervened between the two in
surrections. Nor is it apparent now at what date
Jumel originally went out to Santo Domingo from
France, or whether possibly he was born on the island,
at one of the great plantations, at Limb6, or at the
Cape, or perhaps at Jacmel. At all events, he
came of good family, with influential connections in
France, and he had already made a fortune in the
Colony.

The French western province of Santo Domingo
the name applied then to the entire island the jewel
of the French West Indies, beside which, in 1790,
Guadaloupe and delightfully wicked Martinique
were only minor brilliants. A colony claiming the
greater part of the mother country's commercial
attention, with its extensive production of coffee,
sugar, cotton and indigo. A colony of six hundred
thousand souls, five hundred thousand of whom were
full blooded Congo slaves, some sixty thousand free
mulattoes and the remainder French Creoles in
whom were vested all social and political privileges.
And among these varied thousands, a few hundred
planters and officials from France, with their families;
people who came and went on the packets from

BETSY BOWEN DELACROIX

By St. Memm

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 9

Nantes, and sent their children home to convent and
monastery schools. People like Stephen Jumel.
The aristocracy of queenly Santo Domingo.

For these life was passing, pleasantly and lazily,
but very prosperously, and extremely decorously,
on the great plantations -such as that on which a
lad called Toussaint was learning to read a little
under his master's care a white family here, a white
family there, the planter and his womenfolk, boys,
girls, babies, surrounded by thousands of slaves.
A serene existence, securely established in a rigorous
tradition of castes. And then, in 1790, a ship brought
the startling news from Prance that all men were
equal, and that aristocracy was not an essential
feature of social organization. There was consider
able repetition of the words Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity. The words, and the idea, were novel
in Santo Domingo and appealed at once as excellent
ones to the mulattoes, who forthwith claimed equality
of rights with their French fellow-colonists. The
National Assembly at Paris, when referred to, know
ing less than nothing of social conditions in Santo
Domingo, gave its distant approbation to these
demands and returned to its speech making. The
Creoles in the colony immediately espoused the
royalist cause, determined to ignore this, to them,
fatal decree of the republican Assembly. Civil strife
was imminent between the sixty thousand mulattoes
and the forty thousand Creoles, when suddenly, in
August, 1791 and presumably the well meaning
National Assembly had not foreseen this consequence
of its wholesale and undiluted promulgation of un-

io LIVES AND TIMES

accustomed liberty the five hundred thousand
slaves revolted.

3

The insurrection broke out first on one of the plan
tations near the Cape. There, a slave was seen, in
the early evening, running from a shed to which he
had apparently just set fire. The subsequent morn
ing brought news from other localities of similar
manifestations of insubordination and disquiet, the
sudden, forerunning gusts of the tempest which was,
in a few hours, to sweep the province. On one plan
tation the slaves had spent the night dancing around
afire.

Dancing around a fire.

One begins to sense the precarious uncertainty of
life in the Colony, the constant shadow darkening
the background of all daily intercourse, when so
trivial a circumstance, so pleasant a domestic spec
tacle as that of a parcel of slaves dancing around a
fire, must be considered a cause of alarm and neces
sitate the sending abroad of anxious messengers.

One would like to know how long already they had
been dancing around hidden fires in the jungle,
listening to old Congo war chants, shivering under a
pale moon at the ritual of voodoo priests, while the
maddening drum beats went booming through the
night. One would like to appreciate the cunning,
the deception, the silent network of preparation, the
genius and inspiration, the accumulated inheritance
of hatred and the fantastic hopes, the tribal memories
and aspirations behind it all. One would like to

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT n

have a glimpse of this spiritual return to ancient
Africa there in distant Santo Domingo.

Unfortunately one sees only the relapse into hot
blooded savagery which followed; one is made aware
only of the fanatic cruelties, the ritualistic atrocities,
the ferocious vengeances unchained; one learns only
of grim dances around torturing fires, of ghastly
ceremonies before tribal altars, of unthinkable physi
cal horrors committed in the terrifying presence of
unspeakable banners. One reads, in the report of the
Commissioners from Santo Domingo to the French
Assembly which did not appear especially moved
of living bodies encased in planks and then sawed
in two; of babies carried on pikes at the head of de
mented processions ; of frenzied orgies which transcend
imagination. One reads other sickening paragraphs.

But in the midst of it all one is obliged to remember
two things that the same treatment was accorded
those slaves themselves, and there were many who
refused to join the insurrection and remained superb
ly loyal to their masters; and that there was scarcely
an instance of fiendishly depraved cruelty in the
uprising of the slaves of Santo Domingo which cannot
be duplicated, if not actually surpassed, in the scenes
of popular insanity which attended the Reign of
Terror in the civilized cities of France. When one
thinks of Santo Domingo one must not forget Paris
and her prison massacres, or Lyons and her "repub
lican marriages/' or Nantes and her " national bath."
And when one thinks. of the slave leaders of the
insurrection one must not forget Carrier and Fou-
quier-Tinville, Marat and Robespierre.

12 LIVES AND TIMES

One would do well, in fact, to remember Philadel
phia, where, at a slightly later date, earnest and
pathetically ridiculous American "republican" pa
triots gathered annually at banquets for the purpose
of commemorating the execution of Louis XVI at
which solemn and undeniably civilized functions
otherwise intelligent citizens plunged carving knives
into the body of an emblematic pig and quaffed its
blood in execration of the "tyrant"; self respecting,
Christian citizens of Philadelphia, who danced in a
ring afterwards around the table wearing red liberty
caps, very far removed no doubt from Toussaint
and his Congo rabbles.

The insurrection, originating near Limb6 and the
Cape, and centering its utmost violence and destruc
tion in the regions of Port Margot, Petite Anse and
the Grand Ravine of Limb6, spread throughout the
Province. Plantations, factories, warehouses, cane
fields, the torch was put to everything. Entire
families were driven from their homes, tracked to
their places of panic-stricken refuge and butchered.
The Northern Plain was a blood-stained desolation
of flaming ruins. In November, Port-au-Prince it
self was burned.

Those colonists who escaped immediate massacre
found themselves fugitives in a land wasted by fire
and sword, distracted wanderers^nen, women and
little children through a hostile countryside, terri
fied, fever smitten, starving and destitute. The
more fortunate ones managed to reach the Cape and
the protection of its garrison. Others succeeded in
passing over the border into the Spanish province

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 13

where, at least, there, ,wasl security from the night
mare. Others, again, sought hiding places in the
^ forests and jungles, where they were hunted down
^ relentlessly by the pursuing bands, or else met the
M more merciful end afforded by hunger, and thirst,
./I and sickness. A few came stumbling out at last
^ upon forlorn beaches tattered, emaciated human
^ remnants scanning an empty horizon, or lumbering
^ with pitiful cries and imploring gestures through the
sand after some passing ship. Among these was
Stephen Jumel.

On what beach, or in what company, and after
\. what vicissitudes is not known now. Always robust
and valiant, he may not have suffered as much as
most. One does not know, either, how long he
waited on that beach, whether many ships passed
tantalizingly beyond his reach, or whether the first
was the one to send her boat to rescue him, attracted
by his frantic signals. At all events, she took him
aboard and carried him to St. Helena, her first port
of call. There he left her, to await a vessel return-
ing to America or, possibly, to Europe. He landed,
eventually, at New York where his former business
connections held out some hope of financial rehabili
tation.

4

It was a funny little town when Jumel first came
to it.

Approached from the Bay filled with snows,
brigs, schooners and polaccas, British frigates with
blue upper works and French ones carrying red

14 LIVES AND TIMES

Liberty caps at the mastheads, Albany sloops bear
ing timber, skins and grain to exchange for tammies,
broadcloths and halfthicks, and two masted periaguas
ferrying back and forth between Brooklyn or Paulus
Hook and the city wharves the most conspicuous
feature of the waterfront to attract the visitor's
attention, the combined Riverside Drive and Central
Park of that day, was the Battery.

A public walk along the water's edge surmounted
by a battery of thirteen guns placed en barbette on a
stone platform, behind which rose a truncated stone
tower topped by a flagstaff with a golden ball, popu
larly referred to as the Churn. The remaining space
between these fortifications and the Government
House, on the site of the old Fort George and of the
future Custom House, was occupied by terraces and
walks, shaded by elm trees, along which the entire
population took its ease in the cool of the day. In
front of Government House, a little way back from
the Battery gardens, stood an elliptical plot of grass
still spoken of as the Bowling Green, and containing
the crumbling pedestal of what had once been a
statue of King George. There Broadway began, a
fine, wide thoroughfare not yet come into its own as
a residential avenue, straggling past the Common
with its gibbet, and dwindling soon into a country
road leading towards Lispenard's meadows, where
one went duck shooting and berry gathering.

On the other side of the Common, destined to be
known in time as City Hall Park, was Chatham
Street, from which the carts started every morning
to distribute the water taken from the Tea Water

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 15

Pump for New York could not boast of a system
of wooden water pipes such as served the metropolis
of Philadelphia. And from Chatham Street one
went to Boston, through the Bowery Lane, halting
to pick up passengers for the Boston and Albany
stage at the Bull's Head Tavern, which Mr. Richard
Varian conducted on the property owned by a pros
perous butcher of the Fly Market called Henry
Ashdor, or, as some people pronounced it, Astor.
Or one followed the continuation of the Bowery
Lane and went to Kingsbridge through McGowan's
Pass. Or, at the junction of the Bowery and Monu
ment Lanes, one turned down the latter and went to
the village of Greenwich, two miles distant, stopping
perhaps at Brannan's Tea Gardens to consume iced
liquors and creams and visit the aloes and orange
trees in the greenhouse.

A pretty place, Greenwich, just beyond the Min-
etta Brook to the north of Lispenard's meadows;
noted for its salubrious climate, a refuge in time of
pestilence, adorned with handsome residences set
among its wooded hills; and crowned by Colonel
Burr's great porticoed mansion of Richmond Hill,
where a plump, rosy little girl of twelve called
Theodosia sat at the head of the table and dispensed
her widowed father's lavish hospitality with all the
grace and self assurance of a grown woman of the
world.

Brook, meadows and wooded hills, they have all
vanished now, and so also has Bayard's Mount,
over to the eastward, a landmark of New York in
Jumel's time. Bayard's Mount, or Bunker Hill,

16 LIVES AND TIMES

situated at the spot where now Mulberry Street
brings its traffic to Grand, incredulous of the emi
nence which once overlooked the surrounding coun
tryside, the highest point near the city, on which,
in 1798, Mr. Joseph Delacroix opened his popular
resort called the Vauxhall Garden, for the enjoy
ment of illuminations, fireworks and modest refresh
ments.

And with Bayard's Mount another landmark well
known to Jumel has disappeared the Fresh Water
Pond, or Collect, a sheet of water in which one fished
and upon which one skated, where now the Tombs
prison stands, stonily unconscious of these forgotten
amenities. Jumel saw it filled in, along in 1808, by
order of the City Council which had lost patience
with a population which persisted in throwing refuse
into it; and, already in 1800, he had watched the
stream which served as its outlet to the Hudson
through Lispenard's meadows straightened and deep
ened, and furnished with a roadway on either side,
so that people began to speak of it as the "Canal
Street."

A little later Jumel probably joined his fellow
citizens in ridiculing the vestry of Trinity Church
when it saw fit to invade that desolate region of
brambles and marshes ju&t south of the canal and
west of Broadway, and proceed with the erection of
a church which was promptly dubbed St. John's-in-
the-Fields, and with the laying out of a park which
it proposed to call St. John's Park. And having
laughed at this folly, Jumel lived long enough to see
the Park becoming one of the most exclusive resi-

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 17

dential sections in the city; but in those earlier days
it had not seemed likely that the town would ever
reach so far to the west and north.

For the town, as Jumel first knew it, its residences
and counting houses, its warehouses and shops, its
taverns and gardens, and its wharves, all lay to the
east of Broadway, from the Battery up to the Bowery
Lane. There was no shipping to be found in the
Hudson, almost no activity to take one west of
Broadway, unless one were bound to Philadelphia
by way of the ferry from Bussing's Wharf to Paulus
Hook, or to Greenwich along the "shore road," the
remains of which are now many blocks inland from
the river front. One lived on Whitehall and State
Streets, on Broad and Cherry Streets, in little red
and yellow brick buildings; one did business on Stone
and Pearl Streets, on Liberty, Wall and New, and
on Piewoman's Lane which is now Nassau Street;
one went shopping on Petticoat Lane, near White
hall, for amens and cordurets, for moreens, rattinetts
and shalloons, for ribdelures, ticklenburghs, velverets
and romals, and for putticals and setetersoys; on
Water, Front and South Streets one found the
chandlers and shipping offices, and the "cheap John"
auctions, with bells, and red flags, and vendue
masters.

And at Borden's Wharf and Constable's, at the
Exchange, at the Coffee House, at the Old, and at
Coenties Slips one found the ships themselves,
bringing tea, and spice, and porcelain, camphor and
silk from China, coffee, sugar and rum from Antigua
and St. Kitts, from Jamaica, Guadaloupe and Mar-

18 LIVES AND TIMES

tinique, and loading grain, leather and flour, and
quintals of fish. There was a pleasant smell of tar
in the air, of aromatic cargoes piled up along the
sidewalks, of clean, fresh canvas in the sailmakers'
lofts; a constant clattering of blocks and tackles, of
mawls and hammers in the shipbuilding yards where
Mr. Cheesman, and Mr. Ackley, and Mr. Eckford
were so busy; the shiny hats and bright shirts of
many sailormen were in the streets, and a great
singing of deep water songs all along the docks. One
made money, fabulously and decorously, and in the
evening one strolled gently along the Battery. . . .

5

A merchant himself, Jumel must have fitted in
very readily to the life of the town. He made him
self known, received introductions at the Tontine
Coffee House where all the business of the port was
transacted, looked up his former connections. Per
haps he was given a desk for a while in some friendly
colleague's counting house. He began to make
money.

Soon he must have been able to afford the seven
dollar a week luxury of Mrs. Loring's boarding house
at the foot of Broadway, or possibly that of Corr6's
Hotel a little further up the street. Or he may have
preferred the City Hotel, opposite Mr. Chenelette
Dusseaussoir's confectionery establishment, at that
time, and until the coming of the Astor House, the
finest and most pretentious hostelry in the country.
For his meals, if he chose to dine out in the middle
of the afternoon, he probably went to the Porter

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 19

House on Pine Street to enjoy Mr. Michael Little's
renowned French, cooking, or to Fraunces's when the
latter became its landlord. Once in a while he may
have gone to Mr. Dyde's London Hotel, next door
to the Park Theater, for supper; or to Martling's
Tavern on the corner of Nassau and George Streets,
although after 1799, when the somewhat dilapidated
structure which the Federalists called the Pig Pen
had become the wigwam of the. Tammany Society
and consequently the great "republican" hangout,
he may not have cared to be seen in its long room.

For recreation, when he grew tired of perusing
The Dessert to the True American or The Political
Magazine and Miscellaneous Repository of Balhton,
N. Y., he went and sat with his hat on in the pit of
the Park Theater and got himself pelted with fruit,
chop bones and empty bottles by the gods in the
gallery; he inspected the mammoth's tooth, and the
Chinese birds' nests, and the wampum belts in the
Museum, and had his profile drawn by the physiogno-
trace; or else he patronized an itinerant show and
looked at the automatons, and the musical clocks,
and the electric "thunder houses," and the catoptric
"penetrating spy glasses."

And in the spring and summer times he visited the
gardens. * The Mount Vernon where one rode on
the flying horses, and the Columbian on State Street
at which one stopped for an ice after walking on the
Battery, Vauxhall on Bayard's Mount, and later on
the Bowery Lane, where for fifty cents one watched
the fireworks, and the balloons, and the acrobats,
and listened to the music, and admired the large

20 LIVES AND TIMES

equestrian statue of Mr. Washington; and Contoit's
which was an eminently respectable resort for ladies,
where they might sit in little green compartments
tinder the lamplit trees and consume vanilla ice
cream, pound cake and lemonade for the modest sum
of one shilling although, it being a strictly tem
perance garden, wine negus and cognac were also to
be obtained. Or else he hired a coachee and went
out to the Belvidere Club on the East River, to see
the view from the Captain's Walk and dine in the
octagonal ballroom; or to Ranelagh near Corlaer's
Hook, with its shady lawns; or up to the Indian
Queen on the Boston Post Road,

Or else to Marriner's Tavern in Haarlem, which
had once been the Roger Morris House, and which
he was in time to rechristen the Jumel Mansion. . . .

In other respects, in a community in which the
whole of civic life unfolded itself daily in the lobbies
of the Tontine Coffee House, there was plenty to
occupy Jumel's attention.

In the first place, for a number of almost unin
terruptedly successive seasons, beginning in July
and ending in November, there was the yellow fever.
It came from the West Indies, found a congenial
breeding place in the city's filth and carrion infested
atmosphere and counted its victims by the hundreds,
both at New York and at Philadelphia. It found a
valuable ally, also, in the solemn imbecilities prac
ticed by the prevailing schools of medicine in that
era.

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 21

When, for instance, repeated blood lettings and
administrations of dam juice were not found helpful
to the patient, it was deemed salutary to burn pitch
in his chamber, behind carefully closed windows, and
to fire off horse pistols at his bedside. In the streets,
one made bonfires, and the detonations of fowling
pieces adding their din to the doleful clanging of all
the church bells in town increased the sufferings of
the sick who might otherwise have died peacefully
of the fever alone. Those who were not stricken
smeared themselves with Haarlem Oil and Vinegar
of the Four Thieves, put garlic in their shoes,
drenched their garments with balm of aloes, wore
bags of camphor hung around their necks, and
chewed enormous. quids of tobacco. The more for
tunate ones departed quietly to 'Greenwich, under
went a little prudent cupping and leeching, and dosed
themselves with fantastic concoctions of rhubarb,
senna and molasses.

And then there was politics, uproarious, frenzied,
scurrilous, riot and duel provoking politics. Not
the professional, carefully organized and consequent
ly impersonal variety of a later day in which citizens
have to be reminded for weeks at a time that if they
do not register they cannot vote, so fundamentally
negligent have they become in national affairs; but
a tumultuous, breathless, almost apoplectic individ
ual concern in each successive question of Govern
mental policy, which brought the entire town out
into the streets on the slightest provocation to in
dulge in acrimonious debates enlivened by the most
unseemly epithets, and settled, frequently, not by

22 LIVES AND TIMES

the weight of arguments produced but by that of
cudgels raining on Federalist or Republican heads.
In fact, throughout the early years of Jumel's ac
quaintance with it, American history was a glorified
mob scene set to the frivolous music of indifferent
ballads.

And while, at least in the beginning, the underlying
causes of all this popular tumult cannot have been
of any immediate interest to Jumel, still the tumult
itself must have aroused his curiosity and caused
him considerable amusement. He must, for in
stance, have laughed very heartily at the pamphlet
entitled A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats, in which
that inimitable Mr. "Peter Porcupine" remarked
that

"In these toasting times it would have been some
thing wonderful if the sans culottes in America had
neglected to celebrate the taking of Amsterdam by
their brethren in France. I believe from my soul
there have been more cannons fired here in the cele
bration of this conquest than the French fired in
achieving it. I think I have counted twenty-two
grand civic festivals, fifty-one of an inferior order,
and one hundred and ninety-three public dinners.

He may, indeed, have been genuinely alarmed by
those further paragraphs of "Porcupine's'' in The
Bloody Buoy thrown out as a warning to the Political
Pilots of America, setting forth that

^ "There is not a single action of the French revolu
tionists but has been justified and applauded in our
public papers, and many of them in our public

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 23

assemblies. Anarchy has its open advocates. We
have seen the guillotine toasted to three times three
cheers. And what would the reader say were I to
tell him of a member of Congress who wished to see
one of the murderous machines, employed for lopping
off the heads of aristocrats, permanent in the State
House yard of the City of Philadelphia?

"If these men of blood had once got the sword into
their hands they would have mowed us down like
stubble. We might have seen the banks of the
Delaware, like those of the Loire, covered with human
carcasses and its waters tinged with blood: ere this
we might have seen our parents butchered, and even
the head of our admired and beloved President rolling
on the scaffold."

And, as a Frenchman who had himself suffered
from the consequences of the French Revolution, he
probably appreciated the justice of another state
ment in the same pamphlet, in which the writer
pointed out that

"Unfortunately for America, Great Britain has
thrown from her the principles of the French revolu
tionists with indignation and abhorrence. This has
served, in some measure, as a guide 'to our opinions
and has been one of the principal motives for our
actions. A combination of circumstances has so
soured the minds of the great mass of the people in
this country, has worked up their hatred against
Great Britain to such a pitch, that the instant that
nation is named they lose not only their temper but
their reason also. Whatever the British adopt must
be rejected, and whatever they reject must be adopt
ed. Hence it is that all the execrable acts of the
French legislators, not forgetting their murders and
their blasphemy, have met with the most unqualified

24 LIVES AND TIMES

applauses, merely because they were execrated in the
island of Britain/'

For the whole subject of American foreign policy
and a considerable part of presidential, and conse
quently of state and city politics was conditioned,
during approximately the first decade at least of
JttmeTs sojourn at New York, upon a single criterion,
that of French or English partisanship.

It is difficult in the present age of magnificent
national isolation to appreciate that era, prior to the
promulgation of Mr. Monroe's safeguarding doc
trine, when America found herself constantly in
volved in Anglo-French affairs, much as a school of
fish may be said to be involved in the net which sur
rounds them. The English had apparently not yet
accustomed themselves to the fact that America
was no longer a British colony, and persisted in
their manifold interferences with American maritime
commerce; the French, on the other hand, were
rapidly convincing themselves that the resources and
institutions of the sister republic were intended
primarily for their use, and lost no opportunity of
pointing out to the American people in what respects
their Government fell short in its conception of this
happy partnership ; America viewed these two states
of mind and sided vociferously against one or the
other, stopping occasionally to send envoys plenipo
tentiary across the water, who, like Francis I, re
turned with very little else save honor. It is sig
nificant, perhaps, that the future author of the
Monroe Doctrine was on several occasions a dis-

J U J.VJLJJ/AV,

gruntled member of these fruitless and exasperating
embassies.

And it is difficult, in this day of sophisticated in
difference to European crises, to appreciate the
tremendous effect produced in America by the
French Revolution, the fanatic enthusiasm or
the passionate hostility, the mania of imitation or
the phobia of repudiation, aroused throughout the
greater portion of the United States by that trans
atlantic event.

One is apt to forget that Liberty poles surmounted
by French Liberty Caps stood on many an American
township green or public square; that Jacobin Clubs,
patterned after those in France and in some cases
affiliated with them, flourished in the large American
cities and enrolled some of their most prominent
citizens; that at Philadelphia, triumphal arches were
erected to commemorate the execution of Louis XVI;
that at Boston, people stopped playing omber and
quadrille, and played instead a new game called
Revolution, in which the king was known as Capet,
the Queen as Strumpet and the Ace as La Guillotine;
that from South Carolina to Maine the Democratic
Societies were busy tearing down statues of kings,
changing street names reminiscent of royalty and
refusing to address anyone as "sir," or to sign any
document "your humble servant"; and that at New
York, where a beautiful, red silk Liberty Cap hung
for many months in a place of honor on the wall at
the Tontine Coffee House, men called each other
"citizen" and their wives "citess," cut their, hair in
French style "& la Brutus" and adopted the utmost

26 LIVES AND TIMES

extremes of French fashion in dress. From one end
of America to the other, Yankee Doodle was drowned
out by the sounds of the Marseillaise, of the Car
magnole and of the Ca Ira.

Jtimel came in time to observe many of these
extravagances. In 1795, Citizen Edmond Genfet
had only recently completed his triumphant journey
from Charleston to Philadelphia, duriiig the course
of which he was received as a sort of itinerant apoth
eosis of Liberty, and given the Fraternal Hug by
enormous concourses of American burghers. Only
a little while before, Citizen Bompard of the French
frigate Embuscade had defeated the British frigate
Boston just outside Sandy Hook, and had been wel
comed back to his anchorage in the East River by a
deliriously jubilant population all decked out in
tricolor cockades. Mr. Jay was but that moment
returned from his mission to England for the purpose
of negotiating a treaty of amity and commerce, and
Jumel was very probably a spectator of that mass
meeting in front of Federal Hall, at which twenty-
eight reasons were found for condemning the shame
ful document, and Mr. Alexander Hamilton was
stoned by the mob for presuming to defend it. Per
haps that evening Jumel listened to Republican
supper parties toasting each other at the Indian
Queen.

"A perpetual harvest to America! But clipped
wings, lame legs, the pip and an empty crop to all
Jays!"

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 27

"The Republic of America may she never mis
take jaybirds for eagles !"

Then in 1796, Jumel witnessed his first presiden
tial campaign, and learned that Mr. Washington had
only refused a third term because he knew that he
could not be reflected, and that he had warned the
country against permanent alliances with any por
tion of the foreign world only because he had just
made a treaty with England and did not wish Con
gress to make a similar one with France; aside from
that, Mr, Washington was conceited, avaricious, hot
tempered, unprincipled, an aristocrat and an anglo-
maniac, a person of low character, if the truth be
told an embezzler, and more ostentatious than an
eastern pashaw.

And Jumel learned also that Mr. John Adams
hated the French Revolution, that he was a mon
archist who hoped that his sons would succeed him
on the throne of America, and that he had written a
book in which he advocated a titled nobility to keep
down the canaille multitudes. And as for Mr. Jef
ferson, Jumel learned that he was an infidel, that he
denied that shells found on mountain tops were
proof of the flood, that he maintained that the large
bones found in the west were those of prehistoric
animals called mammoths and not those of giants;
that he was a philosopher, an inventor of whirligig
chairs and, in fact, a mere college professor; and
that he was a poltroon who never came out in the
open against his adversaries but hired other people
to write scurrilous lampoons against them. On the
other hand, Mr. Jefferson was an ardent lover of

28 LIVES AND TIMES

France, and he had no sons and so could not hope
to see himself the founder of an American dy
nasty.

So, in that day, American presidential campaigns
took their delightfully idiotic course, on a flood of
spirited and highly libelous pamphlets signed by
Camillus, and Brutus, and Cato.

And then, in 1798, the shoe was suddenly on the
other foot. Mr. Pinckney, the American envoy at
Paris, had been ordered out of France. Reinforced
by Mr. John Marshall and Mr. Elbridge Gerry he
had returned to Paris, only to become subjected by
Citizen Talleyrand and the members of the Direc-
toire to certain financial negotiations incompatible
with the dignity of his mission, as a result of which
someone in the American delegation was reported to
have exclaimed

"Millions for defense, not one cent for trib
ute!"

The slogan rang across the Atlantic and throughout
the United States. America had been insulted, her
envoys treated with contumely. The piratical ac
tivities of the French, directed against American
shipping in the West Indies, were recalled. The
pamphlets came fluttering from the presses The
Cannibal's Progress, Sans Culotte Piracy, Dear Sister
France.

As a Frenchman, Jumel must have watched these
events with apprehension; he would have had little
sympathy for the France of Talleyrand and the
Directoire, but France was always France, and the
two countries were inevitably drifting into war. In

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 29

vain the Republicans roared against the "war
hawks/' flaunted tricolor cockades, burned Mr. John
Adams in effigy and saiig

" See Johnny at the helm of state,
Head itching for a crowny;
He longs to be, like Georgy, great,
And pull! Tom Jeffer downy . . ."

The nation was aroused to a tremendous pitch of
patriotic enthusiasm; everywhere, the Societies of
Associated Youth were parading with black cockades
in their hats Washington's cockade, the Federal
cockade, the American cockade in the theaters,
audiences stood on their seats to hear the President's
March, and "Stony Point/' and a recent one called
"Hail Columbia." For once the Marseillaise, and
the Carmagnole, and the Ca Ira were drowned out by
a new version of Yankee Doodle

"Columbians all, the present Jtiour
As brothers should unite us;
Union at home's the only way
To make the nation right us.

Yankee Doodle, guard your coast,

Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Fear not, then, nor threat nor boast,

Yankee Doodle Dandy !
Americans, then fly to arms,
And learn the way to use them;
If each man fights to defend his rights
The French can't long abuse them.

Yankee Doodle mind the tune

Yankee Doodle Dandy,

If Frenchmen come we'll mind the tune,

And spank them hard and handy!"

30 LIVES AND TIMES

And soon there was war, a little ghost of a war which
never achieved the honor of official recognition in
history, but which lasted for more than two years.
Mr. Alexander Hamilton was appointed Major
General; the merchants of New York and perhaps
Jtunel among them, for it was the France of the Ter
ror that America was fighting subscribed thirty
thousand dollars in one hour for the "rising navy";
on the sea, Truxton, Bainbridge and Porter, Hull,
Rodgers and the two Decaturs wrote brilliant pages
into the naval annals of America.

And in the midst of it all an incident took place
which must have seemed of enormous importance
to Jumel, and which may well have colored his whole
future attitude towards American politics and made
of him an ardent Republican, a supporter of Mr.
Jefferson and of Colonel Burr, an advocate of the
French party in America in spite of its admiration
for the Revolution and the Terror. At all events,
it may have laid the foundation for his subsequent
devotion to Napoleon Bonaparte.

For in 1798, during the course of the French war,
the American Government had suspended all rela
tions with the French colonies in the West Indies.
Realizing that this action meant starvation for Santo
Domingo, Toussaint, who was now in power, declared
his independence of France and begged the United
States for a renewal of trade. The Renewing Act
was consequently passed, in April, 1799, a Consul
General was sent to the Cape, and an American
squadron assisted Toussaint at the capture of Jacmel,
as a result of which the leader of the slaves overcame

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 31

the last remnant of French authority and made him
self absolute master of the Colony.

One imagines Jumel stalking into the Tontine
Coffee House in a fine fury on the day this news
reached him, and reviling an administration which
had seen fit to make common cause with the chief
of the insurrection by placing its navy at his disposal,
and signing treaties with the monster for to Jumel
the extraordinary Toussaint can never have been
anything else. And as for Napoleon, one suspects
that it was not the glamor of his name or the glories
of his armies in Europe which so enthralled Jumel,
but the fact that, in 1802, the First Consul sent an
army of ten thousand men to Santo Domingo and
carried off the Gilded African to imprisonment and
miserable death, after. as cold blooded a piece of
treachery as ever darkened the record of human
relations. But Jumel would not have cared about
that. Later on, perhaps, towards the close of his
own unfortunate life, but not then. It was sufficient
that the black days and nights of the insurrection
were at last avenged. . . .

8

And in the meantime^ while all these turbulent
events were taking place, there was living at New
York a young lady who called herself Eliza Brown,
who had already seen a good deal of the world,
geographically and metaphorically, and who was
destined to see even more of it.

It is with considerable diffidence that one ap-

32 LIVES AND TIMES

preaches the history of this Miss Eliza Brown, so
contradictory is the information available concern
ing her earlier career, to say nothing of her parent
age, and so well established now are the legends
which cling to her later and more respectable years.
It is, for instance, not without misgiving that one
finds oneself obliged to point out that the "gifted 11
Madame Burr, the momentary partner of the aged
Vice-President in his second and somewhat incom
prehensible matrimonial venture that "cultured
lady of the world" who appears so alluringly in the
encyclopedias, the reputed friend of Lafayette,
Hamilton and Jefferson, of Louis Napoleon, and
of every other celebrity of her long day seems in
reality to have been a person of no education or
breeding, sprung from the lowest origins, and con
siderably more restricted in her circle of fine ac
quaintances than obituary literature would lead one
to believe.

One would like, indeed, to accept the obituary
pronouncement in its entirety, since truth is always
so much stranger, and frequently so much less flatter
ing, than fiction. One might then accept the legend
of Madame Burr to be's birth, in 1769, in the cabin
of a French frigate carrying troops from Brest to
the West Indies, an event which caused the death of
her mother, an English lady called Capet not a
common name in England, or even in France where
it happened to be that of the reigning family. There
is something extremely intriguing, in fact, about this
English lady called Capet, traveling in a French
frigate from Brest to the West Indies in 1769. One

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 33

would then continue to place credence in the legend
which drove the French frigate so far out of her
course that she found herself at Newport, Rhode
Island; thereby allowing the motherless baby called
Capet to be adopted by a certain charitable Mrs.
Thompson, from whose sheltering protection she
eloped to New York at the age of seventeen with an
English colonel called Peter Croix pronounced
Crux, no doubt on whose arm she entered upon the
brilliant career which was to bring her "into contact
with the best people in the city." One would like
very much to believe all that.

Overwhelmed, however, by the documentary and
legal evidence produced by such writers as Mr. W. H.
Shelton, the historian of the Jumel Mansion and of
its last eccentric chatelaine, one prefers to believe
one is, in fact, obliged to believe that Madame Burr
to be was born, not in the cabin of a French frigate
in 1769, but at Providence in 1775; the daughter of
a certain lady of slight social prominence called
Phebe Bowen, nee Kelley, and of her husband John
Bowen, a mariner who got himself drowned in the
harbor of Newport; and that the child was named
Eliza, or Betsy, Bowen. There ensued nineteen
years of vagrant and altogether disreputable exist
ence, during which Betsy, when she was not serving
terms in the workhouse, followed the itinerant for
tunes of her mother and of the latter's successive
broods by varying husbands. Such culture and
refinement as she may have acquired during this
period remain highly problematical and nebulous.
She was known, on the other hand, as the hand-

34 LIVES AND TIMES

somest girl in Providence, and in that verdict one
must find her greatest gift and the secret of all her
future success.

Finally, in 1794, when she was nineteen, Betsy,
for apparently the only time in her life, took upon
herself the dignity of motherhood without assuming
any of its obligations. In the home of a Mistress
Freelove Ballou one would not presume to invent
a name like that she gave birth to a boy who was
named George Washington Bowen, and who for
many long years startled the inhabitants of Provi
dence by the striking resemblance of his features to
those of the Father of His Country. Betsy herself
promptly abandoned the child and went to New
York, not on the arm of Colonel Peter Croix, but on
the New York and Providence packet.

During the next four obscure years she only ap
pears once; as the wife, de facto, of Captain Jacques
de la Croix and there, probably, is the Colonel
Peter Croix of the legend a ship's captain who took
her with him to France, and seems to have had her
profile drawn by the famous Saint-M6min, for she
was then a widely known and acknowledged beauty.
And then she became "separated" from her sea
captain, one hears no more of Madame de la Croix, or
of Betsy Bowen for that matter, and it is as Eliza
Brown that one finds her living at New York in the
last years of the century a very beautiful young
woman who had been across the Atlantic, perhaps
several times, enough to cause her to be pointed
at admiringly in the street in that untraveled
age.

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 35

When was it that Jumel first saw Eliza Brown?
What was it in her that finally attracted him her
beauty, of course, but perhaps also the fact that she
had been across the water, that she spoke a little of
his native tongue, that she was full of charming little
French ways that reminded him of home?

In any case, in 1800, Jumel took a step which may
have seemed natural enough from his foreign point
of view, but which threw the social world of New
York into a state of virtuously scandalized indigna
tion. Jumel had presumed to do publicly that which
decorum required should be kept private. He in
stalled Miss Eliza Brown in his mansion on Whitehall
Street, and went quietly about his business. But
that was not all. He bought her a carriage; not a
gilded coach, perhaps, all covered with cupids and
nymphs like Mr. Washington's, but a fine carriage
none the less, made by Mr. Abraham Quick on Broad
Street, in which the lady took pleasure in parading
her charms all up and down the length of New York's
most cherished residential quarter. Her presence
there might in time have been condoned, that of her
carriage was an unpardonable offense to less fortunate
matrons who took their airings in hired vehicles, or,
many of them indeed, on foot. Some things can
never be forgiven. New York society turned its
back on Jumel; he was to reap the pitiless harvest
of his hot headed sowing in a long martyrdom of
ostracism.

For four years he waited, socially becalmed in his

3 6 LIVES AND TIMES

great mansion on Whitehall Street, and then, in 1804,
he married Miss Eliza Brown. Not, however, as a
concession to society, but out of a generous regard
for her own wishes. She was ill, she had taken to
her bed, she was dying; Jumel, who had set out on a
journey, was overtaken and brought home; on her
deathbed stated to be so by the doctor in attend-
ance she begged Jumel to marry her, she implored
him to give her his name to take with her into the
next world, as a talisman to shield her from the con
sequences of earthly indiscretion. Jumel complied
at once, as soon as a minister could be summoned.
In the very shadow of death they were married, in
her bedchamber in the house on Whitehall Street,
in front of the doctor, and Nodine, the butler, and
her serving maids. It was all extremely touching.

It was infinitely less touching the next morning
when the newly pronounced Madame Jumel arose
.from her bed in the best of health and as merry as a
cricket, and went for a drive in her fine carriage. It
had all been a hoax, she had not been at the point of
death, she had not even been ill, and Nodine and the
doctor had known it all along. A hoax, all of it,
except the marriage which no man might now put
asunder. There is something immensely comic,
something prodigiously pathetic too, in the spectacle
of Jumel, that middle-aged man of the world, that
shrewd, farseeing, successful merchant, that honor
able simpleton, twiddled choused gammoned
bamboozled by that little minx, that mere baggage,
from Providence.

It was perfectly obvious what she was after, aside

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 37

from the actual placing of her relations with Jumel
on a permanent basis which he had possibly not
envisaged this marriage was to be her passport into
that foreign land of New York society the borders of
which, all legends to the contrary, had been so rigor
ously closed to her. Jumel, for his part, took it
extremely well, and behaved like a sensible middle-
aged gentleman who has been twiddled by a little
minx from Providence. He stood by his bargain,
and on April 9, 1804, in the midst of that savage
campaign conducted by Colonel Burr for the Gover
norship of New York State, they were married once
more, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Prince Street.
Then they settled down to wait for that recognition
which the world could surely no longer refuse them.

They had waited for four years before they now
waited for another six, and still hardly a friendly
visiting footstep crossed their threshold, no gesture
of greeting did honor to the occupant of the fine
carriage, no neighborly mansion opened its doors in
welcome to her. Jumel had his counting room the
town had not stopped buying his "choice fluids"
he had his Tontine Coffee House, he might come and
go through the streets and be received with polite
toleration, but for his lady there was no melting of
society's icy disregard.

Through the open windows there must often, in
the springtime, have come to them the sound of
music and singing from some nearby residence; a
gentleman playing the fashionable German flute, a
lady stnimming on the four-stringed guitar for the
violin was considered ungenteel or the soprano

3 8 LIVES AND TIMES

strains of Queen Mary's Lament following the more
male refrain of Hark away to the Downs; they must
frequently have heard the laughter and chatter of
those intimate little soir6es, just a few friends in the
early evening, scattered about the drawing room on
the second floor to applaud each other's ballads and
obligates and consume tea and rusks, or perhaps
some cake and a glass of wine. But they were not
invited; Jumel himself, perhaps, but he would not
have gone without her. They were never invited.
And their own home remained dark and silent,
mocking them with its great empty drawing room,
with its silver, and china, and rich furniture which
were never used, with its staff of servants who had
nothing to do. Just a light in the back room down
stairs where he sat reading a book, it may be, listen
ing to the monotonous prattle of the lady who was
now his wife.

Because, except for the fact that she had been to
France and that he had come from there, they can
never have had the slightest thing in common. He
was an educated, cultured gentleman of the world;
she was, through no fault of her own, a vulgar, igno
rant, mannerless nonentity. One wonders how often
he cursed the beauty which had ensnared him, in the
presence of the raffish ostentation with which she
bedizened it and which she mistook for stylish re
finement; how often, frankly, he longed to choke her
when she babbled giddily, and none too grammati
cally, of utterly platitudinous matters; how often
he wished that he might have perished in Santo
Domingo when he contemplated the cheerless vista

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 39

of an endless succession of years to be spent in the
company of this woman of no discrimination, whose
one consuming ambition was to see herself enthroned
in a society which had forgotten her existence; who
sat in her window, reveling in the finery which she
had not the intelligence to appreciate, and yearned
for the moon to be placed in her shapely but fatally
incompetent hands.

They had no children, they had no relations to
turn to his were all in France; she was, so she
assured him, alone in the world they had no basis
for any intellectual companionship. They had only
a house, and a carriage, and her pretty little French
ways which he must have come to loathe; her little
eccentric ways, too, which were to develop into such
pathetic aberrations in a later day. One looks at
those ten, tragic years and one sees, surely, a pitifully
lonely man, caught in the meshes of his own generous
folly, superbly loyal to a stupendous delusion.

It could not last, not that way, on Whitehall Street.
Whether she twiddled him again into doing it, talked
and wheedled him into it, or whether he did it of his
own accord is not clear. But he had made a fortune
and could well afford to retire from business; what
his marriage had not accomplished, a spectacular
display of wealth might bring about. In 1810, there
fore, he purchased the estate which had at one time
been the property of Colonel Roger Morris, and more
lately Marriner's Tavern, restored the house to its
former splendor as one of the greatest mansions in
the vicinity of New York, and gave it outright to his
wife. Betsy Bowen of Providence was become Lady

JL/JLV.C/D -tt.lN.JLJ .1JUYJJC/Q

of that Manor in which Miss Mary PhiKpse of Yon-
kers had once reigned long before. Let New York
society, that inner circle of old manorial families,
open its eyes, and more especially its doors, and do
homage to so great a lady. What a carriage had
made impossible, perhaps the manor would render
inevitable. . . .

10

It was a fine estate, running from river to river,
on the road leading to Kingsbridge, in the township
of Haarlem. Originally the farm property of Jacob
Dyckman and of his wife Jannetje, it had been pur
chased in 1765, by Mr. Roger Morris, a member of
the Royal Council, as the site for the mansion which
he began at once to build on the mount for his wife,
Miss Mary Philipse, that was, of Yonkers. A
splendid site, from which or rather from the top
of the house which soon crowned it one saw the
Hudson and East Rivers, the Haarlem with Hell
Gate, the Sound, the City of New York in the dis
tance, a great stretch of country in Long Island and
West Chester, and the hills of Staten Island.

And it was a splendid mansion which Mr. Morris
built there for his lady. A two-storied mansion fac
ing the south, with a gallery under its columned
portico, and outer walls two feet thick lined with
English brick. Built to stand a long, long time
for more than one hundred and fifty years already.
In the basement, a fine wainscoted kitchen, twenty
feet by thirty, with a fireplace nine feet wide, and the
buttery, dairy, laundry and offices; reception rooms

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 41

and wide halls on the ground floor, and the lofty
octagonal room at the rear, thirty-two feet by twenty-
two, embellished by a handsome marble mantelpiece.
A plain mahogany staircase leading to the upstairs
bedrooms. Above, a plastered garret. Nineteen
rooms in all, including the halls. A solid, spacious
house, with extremely beautiful doorways, other
wise quite unadorned; a country house, built for
durability and comfort, unconcerned with mere
superficialities of decoration. A house built with
infinite discrimination and care, for a great lady.

For some ten years she lived in it, and then there
was trouble in the Colonies. Mr. Morris, who was
a Loyalist, thought it best to retire to England until
the storm blew over. This he did, in 1775 leaving
Mrs. Morris to preside over the mansion but the
storm did not blow over, and in 1777 he returned to
New York to be made a colonel in the British military
establishment. But he did not return to his man
sion on Mount Morris, for it had become, in the fall
of 1776, the headquarters of a certain General George
Washington. For about three months the octagonal
room was used for courts martial, as a result of which
it received its subsequent name of "court martial
room," while the General worked in his little office
on the second floor; and then, in November, 1776,
the house changed hands, becoming the headquarters
of the British General, Lord Clinton, and after him
of the Hessian commander, Lieutenant General
Baron von Knyphausen, a name which must have
rung strangely in those spacious halls.

As the property of a Loyalist the estate had, of

42 LIVES AND TIMES

course, been confiscated, and after the peace it was
sold by the Commissioners of Forfeiture to Mr. John
Berrian and Mr. Isaac Ledyard. For several years
it passed from hand to hand, not excepting that of
Mr. John Jacob Astor who, in 1809, bought up all
the claims of the contesting heirs to the Morris and
Philipse manors, with the legal right to transfer for
which, in 1828, New York State seems to have paid
him half a million dollars. When, in 1810, the house
came into the possession of Jumel, it had in turn
served as farm building, road house and tavern,
under various names Calumet Hall, Marriner's
and under many proprietors.

Jumel was a man of excellent taste, and of more
than adequate wealth for the task of restoration
which he now undertook. Samples of the famous
wall paper in the court martial room the green
panels with a border of doves, morning glories and
urns mounted on buckram -were sent to Paris for
duplication; every variety of equipment and furnish
ing in keeping with the original character of the
house was provided; every detail of its former ap
pearance was meticulously reproduced. Once again,
with infinite discrimination and care, the mansion
was garnished and made ready for another equally,
though somewhat singularly, great lady.

They moved in. Additional farms were acquired,
the estate was enlarged, consolidated. One imagines
Jumel perhaps happier at this period than he had
been for many years. There were novelties to be
seen to, a whole new order of routine to claim his
daily attention, pride in the fields, and meadows, and

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 43

orchards spreading around the beautiful mansion
which bore his name. There was also a little girl
running along the stone-flagged walks, and chattering
up and down the house; a little nine year old girl to
bear his name Mary Eliza Jumel the orphan
daughter of Polly Clarke, a half-sister of Madame
Jumel, produced from somewhere by her aunt with
no one knows what explanations and precautions,
and adopted by her fine uncle, "the Frenchman"
whom they spoke of sometimes at Providence, when
they thought of Betsy Bowen.

There was only one thing lacking the dust of
approaching carriages on the Kingsbridge Road,
a jingling of coach harness at the gates of the estate,
some Whitehall Street family names for Nodine to
announce at the door of the octagonal drawing room.
It could only be a question of time now before they
came. The Jumels waited for five years, five re
newed years of embittered disappointment, and no
carriages came. New York society had opened its
eyes, perhaps, but not its heart, and certainly not
its doors. , . .

ii

Fifteen years had passed since Jumel had. taken
Miss Eliza Brown to live on Whitehall Street; fifteen
years of neglect and social disdain, at the end of
which he experienced the final mortification resulting
from his discovery in what manner is not clear
of the existence of a certain Mr. George Washington
Bowen at Providence. For the first time in all those
years of subjection to his wife's caprices her death-

44 LIVES AND TIMES

bed comedies and her stubborn assaults upon the
ramparts of society Jwnel seems to have lost his
temper. One pictures him rather pink in the face,
pop-eyed and stuttering, shocked to his aristocratic
fingertips, gesticulating fluently, and none too cour
teously, in front of that that little nothing from
Providence. She, for her part, is reported to have
burst into a rage spiced with undecorous invective,
and to have threatened to shoot him with a pistol
just for what reason is not so manifest, except that
there is nothing so fundamentally exasperating as the
spectacle of a dupe, especially when he ceases to be one.

There was an unpleasant scene, but they patched
it up between them. It was not in her plans, cer
tainly, to break with her generous, her "dear Ste
phen," as she continued to call him. In his mind,
there may have been a necessity for keeping up
appearances, an obstinate refusal to provide society
with any further mockery at his expense; perhaps
in his big, kindly heart he was sorry for her; perhaps,
indeed, he was still fond of her. Perhaps, oil the
other hand, she knew something. There is a hint,
in some later correspondence, of a transaction of
which she helped dispose of the proof. But New
York was no longer possible. The forlorn hope of
the manor had failed, they must try something else.
In 1815, in his barque Eliza, Jumel took his wife and
niece to France.

It t turned out to be a brilliantly successful move.
After a sojourn at Bordeaux, for the purpose of
visiting JtuneTs family and presenting his wife to
them a domestic ceremony , which still, after all

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 45

the years, suggests to the imagination certain ele
ments of pathetic humor the Jumels arrived at
Paris just as the Emperor, fallen at Waterloo, was
about to be handed over a prisoner to the English.
Whether or not Jumel offered him a ship to convey
him to America, whether or not Napoleon gave his
traveling carriage to Jumel and the key to his army
chest to Madame, the fact remains that they became
a part of the Napoleonic legend and were welcomed
with extended palms, at least, by the considerably
impoverished Napoleonic nobility.

He was an immensely wealthy merchant from
America, a milUardaire, no doubt, who offered ships
and country estates to emperors; she was beautiful,
vivacious, dazzling, full of charming little foreign
ways; so gay, so piquant, with her little American
oddities of behavior and her hesitating French
which covered such a multitude of unsuspected de
ficiencies. They took a private hotel on the rue de
Rivoli, and Madame Jumel took the air in a private
carriage in which the ladies of Paris, unlike those of
New York, deemed it a privilege to be seen. Mary
Eliza Jumel was sent to a fashionable boarding school.
The whole social world of the French capital paid
its court to the lady from Haarlem; doors were
opened everywhere; the butler had many great
names to announce. Betsy Bowen was become the
intimate friend of duchesses. They must have been
very happy for a while; it was rain after prolonged
drought, the cool shade of trees after burning deserts,
the laughter and companionship of fellow-beings
after long isolation. At all events, it was a triumph.

46 LIVES AND TIMES

And then, suddenly, in December, 1816, something
happened. Perhaps the air of Paris went to Betsy's
head; perhaps, already, she was spending too much
money; perhaps Jumel grew tired of the masquerade
and reminded her of Providence. In any case,
Madame Jumel found it necessary to return to
America, alone, "because of her health.'* Jumel
went on a voyage to Italy; Madame, and Mary Eliza
who joined her in 1817, remained at the mansion
at Haarlem until 1821. Four terrible,~empty years
for Betsy except for the child and a surreptitious
looking up of estranged half-brothers and sisters
for at the time she had not yet begun to people the
spacious halls with the imaginary visitors of her
demented later years.

But they patched it up again. There seems to
have been no end to Jumel's forbearance or, possibly,
to his infatuation. In 1821, Madame Jumel re
turned to Paris with her niece. For five years they
all lived in great state on the Place Vendome; they
traveled, they entertained, they spent an enormous
amount of money; Madame Jumel attended the
Court; Madame JumeTs carriage carriages seem
to have played an important part in her life her
carriage was " noticed" by His Majesty, Louis
XVIII. It was a second triumph.

It was also an extremely expensive one. The im
mensely wealthy merchant from America was begin
ning to see the bottom lining whenever he looked
into his money bags; partly as a result of the lavish
style which he had been maintaining, partly in con
sequence of an unending lawsuit which he had under-

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 47

taken in the hope of recovering from the French
Government the value of two ships and cargoes
seized by the officials of the port of Bayonne during
Napoleonic days. Perhaps he quarreled with his
wife over her extravagances; perhaps she sensed
the impending collapse of his fortune; perhaps the
burden of incompatibility which they had been
carrying was become too heavy.

This time a permanent separation, though friendly,
would seem to have been intended. Jumel was still
generous and munificent. In January, 1825, he
confirmed his gift to his wife of the mansion and the
lands which had -formed the estate at the time of its
purchase. In addition, he deeded to her for life his
property on the corner of Broadway and Liberty
Street. Then, because he was in pressing need of
funds, and because he trusted this woman for whom
he had done so much, he gave her his power of attor
ney. Madame Jumel returned to America with
Mary Eliza, in 1826, armed with her husband's
signed authority

" . . .for him, and in his name, and for his use,
and in his behalf to sell, either by public auction or
private contract as she shall -thiiik fit and see best;
for the price or prices that can be had or gotten, and
for his most benefit and advantage, all or any part
of the real estate that he may have belonging to him
and lying in the State of New York. . . ."

12

There is so little left to tell.

For two years, Jumel remained in France, selling

48 LIVES AND TIMES

his household silver piece by piece to meet his rent,
and imploring Madame Jumel to complete her nego
tiations in his behalf and send him the money which
must be accumulating to his account. For two
years Madame Jumel exercised her husband's power
of attorney; and at the end of that time all of his
property was safely in the hands of Miss Mary Eliza
Jumel, and he was an utterly ruined man. Even the
mansion itself now stood on the records in Mary's
name. Jumel had been twiddled again, twiddled
out of his lands and the money which was to have
assured the comfort of his few remaining years, as
once before he had been twiddled out of his name.
For sheer simplicity of cold-blooded treachery the
transaction has few equals.

The closing scenes are infinitely pathetic. It was
not enough that he should have wasted thirty years
of his life with her and have been swindled by her at
the end; it was written that he must come begging
her grudging charity, content to sit obscurely for a
little while in a corner of the mansion, which had
been his generous gift to her in the days of his pros
perity. He arrived at New York in 1828, a dis
couraged old man in his seventies, still not quite
credulous of what they had done to him, a querulous
old man who was in the way. They let him stay at
the mansion; all alone the first winter, then as a poor
dependent who must be tolerated, and given his
scraps, and his bit of fire. All alone in a corner
with his thoughts and his memories, his broken heart
and his impotent little reproaches.

He died on May 22, 1832, from injuries sustained

STEPHEN JUMEL, MERCHANT 49

in a fall from a haycart. He was buried in the cheer
less enclosure of the churchyard of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, on Prince Street, under a plain stone.
A pitiful old gaffer Stephen Jumel, merchant.

Madame Jumel was then fifty-seven years old.
She was still to become Madame Burr, and to live
to be ninety. A fantastic old woman, all alone with
her memories and her hallucinations, her disordered
mind, and her banquets spread for imaginary guests.
She died on July 16, 1865, all powdered and rouged,
and covered with jewels, and was buried in a great
tomb, far away from Prince Street. A pitiful old
gammer Betsy Bowen, adventuress. . . .

II

William Eaton, Hero

WILLIAM EATON, HERO

IN the closing years of the eighteenth century,
three merry monarchs sat on embroidered divans in
their respective palaces and viewed the maritime
commerce of the Mediterranean Sea with a glittering
eye. They were the Dey of Algiers, the Bey of
Tunis and the Bashaw of Tripoli, three fat, bearded,
rapacious ruffians clinking with jewels, whose xebecs,
polacres, galliots and galleasses went darting in and
out of their inhospitable harbors on a dangerous,
windswept coast, swooping down on hapless mer
chantmen, and dragging their Christian crews away
to slavery and the whiplashed rowers' benches.

For three centuries these corsairs of the high coast
of Barbary had been indulging in this remunerative
pastime; harrying the shores of their inland sea,
pushing out into the Atlantic, and as far as Iceland,
bringing swift terror and destruction into harbors
of the British Isles, and chivying the dignified Dutch
up the Channel with bloodthirsty outcries. Ever
since the days of Horuk and Khair-ed-Din at Tunis,
in 1500, and of Hasan Aga at Algiers; so that Spain,
and Genoa, and Venice were frequently obliged to

53

54 LIVES AND TIMES

contrive tremendous armadas against the Infidels,
with, varying results. In 1530, for instance, when
Charles V conquered Tunis and massacred thirty
thousand men, women and children like a good
Christian; and in 1541, when, with an army led by
Captain Hernando Cortes and a great fleet com
manded by Andrea Doria, the Genoese, he tried his
luck against Algiers in the presence of many great
ladies of Spain come to witness the emperor's victory
only to lose most of the ladies and one hundred and
fifty vessels in a hurricane, and see his army cut to
pieces ashore in, perhaps, one of history's most lurid
disasters; and again, as late as 1775, when renewed
'disaster at the hands of that same Algiers overtook
another Spanish expedition of four hundred ships.

And now in the late 1790*5, " seven kings of Europe
and two republics" were purchasing annual security
from these worthies, and Consuls of Great Britain,
of Denmark, of Spain, were pocketing their pride and
offering an enormous yearly tribute, in return for
permission to use the Mediterranean from three little
African nabobs whom it was easier to placate than
to punish although the hope that some of the na
tions concerned might fall from financial grace and
so lose their commerce was not absent from the
minds of the tributary governments, not a few of
which considered Algiers an excellent handicap to
the prosperity of their rivals.

And from this group of hand kissing, palm greasing
Consuls, those of the young American republic were
not absent. For America was carrying on a profit
able trade in the Mediterranean with very few ships

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 55

of war to protect it, and while her envoys at Paris
might shout " Millions for defense, not one cent for
tribute!" in Citizen Talleyrand's ear, at Algiers, and
everywhere in Barbary, her consular agents paid
their dues and did their shouting at home. Thirty
thousand dollars to Morocco in 1795; one million
dollars to Algiers in 1793, and another million in
1797, to say nothing of an annual contribution of
twenty-two thousand dollars in naval stores; one
hundred thousand dollars to Tunis; eighty-three
thousand dollars to Tripoli; and the Treasury only
knew what other sums in jewels, and "consular
presents/' and " usances." Such was the mortifying
situation when Captain William Eaton was sent as
United States Consul to Tunis, in 1798.

He was a young man in his thirties, nearly six feet
tall, with a fair, ruddy complexion and large blue
eyes, and of commanding aspect. A quick tem
pered, fiery young man with a chip on his shoulder;
bold, fearless, independent, voluble and indiscreet;
a young man of intellect, resource and eloquence.
A Connecticut Yankee, born at Woodstock, on Feb
ruary 23, 1764, the second child among thirteen of
schoolmaster-farmer Nathan Eaton and his wife
Sarah.

As a boy, already, William was rash and adven
turous, always falling off the top of the barn and out
of apple trees, so that he came near breaking his neck
on countless occasions; but in the fields at Mansfield,
to which the family had moved when he was ten,

5 6 LIVES AND TIMES

William was always shirking his work to sit in the
shade and read some book purloined from his father's
shelves for his was a nature curiously compounded
of studious instincts, so that at one time he thought
of becoming a minister, and of energetic impulses
which finally turned him into a soldier. He was
only sixteen when he ran away from home to join
the Continental troops, and when they sent him
back ill, he returned to the army as soon as he was
able and became a sergeant at seventeen. There
followed years of Latin and Greek, during which
"his mind was most seriously affected with religious
impressions," and in 1787 after an earlier failure
due to his inability to keep up with his classes while
absent all winter long at his schoolmastering he
walked from Mansfield to Hanover, in New Hamp
shire, with "one pistareen of money" in his pocket
and some pins and needles to sell on the way, and
matriculated as a Freshman at Dartmouth College.
During the winters he still taught school, as was
permissible for impecunious students, but he found
time to act in a college dramatic performance and to
write some magnificently bad verse, and in August,
1790, he received his Bachelor's degree.

For a while he served as Clerk to the House of
Delegates of Vermont, and in March, 1792, secured
a captaincy. In August of that year he married a
widow of twenty-five summers, Mrs. Eliza Daniel-
son, who was destined to see very little of him for a
good many years to come, and in the fall he was
ordered to the Army of the West, on the Ohio. A
brief leave of absence in 1794 an( i they set him to

GENERAL WILLIAM EATON

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 57

recruiting for a year, and in December, 1795, he
sailed with his company from Philadelphia, to the
Army of the South this time, in Georgia. A tempes
tuous journey which he described to his wife in a
metrical explosion in which much, perhaps, of this
extravagant, madcap poet, scholar, soldier, orator,
paladin is revealed

"Hoarse through the cordage growled the threatening blast,
Portentous of the storm. The expanse of Heaven
O'ercast with murky columns, seemed convulsed
With one wide waste of elemental war.
From every point along the bounding surges
Rolled the black phalanx of electric fluid.
Borne on the pinions of the maddening storm . . .
Down rushed the glaring tempest, rain and hail,
In winding torrents closed, and the vast space
Of sea and air seemed one promiscuous deluge.
Blue streams of angling sulphur blazed around
Transforming midnight to the fire of day,
Reserving all her horrors. Peals on peals
Burst from the flaming batteries of Heaven
And naught but horror stalked along the gloom ..."

In other words, there was quite a thunder storm off
Hatteras.

They kept him in Georgia, imprudently arguing
with his Colonel Commandant, until 1796, and
then he was courtmartialed, for speculating in army
supplies, for disobedience, for anything which the
Colonel Commandant could think of. But the War
Department did not confirm the verdict of suspension
passed by a court which, in the opinion of one of its
own members, was very partial to "our Colonel
Commandant who is an ignorant, debauched, un-

58 LIVES AND TIMES

principled old bachelor/' willing to " sacrifice the
purest character to gratify the spleen of his soul/'
Captain Eaton was ordered to Philadelphia, en
trusted with various confidential missions for the
State Department, and, in July, 1797, appointed to
his consular post at Tunis. He sailed, on December
22, 1798, aboard the United States brig Sophia,
accompanied by four other vessels to be delivered to
the Dey of Algiers for " arrearages of present dues."

3

Eaton carried with him a Letter of Credence from
President John Adams to the Bey of Tunis, "the well
guarded City and Abode of Felicity," Hamouda
Pasha,

"the most illustrious and most magnificent Prince,
who commands the Odgiac of Tunis, the abode of
happiness ; and the most honored Ibrahim Dey, and
Soliman, Aga of the Janisaries and Chief of the Divan,
and all the elders of the Odgiac."

Aside from that, he was to cooperate with the Con
suls at Algiers and at Tripoli in rectifying certain
unsatisfactory clauses in a treaty recently made
with Tunis.

Eaton found the most illustrious and most magni
ficent Prince to be a "huge, shaggy beast sitting on
his rump," as he elegantly expressed it, who per
mitted the new Consul to kiss his hand, and listened
dubiously to his observations concerning the treaty.
Whereupon there arose into the azure sky of felicitous

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 59

Tunis a general litany of insinuating suggestions
from every official in the palace for jewels, for
swords, for rich cloths, for gunpowder, for stores,
for whole ships, and for money which endured for
months and nearly drove Eaton crazy.' Ever a
reluctant renderer even unto Caesar of the things
that were Caesar's, Eaton boiled with rage and was
consumed with patriotic mortification at the spectacle
of this gaudy bandit who sat crosslegged on a sofa
and prefaced every slight concession which he deigned
to consider with a demand for more tribute. But
he persevered in his task, and finally, in April, 1800,
the desired alterations to the treaty were accom
plished, as a result of the timely arrival of the Hero
with long overdue " presents " and stores.
But this was only a pause in the chorus of Tunisian
mendicancy, and for three years Eaton was to hear
nothing but insults and abuse in one ear, and peremp
tory, threatening demands in the other, culminating
in the Bey's request for a thirty-six gun frigate with
which, no doubt, to offend the eyes of his fellow
monarchs at Algiers and Tripoli. And when Eaton
advised him to whistle for his frigate, the " Prince of
the Princes of Tunis" wrote a letter himself to "Sir
President/' in 1802, in reply to which Mr. Jefferson
informed his "great and good friend, the most illus
trious and most magnificent Prince, the Bey of
Tunis," that he had no frigates to spare. One is
inclined to laugh at all this tomfoolery until one
reads Eaton's letter of almost the same date to
Secretary of State Madison, in which that courageous
Yankee was obliged to confess to his chief that

60 LIVES AND TIMES

"My exile is become insupportable here. . . ,
No advice from Government to regulate my conduct,
and my own exertions failing of effect ; I am left sub
ject, though not yet submissive, to the most intoler
able abuse and personal vexation. Anxiety, per
plexity, and a climate unfavorable to my constitu
tion waste my health."

And in the meantime, things had not been going
so well at Algiers, and one imagines poor Eaton fairly
bursting with fury at the news which reached him
from that port. For in September, 1800, Captain
Bainbridge, in the twenty-four gun frigate George
Washington, had presented himself before the mole
at Algiers for the purpose of paying the annual
Algerine tribute. A duty none too congenial to the
commander of an American war ship, but there was
further disgrace unspeakable to be experienced. Al
giers was in trouble at Constantinople, there was an
embassy to be sent to the Grand Signior Sultan and
presents to soothe his anger. Mustapha, Dey of
Algiers, gazed upon the American frigate anchored
under the guns of his powerful shore batteries and
had a luminous inspiration. The American frigate
would take his Ambassador to Constantinople.

" You pay me tribute/' he reminded the protesting
Bainbridge, "by which you become my slaves. I
have, therefore, a right to order you as I may think
proper."

And not only that, but the frigate would fly the
Algerine flag at the main. Bainbridge, at the mercy
of the Dey's batteries, had no choice in the matter of
the errand to Constantinople, but to haul down the

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 61

American flag, thereby putting his frigate out of
commission, was something to break his sailor's
heart. He would fly the Algerine flag at the fore,
out of courtesy to the Ambassador, and that was all.
No, the Dey assured him, he would fly it at the main
and his General of Marine came aboard with a
troop of soldiers, climbed up to the maintop, tore
down the American flag and put the Algerine stand
ard in its place. Bainbridge looked at the maintop,
then he looked at the guns covering his ship and
realized that the destruction of the frigate would do
more harm to American commerce than that piece
of bunting flying at his masthead. He swallowed
very hard, therefore, and sat back to watch the em
barkation of an extraordinary ship's company. The
Ambassador and his suite of one hundred, bringing
with them nearly one million dollars' worth of pres
ents and cash; one hundred negro women and their
children; one hundred and fifty sheep, twenty-five
heads of cattle and four horses; and twelve parrots,
four antelopes, four lions and four tigers.

And so, on October 19, this floating menagerie
which had once been an American frigate set sail for
Constantinople, a sort of Turkish Noah's Ark from
whose decks arose the clamorous bedlam of a variety
of incongruous beasts. The very moment she was
out of range of the batteries the Algerine flag came
down, and all the Americans aboard felt better, so
that good humor intervened, in a measure, to relieve
the mortification of their employment. For three
weeks they went screeching and bellowing on their
way, tacking back and forth to the unending con-

62 LIVES AND TIMES

fusion of the Faithful striving to keep their prayerful
countenances turned to the East and then they
were at Constantinople, the first American ship to
enter that harbor. The Turks were delighted and
interested what was that flag, what were the
United States? A new world discovered some time
before, it seemed, by Christopher Columbus. Well,
well, Allah was indeed great. Bainbridge was f6ted
by the authorities, he formed a lasting friendship
with the Turkish Admiral who gave him a salute
from Tapana Fortress never before accorded to a
foreign vessel, and in December the George Washing
ton returned to Algiers, with a message from the
Sultan to the Dey which caused the latter to blink
in considerable trepidation. And this time the
frigate anchored beyond the range of the Algerine
guns. . . .

And at Tripoli things were not going at all. For
some time the Bashaw, Yusuf the bloody, of the
House of the Karamanli, had been turning over in
his avaricious mind the fact that he was not receiving
as much tribute from America as his " cousins" of
Algiers and Tunis. In April, 1801, he demanded,, a
payment of two hundred and twenty-five thousand
Spanish dollars and an annual contribution of twenty-
five thousand more, and when his ultimatum was
rejected he declared war on the United States, on
May 10, in the traditional Tripolitan manner, by
cutting down the flagstaff of the American consulate.
f During that summer the war was carried on by
four ships under Commodore Dale, who did what he
could, blockading the coast and capturing enemy

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 63

grain ships, until his return to America, in December.
He was followed by Commodore Morris, a courageous
officer somewhat lacking in initiative, who backed
and filled rather aimlessly up and down the Mediter
ranean until his recall in the spring of 1803; so that
Eaton advised Mr. Madison that Government might
as well "send out Quaker meeting houses to float
about this sea, as frigates with Murrays in com
mand." In fact, it seemed to him in 1802 that "the
operations of our squadron this season have done
less than the last to aid my efforts/' and in December
of that year "only one frigate of this squadron has
been hitherto seen on the enemy's coast. " The war
was dragging along, into the summer of 1803, and
nothing was being accomplished except to convince
Yusuf Bashaw that the Americans were very small
pumpkins indeed, when Commodore Preble was sent
out to relieve the floundering Morris.

From the very beginning of his sojourn at Tunis,
and increasingly so with the advent of the Tripoli war,
Eaton had squirmed under his government's pusil
lanimous policy, and had advocated forceful meas
ures to silence the insulting demands of the Barbary
brotherhood once and for all. If America was going
to spend money in Africa let her spend it on ships of
war, and if gunpowder was to be contributed to the
corsairs let it be used to fire American guns at their
strongholds. A powerful squadron, a little determi
nation and above all a little national pride would
do the trick. To his impetuous, energetic, uncom-

64 LIVES AND TIMES

promising Yankee way of thinking there had been
too much of this unnecessary humiliation, this loan
ing of frigates, this constant purchasing of shameful
favors, this timid backbending before three insig
nificant little princelings.

And so he turned his thoughts into any channel
which might lead to a more prompt consummation
of, the vengeance upon the Bashaw of Tripoli, and
looked under every pebble in his path in the hope of
discovering some means of further damage to that
brigand. And under one of these pebbles he found
Sidi Mahomet, the son of Karaman, who was com
monly called Hamet. Now this Karaman had been
Bashaw of Tripoli some nine years before, and at
his death he had left three sons, Hasan, Hamet and
Yusuf . To Hasan, and after him to Hamet, should
have gone the embroidered sofa of Tripoli, but Yusuf
had caused him to be slaughtered a fate which
Hamet escaped only by precipitate flight and
seized the sofa for his own. And now, in 1801,
Yusuf the usurper was Bashaw of Tripoli, and Hamet
was living precariously at Tunis itself, enjoying the
protection and charity of the Bey who doubtless saw
in him an instrument of possible annoyance to his
colleague of Tripoli, H should occasion ever arise.
Which was precisely what Eaton saw in him, and
the occasion arisen.

Eaton looked at Haniet Karamanli for a while
with a speculative interest, and then a splendidly
adventurous, though by no means impractical,
vision began to take shape in his imagination. With
the American squadron attacking Tripoli from the

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 65

sea if these precious sailors could ever be induced
to do anything except tramp up and down their
quarterdecks and cock their eye at the wind he
would take Hamet out of his Tunisian seclusion,
bolster him up with American supplies and marines
and lead him across the sands in a land assault on
Tripoli which would take the usurper in the rear
and place the rightful Bashaw on his throne. One
imagines Eaton stalking into Hamet's chamber one
day, six feet of blue-eyed Yankee aflame with an
idea, and overwhelming the Pretender with a flow
of passionate oratory, poking him in the back, and
generally disturbing the tobacco-scented peace of
that rather mildly disposed and very slightly heroic
individual.

"Now see here, Hamet, I'm your friend, and I'm
going to put you back on your throne if you'll say
the word. . . ."

It must all have seemed extremely improbable to
Hamet, and most astonishing, and not particularly
alluring, perhaps. But Eaton talked to him, and
pestered him, and probably bullied him, until of
two evils the enmity of his murderous brother and
the eloquence of this implacable American the
bewildered Hamet chose the lesser, and decided to
attack Yusuf. At all events, in September, 1801,
Eaton was already writing to Mr. Madison concern
ing

"a project in concert between the rightful Bashaw
of Tripoli, now an exile in Tunis, and myself, to
attack the usurper by land while our operations are
going on by sea. . . . The Bey of Tunis, though

66 LIVES AND TIMES

prudence will keep him behind the curtain, I have
strong reasons to believe will cheerfully promote
the scheme."

But wherever the Bey may have kept himself,
there seem to have been other persons behind the
curtain for it was not long before Yusuf at Tripoli
was aware of these machinations, and in December
he sent overtures of friendship to his brother Hamet
and offered him the Governorship of Derne. Eaton,
absent at the time on a voyage to Leghorn for his
health, returned in the early spring of 1802 to find
a subdued and mollified Hamet who wanted nothing
from his friend except a passport to Tripoli to go and
see his family and make his peace with his brother.
But Eaton did not propose to lose his Pretender so
easily; he refused the passport, and

"told him candidly that if he departed we must
consider him in the light of an enemy, and that in
stead of my influence to assist his passage to Tripoli
I should give it to have him and his retinue carried
prisoner of war to the United States; but if he would
adhere to his former arrangements I did not doubt
but that before the expiration of four months he
might be offered to his people by an American squad
ron. I tell him the sole object of his brother is to
cut his throat. He is sufficiently alarmed and much
distressed. . . ."

Eaton was more or less talking through his white
consular hat; especially as the captains of the
squadron, Bainbridge, and Murray, and the others,
were definitely opposed to the whole scheme of a

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 67

land expedition if for no other reason, because
they were all hostile to this obstreperous Consul, this
former army officer turned civilian, who presumed
to criticize the conduct of the naval forces and kept
harping on that episode of the Algerine flag aboard
the George Washington. But Hamet was frankly
terrified, and now he was in even worse straits, for
the Bey of Tunis had suddenly cut off his supplies,
no doubt in answer to a hint from the Bashaw, a,
hint adorned, it may be, with jewels. Hamet pro
posed to retire to Malta; Eaton insisted on his
selecting Leghorn or Sardinia, and talked of armed
ships to go after him if he went elsewhere. But
Hamet finally had his way, for once, and in August
he was at Malta, receiving money from Eaton "on
the credit of the United States/' and bloodcurdling
accounts of Yusuf s intentions towards his person if
he set foot in either Derne or Tripoli. At the same
time he was maintaining a brisk correspondence
with his adherents on the mainland, while brother
Yusuf scratched his ear and began to wonder where
all this might terminate.

And now Eaton himself was in a predicament.
His negotiations and transactions with Hamet had
involved an expense of twenty-three thousand dol
lars which he had borrowed, and which must now be
repaid. And he was destitute of resources; if this
expense "should not be admitted in account on final
settlement, my property in America must go to
indemnify the United States so far as it will extend
to that object.". That was in November, 1802. In
December, "my means and my resources of resistance

68 LIVES AND TIMES

are totally exhausted at this place. ... I can no
longer talk of resistance and coercion without exciting
a grimace of contempt and ridicule/' And in March,
1803, he was " totally destitute of funds and credit
here, and do not know where to obtain the means of
daily subsistence/'

He was determined to return to America ; a decision
which delighted the Bey, who found him "too obsti
nate and too violent for me. I must have a Consul
with a disposition more congenial to Barbary in
terests !" Commodore Morris came to Tunis to
take Eaton aboard, and was promptly arrested for
the Consul's debts. But the business was finally
adjusted, and, on March 10, Eaton departed from
the Abode of Felicity, or, depending on the point of
view, from "this sink of treachery."

5

The State Department having refused to accept
Eaton's Hamet accounts, he spent the summer of
1803 at Brimfield, Massachusetts, with the family
which he had not seen for nearly five years, and
returned to Washington in January, 1804, for the
session of Congress which was to investigate his
claims. But he had not forgotten Hamet, or his
scheme for an expedition to Tripoli, and he lost no
opportunity to interest the government in his ven
ture which, he maintained, would have been suc
cessful in 1802 if he had been properly seconded
by a commander "who employed the whole oper
ative naval force of the United States an entire
year in the Mediterranean attending the travels

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 69

of a woman!" No wonder he was hated by the
Navy.

But there was a new commander in the Mediter
ranean now, the energetic Commodore Preble, And
although the unlucky Bainbridge and three hundred
Americans had been captured by the Tripolitans,
and dragged half naked before the delighted Bashaw,
at the time of the disaster to the Philadelphia, the
whole country was ringing, in the spring of 1804,
with Lieutenant Stephen Decatur's exploit of sailing
into the harbor of Tripoli and setting fire to the
captured frigate, so that she blew up with terrifying
detonations under the Bashaw's windows, while the
imprisoned Americans yelled their heads off and
jeered at the flabbergasted Tripolitan cannoniers.
And not only that, but Hamet himself had crossed
over to Derne, placed himself at the head of an Arab
army and inflicted important reverses on his brother's
forces a circumstance which shows him not to have
been the utterly spineless creature which certain
chronicles have tried to make of him, and which
puts Eaton's project in a less fantastic light, with its
revelation of the native support which Hamet, given
adequate funds, was able to command.

Hamet was quite pleased with himself, and wrote
to tell Mr. Jefferson about it and to ask him for help,
and, in March, the President decided to send him
some supplies, some artillery, a thousand stands of
arms, and forty thousand dollars. He also appointed
Eaton Navy Agent to the Barbary States for the
purpose of assisting Hamet's campaign. This was
going a long way for that gingerly administration,

70 LIVES AND TIMES

and when, along in May, news reached Washington
that Hamet had been obliged to retire to Alexandria
for lack of those very supplies, Mr. Jefferson changed
his mind. The supplies were countermanded. " On
the first symptoms of a reverse," Eaton wrote in a
private letter,

"discouragement superseded resolution with our
Executive, and economy supplanted good faith and
honesty. . . . The Secretary of War believes we
had better pay tribute. He said this to me in his
own office. Gallatin . . . shrinks behind the
counter. Mr. Madison leaves everything to the
Secretary of the Navy."

And the Secretary of the Navy said to Commodore
Barron, who was taking Eaton out with a new
squadron

"With respect to the ex-Bashaw of Tripoli we
have no objection to your availing yourself of his
cooperation with you against Tripoli, if you shall
. . . consider his cooperations expedient. The sub
ject is committed entirely to your discretion. In
such an event you will, it is believed, find Mr. Eaton
extremely useful to you."

At the same time, Commodore Barron was to
make peace with Tripoli whenever, in his opinion,
a suitable opportunity presented itself.

So that, when Eaton sailed, in June, 1804, aboard
the John Adams in company with the frigates Presi
dent, Congress, Essex and Constellation, without
specific instructions and with no definite assurances

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 71

of executive support, he had no illusions concerning
the role to which he was destined.

"The cautious policy o the President, " he wrote,
"is calculated to evade responsibility as well as to
secure to himself all the advantages of a miracle;
for ... he neither sends forward supplies nor
even makes any reply to the chief of whose friend
ship he is willing to profit. If, therefore, the co
operation fail of success he evades the imputation
of having embarked in a speculative, theoretical,
chimerical project. This will fix on me. Whereas
if it succeeds the glory of the enterprise will be all
his own, ascribed to his foresight and sagacity . . .
I can say, as a Spartan Ambassador to the King of
Persia's lieutenant, when asked whether he came
with a public commission or on his own account
If successful for the public, if unsuccessful for myself."

In September, 1804, Eaton was once more in that
turbulent Mediterranean, at Malta, and in December,
at Syracuse where Commodore Barron was taking
over the command from Preble. And the retiring
Commodore had much to relate concerning the activi
ties of the previous months. In August, there had
been a tremendous attack on Tripoli, in which Lieu
tenant Decatur had gone careering up and down the
harbor with his gunboats providing the material for
countless patriotic prints, while the frigates treat
ed the town to a bombardment which drove the
Bashaw into the nearest cellar. But Yusuf knew his
Barbary weather and refused to make peace, counting
on a convenient norther to scatter the American

72 LIVES AND TIMES

squadron. Four times during the next month the
fleet repeated its demonstrations without success,
and the fifth time dreadful disaster overtook Captain
Somers and his crew of volunteers in the fire ship
Intrepid; she blew up into smithereens at the en
trance to the harbor Somers having, presumably,
touched her off with his own hand upon finding
himself boarded by the enemy and here the squad
ron was back at Syracuse, and the Bashaw back on
his sofa, biting his thumb at Bainbridge and the
captive Americans. As for Hamet, he was supposed
to be at Alexandria, waiting for some word from
America.

On November 14, therefore, Eaton sailed for
Malta and Alexandria, aboard the brig Argus, Cap
tain Isaac Hull in command, taking with him a
written memorandum signed by Hull of the verbal
instructions issued by Commodore Barron to Hull
in Eaton's presence. His official, written orders
were, it seems

" . . . intended to disguise the real object of
your expedition; which is to proceed with Mr.^Eaton
to Alexandria in search of Hamet Bashaw . . .
and to convey him to Derne or such place . . .
most proper for cooperating with the naval forces
under my command against the common enemy.
. . . The Bashaw may be assured of the support
of my squadron at Bengazi or Derne . . . and
you may assure him also that I will take the most
effectual measures with the forces under my com
mand for cooperating with him against the usurper,
his brother, and for reestablishing him in the regency
of Tripoli. Arrangements to this effect with him

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 73

are confided to the discretion with which Mr. Eaton
is vested by the Government."

Instructions which may or may not have caused
Eaton to smile, since he knew himself to be vested
by Government with all the discretion in the world,
provided that he abstain from any expectation of
being upheld should such a course prove inconvenient
to the administration. But as a matter of fact he
took them quite seriously; he was to help put Harriet
back on his throne of Tripoli, and Commodore Barron
was to "take the most effectual measures" to bring
this about; Eaton's dream was coming true, and the
"expedition to Egypt" was under way. The blue-
eyed Yankee must have been very happy, crossing
his fondly anticipated bridges.

The Argus arrived at Alexandria on November 25.
Hamet was not there; he was at Cairo, he was up the
river, he had joined the Mamelukes no one knew
just where Hamet was. Eaton and the officers
assigned to him went to Rosetta, took a river boat
up the Nile and reached Cairo on December 8.
After a triumphant entry on horseback escorted
by Turkish officers and followed everywhere by
gaping crowds they rode in state, preceded by a
torchlight procession, through seething streets to the
Viceroy's palace where they were received by guards
of honor, and ushered into the audience hall in, which,
on a sofa of embroidered purple and damask, the
Viceroy greeted them with coffee, tobacco and sher
bets.

And after suitable conversational philanderings

74 LIVES AND TIMES

they came at last to the subject of Hamet. Where
was Hamet? Well, Hamet, left practically destitute
at Alexandria, had joined the revolted Mamelukes
and was at that moment besieged with some of their
Beys in the village of Miniet in Upper Egypt. An
awkward circumstance, since, aside from the fact
of his being now a rebel against Turkish authority,
it was questionable whether the Mameluke Beys
would allow him to depart from their midst. But as
far as the Turks were concerned, the Viceroy was
very reasonable about it all; he granted Hamet a
letter of amnesty and permission to pass the Turkish
lines, and sent couriers to bring him to Cairo. And
in the meantime, Eaton had sent couriers of his own,
to inform him that

"I am the American, Consul who made an agree
ment with your Excellency previously to your de
parture from Tunis for Malta I have since been
home; my Government have approved of my con
duct and I am now come out to fulfill my promises.
Let me know how I can communicate with your
Excellency without embroiling myself with the Grand
Signior whom I honor and respect. America is at
peace with all the world except your brother Joseph
we will never make peace with him. I am your
Excellency's sincere friend."

Promises, assurances, prophecies Eaton's utter
ances were always, the children of his hopes. . . .

7

And of all the strange characters who were to take
part in the forthcoming desert melodrama, there was

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 75

none more strange, perhaps, than the courier who
reached Hamet with this letter the astonishing
"Eugene Leitensdorfer."' Born in 1772, near Trent
in the Tyrol, Gervasio Santuari abandoned the re
ligious studies in which he was engaged, to many,
at an early age, a young woman who does not seem
to have enjoyed any great share of his subsequent
attention. After studying engineering and survey
ing, he entered the Austrian army, took part in the
expedition against Belgrade, and found himself
eventually at the siege of Mantua, from which he
departed one night to join the French at Milan,
under the name of Carlo Hossondo. Suspected by
them, however, of being a spy, he poisoned his guards
with opium and escaped to Switzerland, adopting
for the purpose the name of Johan Eugene Leitens-
dorfer. With the money which his family contrived
to send him, he then purchased a stock of jewelry
and watches and traveled extensively through
'France and Spain, until arriving at Toulon one day
he embarked on a vessel for Egypt. In Egypt, he
served the French until the English came, and then
the English with equal facility, ran a coffee house,
managed a theater and married a Coptic wife.

Upon the departure of the English from Egypt, he
abandoned his coffee house, theater, wife and child,
and retired to Messina, where, from temporary lack
of anything more profitable to do, he entered himself
as a novice in a Capuchin monastery in which he
passed as Padre Anselmo. One pauses for breath,
and finds him on a ship bound for Smyrna, from
whence he soon drifted to Constantinople. There,

76 LIVES AND TIMES

for three days and nights, he went without food or
drink, and finally borrowed a pack of cards with
which to secure a few pennies by performing tricks.
A little later he enlisted in the Turkish army all
armies were alike to Gervasio Carlo Johan Eugene
Anselmo and joined a disastrous expedition against
Egypt, from which he escaped to the Arabs in the
desert, to return eventually to Constantinople.

And then this extraordinary man decided to become
a Dervish. He renounced his faith, underwent certain
ritualistic ceremonies necessary to his new status
and religion, called himself Murat Aga, and departed
with a caravan to Trebizond. At Trebizond, the
Bashaw was suffering from an affliction to his eyes;
Murat Aga being a Dervish was also supposed to be
a doctor; he blew the contents, very possibly un
known to him, of a paper of powder in the Bashaw's
eye, prophesied a prompt recovery, and departed
again, as rapidly as possible, with a caravan to
Persia. But messengers overtook him to announce
the miraculous recovery of the Bashaw a circum
stance which Murat Aga had not altogether antic
ipated so he returned to Trebizond to be loaded
with gifts, enjoyed a season of honorable repose and
betook himself to Mecca before some other less
amenable ailment should befall the Bashaw. From
Mecca he went to Jedda, on the Red Sea, crossed
over to Suez, and, grown weary of so much holiness,
became interpreter to Lord Gordon, an English
traveler who took him to Nubia and Abyssinia.

Finally, after an absence of six years, he found
himself again in Alexandria, and remembered that

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 77

he had once had a wife there. He made search for
her, for the purpose of securing a legal separation, and
returned to Cairo where he had found employment
as a military engineer when Eaton saw him, and chose
this tall, lean, agile, swarthy, young man of thirty-
two who spoke so many languages and who had
played so many r61es to be his courier. . . .

8

Eaton was waiting at Cairo, anxiously and im
patiently, so that Egypt held no charms for him.

"I can," he wrote, "see nothing on the celebrated
Nile which the Ohio, Mississippi, Altamaha, Savan
nah and Chesapeake do not offer us; even her croco
diles and her cajal would have nothing to boast side
and side by our alligators and catfish. . . . Ruined
temples, pyramids and catacombs, monuments of
the superstition, pride and folly of their founders,
disgust my sight."

But at last, in January, a messenger arrived from
Hamet. He was coming it is a pity, perhaps, to
deny the legend which describes Eaton plunging into
the desert, chivying Hamet out of his hiding place,
and dragging him back into the enforced limelight
of history Hamet was coming, to a friendly Arab's
house at Fayoum, and Eaton might see him there.
But Eaton had already told him to come to Rosetta,
and believing that he would do so, went there to
meet him. No Hamet. This prudent Prince was
evidently suspicious of the Turks. So, on January
22, with two officers and twenty-three men from the

78 LIVES AND TIMES

Argus, "indifferently mounted," Eaton set out from
Alexandria to join Hamet at Fayoum. On January
23 they were all arrested as British spies in the Turk
ish lines. But the Turks were always ready to listen
to a good story and to investigate its authenticity.
The Pacha in command listened to Eaton, and sent
for an Arab Sheik of his acquaintance who confirmed
the fact of Hamet's presence at Fayoum, and added
that twenty thousand Arabs were prepared to follow
him against Tripoli for a consideration. The Pacha
was impressed, sent the Sheik after Hamet, and
treated Eaton with every courtesy, even though he
did surround him with fierce-looking sentinels.

On February 5, Hamet arrived, without the twenty
thousand Arabs, at the Turkish camp and they
met once more, those friends, Hamet the fugitive
and Eaton the Bashaw maker; the fair-haired, blue-
eyed, daredevil man from the West, and the black-
bearded, dark-skinned, diffident man of the East.
He remains, unfortunately, shadowy and featureless,
the native, but one sees a certain unpretentious dig
nity, a considerable spontaneous courage and the
shy, questioning resolve of an essentially timid man,
come, a little against his inclination, perhaps, but
of his own accord, to lay his trusting simplicity in
another's hands. They met, and important words
were spoken.

Two days later they left for Alexandria to embark
aboard the Argus, and were promptly placed under
arrest by another Turkish contingent until a firman
from the Viceroy released them. And now it seemed
that Hamet was determined to march overland to

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 79

Derne, about four hundred miles across the Desert
of Barca. He pitched his camp, consequently, at the
Arab's Tower, a little way out of Alexandria, to
recruit the five hundred odd followers whom their
resources allowed them to equip, while Eaton went
into the city to make his arrangements with Captain
Hull to meet them at the Bay of Bomba, to collect
supplies and to prevent their being stolen by the
Turks in whose ears the French Consul was whisper
ing not wholly disinterested suggestions.

And since a good many thousands of dollars were
involved, he made a " convention" with Hamet,
which deserves to be preserved in that archive de
voted to America's unratified treaties. A convention
whereby the United States were to be indemnified
out of the proceeds of the annual tribute to Tripoli
from Sweden, Denmark and Holland, and no ransom
required for the three hundred Americans now held
by Yusuf Bashaw. In return, the United States
in the person of William Eaton, "General and Com
mander in Chief of the Land Forces," who should
have known better pledged themselves to assist
Hamet on land and sea to regain his throne. To
regain his throne.

Once again, as expressed in the words which flowed
so readily from Eaton's pen, the hope was father to
the fact. Of course, there were those verbal instruc
tions of Commodore Barron's! It may be that
Eaton did not actually know that Barron was under
orders to make peace with Tripoli at the first oppor
tunity or if he did, perhaps he did not believe that
the Commodore would do so until the purpose of the

8o LIVES AND TIMES

Derne expedition was accomplished. And of course
the document was a nice souvenir, in any case, for
Hamet. . . .

They assembled, on March 3, at the Arab's Tower.
One hundred and seven camels and other beasts of
burden with their drivers; a troop of Arab horsemen
led by two Sheiks; the ninety men of Hamet's per
sonal escort; thirty-eight Greeks with two officers;
twenty-five miscellaneous cannoniers with three
officers; six American marines from the Argus under
the command of a sergeant, a midshipman, Mr. Peck,
and Lieutenant O'Bannon; a doctor picked up at
Alexandria an Englishman called Farquhar the
inevitable Leitensdorfer Hamet Bashaw and "Gen
eral" Eaton. Perhaps four hundred persons of all
colors and creeds, wild men from the desert in flowing
white, scrapings of Alexandria in heterogeneous
raiment, a parcel of Greeks descended, it may be,
from the Ten Thousand of that other March to the
Sea, a handful of unexcited Americans with one eye
on the Greeks and the other on the provision camels,
the Sheiks, Generals and Excellencies and Mid
shipman Peck, very dignified, no doubt, in his brass
buttoned blue coat and red waistcoat, his high
standing collar and black stock, and the little dirk
hanging from a chain at his left hip. Very dignified,
and enormously interested, and excessively hot.
They marched, at eleven o'clock in the morning, on
March 8, 1805.

And that, perhaps, is after all the most remarkable

GENERAL EATON AND HAMET BASHAW ON THE MARCH TO DERNE

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 81

feature of the whole affair not that they should
have arrived at Derne, but that they should ever
have started. They marched, fifteen miles, twenty
miles a day, tramping through the sand under the
African sun, much of the time within sight of the sea,
an ill assorted, poorly equipped, temperamentally in
compatible, haphazard crusade, held together by
some such fantastic obstinacy as occasionally ani
mates the sons of man, by a reckless loyalty to a
fortuitous cause, and by the volcanic, browbeating,
dominating personality of the blue-eyed Xenophon
from Connecticut. One would like to know what
songs they sang, what laughter they found to share,
what visions occupied their contemplation. What
thoughts came drifting through the General's mind
in the noonday, mirage-laden heat of green hedge
rows, possibly, and a Dartmouth Freshman, long
ago, marching from Mansfield to Hanover with a
pack of pins and needles, and one pistareen of money
in his pocket; and now the clatter and clamor of an
army with camels behind him, his saddle bags heavy
with gold, and at the end of the road what, at the
end of the road?

They set out on March 8, and on March 9 the
mutinies, and desertions, and tribulations occa
sioned by the Arabs' and camel drivers' cupidity
began. "Money, more money, was the only stimu
lus which could give motion to the camp," Eaton
wrote on the second morning, and from then on
there was to be no peace. Day after day, they sat
on their haunches and refused to stir unless their
pay were increased, and at night they prowled

82 LIVES AND TIMES

through the camp, a murderous menace to the Chris
tians, and stole eveiything they could reach, down to
the polish on Midshipman Peck's buttons.

And at Moscarah, on March 18, only one hundred
and seventy miles from the starting point, the camel
drivers announced that they had not been hired to
proceed any further. Eaton borrowed every addi
tional sou he could collect, reduced his personal
funds to three Venetian sequins, and persuaded -them
to continue for two days to a native settlement where
other camels would be obtainable. The next morn
ing, with the money in their pouches, all but forty
of the camel drivers deserted, and a few hours later
the remaining forty departed. The expedition was
now entirely without transport, and the Sheiks
decided that this would be an excellent moment to
send a messenger to Bomba to find out if the Ameri
can ships were there. Eaton took his marines into
Moscarah Castle, cut off the rations of the Arabs and
threatened them with starvation. The next day,
out of a sky which may not have been as clear as it
appeared, fifty camels came back, and the army
moved forward again.

They arrived, on March 22, at the settlement,
where they found great herds of cattle, sheep, goats,
horses and camels, and three tribes of Arabs who
had never seen a Christian. The Arabs were tremen
dously impressed, and began to enlist under Hamet's
banner, bringing with them their families, tents and
moveables, forage for the animals and some provisions
for Eaton's men who were already reduced to bread
and rice. Ninety camels were secured, at eleven

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 83

dollars a hump, for the journey to Bomba. Things
were going better when, on March 26, a courier
arrived from Derne with the news that an army of
Yusuf s was advancing on the city and would un
questionably reach it before Hamet. The camel
drivers immediately vanished away to the hills with
their camels, followed by one of the Sheiks with all
his Arabs. Hamet himself retired to his tent and
took counsel of his prudence, while Eaton stormed
up and down the camp and set his marines to mount
guard over the supplies.

On March 27, seeing that nobody cared what he
did, the sulking Sheik came back with his Arabs.
On March 28, another contingent of Arabs deserted
for the day, returning, however, in time for supper.
On March 30, all the Arabs decamped, with such
provisions as they could seize, so that they did not
reappear until April 2. Finally, on that day, Eaton
called a council with Hamet of all the Sheiks, and
"exhorted them to union and perseverance," in an
address which can only have been a masterpiece of
diplomacy, cajolery and energetic eloquence. There
were now some twelve hundred people in the camp,
including seven hundred fighting men the American
ships would be at Bomba a dried fig for Yusuf and
his army! Perhaps Hamet, with Eaton at his elbow,
also said a few optimistic words. They marched,
on April 3. Ten miles out they stopped. What
now? Well, some of the Arabs had discovered that
their stock of dates was running low, and the Pyra
mids would dance before they moved from that spot
without first replenishing their supply from an

84 LIVES AND TIMES

inland depot five days* march distant. Eaton
consigned them and their dates to the lowest Tophet,
and pushed on. And on April 5 they were at
Salaum on the coast, one hundred and fifty miles
from Derne.

They marched again, on April 8, and almost im
mediately Hamet called a halt. It was, he claimed,
necessary to rest the army but it did not take Eaton
long to find out that Hamet had sent a courier to
Bomba to look for the American ships. In fact, the
nearer they approached to Derne, and to the vicinity
of Yusuf s heralded army, the less Hamet thought
of this expedition, and the more the Arabs were
inclined to a cautious and remunerative procrastina
tion. But Eaton was not in a position to procrasti
nate. He had remaining exactly six days' rice ra
tions and no bread or meat whatever. So he cut off
all supplies and called on Hamet to march. At
three o'clock in the afternoon, Hamet and the entire
Arab detachment started to march back to Salaum.
They stopped, however, to seize the provisions, and
before anyone knew what was happening the Chris
tians found themselves face to face with a revolted
army. Hamet had lost his temper, Eaton was
rapidly losing his, the Arabs were prancing up and
down, ready to charge if anybody so much as sneezed.
On all sides, long, brown fingers were closing around
the triggers of threatening muskets Eaton's life
was not worth one of those Venetian sequins. But
Mr. O'Bannon and Mr. Peck kept their heads,
Harriet's own people gathered around him and im
plored him not to be a fool, and to remember that the

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 85

Americans were his only hope and suddenly it was
all over. Excited nerves were calmed, Harriet dis
persed his Arabs, Eaton distributed some food.
Everybody sat down.

"We have a difficult undertaking !" Eaton wrote
in his journal that evening, with superb reticence.

On April 10, the courier returned from Bomba
with the information that the American ships were
there, and empty stomachs were filled with courage.
For five days they marched, a straggling, famished
band down to their last grains of rice, and on April
15, with "our people scattered throughout all the
plain in search of roots and vegetable substances' to
appease the cravings of hunger," they arrived at
the Bay of Bomba.

There was not an American ship to be seen.

10

Starvation, fury, despair of all the terrible mo
ments in store for the expedition, there was to be
none, perhaps, more dreadful than the evening of
April 15 at Bomba. There was nothing to eat, there
was nothing to drink, the Americans had betrayed
them. Why the Americans in the camp were not
slaughtered on the spot remains a miracle. They
retired to some high ground, away from the Arabs
who were preparing to return into the desert, and
built camp fires. And at dawn the next day, there
was the Argus coming into the Bay, followed soon
after by the Hornet. It was quite true, the American
ships had been there the previous day, but they had
not thought it wise to wait any longer, and only the

86 LIVES AND TIMES

glare of Eaton's camp fires had brought them back-
brought them back just in time, with food, and
water, and supplies.

And with despatches. And if Eaton had not
known before of the Government's intention to
make peace with Tripoli, he knew it now, for there
was a letter for him from Commodore Barron, written
after the receipt by the latter of Eaton's convention
with Hamet. A letter which praised Eaton's cour
age, energy and perseverance, and expressed the
Commodore's " ardent desire" that his most sanguine
expectations might be realized, but which reminded
him that

"You must be sensible, Sir, that in giving their
sanction to a cooperation with the exiled Bashaw,
Government did not contemplate . . . ^to fetter
themselves by any specific or definite attainment as
an end. . . . You may depend upon the most
active and vigorous support from the squadron . . .
but I wish you to understand that no guarantee or
engagement to the exiled Prince, whose cause, I
repeat it, we are only favoring as an instrument to an
attainment and not in itself an object, must be held
to stand in the way of our acquiescence to any
honorable and advantageous terms of accommoda
tion which the present Bashaw may be induced to
propose. . . ."

Aside from that

"the observations which I here convey to you are
far from being intended to cool your zeal or dis
courage your expectations, but they are what I con-

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 87

ceive necessary to make, and drawn from me by the
purest feelings of duty; and as such permit me to
recommend them to your calm and candid considera
tion. . . . Much is dependent on the operation
of circumstances. Hence the impropriety of tying
you down with positive instructions. Many things
must necessarily occur in which your judgment and
discretion alone can be your guide. . . . "

But Eaton's judgment and discretion told him
only one thing, to march the remaining forty odd
miles to Derne and capture it, and after that no one
would dream, surely, of making peace with Yusuf
until Tripoli itself had fallen. And so they marched,
on April 23,' towards the cultivated fields of Derne,
while a herald proclaimed that

" He who fears God and feels attachment to Hamet
Bashaw will be careful to destroy nothing. Let no
one touch the growing harvest. He who trans
gresses this injunction shall lose his right hand."

On April 26, they were ready for their last few
miles, and the Arabs seized their last financial oppor
tunity. To a man, they mutinied and started home,
listening eagerly for the clink of the two thousand
dollars which Eaton finally shook in the ears of their
Sheiks. And then at last, at two o'clock in the
afternoon, they were camped along the hills over
looking Derne. The long march was over. And
in the strongly fortified town the Governor had
eight hundred men, and Yusuf s army was only
three days away* Hamet "wished himself back to
Egypt/' and the Governor of Derne replied, "My

88 LIVES AND TIMES

head or yours !" to Eaton's proposal of surrender.
But the Arabs of that region were coming in from all
sides, until Hamet had nearly two thousand horse
men at his disposal, and, on April 27, the Argus, the
Hornet and the Nautilus arrived off the harbor.

Eaton advanced at once, while the ships were
landing supplies, artillery and marines, and at two
o'clock in the afternoon, under a heavy bombard
ment of the shore batteries by the squadron, the
attack on Derne became general. For a while the
resistance was most effective, but Eaton charged
with his Americans and Greeks and captured the
batteries, in a furious m616e in which he lost fourteen
men and was himself wounded, and then Hamet and
his cavalry came swooping into the town and up to
the Governor's palace. The Governor hid himself
in a harem, from which he subsequently escaped,
and at four o'clock, for the first time in American
history, her fifteen Stars and Stripes were flying
above an old-world fortress.

Derne was captured on to Tripoli!

n

But first there was Yusuf 's army to be disposed of.
Eaton fortified himself, and wrote to Commodore
Barron that it would be unthinkable to make use of
Hamet merely for the purpose of securing a peace,
and, on May 8, the enemy arrived. There followed
days of high talk and mutual bribery, during which
Eaton refrained from accepting any "presents of
pastry, cooking, preserves or fruit" from anyone in
town, and then, on May 13, the Tripolitans attacked

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 89

in force. For six hours the battle raged tip and
down the streets of Derne, while Hamet and his
followers fought with considerable conviction, and
finally, before the steady cannonading from the
ships, the enemy broke for the surrounding hills.

Yusuf 's Arabs were deserting in droves, the Tripoli-
tan army was mutinous and disorganized, Eaton
was begging for money, and men, and supplies with
which to push his advantage and carry the war to
the usurper. The time had come, revolt was
brewing in Tripoli itself, Yusuf was sitting on an
anxious sofa and then Eaton learned from his
Commodore that he had instructed Mr* Lear, the
United States Consul at Algiers, to open peace nego
tiations with Yusuf. Barron, it seemed, was ex
tremely sick his illness became so serious eventually
as to impair his faculties for the time being and
Lear, who possessed great influence over him, had
talked him into it, perhaps; or it may be that certain
naval officers resented the achievements of the un
popular Eaton, that soldier, who, according to one
of them, was winning all the honors of the war. In
any case, Mr. Lear was on his way to Tripoli, and as
for Hamet, the Americans had put him in Derne
and from now on he must manage for himself.

Eaton was furious. It was shameful, he wrote, to
make peace now with Yusuf except at the cannon's
mouth, and it was little short of treachery to have
encouraged Hamet so far Eaton did not, perhaps,
stop to consider how much of that encouragement
had come from himself and then to abandon him
when his usefulness was at an end. And in the

90 LIVES AND TIMES

meantime, the hopeful, unsuspecting Harriet was
careering back and forth with his cavalry, giving
a good account of himself, until, on June 10, he held
his ground for four hours against repeated enemy
charges, in a pitched battle which brought five thou
sand men into the field and resulted in renewed
defeat for the Tripolitans.

And Eaton may have cried with rage, for the very
next day the frigate Constellation was at Derne.
And Derne was to be evacuated at once, by order of
Commodore Rodgers now in command, for peace
had been signed with Yusuf , on June 4. A miserable
peace, providing for a ransom of sixty thousand
dollars for the imprisoned Americans, and a " con
sular present " of six thousand from each new official.
To be sure, the word tribute did not appear in the
document.

There must have been a ghastly moment, such as
it is not required of many men to undergo, while
Eaton realized his helpless responsibility to an entire
province given over to vengeance. He could blame
Lear, and Barron, and the rest of them, but in his
heart he knew that his own rashly promissory en
thusiasm was at fault. And then he stumbled out
into the glaring streets of Derne, and walked with
reluctant feet to the palace for that bitter ordeal,
that personal interview with Hamet whom he had
come to like so well, in spite of his little timidities
and tantrums. Hamet the gentle, whom he had
found that day in Tunis and set upon the road which
was to lead him to a throne, and who must now be
told the shabby truth. Hamet the trustful, who

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 91

had believed some words on a piece of paper in
Eaton's handwriting. It is difficult to say which of
the two men is to be the less envied as the curtains
part to confront them. . . .

12

Hamet, poor soul, does not seem to have com
plained. He was too desperately frightened, and
his one concern was that America should not abandon
his person as well as his cause. He must be allowed
to depart with the Americans Derne might con
ceivably be spared, but there would be no mercy for
him from Yusuf and in the meantime, a show of
continued hostilities must be maintained or other
wise it was more than likely that Eaton and all the
Christians would be massacred.

And so, on June 12, they drilled the troops as
usual, and even issued rations and ammunition as
if for an impending attack and went with calm,
and perhaps smiling faces through the streets of that
town already marked for sacrifice, in the midst of
that host destined to betrayal. And if the long
weeks of the desert march to Derne had been weari
some, the few remaining hours of hypocritical activ
ity within its walls must have contained an eternity
of fatigue.

At eight o'clock in the evening, with as little fuss
as possible, the Constellation's boats came to the
wharf. The artillery, the cannoniers and the Greeks
were embarked "with silence and alacrity, but with
astonishment. " When these were all safely aboard
the frigate, the boats returned for Hamet, who had

92 LIVES AND TIMES

come down from the palace with fifteen chosen fol
lowers ostensibly to attend a conference with Eaton.
Silently, and swiftly, but perhaps with less astonish
ment, they rowed away into the darkness, followed
by the American marines. It was then two o'clock
in the morning. Alone, on the wharf, Eaton was
waiting, the last to leave the doomed city in which
men and women were sleeping quietly under the
Stars and Stripes. And then suddenly the sleeping
city awoke, there was a stirring in the houses, a
panic-stricken running through the streets, a tumult
of voices ringing through the night. The Lord
Hamet the American fighting men Eaton Pacha
where were they, what was happening?

Eaton "stepped into a small boat which I had
retained for the purpose and had just time to save my
distance when the shore, our camp and the battery
were crowded with the distracted soldiery and popu
lace; some calling on the Bashaw, some on me, some
uttering shrieks, some execrations. . . ."

Those poor people. They ransacked the camp,
and during the early hours the Arabs, followed by as
many of the inhabitants as could join them, went
flying to the mountains, taking with them every
animal, every beast of burden in the town. The
next morning, an envoy from Yusuf presented him
self at the gates with a letter of amnesty if those
remaining surrendered; but they rejected it, saying
that they knew the Bashaw's perfidy too well to be
taken in by it, and that they were resolved to "de
fend themselves to the last moment from the terraces
and walls of their houses against his troops."

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 93

And the Constellation was tinder way, taking with
her a Chieftain and his General, and the pick of his
troops, and the curses of an entire populace.

"It is to be hoped," Eaton wrote as the white
houses of Derne dropped astern, "the position they
have taken may terminate in an accommodation
and save the tragedy that menaces them. In a few
minutes more we shall lose sight of this devoted city,
which has experienced as strange a reverse in so
short a time as ever was recorded in the disasters of
war. . . . This moment we drop them from ours
into the hands of their enemy, for no other crime but
too much confidence in us!"

Or in himself, he had, perhaps, better have said.

13

At Syracuse, where the fugitives were put ashore,
Eaton served as Judge Advocate to the court of
inquiry, before Captains Barron, Campbell and
Decatur aboard the Constitution, which exonerated
Captain Bainbridge of all blame for the loss of the
Philadelphia; then, on August 6, he sailed, and ar
rived in Hampton Roads in November.

His name was on every tongue, the President
honored him in his message to Congress, public
dinners were tendered him in all the cities through
which he passed he was the Hero of Derne. Con
gress nearly decreed him a medal, Boston named
a street after the town which he had conquered,
Massachusetts gave him "a tract of land to contain
ten thousand acres of any of the unappropriated

94 LIVES AND TIMES

land of this Commonwealth in the District of Maine,''
half of which he sold three years later at fifty cents
an acre* All this popularity, and the resentment
which he felt against Mr. Lear and Commodore
Barron, led him, however, into excesses of vitupera
tive indiscretion which were not softened by those
other convivial excesses " which afterwards became
almost habitual/' and during which "his egotism,
rashness and authoritative manners, excited disgust
in the minds of many."

And his accounts were not settled. So that, after
a tour of the West in the summer of 1806, he had to
return to Washington for another session of Con
gress. And still his accounts were not settled, per
haps because he talked too much about Mr. Lear
and his peace, or about the Hero of Derne and his
war. And then Colonel Burr was arrested by a
Government which was determined at any cost to
convict him of treason, and on January 26, 1807,
Eaton made his famous affidavit against him in open
court at Washington; an affidavit which could only
have been the product of an alcoholic recollection of
debatable facts. And in February his accounts
were settled. Eaton put on his big hat and his
Turkish sash, and went off to the bar-room of the
Eagle Tavern, at Richmond, to attend the trial
at the close of which Mr. Blennerhassett found that
"the once redoubted Eaton has dwindled down in
the eyes of this sarcastic town into a ridiculous
mountebank, strutting about the streets . . when
he is not tippling in the taverns." He, had only
four years to live. . . .

WILLIAM EATON, HERO 95

And Harriet stayed at Syracuse, with his chosen
fifteen, living on the allowance of two hundred dollars
a month which Commodore Rodgers gave him, and
writing plaintive letters to America until, in 1806,
Congress was moved to appropriate twenty-four
hundred dollars which finally reached him more
than a year later. But he was also writing to Eaton
with whom he remained in friendly communication
until the other's death in 1811, and Eaton, in his
cups or out of them, was not one to forget what
he regarded as the American Government's treach
ery in using Hamet as an "instrument" to obtain
its ends and then casting him aside like an old
shoe.

And so, in 1807, with Eaton clamoring in his be
half in America, and the United States Consul at
Tunis exerting his influence on Yusuf, Harriet's
family was restored to him; in the following year he
was granted a pension by his brother, as a result of
which he took up his residence in Morocco and, in
1809, he was appointed Governor of Derne, which
had, after all, been spared. Governor of Derne,
and perhaps he landed at that same wharf from
which he had fled in the middle of the night four
years before or perhaps he came riding in to the
palace along that street which had echoed to the
charging hoofbeats of his victorious Arab cavalry
and perhaps the inhabitants were pleased to see him
once more. But he did not stay long, for, in 1811,
Yusuf chased him out again he may have tried to
organize another uprising and he retired in haste
to Egypt where, soon after, he died. An ill fated

96 LIVES AND TIMES

personage, who would probably not have made a
good Bashaw. . . .

Of them all, the irrepressible Leitensdorfer was
the most fortunate. For, having gone from Syra
cuse to Salona, where the Turks immediately seized
him as an apostate and put him in chains, he finally
secured his freedom from them and withdrew to
Palermo. There, temporarily, he married a third
wife, and then he took ship to America, and landed
at Salem, in December, 1809. With letters from
Eaton to the authorities at Washington, he sought
employment from the Government, and served as
a map maker, and also as a night watchman at the
Capitol, until the Senate graciously awarded him a
year's pay as a captain in the United States Army,
and a half section of land.

And Congress would have increased the grant to a
whole section, but the Senate, mindful of its recent
munificence to Hamet, and sternly conscious of its
proper obligations, refused to be carried away by
any sentimental promptings of extravagance, and
stood firm for the half section. And to Leitens
dorfer it very probably seemed that half a section
of land in America was better than none at all in
Tripoli. . . *

Ill

Th.eod.osia. Burr, Prodigy

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY

ON November 25, 1783, at one o'clock in the
afternoon, the British troops at New York left their
posts in the Bowery Lane and retired to their ships;
stopping on the way, however, to grease the flagpole
from which they had removed the halliards, so as
to give General Washington and his entering Amer
icans as much trouble as possible in hoisting their
precious Stars and Stripes. It was Evacuation
Day, and in the crowds on Broadway there may
have been a baby, an infant of six months a little
girl called Theodosia Burr.

At any rate, her father and mother are almost
certain to have been in the welcoming throng. The
Burrs had only just come to New York, into Mr*
Verplanck's house on Wall Street, before moving
into a house on Maiden Lane for which they were
paying two hundred pounds a year; from Albany,
where the little girl had been born, on June 20, and
where Colonel Burr had taken his bride after their
marriage at Paramus, New Jersey, in July of the
previous year. His wife was the widow of a Brit
ish officer, Colonel Prevost and there were those

99

ioo LIVES AND TIMES

who looked askance at Colonel Burr for such an
unpatriotic choice and she had been Miss Theo-
dosia Bartow, of Shrewsbury, New Jersey. At the
time of her marriage to Colonel Burr she had two
nearly grown sons, she was a good ten years his
senior, she was not beautiful she was, in fact,
slightly disfigured and she brought him no mate
rial fortune.

But in the estimation of her almost fanatically
studious, polished and critical husband, she brought
him something infinitely more worth while. For,
in that age of general feminine mental vacuity, she
shared with Mrs. John Adams, and not many
others, a reputation for unusual brilliancy of mind
and elegance of manners. She was widely read in
philosophy and literature, she was a careful student
of Chesterfield, Rousseau and Voltaire, she loved
pictures and books. And Colonel Burr loved her, as
he explained, because she had the truest heart, the
ripest intellect and the most winning and graceful
manners of any woman he had ever met and the
Colonel had met quite a few.

They moved, in 1785, to an elegant house on the
corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets, famous for its
beautiful garden and grapery, where they lived in
considerable ease with a retinue of servants one
of whom, a certain Hannah, seems to have been
unusually partial to the liquid products of the
grapery. Colonel Burr, with Mr. Hamilton, was
one of the leaders of the New York Bar, and already
a member of the Legislature; the two Prevost step
sons, in whose welfare he always took the liveliest

THEODOSIA BURR

By St. Memin

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 101

interest, worked in his office; the entire household
was devoted to its fascinating master, that diminu
tive man, with the large head and the splendidly
flashing black eyes; life passed very prosperously
and pleasantly for the little family except for
the fact that the Colonel's activities at Albany and
elsewhere kept him so much away from home.

They all regretted these long absences, Mrs.
Burr, her two sons, little Theodosia; and that
other little girl, the mysterious, sickly Sally, con
cerning whom there has always been so much un
necessary speculation.

For while it has always been said that except
for two boys who died at birth Theodosia was the
only child of that marriage, still, the Burrs' letters
of 1785, 1786 and 1787 contain many references to
"our dear Sally," and to "our children" and "the
girls," and in 1787, Mrs. Burr was writing to her
husband that -

"Our two pledges have . . . been awake all
evening. I have the youngest in my arms. Our
sweet prattler exclaims at every noise, ' There's dear
Papa,' and runs to meet him."

The sweet prattler was Theodosia, aged four, who
already gave evidence of an attachment to her
father which was "not of a common nature," so
that she could not hear him mentioned when ab
sent "without an apparent melancholy." The
youngest in Mrs. Burr's arms was undoubtedly
Sally; a younger sister of Theodosia, who lived for

102 LIVES AND TIMES

a few years and then passed out of the family's
correspondence.

"We have lost our youngest child, our Sally a
beautiful, lovely Baby/' Colonel Burr wrote to his
sister, Mrs. Reeve, on October 12, presumably of
1788 although, as quoted in Mr. Todd's General
History of the Burr Family, the letter is dated 1786,
no doubt as the result of a typographical error,
since in 1787 Sally was still alive.

As for the two engravings by Mr. St.-Memin
both of them frequently assumed to represent Theo-
dosia, although there is little, if any, resemblance
between them that of 1797 was labeled by the
artist "Miss S. Burr/' whereas that of 1796 was
marked by him "Miss Theodosia Burr." But it
does not necessarily follow in fact, the date, and
the evident age of the person portrayed, make it
impossible that the "Miss S. Burr" of 1797 was
Theodosia's sister; for there were many Burrs, and
among them many Sallys, and this one is much more
likely to have been a cousin.

At the age of three, Theo, as they called her or
Miss Prissy was already the pet of the family;
by the time she was! ten, she had turned into a small,
plump little girl, very beautiful, and not very
strong. She adored her father and her big half
brother Frederick; she hated cats, but had a fatal
fondness for green apples; she was lazy, and full
of pranks and fibs/ She was quite hopeless at
Arithmetic, she ran away as often as possible from

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 103

her practicing at the piano forte, she spelled in a
manner not sanctioned by Mr. Cheever's Accidence
or Mr. Webster's blue backed American Institute;
she was not particularly thrilled, probably, by the
piece about "The Child trained up for the Gallows/'
in Mr. Bingham's American Preceptor, or by the
uninspiring statement that "The Bee is a noble
Pattern of Industry and Prudence." She was,
fortunately for her, a perfectly normal, impulsive
little girl.

Fortunately, because she was the child of Aaron
Burr; a man, descended from severe dominies and
schoolmasters, himself a mental prodigy in early
youth, and now possessed of an insatiable mania for
the inculcation of learning. A relentless taskmaster
with a passion for instruction, who seized upon his
daughter and made of her a living experiment in
advanced pedagogy. A stoic, too, abstemious and
unemotional, who practiced fortitude and auster
ity, and subjected his daughter to a vigorous dis
cipline of self control and routine causing her,
at a tender age, to sleep alone, and walk in the
dark through empty portions of the house in order
to dispel her childish fears; and restraining her to
the simplest breakfast of bread and milk, instead of
the customary hung beef, and creamy cheese, and
hot bread soaked in butter.

And when it came to Theo's education, Colonel
Burr was greatly influenced by his reading of Mary
Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women,
and determined that his daughter should be treated
intellectually as though she had been a boy. At all

104 LIVES AND TIMES

costs she must not grow up a mere fashionable woman
of society; he would rather that she died forthwith,
and he hoped "by her to convince the world what
neither sex appears to believe, that women have
souls."

And so, in order to demonstrate this interesting
theory, there came to Theo a host of tutors "and pre
ceptors Mr. Chevalier, Mr. de St. Aivre, who could
not find a fiddler because even his furniture had
been seized by the sheriff, Mr. Martell, Mr. Gurney,
Mr. Hewlett, Mr. Leshlie to teach her to dance,
and to skate, and to play the harpsichord and the
piano forte on an elegant instrument purchased
at Philadelphia for thirty-three guineas and to
instruct her in French, in German, in Latin, in
Greek, in Philosophy and all the kindred Arts, as
well as in the humbler fundamentals of reading,
and writing, and the troublesome " ciphering. "
In vain, even Mrs. Burr protested, when Theo was
eight, that she could make no progress while she
had so many " avocations " Colonel Burr replied
that two or three hours a day at French and arith
metic would not injure her; and during the follow
ing summer, at Pelham, the child was ciphering
"from five in the morning until eight, and also the
same hours in the evening/' while her father found
it difficult, because she read so much and so rapidly,
to provide proper and amusing French books for
her "an intelligent, well informed girl nine years
old."

In the midst of his own arduous duties at Albany,
and later at Philadelphia in the United States Sen-

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 105

ate, one can only admire Colonel Burr's ceaseless
concern in Theo's progress, in every detail of her
upbringing, in every moment of her daily life; his
meticulous guidance and criticism of her reading,
her studies, her deportment, her journal, her spell
ing, her handwriting every breath that she drew.
But when all is said and done, there is something
rather horrifying, surely, in the spectacle of that
little girl, who, at the close of her tenth year, was
reading Horace, Terence and Lucian, studying
Gibbon and the Greek grammar, speaking German
and French, playing the piano forte and the harp,
and learning to ride, to skate, and to dance.

When did she find time to make mud pies, to
play with her dolls, to hop about on one foot, to
shout, and dirty her face, and tear her clothes?
Was she ever allowed to do any of these pleasant
and necessary things?

In the spring of 1794, after a long, weary illness,
Mrs. Burr died, of cancer. Father and daughter
were drawn even more closely together in spite of
his enforced, continued absences, mitigated by an
almost constant correspondence in which the solici
tous, and often critical and even fretful, attitude
of the parent was never for a moment relaxed.
Colonel Burr was never satisfied; the child's letters
were never long enough, they never came often
enough, they were frequently not attentive enough
to his interminable catechisms. One may read into
his own epistles a father's desperate anxiety and care

106 LIVES AND TIMES

for an only, motherless daughter or one may sud
denly receive the disturbing impression of a cold,
almost inhuman personality forever anticipating the
success of an experiment which had become an
obsession, and probing impatiently into its pathetic
little shortcomings and failures. Had she done this,
had she read that, could the next Latin lesson not be
increased, did she realize that her last letter had
not been fit to show to anyone. In one case, to be
sure, her letter had- been splendid, and he had ex
hibited it with enormous satisfaction, after chang
ing a misspelled word an extremely significant con
fession, perhaps. Far more than his mere flesh and
blood, she was the creation of his spirit, the product
of his mind in which he took so great a pride, the
apotheosis of his intellect. Fortunately, again, for
her, she adored him.

Theo was in her twelfth year, and now, in addi
tion to her accumulating studies, she was become
mistress of her father's home. The new city house
on Partition Street, in 1795, and, later, the estate
and mansion of Richmond Hill. To assist her, be
sides a corps of [servitors, she had the ancient
and faithful Peggy, and the impeccable Alexis; and
she had Madame de Senet, who also taught the
harp, and the latter's protegee, Natalie de Delage de
Volade & little French girl whose family had been
scattered by the revolutionary disaster to the house
hold of the Princesse de Lamballe, and who was
taken into the Burr establishment as a playmate for
Theo.

Colonel Burr's hospitality was renowned; his

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 107

library, filled with the works of Mr. Godwin, Mr.
Jeremy Bentham and Miss Burnet, was a noted
one; the tall candelabra on rollers shone on the pic
tures of Mr. West and Mr. Copley, on Wedgwood
china, and on much fine silver and cut 'glass. Fond
as he was, especially, of French society, he gath
ered around him all that polished, distinguished
circle of French emigres, fugitives in America from
the upheavals in France. At one time or another,
such men as Talleyrand, Louis Philippe, Volney,
Jerome Bonaparte, passed through his drawing
rooms, along with Hamilton, and Jefferson, and
many of the most notable American figures of the
day. And always at the head of the table, doing
the honors for those great ones with a dignity and
charm which enthralled them, sat the little girl with
the long curly hair cut in a bang across the forehead,
just above the flashing black eyes.

Sometimes, indeed, she entertained in her father's
absence, and even more important visitors. In
1797, for instance, when a letter of introduction
from Colonel Burr presented to her the celebrated
Joseph Brant, with the request that she receive him
with respect and hospitality, since he was not "one
of those Indians who drink rum/' but quite a gentle
man. Fourteen year old Theo was quite perplexed,
and in particular regarding the nature of the repast
which must be prepared, as she had always supposed
that " savages" were cannibals; but she ended by
inviting fourteen gentlemen of renown, including
Dr. Hosack and the Bishop of New York, to dine in,
state with Thayendanegea, Captain of the Six

108 LIVES AND TIMES

Nations and Chief v of the Mohawks who came,
all six feet of him, one hopes, in full feather, and
behaved like "a most Christian and civilized guest."

It was in 1797, too, that Theo began to spend her
summers at Richmond Hill, the mansion in which
Colonel Burr had once served under General Wash-
inton, and which he had purchased a few years
before. A large, rambling, wooden house facing the
Hudson, situated on a prominent crest some two
miles from the city between Lispenard's Meadows
and the Minetta Brook at Greenwich, surrounded
by extensive grounds and lawns reaching all the
way to the river. A stately mansion, with its lofty
chambers- and beautiful mahogany staircases, raising
its graceful portico of Ionic columns against a
background of splendid oaks and cedars. A mansion
built in 1760 by Major Abraham Mortier, a great
friend of Lord Geoffrey Amherst, with a long tradi
tion of elegant hospitality within its walls; in his
time, and in that of Mrs. John Adams, who occu
pied it in 1789, and found it set in the midst of ven
erable trees and fields variegated with grass and
grain, at an agreeable distance from "the noble
Hudson bearing upon its bosom the fruitful produc
tions of the adjacent country, " and enlivened by the
serenading of countless birds.

Colonel Burr had always loved the place; he
spent money on it extravagantly now, putting up
gateways, enlarging the building, planting trees and
shrubs, and widening the brook into a lake which
the villagers called Burr's Pond. And Theo loved
it too, managing her maids, and grooms and foot-

JOSEPH BRANT

From the London Magazine, July. 1776

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 109

men, whom she paid as much as ten dollars a month
to polish the hoofs of the carriage horses, and scrub
their teeth, and treat their coats with paste of whit
ing; rejoicing in her gardens filled with hollyhocks,
snowballs, tulips and Jerusalem cherries; and de
lighting in the lovely, peaceful countryside through
which she went galloping, terrifying the rustics with
her daring leaps and breakneck habits.

Theo was fourteen, plump, petite, rosy cheeked;
with all of her father's grace, and repose, and curi
ous delicacy of countenance, very self assured and
positive. She was a finished Latin, Greek and
German scholar; she was reading two hundred
lines a day of Homer, and was translating French
comedies and English political treatises; she was
familiar with all the economic and philosophical
writers of the time. She was known throughout the
island, and at Albany and Philadelphia, for her dig
nity and charm, and for her astounding precocity,
and envied by many older belles for her fortune and
popularity. And yet one has a picture of a rather
lonely little .girl, striving breathlessly to keep pace
with her father's fantastic standards, perplexed
and unhappy sometimes, so that he was obliged to
write to her in one of his more tolerant moods that

"You must not 'puzzle all day/ my dear little

girl, at one hard lesson. After puzzling faithfully

for one hour, apply to your arithmetic, and do enough

to convince the Doctor that you have not been idle."

no LIVES AND TIMES

And the father's admonitions never ceased. If
she should dine at Mrs. Penn's, "I will apprise you,"
he told her, "of one circumstance by a trifling at
tention to which you may elevate yourself in her
esteem. She is a very great advocate for a very
plain, rather abstemious diet in children. ... Be
careful, therefore, to eat of but one dish, that a
plain roast or boiled, little or no gravy or butter,
and very sparingly of dessert or fruit; not more than
half a glass of wine. ... If they ask a reason,
Papa thinks it is not good for me is the best."

Theo was become his most cherished companion
and counselor. In the political campaign of 1800
when Mr. Hamilton rode in vain on his white horse
from precinct to precinct trying to stem the tide
which was sweeping Mr. Jefferson and Colonel Burr
into the presidential nomination Theo was in the
thick of the conferences between her father and
his corps of young Tammany henchmen from the
^"Pig Pen" Tavern, the "myrmidons" of Federal
ist scorn, whom she proudly called the Tenth Legion.
"The happiness of my life," he assured her, "de
pends upon your exertions, for what else, for whom
else do I live?" And he continued to mould her to
his will her habits, her occupations, even her
features

"There is nothing more certain than that you
may form what countenance you please. An open,
serene, intelligent countenance, a little brightened
by cheerfulness, not wrought into smiles or simpers,
will presently become familiar and grow into habit.
A year will certainly accomplish it. Your physiog-

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY in

nomy has naturally much of benevolence, and it will
cost you much labor which you may well spare to
eradicate it. Avoid ... a smile or sneer of con
tempt. ... A frown of sullenness or discontent
is but one degree less hateful/ 1

Theo was seventeen, and there were many suitors,
even without the ones which legend has ascribed to
her -Washington Irving, for instance, whom it is
doubtful if she ever knew personally; and John
Vanderlyn, the country boy whom the Colonel
befriended, with whom Theo is sometimes said to
have been in love, although she was only twelve
when he left the United States, not to return until
after her marriage when he painted the famous por
trait of her which he considered his best work in
America; and a son, whose identity is not revealed,
of one of the great Republican families in the state,
with which Colonel Burr is reported to have sought
such an alliance for political purposes.

Many suitors, probably, until young Mr. Joseph
Alston, of South Carolina, came through New York
during the summer of 1800, and after that there was
no time for other suitors. He was the son of Colonel
William Alston, one of the foremost planters and
slave owners in his state; a very fine young man,
twenty-two years of age, talented and extremely
popular; already a member of the Bar, a great trav
eler and something of a poet; and the possessor of a
large estate, The Oaks, inherited from his grand
father, on the Waccamaw River, in All Saints*

H2 LIVES AND TIMES

Parish, Georgetown County. A very fervent, elo
quent young man with his soft Carolinian speech,
from that South which seemed so far away, who fell
head over heels in love with Theo and then wrote
her long philosophical dissertations about it, filled
with classical allusions and the restrained periods of
a graceful rhetoric.

For Theo did not want to marry him, oh no, Mr,
Alston; she had a sincere friendship for him, and
that was all. Charleston, she had heard, was full of
plague and excessively hot, resounding with "the
yells of whipped negroes, " and its gentlemen were
absorbed in hunting and gaming while the ladies
had nothing to do except "come together in large
parties, sip tea and look prim." And when Mr. Al
ston had a long answer for that, Theo reminded him
that Aristotle had said that no man should marry
before he was thirty. But Mr. Alston was not inter
ested in Aristotle.

"Hear me, Miss Burr," he begged her, at the start
of a veritable brief on the subject. "Suppose
(merely for instance) a young man nearly two and
twenty, already of the greatest discretion, with an
ample fortune, were to be passionately in love with
a young lady about eighteen, equally discreet with
himself, and who had a 'sincere friendship' for him
do you think it would be necessary to make him
wait till thirty? Particularly where friends on both
sides were pleased with the match? "

No, Miss Burr did not really think so; already
before receiving his letter she had written "to tell
you that I shall be happy to see you whenever you

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 113

choose; that, I suppose, is equivalent to very soon.
. . . My father laughs at my impatience to hear
from you, and says I am in love. ... I had in
tended not to marry this twelvemonth . . . but to
your solicitations I yield my judgment."

They were married at Albany, where Colonel
Burr was busy in the Legislature, on February 2,
1801.

They spent a week at Albany, and then went to
New York alone, to dear Richmond Hill, for a few
days; and then to Baltimore, where they met
Colonel Burr and accompanied him to Washington
City, that village in a wilderness, to see him inaug
urated, as Vice President of the United States, on
March 4.

And it was only by a few votes that he was not
to be President, actually, in place of Mr. JeSerson
with whom he had been tied as a result of the elec
tion. While the honeymooners had been at Rich
mond Hill and while thousands of people come
from all over the country were sleeping fifty in a
room on the floors of Washington taverns, and
standing in crowds in front of Conrad's boarding
house on Capitol Hill to catch a glimpse of Mr.
Jefferson, the "Mammoth of Democracy" Con
gress had been trying to break the deadlock. With
Mr. Nicholson of Maryland brought in his sickbed
to be present, and with the defeated Federalists
obstructing every move, the balloting began, on
February 1 1 . Nineteen ballots that day, and it was
midnight and Congressmen in nightcaps were snor
ing all over the chamber; nine more ballots through-

114 LIVES AND TIMES

out the night, and they adjourned until Friday,
took one ballot at noon, and adjourned again until
Saturday. On that day, after four more ballots,
they adjourned until Monday.

Outside, in the streets, the crowds were stirred by
outlandish rumors. Mr. Jefferson would be elected
by force; the people of Philadelphia had risen in
arms and were marching on Washington. Hours of
anxious waiting found their outlet in noisy proces
sions singing for Jefferson and Liberty

"Calumny and falsehood in vain raise their voice
To blast our Republican's fair reputation,
But Jefferson still is America's choice,
And he will her liberties guard from invasion . . . "

On Monday, February 16, the thirty-fourth and
fifth ballots were taken, and then something hap
pened. Colonel Burr had refused to pledge him
self to certain Federalist measures, Mr. Jefferson had
signified his willingness. On the thirty-sixth ballot,
Maryland, Vermont and Delaware changed their
votes, and Mr. Jefferson was elected. As Mr. Bay
ard of Delaware wrote to Mr. Hamilton

"I was enabled soon to perceive that he" Colonel
Burr "was determined not to shackle himself with
Federal principles. . . . The means existed of elect
ing Burr, but this required his cooperation: by de
ceiving one man (a great blockhead) and tempting
two (not incorrupt) he might have secured the
majority of the states."

The Vice President elect, therefore, and the
Alstons arrived at Washington in an uproar of bon-

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 115

fires and public jubilations, in the midst of which
the Federalists were dolefully proclaiming that the
Moon of Democracy was arisen, and that the Eagle
of Freedom was now replaced by the Owl. And,
in another great din of guns and bells, Theo saw
her beloved father take his place as the Second
Gentleman in the Land, and watched him escort
Mr. Jefferson to his chair, in the presence of the
Chief Justice of the United States, Mr. John Mar
shall a prophetic juxtaposition which was to have its
sequel six years later in a courthouse at Richmond.

And then the Alstons went on South; for once, it
was Theo who had gone away on a journey, and
Colonel Burr wrote from New York that it was
dreary, solitary, comfortless and no longer home
without her; and Theo wrote back and advised
him to marry again, which he did, finally, in his
seventies. . . .

There followed some happy months for Theo. She
adored her husband, without for a moment forgetting
her father, and while she was always to prefer north
ern scenes, still, " where you are, there is my country,
and in you are centered all my wishes/' She was
very busy setting in order her two Waccamaw plan
tations, Hagley and The Oaks, and the summer home
on Debordieu Island, and sending to New York for
furniture, and apples, a cook one wonders why,
in Carolina and a chambermaid who came, in time,
with Colonel Burr's recommendation, "a good, steady
looking animal aged twenty-three."

Ii6 LIVES AND TIMES

She was received with open arms in lovely Charles
ton, when she came there for Race Week and the
Saint Cecilia Balls, to the Alston residence on King
Street; and one imagines her driving in the cool of
the evening on the Battery; as the youngest bride
present, it may be, at her first Saint Cecilia, com
ing down to supper on the arm of the President;
visiting in those serene Charleston mansions which
turned their shoulders so diffidently to the world,
preserving for their inmates the dignity of their
columned piazzas and the scented shade of their
precious gardens filled with jessamine, and roses,
and azaleas; sitting, perhaps, of a fragrant Sunday
morning, in the family pew at St. Michael's or St.
Philip's, or possibly out in the country, at St.
Andrew's parish church or at St. James, Goosecreek,
among the pines.

In the summer when she was not at the island, she
traveled, to the mountains and at the North, some
times without her husband. To Niagara and Grand
River, where she called upon the Chief of the Mo
hawks, who entertained her royally in his turn
and gave her gifts of moccasins; to Saratoga, to
Ballston Spa, into New England, and, of course, to
Richmond Hill. And once, in the spring of 1802,
the Vice President went South, and visited her at
The Oaks; a memorable occasion, no doubt, fraught
with considerable ceremonious festivity.

"My father, the Vice President of the United
States . . ."

And constantly, in between times, Colonel Burr
wrote to her as he had always done, advising, sug-

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 117

gesting, insisting, criticizing, complaining, as though
she had been a little girl still, and not a young mar
ried lady with her own troubles. She must not
suffer any operation to be performed upon her
teeth. She must walk a great deal, even without
her husband, and, if necessary, "to be in form/'
with ten negroes at her heels; she must, for this
purpose, provide herself with a stout pair of over
shoes, and the kind that came up to the ankle bone
with one button to keep them on would be best,
and would she write to say that she had done so.
There is something rather ludicrous in all this pother
of details, but the Colonel was bound to have his
nose at every crack, and that was not all

"The ladies of Philadelphia," he told her in
December, 1801, "unite in the opinion that the
' energies of the men ought to be principally employed
in the multiplication of the human race/ and in
this they promise an ardent and active cooperation.
... I hope the fair of your state will equally
testify their applause of this sentiment, and I en
join it on you to manifest your patriotism . . ,
in the manner indicated/'

As a matter of fact, the boy, Aaron Burr Alston,
was born in May, 1802; a "sweet little rascal/'
whom they took to calling "Mammy's treasure"
and "the Vice President."

Theo went North with him, almost at once, to
stay five months during which she wrote to Mr. Al
ston "Ah, my husband, why are we separated.
. . . When will the month of October come . . .
it appears to be a century off"; and in 1803 again,

n8 LIVES AND TIMES

this time accompanied by her husband, she had the
boy at his grandfather's. And the Colonel was
delighted with him, and called him "Gampy,"
because of his baby pronunciation of the word
Grandpa a word which, in the little fellow's mind,
seems always to have meant Grandpa Burr, whom
he adored, and not Grandpa Alston, who may or may
not have resented the fact. And because Colonel
Burr was utterly unable to keep his hands off any
potential pupil who came within his grasp, and
because his dictatorial mania, especially in matters
of education, had if anything increased, one finds
him writing, in 1804 when the child was only nine
teen months old

"I am sure he may now be taught his letters,
and then put a pen into his hands and set him to
imitate them. He may read and write before he is
three years old. This, with speaking French, would
make him a tolerably accomplished lad of that
age, and worthy of his blood."

The Edwards, Burr blood, of course. And a few
months later, when "Gampy" was barely two, after
the Colonel had calmly ordered the mother to trans
late the Constitution into French for him, he was
reminding her that if she were

"quite mistress of natural philosophy, he" the
boy "would now be acquiring a knowledge of
various branches, particularly natural history, bot
any and chymistry. . . . Pray take in hand/'
he advised her, "some book which requires atten
tion and study. You will, I fear, lose the habit of

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 119

study which, would be a greater misfortune than to
lose your head."

. One begins to wonder whether, for his part, the
Colonel had not lost his mind in certain respects;
and as Mr. Blennerhassett was inclined, later, to
believe, and Mr. Cowles Meade to be convinced
whether he was not actually slightly ''deranged*"

And this sinister aspect of Colonel Burr becomes
more impressive when one realizes that Theo was,
at the time, an extremely sick young woman. The
birth of the boy had left her very weak "if Heaven
grants him but to live, I shall never repent what he
has cost me," she told her husband. Already in
1802, she was suffering from nervous depression,
and a general apathy from which she could only
with difficulty be aroused. Saratoga and Ballston
Spa did her no lasting good, her long journeys ex
hausted her, and in the spring of 1803 she was really
desperately ill. Only the occasional "delightful
confusion" of some domestic "bustle" seemed
capable of giving "a circulation to the blood, an
activity to the mind, and a spring to the spirits."
She absorbed quantities of mercury, and, at the age
of nineteen, wrote pitifully to Mr. Alston that

"I have now abandoned all hope of recovery.
. . . You . . . must summon up your fortitude
to bear with a sick wife the rest of her life. At
present my general health is very good, indeed my
appearance so perfectly announces it that physi-

120 LIVES AND TIMES

cians smile at the idea of my being an invalid. The
great misf ortttne of this complaint is that one may
vegetate forty years in a sort of middle state between
life and death. . . ."

So that the news, in July, 1804, that her father
had quarreled with Mr. Hamilton over some exceed
ingly insulting letters, called him out and shot
him, found her in a distressing condition.

"Oh Burr, oh Burr!" they were singing at New
York

"What hast thou done?
Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton !
You hid behind a bunch of thistle,
And shooted him dead with a great hoss pistol!'*

The Vice President of the United States was
practically a fugitive from justice, a coroner's jury
had returned a charge of murder against him al
though for just what reason, in that duelling age, is
not so clear and Theo was in a panic of apprehen
sion, and, possibly, reproach, for he wrote her not to
let him have "the idea that you are dissatisfied with
me a moment. I can't just now endure it. At an
other time you may play the Juno, if you please. "

At all events, his "dearest Theodosia" to whom
he was "indebted for a very great portion of the
happiness which I have enjoyed in this life/' and
who had "completely satisfied all that my heart
and affections had hoped or even wished" was
extremely depressed and feeble during the whole
of that summer, a part of which he spent in St.
Simon's Sound and in the Floridas; so that her

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 121

husband was not able to put into effect those recom
mendations which the Colonel had addressed to him
on the night before the duel, in that amazing letter
in which he still found time to entreat him to

" . . . stimulate and aid Theodosia in the cul
tivation of her mind. It is indispensable to her hap
piness and essential to yours. It is also of the ut
most importance to your son. She would presently
acquire a critical knowledge of Latin, English, and
all branches of natural philosophy. All this would
be poured into your son. If you should differ with
me as to the importance of this measure " -and the
suggestion is, no doubt, significant of some previ
ous resentment on the father's part of the father-in-
law's interferences -"suffer me to ask it of you
as a last favor."

The Vice President resigned, after reminding the
weeping Senators that "this House is a sanctuary,
a citadel of law, of order and liberty," in which,
if anywhere, resistance would be made "to the
storms of political frenzy and the silent arts of cor
ruption." During that summer of 1805, *& which
Theo was again so sick and despondent, he trav
eled extensively in the West and in the South, con
versing with many people on a variety of extraordi
nary subjects. And in the course of his journey he
came to Blennerhassett's Island. In the following
year he returned there, with Mr. and Mrs. Alston
and the boy.

8

It was an island in the Ohio River, at the mouth
of the Little Kenawha, a "solitary island" turned

122 LIVES AND TIMES

into a "terrestrial paradise" of lawns and shrubs,
pastures, fruit and vegetable gardens, surrounding
a white, two storied house with curving wings,
which had cost its owner thirty thousand dollars.
His name was Harman Blennerhassett; an Irish
man who had come to America with the " tender
partner of his bosom " and two children, and a large
fortune; a man "whose soul is accustomed to toil in
the depths of science and to repose beneath the
bowers of literature, whose ear is formed to the har
mony of sound, and whose touch and breath daily
awaken it from a variety of melodious instruments/'
Peace, tranquillity and innocence so, moreover,
Mr. Wirt was subsequently to declaim shed their
mingled delights around him. And in the midst of
it all, "this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of
the heart/' came Colonel Burr and the Alstons. ""

And in a short while, according to Mr, Wirt, the
whole scene was changed. Mr. Blennerhassett's
shrubbery breathed its fragrance upon the air in
vain, he liked it not; his ear no longer drank the
rich melody of music, he preferred the clangor of
trumpets; even "the prattle of his babes" and "the
angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his
bosom with ecstasy so unspeakable," left him un
moved. So it was to appear to Mr. Wirt, summing
up, at the time, for the prosecution, in the case of
the Federal Government against Aaron Burr.

Actually, it is difficult, even today, to determine
exactly what took place. It is not feasible, certainly,
in these pages to reconstruct more than the mere
outline of the castle in Spain which Colonel Burr

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 123

erected upon the deluded hopes of his fascinated
followers, and of his own possibly disordered imag
ination. There had, probably, been talk of a sep
aration from the Union of the western states no
very terrible matter at a time when the whole of
New England was roaring for a Northern Confed
eracy bounded by the Delaware, under the ad
mitted leadership of a former Secretary of State
but this project had already been abandoned.
There was a scheme, too, for the colonization of the
Washita lands in Louisiana, that fabulous region,
reputed to be full of salt mountains and giants,
which Mr. Jefferson had recently purchased for
fifteen million dollars enough dollars, as they said,
to make a pile three miles high. And then, in the
event of war between America and Spain, there was
to be an expedition into Mexico.

They were counting on that war just as some
forty years later, in California, Mr. Fremont was
to count on a war with Mexico and not be disap
pointed, so that he became a hero as a result of his
escapade and not a public criminal. And in 1806,
war with Spain seemed inevitable; many high Fed
eral officials predicted it, Mr. Jefferson, apparently,
wanted it -until Napoleon informed him that France
would stand against him; but as late as 1807 he was
still writing to his Minister at Madrid "we expect
. . . from the friendship of the emperor that he
will either compel Spain to do us justice or abandon
her to us. We ask but one month to be in . . .
the City of Mexico/' It is a question, indeed,
whether the President was not quite aware of the

I2 4 LIVES AND TIMES

intended expedition, and in favor of it; at all events,
he had certainly been sounding out Louisiana and the
Floridas as to their attitude in the event of hostilities.

And so they were preparing their floating ex
pedition, and planning, perhaps, to seize New Or
leans; and dreaming an extraordinary dream in which
Colonel Burr was to be Emperor of Mexico, and his
grandson Heir to the Throne, his daughter Chief
Lady of the Court, and her husband Head of the
Nobility; there was to be untold wealth, the fabled
treasure of the Aztecs, mines of silver and gold;
and Mr. Blennerhassett was to be Ambassador to
England, and Commodore Truxton, possibly, Ad
miral of the Navy, and General Wilkinson Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army a sorry figure, the
latter, a former leader of the Kentucky Secession
movement, and now on the payroll of Spain while
in command of the military forces of the United
States, a fact which Emperor Aaron I would have
done well to have ascertained. A gentleman of
scattered and expensive loyalties.

Colonel Burr talked and Theo smiled; Mr. Alston
gave his security for the fifty thousand dollars which
Mr. Blennerhassett subscribed. Proclamations were
issued, secret ciphers were concocted, and many fra
gile promises made. The Spanish Ambassador prob
ably smiled up his sleeve. The Alstons went home
to await the " clangor of trumpets/'

And then General Wilkinson decided to wash his
grimy hands in Spanish gold dust. He forwarded
to Mr. Jefferson, with other heroic communications
of his own, an incriminating letter purporting to

THEODOSIA BURR ALSTON

By Vanderlyn

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 125

have been received from Colonel Burr although
many people, including Senator Plumer, were of
the opinion that there was in it "more of WilHn-
sonism than of Burrism," especially since the Colonel
was noted for his epistolary reticence in which
there was reference to a "host of choice spirits,"
among them Wilkinson himself, and to the depar
ture of Colonel Burr, "never to return/' accompan
ied by his daughter and grandson, and to be followed
by his son-in-law, in October, "with a corps of
worthies." Whereupon General Wilkinson began to
arrest people right and left, and sent an emissary
to the Viceroy of Mexico with a modest request for
two hundred thousand dollars, to defray his "great
pecuniary sacrifices in defeating Burr's plans" and
throwing himself, " Leonidas-like, in the Pass of
Thermopylae"; a request which the Viceroy rejected
with considerable asperity.

Mr. Jefferson who freely admitted the prac
ticability of Colonel Burr's venture against Spain,
but was now cautiously giving heed to Napoleon's
warnings, so that the projected expedition was
become, perhaps, an awkward bedfellow read the
letter with great interest. He also listened to many
reported rumors, and, with fascinated attention,
to such fantastic affidavits as that of "General"
William Eaton a gentleman who had recently
conducted an expedition of his own in Tripoli in
which that worthy stated that Colonel Burr had
expressed to him the intention of turning Congress
neck and heels out of doors, assassinating the Pres
ident, seizing the Treasury and the Navy, and de-

126 LIVES AND TIMES

claring himself protector of America. A program,
Mr. Beveridge points out, which could only have
been conceived at a time when " General" Eaton
and Colonel Burr who seldom touched spirituous
liquors were both gloriously drunk.

In any case, Mr. Jefferson laid the whole mat
ter before Congress, in a Message which startled
that body and terrified the nation into a panic of
hysterical rage. Colonel Burr had committed treason,
Colonel Burr had planned to overthrow the Govern
ment, Colonel Burr had led an expedition against
the United States. There had been a "battle."
Colonel Burr's guilt, Mr. Jefferson imprudently in
formed the world, was "placed beyond question"
a pronouncement which drew from Mr. John Adams
the observation that if Colonel Burr's guilt was "as
clear as the Noonday Stan, the First Magistrate
ought not to have pronounced it so before a jury
had tried him."

The first thing the Alstons knew, Colonel Burr had
been arrested, on February 19, 1807, an d was being
taken to Richmond. Theo was in a fury of despair.
Some of her letters, the Colonel told her, indicated
"a sort of stupor"; she must "come back to rea
son"; she must "amuse" herself collecting in
stances of virtuous men subjected to "vindictive and
relentless persecution," and write him an essay with
"reflections, comments and applications." Mr.
Alston, for his part, was not writing any essays;
he was writing to Governor Pinckney of South
Carolina, and exonerating himself as rapidly as pos
sible of any connection with Colonel Burr's infam-

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 127

ies, of which, the Governor might rest assured, Mr.
Alston had had no suspicion. His wife and child
had not accompanied Colonel Burr, neither had he
followed, in October, "with a corps of worthies,"
since they were, all three of them, quietly sitting at
The Oaks watching their rice crop; and Colonel
Burr had had no right to make use of his name
in such a manner.

Mr. Alston was a monument of protesting indig
nation he had, it may be, never actually seen
further than the Washita Colony scheme, although
Mr. Blennerhassett thought differently and for
once, perhaps, there was bitter discord and recrim
ination on the Waccamaw River. . . .

Already on March 30, 1807, when Colonel Burr
was arraigned before Chief Justice Marshall, Rich
mond was a madhouse; so that it was necessary at
once to transfer the ceremonies from the Eagle Tav
ern, where Colonel Burr was lodged, to the Hall of
the House of Burgesses in order to accommodate the
spectators. By May 22 when proceedings were
opened before the Grand Jury in the United States
Court for the Fifth Circuit and the Virginia Dis
trict, in the presence of Justice Marshall and Judge
Griffin the five thousand inhabitants of that de
mure little town had been increased by many other
thousands from all over the country, who were sleep
ing in teats, and in the wagons in which they had
traveled, encamped along the river banks and on
the hillsides. Day after day, in a sweltering tern-

128 LIVES AND TIMES

peratttre which reached ninety-eight degrees in the
shade in Jtine, great throngs strammed up and down
the Brick Row, shoving each other off the side
walks as they went reeling in and out of saloons and
inns, the Eagle, the Swan, in search of the good Vir
ginia brandy with which the proceedings of this
legal carnival were copiously irrigated.

And, of course, toiling up the hill and fighting
their way inch by inch into the court room while a
tall, ungainly personage in frontier clothes with his
hair all over his face, who said his name was Andrew
Jackson, was making fiery speeches outside against
the 'persecutor" Jefferson to stand on tiptoe,
and on the edges of precarious window sills, and
one young man called Winfield Scott on the great
lock of the front door itself, in order to get even a
glimpse of the little Colonel, so pale and erectly ele
gant in his black silk clothes and powdered hair; of
the gigantic, sprawling, untidy looking Chief Jus
tice; of that jury containing some of the most not
able citizens of Virginia under the foremanship of
Mr. John Randolph of Roanoke; of the lawyers on
both sides, fulminating acrimoniously back and
forth for the special benefit of the audience the
prosecutor, inadequate, anxious Mr. Hay, and his
associates, that sour, belligerent, sarcastic old Lieu
tenant Governor McRae and the fascinating, flow
ery Mr. Wirt; and the attorneys for the defense,
the crippled Mr. Baker, prosy Mr. Edmund Ran
dolph, the youthful, caustic Mr. Benjamin Botts,
the great Mr. Wickham, and pugnacious, red faced,
liquidly convivial Mr. Luther Martin, "the rear

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 129

guard of Burr's forensic army," bellowing about
"the dogs of war, the hell hounds of persecution. "

A great mob of men, sweating, smoking, spitting
into the square sand boxes or wherever convenience
might dictate; gentlemen in stocks and ruffled
linen, in buckled breeches and silken queues; back
woodsmen, farmers, mountaineers, frontiersmen, in
long hair, and deerskin coats, and red woolen shirts;
almost all of them Republicans come to see a traitor
convicted, aggressively partisan, inflamed by a
screaming official press, bitterly hostile to the ac
cused, so that bondsmen for him were hard to find
in the face of the public hatred which stood, clamor
ous and menacing, at the elbows of the jury itself
and of the Court.

Fortunately, there was sitting upon the Bench,
unmoved and solitary above the tumult Judge
Griffin does not seem to have contributed more than
his physical presence to the scene the calm, dom
inating and immeasurably courageous figure of the
Chief Justice. A gentleman who had sworn to safe
guard the Constitution and proposed to do so; a
gentleman for whom the Law was not an instru
ment of party politics or of personal vengeance; a
gentleman who required evidence and proof.

Fortunately, because in the background of this
extraordinary trial there loomed another figure,
passionate, arbitrary and endlessly cunning. A
gentleman who threatened the Chief Justice with
removal if he allowed the accused to escape; a
gentleman who set the entire machinery of the
Federal Government in motion to facilitate a con-

I 3 o LIVES AND TIMES

damnation, who, on his own initiative, spent more
than ten thousand dollars of the public funds in
the securing of witnesses from all over the Union by
a drag-net process of questionnaires, who furnished
his attorneys with pardons to be dangled as a bait
for complaisant testimony, and with minute and
continuous instructions concerning the conduct of
the case, to the preparing of which he devoted the
greater portion of his time; a gentleman who per
mitted himself to write, when the matter was be
fore the Grand Jury, asking whether "the letters
and facts, published in the local newspapers, Burr's
flight, and the universal rumor of his guilt" were not
" probable ground for presuming the facts" and
placing him on trial. Mr. Thomas Jefferson, Presi
dent of the United States.

Mr. Marshall, however, required proofs, not
rumors. Already at the preliminary examination he
announced and his voice was intended to carry
as far as Monticello if necessary that he could not
discharge the prisoner unless it was evident that
there was no suspicion against him, but that this
did not signify that "the hand of malignity may
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." But Mr. Jefferson had
announced Colonel Burr's guilt in advance, with
sensational indiscretion he had proclaimed it to
Congress, and to the nation which forthwith ac
cepted the foregone verdict as a fifth gospel it
must, therefore, be so; and it must, consequently,

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 131

at all costs be established, or leave the Chief Magis
trate utterly discredited and ridiculous. As against
Colonel Burr himself, Mr, Jefferson had " never had
one hostile sentiment" a statement of the sincer
ity of which the history of their previous relations
is perhaps the best indication.

And so, day by day in that seething, dripping
court room, there unfolded the amazing the dis
mal and at the same time inspiring spectacle of a
Chief Magistrate's vindictive prosecution of a per
sonal enemy, embittered by his hatred of a Chief
Justice who might not be intimidated, and who him
self despised him. And in the midst of it all, a little
man in black silk, on trial for his life. . . .

10

There can be no question, here, of discussing
the legal features of that great suit, or the judicial
problems involved. With Mr. Beveridge's Life of
John Marshall before one, one may only presume
to evoke a few of the dramatic moments which dis-
'tinguished its course, some of the more personal
incidents which enlivened its progress.

From the very first, the defense insisted, and Mr.
Marshall, upheld, that if Colonel Burr was guilty
of treason the Government must first prove that a
treasonable act had been committed, and, in such
an event, that the accused had been present. In
this connection, on June 9, Colonel Burr demanded
that one of General Wilkinson's letters to the Pres
ident be produced, and not only that, but that a
subpoena duces tecum be issued against Mr. Jeffer-

132 LIVES AND TIMES

son, requiring him to appear in person with the
document. This was a good deal of a petard for
the prosecution, and they had a tremendous time
over it. Mr. Luther Martin got going would this
President, "who has raised all this absurd clamor,"
pretend to refuse papers which might be necessary
to save a man's life? If so, he was " substantially
a murderer, and so recorded in the register of
Heaven." Mr. Randolph got going. Mr, Hay got
going. The President could not be ordered about
that way. Mr. Luther Martin got going again.

"Is the life of a man lately in high public esteem,"
he thundered, "to be endangered for the sake of
punctilio to the President?" Were "envy, hatred
and all the malignant passions" to pour out their
poison against a citizen and not be enquired into?

Mr. Luther Martin thought not, and the coun
try, on the whole, thought not. At all events, Mr.
Marshall issued the subpoena. In the midst of the
general uproar, Mr. Jefferson called Mr. Martin an
"unprincipled and impudent federal bulldog," and
announced that his office did not permit him to be
"bandied from pillar to post/' In due course,
since the President of the United States was un
deniably in contempt of court, Mr. Marshall issued
a second subpoena duces tecum against him. Mr.
Jefferson was considerably alarmed this time; he
refused to "sanction a proceeding so preposterous,"
but in his confidential correspondence with the
prosecuting attorney he was full of panic-stricken
suggestions could not Mr. Marshall be induced to
postpone action, was there no way of calling a truce

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 133

to all this duces tecum business, and if the Court at
tempted to enforce its order the United States mar
shal must be told to ignore it, and he would be pro
tected from the consequences. But by that time
General Wilkinson's reputation had been very thor
oughly tarnished, and the matter was dropped.

The General appeared in court on June 15 an
other tremendous occasion. The "great accom-
plisher of all things/' according to Mr. Randolph,
the man who was to "officiate as the high priest of
this human sacrifice," and support "the sing song
and the ballads of treason and conspiracy/' whose
torch was to "kindle the fatal blaze/' He came, in
full uniform, obese, grandiloquent strutting and
swelling like a turkey cock, so it seemed to Mr.
Washington Irving and testified for four days,
discharging the wondrous cargo of a mighty mass
of words Mr. Irving again at the end of which
time he escaped indictment by two votes. And
Colonel Burr gave him just one look of withering
scorn, which did not prevent him from declaiming
to Mr. Jefferson that Burr

" . . . this Lion hearted Eagle Eyed Hero sink
ing under the weight of conscious guilt, with hag
gard Eye, made an Effort to meet the indignant Sal
utation of outraged Honor, but it was in vain, his
audacity failed Him, He averted his face, grew pale
and affected passion to conceal his perturbation."

The General was always breaking out in a rash
of capitals.

Althoiigh a little later after he had been pro-

I34 LIVES AND TIMES

jected off the sidewalk and into the middle of the
street by young Mr. Swartwout the bibulous turkey
cock who was finally to be posted at the Eagle
Tavern as a liar, a perjurer, a forger and a coward,
was writing that

"To my 'Astonishment I found the Traitor vin
dicated and myself condemned by a Mass of Wealth
Character influence and Talents Merciful God
what a Spectacle did I behold Integrity and Truth
perverted and trampled under foot by turpitude
and Guilt, Patriotism appalled and Usurpation
triumphant/*

On the other hand merciful God what a Spec
tacle did he not himself provide!

At last, on June 24, the Grand Jury indicted
Colonel Burr for treason and misdemeanor; he was
removed, pending the formal trial, to a suite on the
third floor of the State Penitentiary, where his
antechamber was filled with visitors, and with the
fruit, and flowers, and creams sent to him daily by
the young ladies of Richmond, whose families had
long since succumbed to the fascination of his per
sonality and to the conviction of his innocence;
and, in July, he sent for Theo.

"I should never invite anyone, much less those so
dear to me, to witness my disgrace. I may be im
mured in dungeons, chained, murdered in legal
form, but I cannot be humiliated or disgraced. If
absent, you will suffer great solicitude. In my
presence you will feel none, whatever _ be the mal
ice or the power of my enemies, and in both they

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 135

abound. . . . No agitations, no complaints, no
fears or anxieties on the road, or I renounce thee."

ii

Theo came at once, sick as she was, with her
husband and son. They went immediately to the
Penitentiary and spent the night; and there fol
lowed if one may believe Mr. Blennerhassett who
reports having heard it from Colonel Burr a very
lively scene between the father and son-in-law con
cerning the letter to Governor Pinckney, as a result
of which Mr. Alston offered to print a public recon
ciliation but was spared this humiliation out of re
gard for Theo. Two letters attacking General Wil
kinson did appear over the pen name of Agrestis,
which he claimed as his own, but which Mr. Blen
nerhassett who thought very poorly of Mr. Al
ston, and who was constantly trying to recover his
money from him ascribed to Theo herself.

And then Theo established herself in a house in
town, and began to entertain. Dinners were all
the vogue at Richmond, especially in the houses of
the members of the Bar, and the functions given by
Mr. Marshall and Mr. Wickham, his next door
neighbor, had always been famous for the prodigal
ity of their excellent cheer as well as the flow of wit
and good humor which distinguished them. But
Theo surpassed them all, winning more friends for
her father in one evening with her sparkling smile
than his attorneys could in a month of passionate
oratory. More friends for him, and a host of de
voted admirers for herself, including Mr. Luther

136 LIVES AND TIMES

Martin who went running all over the town proclaim
ing his infatuation.

And Theo, who so loved a "bustle," must have
been very happy in the knowledge that her accom
plishments, her social graces and her intellectual
talents, which he had done so much to foster, were
serving her father in the hour of his greatest need.
They were all happy except perhaps Mr. Alston,
who gives the impression at this period of a gentle
man walking on very fragile eggs there was high
talk of renewed plans and ventures, and "our little
family circle has been a scene of uninterrupted gaiety
... a real party of pleasure."

And now they were in court again, during that
torrid August, spending two weeks in the selection
of an admittedly prejudiced jury, but public opinion
at Richmond was turning. General Wilkinson had
not helped the Government's cause, and the gaudy
" General " Eaton, staggering from bar to bar in a
tremendous hat and a Turkish sash, posturing in
every taproom and violently abusing the accused,
was actually helping the defense. Colonel Burr
was marching every day from Mr. Martin's house,
where they kept him behind bars and padlocks, with
an escort of two hundred .gentlemen. The prose
cution, with an army of witnesses, was trying to
establish its case.

And what was it after all, what was it that had
happened on that famous thirteenth of December
on which Colonel Burr was supposed to have lev
ied war against the United States, as specified in
the indictment? Well, with much hemming and

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 137

hawing, there had been some boats, and "about
betwixt twenty and twenty-five men/' and they
had come and gone with lanterns, and with this,
that and the other, and there had been fires, while
Mrs. Blennerhassett stood "shivering at midnight
on the wintery banks of the Ohio, and mingling her
tears with the torrents that froze as they fell."
No, Colonel Burr had not been present. Such was
the State's case. The defense moved that no "overt
act" had been proved. Mr. Wickham summed up
for two days, followed by Mr. Randolph. Mr. Wirt
made his famous speech "Who is Blennerhassett?
A native of Ireland. . . . War is not the natural
element of his mind. If it had been, he never would
have exchanged Ireland for America!" Mr. Botts
replied with a satire which had the entire court,
including Mr. Marshall, in roars of laughter. Mr.
Hay spoke for another two days. And then Mr.
Luther Martin, at the crest of his intemperate pow
ers, closed this forensic tournament.

"God of Heaven!" he exclaimed. "Have we
already under our form of government . .^ . ar
rived at a period when a trial in a court of justice
where life is at stake shall be but ... a mere
idle . . . ceremony to transfer innocence from
the gaol to the gibbet to gratify popular indigna
tion excited by bloodthirsty enemies?"

Mr. Marshall decided that the Government had
not proved its case, and the jury delivered its reluc
tant verdict of acquittal. "The knowledge of my
father's innocence," Theo wrote as they brought her
the message, "my ineffable contempt for his ene-

138 LIVES AND TIMES

mies, and the elevation of his mind have kept me
above any sensations bordering on depression/'
There were tremendous parties all over Richmond
that night, and especially at Mr. Martin's; in the
taverns, hundreds of Republicans got very full,
drinking damnation to the Chief Justice. The
Alstons went home.

The misdemeanor suit ended in an even greater
disorganization of the Federal forces, but the Gov
ernment had not finished. Colonel Burr and his
associates were recommitted for trial in the District
of Ohio. "After all/ 7 he wrote Theo, "this is a sort
of drawn battle/' There might be no end to this
process, to this persecution which would accept no
verdict but its own. And so, while roaring mobs
were hanging him in effigy at Baltimore, and while
Mr. Jefferson was threatening Mr. Marshall with
impeachment, Colonel Burr fled, eventually, to New
York, and concealed himself in the home of Mrs.
Pollock, under the name of Edwards.

He was 'to sail secretly for England, on June 9,
1808, aboard the packet Clarissa, and for several
weeks prior to his departure, and all through the
night of June 6 before he went aboard, a ' ' Miss Mary
Ann .Edwards" from South Carolina was constantly
at his side, receiving his papers and the claims of
his countless creditors, and taking her heartbroken
farewells of the father whom she was never to see
again. Farewells, on his side, in which the old habit
of correction and criticism was even then not quite
forgotten.

He was gone for four years, wandering all over

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 139

Europe, taking with him the portrait of her by Van-
derlyn which became so worn from repeated rolling;
and all during those years Theo toiled for him;
collecting such funds as could be secured; appeal
ing without her husband's knowledge to every
one she could think of in his behalf, to Mr. Gallatin,
to the new President, to her old acquaintance Mrs.
Madison; and writing to him constantly, faithfully,
and with the deepest affection.

" . . . you appear to me so superior, so ele
vated above all other men, I contemplate you with
such a strange mixture of humility, admiration,
reverence, love and pride ... I had rather not
live than not be the daughter of such a man."

These are, perhaps, the finest, most courageous
years of Theo's life. . . .

12

In 1811, Mr. Alston was running for Governor of
South Carolina, and the equanimity of the entire
household at The Oaks must have been considerably
shaken by a letter which he received, and which
may or may not shed a cold, disagreeably brilliant
light on certain events of the past. It was from
Mr. Blennerhassett everybody had been trying
to forget Mr. Blennerhassett and it related to
various sums of money which that poor gentleman
had not yet succeeded in recovering.

"Having long since despaired/' it began, inaus-
piciously, "of all indemnity from Mr. Burr for my

140 LIVES AND TIMES

losses, by the confederacy in which I was associated
with you and him, I count upon a partial reimburse
ment from you. . . .

"The heroic offer you made to cooperate with your
person and fortune in our common enterprise, gave
you ... a color of claim to that succession in
empire you boasted you would win by better titles
your deeds of merit in council or the field. . . .
But I confess, Sir, I attached a more interesting
value to the tender you so nobly pledged of your
whole property to forward and support our expedi
tion, together with your special assurances to me of
reimbursement for all contingent losses of a pecu
niary nature I might individually suffer. "

Very disturbing reading for Mr. Alston, no doubt,
but there was much worse to follow. Having already
paid twelve thousand~five hundred dollars of the orig
inal fifty thousand, would he now pay fifteen thou
sand more, or else Mr. Blennerhassett was of the
opinion that the electors of South Carolina would
be interested to learn of candidate Alston's share in
the confederacy, of his intention of joining it at New
Orleans with three thousand men, and of the man
ner in which he had committed "the shabby trea
son of deserting from your parent by affinity and
your sovereign in expectancy," vilified him in a
letter to Governor Pinckney, and perjured himself
by denying all connection with his projects. Unless
the fifteen 'thousand dollars were forthcoming, Mr.
Blennerhassett would publish all his correspondence
and interviews with Mr. Alston, and the latter might
rest assured that Mr. Blennerhassett had no inten
tion of abandoning "the ore I have extracted . . .

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 141

from the mines both dark and deep, not indeed of
Mexico, but of Alston, Jefferson and Burr."

But Mr. Alston did not pay the fifteen thousand
dollars, the famous book did not appear for the
time being, and, in 1812, he was driven to his inaugu
ration in a coach drawn by four white mules; with
Theo, no doubt, at his side, thinking, perhaps, of
another inauguration.

And in the spring of 1812, Colonel Burr returned
to America. He landed at Boston, notified Theo
whom he intended to visit, and, in May, slipped
quietly into New York. Nothing happened. So
cially he was still an outcast, but his practice re
turned to him, the future seemed secure. For once,
there was a little peace, and a prospect of happiness.
And then he received two terrible letters from The
Oaks. "Gampy" was dead, at Debordieu Island,
of the fever.

"One dreadful blow has destroyed us. ...
That boy on whom all rested ... he who was to
have redeemed all your glory and shed new lustre
upon our families that boy at once our happiness
and our pride is dead. We saw him dead . . .
yet we are alive . . . Theodosia has endured all
that a human being could endure, but her admir
able mind will triumph. She supports herself in a
manner worthy of your daughter."

And Theo's heartbroken sentences

11 There is no more joy for me. The world is a
blank. I have lost my boy. . . . May Heaven,
by other blessings, make you some amends for the
noble grandson you have lost. ... Of what use

142 LIVES AND TIMES

can I be in this world . . . with a body reduced
to premature old age, and a mind enfeebled and be
wildered. Yet ... I will endeavor to fulfill my
part . . . though this life must henceforth be to
me a bed of thorns. . . . He was eleven years
old . . ."

13

Theo was desperately ill, listless, comfortless.
Colonel Burr insisted that she come North. The
Governor was not permitted by law to leave the
state; Mr. Timothy Green was sent down, there
fore, to escort her an old gentleman with some
medical knowledge, whose presence was somewhat
resented at The Oaks. In his opinion Theo was too
feeble to undertake the journey by land the Colonel
would find her very emaciated, and a prey to inces
sant nervous fever he took passage for her, con
sequently, in a schooner-built pilot boat, which hap
pened to be refitting at Georgetown.

She was the privateer Patriot, Captain Over
stocks, a famous vessel noted for her speed. She
had discharged her privateer crew, hidden her
guns underdeck and probably painted out her name,
and was preparing for a dash to New York, richly
laden with the proceeds of her raids. These mat
ters were doubtless well known in the taverns where
the former crew were spending their bounty money.
The Governor, for his part, was afraid of two things:
the pirates and wreckers the dreaded "bankers"
who infested that coast, and the British fleet cruis
ing off the Capes, for the Patriot was a valuable
prize. The pirates he could not guard against, but

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 143

to Captain Overstocks he gave a letter for the Brit
ish Admiral, requesting free passage for the ship
bearing his sick lady.

They went aboard, Theo, her maid and Mr.
Green, with all her trunks, and, it may be, a special
present for her father; a portrait, perhaps to re
place the old worn one fresh and new, carried sep
arately in its frame? One would give a great deal,
too, to know whether there was a little black and
tan dog on board. Mr. Alston accompanied her
down Winyaw Bay, and left her at the bar with
many misgivings, poor soul at noon, on Decem
ber 30, 1812. Early in January but this was not
known until much later the Patriot fell in with the
British fleet off Hatteras, presented her letter and
was courteously given free passage. That night a
terrific storm arose; the Patriot was never heard
from again.

For a few weeks they hoped against hope, while
Colonel Burr walked pathetically up and down the
Battery at New York, waiting for the Patriot, for a
rescuing ship, for some word. But thirty days
were "decisive." Mr. Alston was convinced that
his wife was either "captured or lost." And rumors
of capture were all the time reaching Colonel Burr
something dreadful had happened off that sinister
Hatteras coast but he refused to believe them.
If Theo had been captured "she would have found
her way to me."

"My boy my wife gone both!" Mr. Alston
wrote in February. "This, then, is the end of all

144 LIVES AND TIMES

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 . . ."

Nothing except another letter, to Colonel Burr
this time, in April, from Mr. Blennerhassett, who
was not so soon to be put aside. He had not
yet been reimbursed, and it seemed to him. very
probable that nothing short of the publication
of his book, "hitherto postponed only by sickness,"
would bring him any part of the balance due him
from Governor Alston.

"His well earned election to the chief executive
office of his state," Mr. Blennerhassett continued,
"and your return from Europe will . . . render
the publication more effective ... I would still
agree to accept . . . $15,000 . . . and of course
withhold the book, which is entitled A Review of the
Projects and Intrigues of Aaron Burr, during the
years 1805, 6, 7, including therein as parties or priv
ies, Thos. Jefferson, Albert Gallatin, Dr. Eustis, Gov.
Alston, Dan. Clark, Generals Wilkinson, Dearborn,
Harrison, Jackson and Smith, and the late Spanish
Ambassador, exhibiting original documents and cor-
respondence hitherto unpublished, compiled from the
notes and private journal kept during the above period
by H. Blennerhassett, LL.B."

A fascinating title, and an absorbing work, no
doubt, well worth fifteen thousand dollars; but its
publication seems to have been unaccountably
delayed, and on September 10, 1816, Mr. Alston
himself died, and was buried with his son in the

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 145

family burying ground at The Oaks tinder that
stone which bore the record, now, of three such
untimely deaths.

And now, for the lonely old man at New York,
there was nothing left. Yes some relics of Theo's
which they had sent him; some lace, and a little
satinwood box, and a black satin embroidered one
with a pincushion, and a letter which he found
among her papers. A letter intended for her hus
band after her death, but which Mr. Alston never
saw, because he never had the courage to look at
her things, but left them, untouched, in her room
in the big house on the Waccamaw. A tragic letter
written long before, in 1805, when she was twenty-
two; a heartrending letter to read in 1816, with its
revelation of the invalid, anxious, miserable years
that had followed.

" Whether it is the effect of extreme debility and
disordered nerves," she had told him, "or whether
it is really presentiment, the existence of which I
have often been told of and always doubted, I can
not tell; but something whispers me that my end
approaches . . .

"To you, my beloved, I leave my child, the child
of my bosom. . . . Never, never listen to what
any other person tells you of him. Be yourself his
judge on all occasions. He has faults, see them and
correct them yourself. ... I fear you will scarcely
be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hurried and
agitated. Death is not welcome to me; I confess it
is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of life.
Adieu, then, thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu,
friend of my heart. May Heaven prosper you, and

146 LIVES AND TIMES

may we meet hereafter. . . . Least of all should I
murmur . . . whose days have been numbered by
bounties, who have had such a husband, such a
child, such a father. . . . Speak of me often to our
son. Let him love the memory of his mother, and
let him know how he was loved by her. Your wife,
your fond wife, Theo."

And the postscript

"Let my father see my son sometimes. Do not be
unkind towards him whom I have loved so much, I
beseech you. . . . If it does not appear contrary
or silly, I beg to be kept as long as possible before I
am consigned to the earth. ..."

Theo was dead, but the memory of her could not
die, and the rumors lived.

Rumors of piracy, of mutiny, of Carolina wreck
ers. The Patriot had been captured by the cele
brated pirate, Dominique You; she had been cap
tured by the infamous "Babe"; Mrs. Alston had
walked the plank with the entire ship's company.
Rumors, persistent rumors; and then, twenty and
thirty years later, confessions; deathbed confes
sions of sailors, scaffold confessions of executed
criminals mutiny, piracy, murder, a terrible dawn
after a terrifying night, and a haunting picture in
their minds of a lovely, gentle lady who perished
very bravely and with infinite dignity. But in one
version the executed criminals two sailors at Nor
folk who recur in all the stories claimed to have
been members of a gang of wreckers, on Kitty Hawk,

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 147

who had looted the Patriot and killed her passengers
after they had come ashore on those dreary sands.
And it is this last version which one is tempted to
remember.

And then, in 1850, a more detailed story, prob
ably not an entirely truthful one, but connected in
many significant respects with the past, and with
what was to come in the future. So that here, at
last, whatever the antecedent events and the exact
locality, one may be in the very presence of Theo's
last ordeal. The story of "Old Frank " Burdick,
an. old man reputed to have been a pirate, who, at
the time of his death, insisted that he had been one
of the crew of a pirate ship which had captured the
Patriot. He himself had held the plank for Mrs.
Alston, who walked over the side very calmly, all
dressed in white, after begging them to send word to
her father and husband. Her eyes were closed, her
hands were crossed upon her breast, and as she
took the final step she waved them as if in farewell.
She came to the surface of the waters once, they saw
her face again, and then the outstretched arms, the
hands still waving as they sank. Perhaps, for a
moment at the rail, no man spoke or dared to raise
his eyes; or perhaps they laughed, and went about
their business.

As for the Patriot, they had plundered her and
then abandoned her under full sail. In the cabin,
"Old Frank" remembered, there was a portrait of
the lady, and somewhere aboard a little black and
tan dog. One wonders about that little dog why
was he not allowed to come aboard the corsair to

148 LIVES AND TIMES

which all the prisoners had been transferred? one
wonders, until one realizes that the entire episode
of the piracy at sea was perhaps a fabrication of
''Old Frank's" to protect men still living on land,
at Nag's Head, near Kitty Hawk just north of Hat-
teras Nag's Head, a famous stronghold of the
wreckers.

And so one comes, in 1869, to Nag's Head, where
a certain Doctor Pool was summoned professionally
one day to the house of a Mrs. Mann; a very old
lady who had formerly been the wife of one of the
Tillett boys, who, with the Manns themselves, be
longed to the aristocracy of the wrecking " bankers"
of that coast, in the early decades of the nineteenth
century. In the parlor of Mrs. Mann's cottage was
a portrait which aroused the doctor's curiosity; a
portrait painted on wood, in a plain gilt frame, of a
beautiful young woman elegantly dressed in white,
in the style of 1810; a frail young woman with dark
hair and piercing black eyes.

In answer to the doctor's eager questions, but with
infinite reluctance and possibly many deliberate
reticences, Mrs. Maim told the story, of the portrait.
" During the English war," when she was quite a
young girl and while Tillett was courting her, a pilot
boat had come ashore on Kitty Hawk in a storm,,
and the men had gone out to her. When they re
turned, they reported having found a nameless,
empty ship, with her sails set and the helm tied
down, and the only living creature aboard a little
black and tan dog. The cabin, they said, was in
great confusion, trunks broken open, and a lady's

THEODOSIA BURR, PRODIGY 149

effects some beautiful lace, some silk dresses, a
vase of wax flowers belter skelter on the floor.
Hanging on the wall was the portrait. In the dis
tribution of spoils, Tillett had claimed it for his
sweetheart, along with the dresses and other femi
nine objects things which Mrs. Mann showed to
Doctor Pool, but the existence of which in her pos
session her younger sister, at a later date, had never
been aware of; things which Mrs. Mann had kept
hidden, just as she probably concealed many details
which young Tillett may have told her about the
doings that day on Kitty Hawk. Gruesome details
which explained, perhaps, why the little black and
tan dog was the only living creature aboard, not when
they found the ship, but when they left her.

For while Mrs. Mann's account agrees surpris
ingly with "Old Frank's" story concerning the
Patriot, one must remember two circumstances.
That the Patriot had just passed through the Brit
ish fleet, so that she would scarcely have been at
tacked in such a neighborhood; and that in the ter
rific storm which arose that same day no act of
piracy on the sea can have been possible, no trans
ferring of prisoners, no walking of the plank. One
can only surmise that, if Mrs. Mann's pilot boat
was the Patriot, she was driven ashore on Kitty Hawk
during the tempest, with all her passengers aboard,
and that they met their death in that place at the
hands of the wreckers who swarmed out to loot her.
Just as the two convicted " bankers" confessed some
thirty years later.

And the pilot boat on Kitty Hawk may well have

ISO LIVES AND TIMES

been the "schooner-built pilot boat" Patriot, for the
painting in Mrs. Mann's cottage is believed by many
to have been a portrait of Theodosia Burr Alston
the " first gentlewoman of her time," and the most
unfortunate.

IV
Edmond Charles Genet, Citizen

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN

IN 1820, two years before her death, an old lady
of nearly threescore and ten sat in her home at
Mantes, in France, and wrote a letter to her nephews
and nieces in America. Some thirty years before
she had seen their father, her only brother, for the
last time; more recently she had been the mistress
of an extremely elegant boarding school for young
females, on the early roll of which had been in
scribed the names of Mademoiselle Hortense de
Beauharnais, a Queen to be, and the daughter of
Josephine Bonaparte; of Miss Eliza Monroe, daugh
ter of the American Minister to France; and of the
Misses Pinckney, daughters of yet another Amer
ican Envoy. Young ladies who paid their board in
American gold, and caused the struggling little acad
emy to prosper, and grow into the famous establish
ment of more than one hundred pupils, the school
room of Duchesses and Queens.

Now, in 1820, at the close of her life, she thought
of those boys and girls whom she had never seen, and
prepared for them a little history of their family in

153

154 LIVES AND TIMES

France. With it she sent the letter; such a letter as
aunts wrote, once upon a time, to their nephews and
nieces.

"My dear children," she told them, "an enor
mous distance separates you from a large family
by which, in spite of your absence, you will always
be held most dear.

"When you look at the map of the Universe, you
see on it old Europe, and in this old Europe, France,
from which you are descended through your most
estimable father. The station which your family
occupied in France, the worthy things which they
have done and the disastrous misfortunes which they
have been obliged to bear, everything which con
cerns them, should interest you, and time can only
increase this interest.

"The most widely separated families may some
day, through a change of fortune, be reunited; too
frequently those tender bonds of close relationship,
loosened with each successive generation, vanish
entirely. I wish therefore, with foreseeing tender
ness, to strengthen and maintain those bonds by
informing you, not only of the origin of your father
through his father and mother, but of the present
condition of a family which, when it was deprived of
the support and counsels of your estimable father,
experienced a loss greater than all those to which it
has been subjected as a result of the events of the
last century. Your Aunt."

The nephews and nieces in question were the chil
dren of Cornelia Tappen Clinton, and of Martha
Brandon Osgood daughters, respectively, of the
late Vice President of the United States and of the
Postmaster General and their estimable father was

EDMONO CHARLES GENET

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 155

Edtnond Charles Genet, one time Minister Pleni
potentiary of the French Republic "at" the United
States.

At Christmas time, in 1762, Marie Anne Louise
Cardon Genet was about to bring into the world her
ninth, and last, child. The two only sons had died
in infancy; it was ardently hoped that the baby
would be a boy. With this hope in her heart, Louise
Gen6t retired to her canopied bed one night and
dreamed that the Virgin had come to her, bringing
a handsome boy baby in a beautiful white cradle.
The next morning she vowed that if the dream came
true the child should wear nothing but white for
the first five years of his life. On January 8, 1763,
the boy was born, in the Parish of Saint Louis, at
Versailles; and not until his fifth birthday did he
lay aside the little white suits, the white shoes and
the white hats, with which his pious mother had
filled his wardrobe. A little boy in white, in a great
house on one of the cavernous streets of solemn Ver
sailles; Edmond Charles Genet, destined to become
the representative of the Republic, One and In
divisible.

It was a family of magistrates and officials, tracing
its present prosperity to the little boy's grandfather,
Jean Genet, who, in 1702 at the age of twelve,
walked from his home near Tonnerre, in Burgundy,
to Paris, with the intention of restoring the dimin
ished family fortunes. At Paris he attracted the
benevolent attention of the Cardinal Alberoni,

156 LIVES AND TIMES

Prime Minister to Philip V of Spain, who took him
to Madrid. Jean Gent returned to Prance with
all the religious severity of Spain in his nature, and
with a fortune of four hundred thousand limes in
his pockets, which he invested in real estate and in
the purchase of a magistrature. He married, in 1721,
a lady of ancient, though penurious, lineage, who
gave him two sons Edm6 Jacques, the father of
the little boy, and Pierre Michel, who grew up to
be a recluse, a bachelor and quite sickly.

As a young man, Edm6 Jacques had an adventur
ous time of it. Brilliant in his studies, a lover of the
classics, of history and of languages, he desired to
become a diplomat. His father destined him to the
magistrature. When Edtn6 Jacques betrayed a
taste for poetic composition his father nearly had
him locked up in a monastery on a lettre de cachet.
Edm6 Jacques was very much in love with the
beautiful Louise Cardon; his father wished him to
marry another lady whose face was no part of her
otherwise considerable fortune. It was thought best,
finally, to allow him to travel, with the understand
ing that he was not to return until he had put from
his mind all of his personal diplomatic and matri
monial notions.

Edm6 Jacques was twenty; he would not, under
the French law, attain his majority until he was
twenty-five. He went to Louise Cardon and ex
changed with her vows of immutable fidelity, and
then for five years he traveled; in Germany, and
in, England, where he boarded with the Governor
of Dover Castle. Dover was very near France,

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 157

Edme Jacques slipped across one night, concealed
himself for two days in the house of a friend, sent
for his mother, and visited his Louise. Then he
returned to Dover to await his coming of age. That
was in 1751. In January, 1752, without his father's
consent, he married Louise, and shortly after the
birth of their first child, Henriette, he was appointed
Secretary Interpreter at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

They moved to Versailles where, during the next
six years, he borrowed on his patrimony and was
blessed with six children, only two of whom sur
vived infancy, Julie and Adelaide. Then, in 1759,
the Due de Choiseul enlarged his bureau at the
Ministry and increased his salary. He prepared,
after another sojourn in England in 1762, a report
on the British Navy which earned the favorable
notice of Louis XV. His wife presented him with
another daughter, Sophie, and with the white-clad
boy, Edmond Charles. The great days of the Gen6t
family were at hand.

3

Edmond Charles, as he grew up, saw them in all
their splendor. His father was a man of elegance
and wit, a distinguished linguist, and a scholar;
his house was the meeting place for all the learned
and artistic world of Versailles; in its salons there
were recitations, and music, and philosophical dis
cussions in many tongues; one heard there a con
stant setting forth of stately matters, in the midst
of a continuous passing to and fro of courtly per-

158 LIVES AND TIMES

sonages, tinder the brilliant glow of many candles.
One by one -as they left their English and Italian
governesses, their piano forte, harp and singing teach
ers, their French poetry and elocution lessons
Edmond Charles's sisters were called to the Court
and made great marriages, arranged and dowered
by royal patronage.

Henriette, already Reader to Mesdames, the
Daughters of the King, found herself at seventeen
the chosen companion of the little fifteen year old
Dauphine, Marie Antoinette of Austria; and, four
years later, Her Majesty's First Lady of the Bed
chamber. Julie, who sang divinely, became Cradle
Rocker to the Children of France one of them a
little boy who was never to be King and when she
married M. Rousseau, in 1771, Louis XV ventured
to remark that never in his experience had he seen
so handsome a bridal pair. Her husband was
Chamberla into the Comtesse d'Artois, Fencing Mas
ter to the Dauphin, and Cloak Carrier to the King.
He was, not unnaturally, guillotined, in Messidor of
the Year II. Adelaide was also very beautiful, and
a great favorite of Marie Antoinette, who appointed
her Lady in Waiting, and gave her a costly present
of diamonds at the time of her marriage to a gentle
man who was Quartermaster General to the Army,
Receiver General of Finances, and of the Duchy of
Bar and Lorraine. Even Sophie, who was not at
all beautiful, was made Lady in Waiting to the little
Madame, Daughter of the King.

Days of splendor, bright with the sunshine of
countless royal favors; but the ones which Edmond

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 159

Charles enjoyed the most were those summer days
of real sunshine when they all went rolling out, bag
and baggage, to visit Uncle Toto Pierre Michel,
the brother of Edme Jacques at his country retreat
at Mainville. For at Mainville there were woods,
and birds, and cows, and a great romping, after the
solemnities of Versailles; and in the evening, Uncle
Toto with his flute, playing Charming Gdbrielle and
My Merry Shepherd.

And Uncle Toto himself, so fond of his scamper
ing nephew; such a simple, absent minded, gentle,
kindly old soul; so removed from the world that he
was to find it necessary, in 1793, to write to his niece
Henriette and ask her

"Just exactly what is the Revolution? Why all
this uproar? For what reason are all these people
being put to death? "

4

At the same time, Edmond Charles's education
was most carefully planned and developed. At
the age of five, he could already read English and
recite his Greek roots. Two years later, in addition
to the instruction in history and in law which he
received from his father, he was studying ancient
and modern languages with two tutors, and learn
ing to ride, to fence, to dance and to play on the
piano forte, an instrument for which he showed
considerable aptitude. At the age of twelve, the
amazing child was given a gold medal by the King
of Sweden for his translation from Swedish into
French of the History of the Reign of Eric XIV. In

160 LIVES AND TIMES

the following year, he produced his translation of the
Researches concerning the Ancient Finnish Race.

And during that period, in 1777, he helped his
father in the preparation of his periodical, Anglo-
American Affairs, translating for him into French
the occasional contributions submitted by a cer
tain Mr. Franklin, and his associates of the Ameri
can Commission splendid personages, in the eyes
of the young translator, gentlemen who had come
from across the Atlantic, and who talked magic
ally of a strange, fascinating thing called Liberty.

So that it must have been with a quite special
delight that, in 1779, he put on his uniform of a
Lieutenant in the Colonel General's Regiment of
Dragoons, and accompanied the corps to Brest, to
embark for the American war. But it seemed at the
last moment that there was no need of cavalry over
there, and when the troopers returned to Paris,
Edmond Charles remained at Brest to collect Eng
lish and American nautical phrases to put into a
dictionary for the use of French sailors ; a task which
was followed by a sojourn at Nantes, for the pur
pose of studying commercial and merchant shipping
affairs, including, no doubt, the legal status of
privateers.

It was in 1780. Edmond Charles was seventeen,
he spoke several languages, he was grounded in the
law, he understood the fundamental principles of
commerce, he rode well, he fenced with skill, he
danced gracefully, he possessed agreeable musical
talents and elegant manners, he looked extremely
attractive in his handsome uniform. It was time to

EDMOND CHARLES GEN&T, CITIZEN 161

initiate him into the diplomatic career to which
he was obviously destined. He was sent to Germany,
to the University of Goettingen, then to the Em
bassy at Berlin, later on to the Embassy at Vienna.
He returned to Paris just in time to attend the state
funeral of his father, the much beloved and respected
Edme Jacques, in September, 1781.

Edmond Charles was almost immediately ap
pointed to succeed his father at the Ministry of For
eign Affairs, and it was to him that the courier
bearing the first news of the surrender at Yorktown
presented himself. Edmond Charles was barely
nineteen. He commanded a salary of forty thou
sand limes; he had under him a staff of eight inter
preters, all of them much older officials whom he
treated with faultless tact. "Never, for a single
moment, did he forget himself/' his sister Henriette
remembered afterwards. At home, he set himself
to the liquidation of his father's numerous debts,
and not until the last penny had been paid, several
years later, did he discard the simple black attire of
his mourning. Very young, very correct, very
modest, the personification of integrity.

In 1783, he accompanied the special mission to
London, for the negotiation of the new commercial
treaty, and during his stay in England those tastes
which were to claim the leisure of his later years
began to manifest themselves. For the youthful
Secretary avoided the gayeties of the Court; he
preferred, instead, to visit the manufacturing centers,
to occupy himself with scientific enterprises, to inves
tigate the latest progress of invention; there was a

162 LIVES AND TIMES

serious strain in him, a certain lofty detachment
from the frivolities which encompassed him, a great
curiosity concerning the novelties of the age.

When the States General convened, after his
return to France, for the purpose of discussing be
lated economic reforms in the kingdom, Edmond
Charles read a report of his own preparation before
one of the committees presided over by the Comte
d'Artois. The report condemned a proposed stamp
tax, pointing out the recent English experience
with a similar measure, and greatly displeased the
Comte d'Artois; but the Marquis de Lafayette ap
plauded the young man's courage not in the pres
ence of the King's brother, to be sure and told
him that he was very young, but that he had be
haved like a man. At all events, he had incurred
the displeasure of Monsieur, and it was not long
before Edmond Charles's bureau at the Ministry-
was discontinued, and its duties absorbed by other
departments, ostensibly for the sake of economy.
There was a vacancy at the Embassy at St. Peters
burg; Edmond Charles applied for it, and, in 1787,
set out on the long journey to Russia.

5

At Warsaw, he committed possibly his first indis
cretion. At any rate, he betrayed the simmering
blood in his veins, the jealous, brash if one will,
rebellious quality of his youthful attitude towards
any disparagement of his importance as a repre
sentative of France; and, perhaps more than that
already, his impatient scorn of men whose natures

EDMOND CHARLES GEN&T, CITIZEN 163

were not attuned to his own swift, vigorous, forward
moving instincts, and to his own deep, ceaseless
absorption in the furtherance of what they called
in France the " public concerns." A very earnest
young man, imbued with zeal, saturated with energy,
extremely meticulous of his dignity, which was,
after all, his country's. And at Warsaw he found
Poniatowski, King of Poland on sufferance; a
gentleman who was very fond of French operettas,
and who sat Edmond Charles down at the piano
forte and made him sing for him by the hour until
finally Edmond Charles sang a song which the King
of Poland did not relish, so that he had the piano
forte removed, and the refrain of which ran

"Is he King or isn't he King?
If he isn't, why call him King? 11

At St. Petersburg, Edmond Charles found the
Empress, Catherine II who stared at him very
hard in his dragoon uniform because of his striking
resemblance to her late favorite, the Count Landskoy
and the Comte de S6gur, the Ambassador, who
while he was to record subsequently in his memoirs
that Edmond Charles was extremely hot headed
wrote of him at the time of his sojourn in Russia
that he was a very distinguished young man, in all
respects suitable, uniting agreeable talents with
profound knowledge, erudite without pedantry,
bright without pretension, his logic sound, his zeal
indefatigable, his wit ornate, his manner of thinking
noble and attractive. In fact, the more Mr. de
S6gur became acquainted with him, the more he

164 LIVES AND TIMES

found him a treasure to sustain and employ. Ed-
mond Charles was promoted to the rank of Captain,
and appointed Charg6 d' Affaires when Mr. de S6gur
went home, in October, 1789. That, at the same
time, the young dragoon who so resembled Count
Landskoy pleased the Empress, is manifest from
the fact that she adorned him with diamond knee
buckles.

And then most extraordinary events began to
take place in France. In 1790, the King swore to
maintain a Constitution; a royal gesture which left
the Empress Catherine, for one, extremely unim
pressed. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs
instructed all his representatives to adhere to the
Constitution, and then confidentially advised them
to do no such thing. The King put his tongue in
his cheek, and the Princes decamped from France.
Edmond Charles obeyed his official instructions with
alacrity, and ignored the confidential footnote.
Now that it was done, he found himself Constitu
tionalist to the core it was the dawn of Liberty, it
was what Mr. Franklin had talked about, it was the
first step down that road which the young American
Republic had opened to all enlightened, right think
ing men. It was glorious.

When he was not busy sending despatches about
the activities in Russia of the emigrated Princes to
the Foreign Minister who never opened them, Ed
mond Charles told the Empress that it was glorious.
The Empress, very soon, began to speak of him as
an insane demagogue. The emissary of the Princes
thought that he was merely a "crazy little fool."

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 165

It is quite possible that Edmond Charles, in his
fierce enthusiasm for the new "public concerns/'
made himself vocally conspicuous to a degree which
deafened the despotic ears of his imperial patroness.
Catherine II was very fond of good-looking dragoons
she was very fond always of Edmond Charles
and did her best to persuade him to renounce France
and accept a position in the Russian diplomatic
service but she forbade him the Court, as repre
senting a monarch who was now, in August, 1791, the
prisoner of his people, and surrounded him with spies.
Edmond Charles reminded her tartly that he rep
resented France, Constitutional France; he refused
to become involved in the intrigues of the Princes;
and he sat down to write a very fine letter to his
sister, Henriette.

"My dear sister," he informed her, "I am aware
of your respectful and deep attachment to your
august mistress; those sentiments entirely control
your actions; they are praiseworthy and should not
be altered.

" My position is different from yours; a citizen of .
France, charged with the honor of representing my
country, I must do so in accordance with the laws
prescribed by the Constitution which the King has
sworn to maintain, and in support of which I have
also given my oath. Never speak to me in your
letters of the opinions which divide Frenchmen, who
would be happy if, like myself, they realized that
the welfare of their sovereign and of their country
resides only in the maintenance of the Constitution!

"An advanced sentinel, I remain here ready at all
times to give warning of any conspiracy against my

166 LIVES AND TIMES

country. I do so with all the more zeal, because I
believe myself to be serving the real interests of my
sovereign. Place my letter at the feet of the Queen;
I think it necessary that it be through you that she
be made aware of the resolve to which my senti
ments as a French citizen and my profound and
respectful devotion to the true interests of my
sovereigns alike constrain me."

The Queen read the letter and expressed the
opinion that while she feared that it might hinder
Edmond Charles's future advancement in the royal
service she was herself, at the time, a prisoner in
her own palace still it proved him to be a man of
sincerity. And in that she was right. Edmond
Charles was no barefoot sans culotte with nothing to
lose, trailing his vociferous republicanism through the
royal apartments. He was the son of an intensely
royalist family, nurtured in a tradition of unswerv
ing loyalty to his sovereigns, beholden to them for
his own position and the prosperity of his sisters -
two of whom, Henriette and Adelaide, were only to
escape death on the fatal August 10, 1792, as a
result of his foresight in asking the protection of
the Assembly for them. When he chose to uphold
the Constitution, to take his stand with the patriots
1 against his King, to break with all the training of
his childhood, and splash a discordant crimson
across the whole white background of his life, he did
so deliberately, sincerely and with the utmost moral
courage, because he was filled with admiration for
the founders of American liberty, and because his
reason, his instinct and his conscience left him no

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 167

other choice. He was in this, surely, altogether
admirable.

It was inevitable that Edmond Charles should
be dismissed from Russia. His political opinions were
not compatible with a continued sojourn at the
Court of the Empress Catherine, and he was given
his passports, in July, 1792.

11 Hasten to come to the capital/' the new For
eign Minister wrote to him, "where I will see you
with great pleasure, since I destine you for a new
mission in which I am sure you will acquire new
rights to the gratitude of your fellow-citizens/'

Edmond Charles passed through Warsaw, where
Poniatowski was no longer King, and arrived at
Paris, in October, 1792.

There were tremendous changes at Paris. The
royal family was imprisoned at the Temple, Ed
mond Charles's sisters had fled with their mother
to Julie's country place at Beauplan Henriette
and Adelaide after the terrible day of August 10, on
which they had stayed at the Queen's side until
the last moment, and received from the King some
of his most personal private documents; the Gen6t
f ortune was destroyed.

Edmond Charles himself was most cordially re
ceived by the moderate Girondist group in power.
He was made Colonel and proposed as Ambassador
to Holland; he went on an important mission to
Switzerland; he moved in the most select republi-

168 LIVES AND TIMES

can circles, an Intimate of Brissot, Condorcet, Ro
land and his distinguished lady. When there was
question of banishing Louis XVI, Edmond Charles
was suggested as a suitable escort to conduct him
to America. With this object, among others, in
view, "the civic virtue with which Citizen Gen6t
has accomplished the various missions entrusted to
him, and his known devotion to the cause of Lib
erty and Equality/' so they officially informed him,
"have decided The Executive Council to appoint
him Minister Plenipotentiary from the French
Republic at the Congress of the United States of
Northern America." At the Congress, be it noted,
distinctly specified.

And while Robespierre and the " Mountain "
roared that the selection was founded on Brissot's
personal friendship and not on merit ; and while the
aristocratic Gouverneur Morris advised Mr. Wash
ington that the new Envoy looked like an upstart
and possessed more genius than ability Madame
Roland wrote that the appointment was eminently
deserved, that Gen6t one must begin to call him
Genfet now that Gen6t was a man of sound judg
ment and enlightened mind, combining amenity and
decency of manners; that his conversation was
instructive and agreeable, and free from pedantry
and affectation; and that his chief characteristics
were gentleness, propriety, grace and reason. Gentle
ness, propriety, grace and reason- . . .

The Revolutionary scene was unfolding. Genfet
witnessed the session of the Convention at which the
Girondists, overawed by the Jacobin "Mountain,"

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 169

voted for the execution of the King. He went to
Beauplan to make his farewells to his family. His
mother, his sisters whom he was never to see again.
Henriette, who had not yet started her famous
school, Julie, Sophie poor Adelaide, the Queen's
" little lioness" who had held the door at Versailles
against the mob, and who was so soon to commit
suicide rather than be sent to the scaffold for having
given twenty-five louis to Marie Antoinette on the
day of her arrest. His little niece Agla6, who was
to become the wife of Marshal Ney.

On January 23, 1793, Gen6t started for Brest,
to embark on the frigate Embtiscade. At the gates of
Paris they stopped him and searched even his trunks,
because of a rumor that he had the little Dauphin
with him. For a month he was detained at Brest by
contrary winds, and then, finally, he left France,
forever.

7

And in America many curious events were taking
place.

The country had gone solemnly insane over the
French Revolution, and was expressing its hyster
ical delight in that event in a series of ridiculous
republican mummeries. One talked about the Hydra
of Despotism, the Phoenix of Freedom, and the Gallo-
Columbian Fraternity of Freemen, and drank toasts
proposing that the sister republics of France and
America be as incorporate as light and heat. The
National Gazette greeted the death of Louis XVI
with the dignified observation that "Louis Capet

I 7 o LIVES AND TIMES

has lost his Caput"; and men, women, and children
at half price, stormed the waxworks of the execu
tion, at Philadelphia, to see "the knife fall, the
head drop, and the lips turn blue." In the theaters,
audiences sang the Marseillaise and the Ca Ira,
while they watched performances of The Demolition
of the Bastille and Helvetic Liberty, or the Lass of the

Lakes.

At Charleston, at Philadelphia, at New York, at
Boston, everywhere, they held " grand civic pa
geants" to celebrate the French victories. Func
tions attended by city and state officials, in a great
to do of booming guns and clanging bells; at which
Te Deums were chanted, and feasts consumed in
halls decorated with broken crowns and scepters,
and the Ox of Aristocracy paraded through the
streets, accompanied by citizens in white frocks
"while the balconies of the houses exhibited bevies
of our amiable and beautiful women, who by their *
smiles and approbation cast a pleasing luster over
the festive scenes," and added their fervent soprano
to the singing of republican odes setting forth that

"By hell inspired with brutal rage
Austria and Prussia both engage
To crush fair freedom's flame;
But the intrepid sons of France
Have led them such a glorious dance
They've turned their backs for shame."

At Philadelphia, Mr. Washington was, of course,
still President, and wishing that he were not; Mr.
John Adams, who wrote books about the vile mul-

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 171

titudes, was Vice President; General Knox was
Secretary of War, and " Sandy " Hamilton Secretary
of the Treasury; Mr. Edmund Randolph, whom Mr.
Jefferson called the poorest chameleon he had ever
seen, was Attorney General; timid little Mr. Madi
son was leader of the House of Representatives;
Mr. James Monroe was never very far away.

And Mr.- Jefferson was Secretary of State, in his
red. waistcoats and untidy woolen stockings. A
gentleman who had recently returned from a five
years' sojourn at Paris, with a mind steeped in the
fumes of a frenzied democracy, so that he reeled
intellectually in a haze of rabid republicanism
illuminated by the beacon, the "pole star" of
his self-confessed, fanatical devotion to France. A
gentleman it is Alexander Hamilton writing who,
together with Mr. Madison, was filled with a
womanish attachment to France, and a womanish
resentment against Great Britain; who, in France,
had seen government only on the side of its abuses,
and had drunk deeply of the French philosophy in
religion, science and politics; who had come from
France in the moment of fermentation which he
had had a share in exciting, and in the passions and
feelings of which he shared both from temperament
and situation; who had come "probably with a too
partial idea of his own powers, and with the expec
tation of a greater share in the direction of our
councils" than he was enjoying; who had come
"electrified plus with attachment to France, and
with the project of knitting together the two coun
tries in the closest political bands."

172 LIVES AND TIMES

A gentleman of flexible principles the opinion is
that of Mr. Oliver Wolcott who practiced the arts
of political chicanery with an address and perse
verance such as few men had ever attained; who, in
his office, was distinguished for "an attention to all
those trifles which attend the minds of half Jearned,
dreaming politicians and superficial scholars," A
gentleman who imagined monarchist plots behind
every door; who listened eagerly to evil reports con
cerning his friends and associates, and who wrote
them down in vicious little secret diaries; who
concurred hypocritically in the deliberations of his
colleagues, and attacked them scurrilously, and
anonymously, and under the mask of venomous hire
lings, in his National Gazette. A gentleman who, what
ever the extent of his undeniable contribution to the
national welfare, was also to lend himself to many
unlovely stratagems. A gentleman obsessed with
dangerous ideals, immersed in hazardous abstrac
tions, possessed of perilous virtues.

And for his consideration, and that of his fellow
Cabinet officers, there arose, in April, 1793, a ques
tion of great moment. There was a new French
Minister on his way to America he arrived actu
ally on April 8 -and France was suddenly at war
with England. Should the treaties of 1778 with
France be upheld? There were two of these one, a
treaty of alliance in which the territorial integrity of
the contracting countries was guaranteed; the other,
a pact of amity and commerce, whereby, among
other clauses, each nation might take into the ports
of the other the prizes captured by its privateers,

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 173

whereas the captures made by the privateers of
other nations were forbidden entry into the ports
concerned. There was also extant, though not im
mediately due in full, a debt of two million three
hundred thousand dollars, the balance of the French
loan to the United States. With France at war, and
her West Indian colonies exposed to capture, loyal
adherence to the treaties could only plunge America
into conflict with England, and probably with Spain
and there would be an end, for one thing, of Amer
ican commerce, if not eventually of American inde
pendence. The merchants were in favor of neutral
ity, the people at large faithful to "France and Lib
erty." The Cabinet must decide.

Mr. Hamilton came out for neutrality, in name and
fact, and for a repudiation of the awkward treaties
made with a government now no longer in existence.
Mr. Jefferson desired peace he was, perhaps, the
first of America's great practicing pacifists but
under no consideration would he permit the Presi
dent to declare a genuine neutrality. Such a course
would be an insult to France, and with his rare
capacity for riding two horses at once in opposite
directions, Mr. Jefferson was determined to enjoy
the benefits of neutrality without subscribing openly
to the principle. Harried and bedeviled by his two
great hostile counselors, Mr. Washington finally
issued a proclamation, on April 23, in which no
reference whatever was made to the subject of neu
trality, all citizens being enjoined, merely, against
committing belligerent acts.

Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, immediately

174 LIVES AND TIMES

attacked the proclamation with all the private

weapons at his command. It was unconstitutional
because the legislature had not been consulted ; it was
pusillanimous because it did not feature America's
friendship for France; it was not a "manly neutral
ity, " but only an English one. 'Our proceedings, "
he wrote, "towards the conspirators against human
liberty" meaning the English "are unjustifiable in
principle, in interest, and in respect to the wishes of
our constituents." The people, he was convinced,
were coming forward to express those wishes, since
the Government failed to represent them. An inter
esting observation, from a Federal official who was
so soon to be shocked by an alleged "appeal to the
people" on the part of the new French Minister.

As for the National Gazette Mr. Jefferson's Na
tional Gazette

"Had you, Sir," it roared at Mr. Washington,
"before you ventured to issue a proclamation which
appears to have given much uneasiness, consulted
the general sentiments of your fellow citizens, you
would have found them from one extremity of the
Union to the other firmly attached to the cause of
France. You would not have found them ... so
far divested of the feelings of men as to treat with
'impartiality' and 'equal friendship' those tigers
who so lately deluged our country with the blood of
thousands, and the men who generously flew to her
rescue and became her deliverers . . .

' ' I am aware, Sir, that some court satellites may have
deceived you with respect to the sentiments of your fel
low citizens. The first magistrate of a country, wheth
er he be called a King or a President, seldom knows the

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 175

real state of the nation; particularly if he be so
much buoyed up by official importance as to think
it beneath his dignity to mix occasionally with the
people. . . . Let not the little buzz of the aristo
cratic few and their contemptible minions . . .
be mistaken for the exalted and general voice of the
American people/'

It was in such an America, animated by such pub
lic dissensions, that the new Minister from France
set foot.

8

The frigate Emb^^,scade, with her thirty-six guns,
her Liberty Cap at the foremast head and her quar
ter galleries decorated with the emblems of the
Terrible Republic, arrived at Charleston on April 8,
1793- It had originally been her intention to pro
ceed to Philadelphia, but contrary winds and the
rumored presence of two British frigates turned her
aside to the Southern port.

The young man on her quarterdeck, resplendent
in the tri-'colored ribbon of his ministerial office, was
exactly thirty years and three months old. A very
handsome young man, with a fine, open, laughing
countenance and a ruddy complexion, active and
full of bustle, pleasant and unaffected, "more like a
busy man than a man of business." A young man
of parts, of great culture, and of long diplomatic
experience; an. 'admirer, since his childhood, of the
founders of American freedom; fresh from the mag
nificent and transfiguring ordeal of his own country's
republican rebirth, aflame with patriotism and lofty

I7 6 LIVES AND TIMES

resolves, dedicated to the constant service of France

tfoe new> glorious, triumphant France of his

Girondist ideals and through her, inevitably, to
the service of the whole Brotherhood of Man.

"The whole of the new world must be made free,"
he once wrote, "and the Americans must help us in
this sublime task."

An apostle, a crusader of Liberty, come with
exalted hope to that land where Liberty had been
born, to find, surely, a concern equal to his own in
the welfare of the sister, the daughter republic.
An eloquent young man, so filled with zeal, so
dreadfully in earnest, so proud of his mission, so
sternly convinced of its sanctity and righteousness,
so fiercely confident of success. -So one seems to see
him, on the quarterdeck on that April morning, and
not as the vainglorious, arrogant, blustering mounte
bank of history. Impatient, hot headed, petulant,
fanatic, a good deal of a spoiled child, perhaps a
little too precocious, too unabashed, too arbi
trary all of these things but not a fool, not an
adventurer, not without conspicuous and ingratiat
ing qualities, and never ridiculous. If he was to
offend, the reason was, in his own words

"... that a pure and warm blood runs swiftly
through my veins; that I passionately love my
country; that I adore the cause of ^Liberty; that
I am always ready to sacrifice my life for it; that
to me it appears inconceivable that all the enemies
of tyranny, that all virtuous men, should not march
with us to the combat; and that when I find an in
justice is done to my fellow citizens, that their inter-

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 177

ests are not espoused with the zeal which they merit,
no consideration in the world can hinder either my
pen or my tongue from tracing, from expressing my
grief. . . ."

He was coming to take his place as a successor to
Ministers who, in the opinion of Mr. Moreau de
Saint-Mery, had proved most unsatisfactory one
of them, indeed, having been so tactless as to cause
French dishes to be carried with him to the house,
whenever he dined at Mr. Hamilton's. He was com
ing to assume a position in which he would need

"to be extremely affable, to see everything, to hear
everything, to note everything without affectation,
and without panic, to play his diplomatic role at
his board, to attract to it cleverly the influential
members of the House of Representatives and of the
Senate, and never to permit the British Ambassador
to serve at his table a brand of Madeira superior
to his own."

He had already been warned by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the coldness of the American
character; and advised to employ indirect methods
of approach, to exert all possible influence on the
public sentiment, to avail himself with circumspec
tion of the zealous cooperation of certain friends
whom he would find in the House of Representatives
and among the principal executive officials, and to
place entire confidence in Mr. Washington, in Mr.
Madison, and in Mr. Jefferson advice which may
possibly have been responsible for his subsequent
exclamation that

I 7 8 LIVES AND TIMES

"America is so little understood in France!"

He brought with him explicit instructions, cover
ing a number of important matters, which, as they
were almost all to be repudiated by the Jacobin
Government after the fall of the Girondists who had
issued them, deserve to be recorded in some detail;
more especially since the utmost which can be stated
in condemnation of his conduct in America is that
he obeyed the spirit as well as the. letter of his in
structions, and came within an ace of succeeding
Mr, de Saint-M6ry thought six weeks.

He was to avoid as much as possible "those ridicu
lous disputes which cluttered up the transactions of
the older diplomacy' 'and there, at least, he was
to fail miserably. He was to negotiate a new treaty
of amity and commerce, to replace those of 1778;
and in the meantime he was to insist on the mainte
nance of the existing agreements; to prevent any
armament of privateers other than French ones,
and any harboring of prizes except those taken by
French vessels, in the ports of America; and to
make use of the three hundred blank letters of marque
furnished him by the Ministry of the Navy, for dis
tribution to all American ship owners "willing to
risk a raid against the English, the Dutch, the Rus
sians, the Prussians and the Austrians." Even a
person of less intelligent imagination than he pos
sessed would have appreciated the tacit, underlying
hope that America might be persuaded to join
France in her English war.

And then he was to attempt the realization of an
extraordinary dream, a vision of colonial empire, a

si
o -s

1

I

;&
o

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 179

carrying of the banners of Liberty through Canada
and the Spanish Americas, just as on the other side
of the water the armies of France were sweeping
them across Europe. Trusting in the hostility
towards Spain of the American frontiersmen -and
ready to defray the necessary expenses for intoxicat
ing stimulants, since it was known "that Americans
only talk of war when vis a vis with a bowl" they
told him at Paris to dispense the blank military com
missions which they had provided for the Indians,
who thought highly of such documents; and to do
all in his power, in Louisiana- and the provinces adja
cent to the American borders, to " quicken the prin
ciples of freedom and independence," or, in plain
French, to maintain agents in those regions for the
purpose of recruiting armed bands and stimulating
insurrection.

And if the American Government ever made up
its mind to it, he was to negotiate still another
treaty

"A national pact in which the two nations would
mingle their commercial and political interests, and
establish an intimate harmony for the purpose of
favoring in every way the extension of the Kingdom
of Liberty, guaranteeing the sovereignty of Peoples,
and punishing the Powers which still persevere in
an exclusive colonial system. . . . This pact would
soon lead to the liberation of Spanish America, to
the opening up to the inhabitants of Kentucky of
the navigation of the Mississippi, to the deliver
ance of our ancient brothers of Louisiana from the
tyrannical yoke of Spain, and, possibly, to the plac
ing in the American Constellation of the bright star

i8o LIVES AND TIMES

of Canada. However vast this project may seem, it
will be easy of execution if the Americans so desire,
and in convincing them of this fact the Citizen
Gent shall exercise all his care. . . ."

Such, "with absolute trust in his known prudence
and moderation, " were the stupendous undertakings
confided to that young man of thirty, standing on
the quarterdeck of the frigate Embuscade while she
boomed her salute to the port of Charleston.

9

The official details of Genet's activities in Amer
ica, his acrimonious debates with the Federal Gov
ernment, his undeniably caustic attacks on the
President, his incontestable breaches of diplomatic
conduct these matters are all to be found in the
archives of formal history.

It is well known that he instigated important mil
itary and naval operations against Canada and
Spanish- America; that he encouraged recruiting
within the borders of neutral America; that he
armed countless privateers, with fascinating repub
lican names, in every American port, and caused
their prizes to be confiscated in American courts;
that he did all in his power to precipitate the United
States into war; that, in short, he obeyed his in
structions. It is quite true that his consuls, the cap
tains of his frigates and their crews, permitted them
selves outrageous impertinences, and indulged in
riotous communion with their English colleagues in
every waterfront tavern; that he called the Presi
dent

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 181

"This old Washington, who greatly differs from
him whose name has been engraved by history, and
who does not pardon me my successes "

That he roared bitter and impolite complaints at
the Cabinet; that he thought less than nothing of
Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Randolph and General Enox;
that he issued tempestuous and extremely bombastic
manifestoes for the public consumption; that he
made a great deal of noise, and offended a great
many people, and finally frightened Mr. Jefferson
out of his coat.

What is not so true is that he did anything con
trary to the proper conception of his duty, to the
just interpretation of America's existing obligations
to France, to the widespread and loudly expressed
popular approval of his point of view; what is not
so well known, perhaps, is how he was secretly en
couraged in his attitude by Mr. Jefferson, and how
he was finally betrayed and discredited because he
had become too dangerous to both American polit
ical parties. It is these matters, more particularly,
which one is tempted to examine. . . ,

Gen&t went ashore at Charleston, after his forty-
five days at sea, in a great din of guns and bells, and
was received with great cordiality by Governor
Moultrie, by Mr. Izard, who had known his father
at Paris, and by the French Consul, who rejoiced in
the name of Michael Angelo Bernard de Mangourit.
From them, between the courses of various civic
feasts, he learned that the Government would prob
ably declare for neutrality it did so two weeks
later that the people were very generally opposed

1 82 LIVES AND TIMES

to the Government's policy, and that it was perfectly
proper for him to arm privateers in American ports.
Gen6t did not waste any time. "1 am more
anxious to succeed/' he wrote, "than to shine pub
licly." During the ten days of his stay 'at Charles
ton, he manned two privateers, saw the Embuscade
start on her raiding voyage to Philadelphia, and set
in motion the machinery of his Spanish ventures
which he left in the energetic hands of Mr. de Man-
gourit. Then, on April 18, he started north by land,
choosing a route which would take him through a
countryside the farming population of which was
none too well disposed toward the Federal party in
power, with its unpopular excise laws, and where
he might have opportunity to purchase necessary
supplies of grain for the French colonies. His prog
ress was a continuous triumph, a tumultuous ova
tion of guns, bells, public addresses, civic feasts and
Fraternal Hugs.

"The people," he was able to report, "received
me in their arms and under their modest roofs, and
offered me much grain and corn. I was clasped in
the arms of a multitude which had rushed out to
meet me. My journey has been an uninterrupted
succession of civic festivities."

Philadelphia was all bubbling over with excite
ment in anticipation of his coming.

"May we not hope," the National Gazette sug
gested, "that the true Republicans will hoist the
tri-colored flag; and to complete the spectacle, that
our fair Philadelphians will decorate their elegant

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 183

persons and adorn their hair with patriotic rib
bands? "

Along the roads, horsemen were posted to bring in
the news of his approach; and citizen Bompard of
the Embuscade had agreed to fire three shots in con
firmation of the event.

Gen6t arrived at one o'clock on the afternoon of
May 1 6. A large concourse of" citizens had marched
out to Gray's Ferry to meet him, and escort him in
triumph into the town, but he avoided them and
drove through cheering streets to the City Tavern,
at Second near Walnut; an establishment similar
to the Tontine Coffee House at New York, where all
the business of the port was transacted, and where
punch was served at side tables. Of all the conflict
ing reports of his entry, one prefers the one tucked
away in a New York gazette, quoted from a private
letter written by a lady in Philadelphia to a Friend
in Alexandria.

"Mr. Genet's address is so easy, affable and pleas
ing," she said, "that he fascinates all who have the
honor to be introduced to him. He was quite over
come with the affectionate joy that appeared in
every face on his arrival. It would be impossible, my
dear, to give you any idea of the scene. It was great
and interesting in the highest degree. The streets
were crowded, and the city was in a tumult of joy."

On May 17, he was waited upon by deputations
of prominent citizens and replied from his balcony
to their acclamations of welcome. On May 18, he
was formally, and in his estimation a trifle coldly,

1 84 LIVES AND TIMES

received by the President, and a little shocked to
find ''medallions of Capet and his family" in the
parlor. On that same evening he attended the first
of several festivities in his honor; a tremendous
banquet at Oeller's Tavern, at which many distin
guished Philadelphians, as well as some of the crew
of the Embuscade, were present. A banquet enliv
ened by odes, and hymns, and toasts "the Treaty
of Alliance with France, may those who attempt to
evade or violate the political obligations and faith
of our country be considered as traitors, and con
signed to infamy!" A banquet which closed with
the passing from head to head of a Liberty Cap,
after Gen6t himself had charmed the assemblage by
singing:

* ' Liberty ! Liberty ! B e thy name adored forever ;
Tyrants, beware, your tottering thrones must fall;
One interest links the free together,
And Freedom's Sons are Frenchmen all!"

Governor Mifflin and Gent went home at half
past nine, and the next morning the French Ambassa
dor turned eagerly to his various tasks. While the
belles of Philadelphia who, according to Mr. de
Saint-Mery, were adorable at fifteen, faded at
twenty-three, decrepit at forty, and afflicted with
bad teeth, falling hair and a passion for ribbons were
promenading fashionably on the north side of Mar
ket Street, between Third and Fifth; while the
gentlemen of the town one continues to quote Mr.
de Saint-M6ry were sitting late at afternoon din
ner, in dining rooms furnished with maple and horse-

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 185

hair and glittering with superfluous silver, consuming
vast quantities of claret and Madeira, and retiring
occasionally to the corners of the room for purposes
which may best be imagined; while the good citi
zens, "who washed their faces and hands with care,
but never their mouths, seldom their feet, and even
more rarely their bodies," were smoking, and drinking
very hot tea, and devouring green fruit in that busy
city infested with bedbugs and flies; and while the
oyster barrows were being trundled through the
streets until ten o'clock at night, "with lamentable
cries " the Citizen Minister toiled, and planned,
and organized.

He saw to his growing squadron of privateers;
he maintained that since the treaties forbade the
enemies of France to fit out raiders in American
ports the permission for France to do so was obvi
ously intended, and that if French privateers were
allowed to bring their prizes into American har
bors they might also condemn them there; he asked
for advances on the two million dollar debt and was
told by Mr. Hamilton that there was no money in
the treasury, and that even if there were he would
not receive any of it; he sent agents to Louisiana,
he incited the Canadians, he armed the Kentuck-
ians, and gathered together a fleet; he wrote vol
uminously on a multitude of subjects, and answered
that letter concerning the Spaniards from George
Rogers Clark, which began

"Sir, the contest in which the Republic of the
French is actually involved against all the despots of

i86 LIVES AND TIMES

Europe Is among the most awful, interesting and
solemn, in, all its consequences, that has ever arisen
in the world. . . . With those who already feel or
know anything of the Rights of Man it is a spec
tacle which, between hope and fear about its suc
cess, must engage the attention of both head and
heart, and with them influence every of the nobler
passions. . . ."

Soon he could inform his Government that

"True Americans are at the height of joy. The
whole of America has risen to acknowledge in me
the Minister of the French Republic. I live in the
midst of perpetual feasts; I receive addresses from
all parts of the continent. I see with gratification
that my way of negotiating pleases our American
brothers and I am led to believe, Citizen Minister,
that my mission will be a fortunate one from every
point of view."

Cheerful, sanguine, deluded 'young man that he
was. . . .

10

He had every reason to be sanguine. On all
sides excepting in purely Federalist circles in
poetry and prose, he was being told that his cause
was just, and that the American people were behind
him. Repeatedly, at Philadelphia, riotous crowds
went storming down the streets, threatening to pull
Mr. Washington and Mr. Adams out of their beds
if they refused to make war on England. Within a
fortnight of his arrival, some of the most prominent
citizens of the town waited on him to ask his opinion

'&.

o

1 *
3

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 187

concerning a name for a new Republican club. Gen6t
suggested that it be called the Democratic Society.

On May 30, the Democratic Society of Pennsyl
vania was organized with a constitution and circu
lar notice drafted by the Secretary of State of the
Commonwealth, Mr. Alexander J. Dallas. It seemed
that the events of the French and American Revo
lutions had taught the founders,

"no longer dazzled by adventitious splendor, or
awed by antiquated usurpation, to erect the temple
of Liberty on the ruins of palaces and thrones. . . .
The seeds of luxury appear to have taken root in
our domestic soil; and the jealous eye of patriotism
already regards the spirit of freedom and equality as
eclipsed by the pride of wealth and the arrogance of
power/'

The Society was established, therefore,

"to cultivate a just knowledge of rational liberty,
to facilitate the enjoyment and exercise of our civic
rights, and to transmit unimpaired to posterity the
glorious inheritance of a free republican govern
ment."

Other cities were not slow to imitate the capital.
At Boston, the Freemen declared that they adored
the cause of Liberty, and that their wishes and pray
ers were frequently engaged against the Despots of
the Earth. They were persuaded "that the present
struggles of the French people are directed to the
subversion of Aristocracy and Despotism, and to the
lasting improvement and happiness of the human
race." Other Societies announced that they favored

188 LIVES AND TIMES

a "real and genuine Republicanism, unsullied and
uncontaminated with the smallest spark of monarch
ical or aristocratic principles."

Under the mask of abstract republicanism, it was
not long before the r Societies those nurseries of
sedition, as the Federalists called them, with their
" barefaced correspondencies and resolves" began
to attack the administration, the policy of neutrality,
and all the Federalist measures; while, on their side,
the National Gazette Mr. Jefferson's National Gaz
ette and Mr. Bache's General Advertiser were sling
ing criticism and abuse at Mr. Washington, until he
raged against them openly at Cabinet meetings.

In the Charleston Society, which had actually
affiliated itself with the Jacobin Club at Paris, they
could only lament "the amazing want of Republican
ism which now forms a conspicuous trait in the char
acter composing the highest officers in the Federal
government " ; they resolved that war was inevitable,
that the French treaties must be upheld, and that the
cause of France was America's; and they believed
that

"for any man or set of men, either in private or pub
lic, and particularly those to whom the welfare of
our community is entrusted, to advocate doctrines
and principles derogatory to the cause of France
... or in support of the base measures of the
combined Despots of Europe, particularly Great
Britain, is a convincing manifestation of sentiments
treacherous and hostile to the interest of the United
States, and well deserves the severest censure from
all true republican citizens of America."

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 189

Gen6t might tell Dr. Logan, out on the beautiful
lawn at Stenton which he often visited, that he would
never suffer a gazette to enter his house; but he
read them just the same, and sent clippings home to
France; he knew what a large proportion of the
American people were thinking and saying; he
found ample justification for his estimate of

"the ardent and sublime love of the good country
people, of the old soldiers, of the poor but industrious
men of the cities, for the principles of Prance/ 7 and of
"the base idolatry of the great capitalists, of the
big merchants, for the English constitution/'

ii

And, at the Department of State, he found Mr.
Jefferson.

The two men talked, not as officials, but openly
and intimately as friends. Mr. Jefferson was made
aware of Genet's Spanish enterprises, and assured
him that he did not care what insurrections were
incited in Louisiana, although expeditions from
Kentucky might prove embarrassing to the par
ticipants if captured. Mr. Jefferson thought that
Gen6t could not have been more affectionate or
more magnanimous. Mr. Jefferson, in those early
days, seemed disposed to second the French point
of view, he sympathized with the French Envoy in
all his disputes with the Federal Government, and,
in the security of their personal conversations, dis
paraged the motives and pronouncements of his
executive colleagues.

190 LIVES AND TIMES

"He gave me," Gendt reported, "useful information
concerning the men in power, and did not conceal
from me that Senator Morris and Secretary of the
Treasury Hamilton, devoted to the interests of
England, exercised the greatest influence on the
President's mind, and that it was only with the
greatest trouble that he was able to counteract
their efforts."

Mr. Jefferson, exposed to the hatred of the Presi-
ident and of his colleagues so Gen6t was given to
understand the situation was the only official for
whom he, Gen6t, possessed any respect.

At the same time, when it came to discussing
practical details the maintenance of existing trea
ties or the formulation of new agreements Mr.
Jefferson was extremely vague. He blandly admitted
the validity of the French treaties, and, simultane
ously, assured the British Minister that America
proposed to remain vigorously neutral. He took
refuge in a haze of general technicalities, and de-
claimed copious extracts from various tomes on
international law. All in the same breath, he played
the cat to Genet's mouse, cajoled his English col
league, and succeeded in placing the public blame for
the Government's spineless vacillations on Mr. Ham
ilton and his " secret antigallomany." Depending
on the listener, he talked lengthily and with the
utmost apparent sincerity, on both sides of the same
question, content if in' so doing he could in any
degree embarrass and obstruct his enemy at the
Treasury Department. As for the effect on the
listener, Mr. Jefferson, treading the tortuous path

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 191

of his own destiny, was not in the least concerned in
such insignificant consequences of his policy.

Gen6t began to realize the duplicity confronting
him. Mr. Jefferson constantly said one thing and
did another, he made use of "an official language
and a confidential language"; in the former he pub
licly upheld the actions of the Government, in the
latter he privately encouraged Genet to disregard
them and his own hypocritical approval of them.
Mr. Jefferson, Gen6t found out, " signed his name to
what he did not believe, and officially approved
threats which he condemned in his private conversa
tions and anonymous writings"; there was in his
official declarations "a restraint" which convinced
Gen6t "that this man of half-hearted convictions
wished to maintain himself in a position which
would keep him in office, whatever the turn of

events."

But at first Genet realized none of this. He
listened to Mr. Jefferson just as many long years
afterwards the French people were to listen to an
other great American spokesman and believed, as
did his compatriots of that later day, that he was
listening to the voice of America.

12

And now things were not going so well.

''Seeing myself upheld by the American people," he
was soon to write, "1 believed that a government
sprung from it would prove itself worthy of its trust
by obeying its supreme voice. I had not in the least
foreseen that the men charged by the people with the

I 9 2 LIVES AND TIMES

task of government would betray their duty by mul
tiplying in our path obstacles, difficulties and dis
appointments.' '

At all events, in June, the President proclaimed
that all privateers being armed in American ports
should be seized. During the first days of July, it
was brought to the attention of the authorities at
Philadelphia that the brig Petit Democrate, ex Little
Sarah -a former French prize was being armed
and made ready for sea. Governor Mifflin was re
quested by the merchants of the port to call out
the militia and prevent the departure of this vessel
whose identity as a privateer of Genet's was an
open secret. Governor Mifflin sent his Secretary of
State, Mr. Dallas of the Democratic Society, to in
terview Gen6t. A very famous interview, as it turned
out, at which no one except the two men was present.

Gen6t lost his temper, talked extravagantly about
his wrongs, and refused to countermand the brig's
departure. Governor Mifflin called out his militia.
In the Cabinet, sitting without Mr. Washington,
who was at Mount Vernon, Mr. Hamilton and
General Knox urged that guns be mounted on Mud
Island to sink the Petit D&mocrate if she sailed in
defiance of the proclamation. Mr. Jefferson im
plored them to leave everything to him, and went
off to interview Gen6t himself. Once again, Gen6t
lost his temper, and shouted at Mr. Jefferson for a
long time before the latter could get in a word
"but he did not/' Mr. Jefferson recorded in his
diary, "on that, nor ever did on any other occasion

EDMOND CHARLES. GENET, CITIZEN 193

in my presence, use disrespectful expressions of the
President. "

It was Genet's contention that he had a perfect
right, according to the treaties, to arm privateers,
and that Congress was bound to see that the treaties
were observed. Mr. Jefferson told him no, that was
for the President to do. Then, Gen6t enquired,
if the President decided against the treaty, to whom
was the nation to appeal? Mr. Jefferson -who was
upholding his Chief that evening explained that
under the Constitution the President was the last
appeal. Gen6t bowed and said that he could not
make him any compliments on such a constitution;
he might also have asked Mr. Jefferson why, then, he
had attacked the President's neutrality proclama
tion, on the ground of tmconstitutionality. After
that Gen6t regained his good humor, and they dis
cussed the brig. Mr. Jefferson begged him not to
allow her to sail before the President returned.
Gent informed him that she would drop down to
Chester to take on supplies, and that she would
probably not be ready to sail before the President
returned.

Mr. Jefferson went running back to the Cabinet
and reported that everything was arranged and that
the brig would certainly not sail. Governor Mifflin
called in his militia. Ten days later, the brig sailed
the promise that she would not do so never hav
ing existed except in Mr. Jefferson's imagination.

Mr. Washington returned to Philadelphia, on
July n, in a state of extreme impatience. Gen6t
asked Mr. Jefferson for an interview with the Pres-

I 9 4 LIVES AND TIMES

ident and was told that all communications must
pass through the Secretary of State. Notwithstand
ing this refusal, Gen6t called at Mr. Washington's
house that same evening, and, "after some very
polite and obliging discourse on the part of Mrs.
Washington," persuaded the President to give him a
few moments in private. Gen6t "protested what is
entirely true" his account was written four years
later

"that I had been entirely amazed on reading in the
public journals certain articles which they attrib
uted to me, relative to his conduct towards France,
but in which I had no participation; that my cor
respondence was indeed animated, but if he would
condescend to put himself in my position and con
sider that by his proclamation of neutrality and the
interpretation that he had given to it, he had an
nulled the most sacred treaties, deprived the French
people . . . of the alliance which they considered as
property dearly bought he would acknowledge that
unless I was a traitor I could not act otherwise/ '

Gen&t then suggested that they discuss a new
treaty.

"The President," he stated, "listened to all I
had said and simply told me that he did not read
the papers, that he did not care what they said con
cerning his administration" one occasion, at least,
on which Mr. Washington departed from the tradi
tions of the cherry tree. "We left the room, he
accompanied me as far as the staircase, took me by
the hand and pressed it." The next morning Gent
went to Mr. Jefferson and told him of this inter-

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 195

view. Mr. Jefferson blushed the door opened, and
in walked Mr. Washington. Gent was not invited
to remain, nor could he ever find out from Mr. Jef
ferson whether the President had referred to his
nocturnal visit. A few days later, Gen6t was called
to New York.

13

Mr. Jefferson was alarmed. He was getting the
worst of it in his perpetual quarrel with Mr. Hamil
ton; the constant uproar over Genfet was turning
even the Republicans against their party, and con
sequently against himself. And then this young
man who had made a fool of him before the Cabinet
over the Petit Democrate; who visited the President
without permission, and was liable to tell him Heaven
knew what about his Secretary of State's private
chicaneries something must be done.

" Never, in my opinion," Mr. Jefferson wrote to
Mr. Madison in July, "was so calamitous an ap
pointment made as that of the present Minister of
France here. Hot headed, all imagination, no
judgment, passionate, disrespectful, and even in
decent towards the President in his written as well
as his verbal communications"

a statement directly opposed to Mr. Jefferson's own
testimony in his personal diary.

"I believe/ 5 he wrote again a little later, "it will
be true wisdom in the Republican party to approve
unequivocally of a state of neutrality . . . to
abandon GenU entirely. ... In this way we shall
keep the people on our side by keeping ourselves in

196 LIVES AND TIMES

the right. I have been myself under a cruel dilemna
with him. I adhered to him as long as I could have
a hope of setting him right" -by encouraging him
in every way, no doubt. "Finding at length that
the man was incorrigible, I saw the necessity of
quitting a wreck which would but sink all who should
cling to it."

The rats were leaving the sinking ship. As Mr.
Oliver Wolcott expressed it, Mr. Jefferson " stimu
lated the prejudices of the French Minister against
his colleagues in the American Cabinet, and, after
he had been seduced into intemperate measures, this
too sanguine instrument of his intriguing ambition
was sacrificed without scruple."

On the evening of his interview with Genet con
cerning the brig, Mr. Jefferson stopped in at Gover
nor Miffiin's to report his imagined success, and
found Mr. Dallas there. They compared their inter
views, and, in his diary, Mr. Jefferson recorded that
Mr. Dallas mentioned some things which Gen6t had
not said in the second interview, "and particularly
his declaration that he would appeal from the Presi
dent to the people." This important and, if au
thentic, unpardonable threat on the part of a foreign
Minister was repeated by Mr. Jefferson to the Cabi
net. Governor MifHin also carried it to General
Eaox who imparted it to Mr. Hamilton as having
been reported to him by his Secretary on the occa
sion of the first interview. One may not, lacking
further evidence, presume that these gentlemen acted
otherwise than in good faith and according to their
sincere recollection of a verbal communication.

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 197

At all events, Mr. Hamilton notified Mr. Jay and
Mr. King of Genet's alleged indiscretion, and au
thorized them to publish it. Gent, arriving at
New York on August 7 in the midst of the customary
guns and bells, went from the New Coffee House to
his lodgings on Maiden Lane and found the "certifi
cate" in the Diary. Gen6t immediately denied
the accusation flatly. Mr. Hamilton and General
Knox issued a statement corroborating Mr. Jay and
Mr. King, and announcing that their authorities
were Governor Mifflin and Mr. Jefferson. Gen6t
appealed, fruitlessly, to Mr. Washington "I dare
therefore to venture to expect from you an explicit
denial, a statement that I have never intimated to
you an intention of appealing to the people." Mr.
Jefferson replied that the President did not think it
necessary to testify against a declaration which,
whether made to him or to others, was perhaps im
material. Genfrfc characterized this reply as " eva
sive," and wrote to his Government

"Knox and Hamilton, alarmed by the tremendous
popularity which I enjoy, are spreading the news
everywhere that I want to incite the Americans
against their government, and that, displeased with
its conduct, I have determined to appeal to the
people; and this weak government which is always
afraid of England deserves such an appeal . . .
but since the fact is false I have just written a very
firm letter to General Washington."

The question was become one of national con
troversy. Throughout the summer, while New York
and Philadelphia were in the throes of a violent

198 LIVES AND TIMES

epidemic of yellow plague caused, many people
thought, by the godless action of erecting a new
theater at Philadelphia war raged in the news
papers over Genfet's reported appeal. It was an
outrage, in keeping with similar outrages perpetrated
by his minions and hirelings it was a base libel, a
Federalist plot to ruin him. Mr. Monroe concurred
in the latter opinion.

"The monarchy party among us," he wrote, "has
seized a new ground whereon, to advance their for
tunes. The French Minister has been guilty in the
vehemence of his zeal of some indiscretions, slighting
the President of the United States, and instead of
healing the breach, this party have brought it to the
public view, and are laboring to turn the popularity
of this respectable citizen against the French Revo
lution. . . ."

And a little later he told Mr. Jefferson

"that the object of this party is to separate us from
France and ultimately unite us with England is what
I am well assured of and that the certificate of
Messrs. Jay and King was concerted at Philadelphia
as the means of bringing the subject before the
public is likewise what I believe. ... I consider
the whole however as a mere trick, and which will
ultimately recoil on the authors of it/*

Mr. Jefferson who, with his fellow Republican,
Governor MifBin, had started the rumor, and who
was only too pleased at the prospect of trouble for
the Federalists, and who did not give two pins for

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 199

Gen6t any more, probably laughed very heartily.
Governor Mifflin, for his part, was not so sure now
as to just what Mr. Dallas had said, or as to what
he himself had said Mr. Dallas had said, Mr. King
and Mr. Jay, on their side, were not laughing at all.
The Senator from New York and the Chief Justice
of the United States did not relish being called liars
in the public gazettes; nor did they appreciate the
comedy at Philadelphia, where Mr. Hamilton was
pointing to General Knox, and General Knox to
Governor Mifflin, and Governor Mifflin to Mr.
Dallas, and all of them to Mr. Jefferson.

"I find," Mr. Monroe advised him on December 4,
"the establishment of the charge against Mr. Gen6t
will depend principally upon what you heard Mr.
Dallas say. This latter will deny that he ever said
anything like what the certificate states; Jay and
King heard it from Hamilton and Knox, these latter
from Mifflin, and I am told that there is a difference
between those gentlemen and MifBin, and likewise
between him and Dallas, as to what they respectively
stated. So the fact will be disproved against them
unless the circumstances they are able to adduce are
supported by you."

But Mr. Jefferson said nothing at all, and on
December 7, Mr. Dallas issued an official denial of
the statement attributed to him. He set forth all
that Gen6t had said in the interview with regard to
the sovereignty of Congress in the matter of the
treaties, and the consequent duty of the President
to convene Congress to discuss them, and then he
announced that

200 LIVES AND TIMES

"Such was Mr. Genet's conversation with me, and
it will be allowed that although I am responsible for
the fidelity of the recital I am not responsible for any
inference which has been drawn from the facts that
it contains/'

Then after admitting that Governor Mifflin might
be correct in saying that he, Dallas, had stated that

"if after the business was laid before Congress Mr.
Gen&t did not receive satisfaction on behalf of his
nation, he would publish his appeal, withdraw and
leave the governments themselves to settle the dis
pute "

Mr. Dallas went on to explain that he was given to
understand that Mr. Jefferson had stated

" . . .in an official memorandum, that Mr*
Gen&t's declaration of an intention to appeal from
the President to the people was not expressed to him,
but to me. Whether Mr. Jefferson employed the
language of his own inference from my recital on the
occasion, or adopted the language of the current
rumor, I will not attempt to discuss.

"But if, in the same early stage of the business,
I had also enjoyed the same means of explanation, I,
like Mr. Jefferson, should then have said what I said
the moment I heard the suggestion applied to me,
what I have since taken every opportunity of saying,
and what I now most solemnly say, that Mr. Gen6t
never did in conversation with me declare 'that he
would appeal from the President to the people/ or
that he would make any other appeal which con
veyed to mind the idea of exciting insurrection and
tumult.

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 201

"Upon the whole, as my communications to the
Governor and Mr. Jefferson were of an official and
confidential nature, I think that I have cause to
complain; and the candor of others will induce them
to lament that I was not personally consulted (which
common courtesy as well as common caution might
have dictated) before Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Knox
(who had daily opportunities of seeing me) under
took to propagate the report connected with my
name; or, at least, before Mr. Jay and Mr. King
undertook to vouch for its authority."

Very unpleasant reading, one would imagine, for
Mr. Jay and Mr. King, for Mr. Hamilton and Gen
eral Knox, for Governor Mifflin, and for Mr. Jeffer
son. One almost begins to wonder whether Gover
nor Mifflin did not repeat, and Mr. Jefferson
inadvertently, no doubt record in his diary, garbled
versions of their conversations with Mr. Dallas con
cerning the young man who was becoming such a
menace to the Republican party; and whether Mr.
Hamilton and General Knox did not incautiously
seize upon them, doubtless in the best of faith, for
the purpose of discrediting Gent, that troublesome
pebble in the Federalist shoe. " It is to be regretted, ' '
Mr. Jay remarked to Mr. King, "that Mr. Jefferson
and Governor Mifflin still remain, as it were, in a
back ground."

And for Gent the situation was not only regret
table, it was fatal. Whatever the facts of the case,
the mere repetition of the scandal was capable of
destroying him and his cause. Already addresses
of loyalty to the President were pouring in from

202 LIVES AND TIMES

every quarter; from Charleston, Governor Moultrie
wrote to Gent to tell him that he was ruined; he
was being spoken of as "too abhorred a villain to
have his name mentioned by any man of the least
honor or virtue/' Between them, and from quite
different motives, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton
had done for him. And this time, in the face of
disaster, Gen6t quite lost his head. He demanded
that Mr. Jay and Mr. King be prosecuted for libel
by the Attorney General. Mr. Jefferson trans
mitted the plea with a request that it be given every
consideration, as concerning "a public character
peculiarly entitled to the protection of the laws"
why "peculiarly" is not so clear, unless Mr. Jefferson
had it in mind that the suit would damage Mr.
Hamilton; Mr. Randolph refused to inaugurate
proceedings; and Gen6t exclaimed that he would
"cover himself with the mantle of mourning and say
that America is no longer free."

Whereupon, with the advice of Mr. Edward Liv
ingston, he determined to

"prosecute in your courts of Judicature the authors
and abettors of the odious and vile machinations
that have been plotted against me by means of a
series of impostures which for a while have fascinated
the minds of the public, and misled even your Ffrst
Magistrate. . . ."

14

But that was not all. Troubles were accumulat
ing, both at home and in America, and the disaster
was complete. For in August, already, the Cabinet

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 203

had decided to ask for Genet's recall, and Mr. Jef
ferson had written to Mr. Gouverneur Morris, at
Paris, to present this request concerning the Minister
who had " developed a character and conduct so
unexpected and so extraordinary as to place us in
the most distressing dilemna." Just how distress
ing, none but Mr. Jefferson himself was in a position
-to appreciate. Gen6t was officially informed of this
step on September 15, and had some interesting
observations to make in his reply to Mr. Jefferson,
in which he summed up his attitude towards the
whole controversy.

"Sir," he told him, "persuaded that the sovereign
ty of the United States resides essentially in the
People and its representation in the Congress; per
suaded that the executive power is the only one which
has been confided to the President of the United
States; persuaded that this Magistrate has not the
right to decide questions the discussion of which the
Constitution reserves particularly to the Congress;
persuaded that he has not the power to bend existing
treaties to circumstances and to change their sense
I had deferred . . . communicating to my
government . . . the original correspondence which
has taken place in writing between you and myself
on the political rights of France in particular ...
and on the acts, proclamations and decisions of the
President of the United States relative to objects
which require from their nature the sanction of the
legislative body.

"However, informed that the gentlemen who have
been painted to me so often" by whom, one won
ders "as aristocrats, partisans of monarchy, par
tisans of England . . . were laboring to ruin me

204 LIVES AND TIMES

in my country after having reunited all their efforts
to caltimniate me in the view of their fellow citizens,
I was going to . - * transmit them to France with
my reports, when the denunciation which those
same men have excited the President to exhibit
against me, through Mr. Morris, came to my hands.

"It is in the name of the French People that I am
sent to their brethren. ... It is, then, for the
representatives of the American People, and not
for a single man, to exhibit against me an act of
accusation if I have merited it. . . . "

And so, for perhaps the thousandth time, Gen&t
asked, in conclusion, that all the points at issue be
laid before Congress.

And in France the Girondists had fallen, the Jaco
bin Reign of Terror was under way; already in July,
Robespierre's colleagues had been examining the
reported activities of the Minister whose appoint
ment had so angered them, in preparation for a
written rebuke which he must have received some
time in that same fatal September, and the tone of
which few Envoys, probably, have ever been sub
jected to by their Government.

"You thought, " they informed him, with a con
venient disregard of the spirit of his instructions, if
not actually the letter, "that it was your duty to
direct the political affairs of that people and to
persuade it to make common cause with us. ...
You took it upon yourself to arm privateers, to order
recruiting at Charleston, to cause prizes to be con
demned before having been recognized by the Ameri
can Government . . . and with the certainty of

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 205

its disapproval. . . . Your instructions are di-
rectly opposed to this curious interpretation. You
were ordered to treat with the Government and not
with a portion of the people, to be the representative
of the French Republic at the Congress and not the
chief of an American party. . . . We may not,
we can not recognize in America any lawful authority
except that of the President and of the Congress.
It is there that the general will of the people resides
without exception. "

Precisely, in the Congress Genfet had been saying
that for months!

"It seems, Citizen/' they continued, "that since
your arrival at Charleston, you have been sur
rounded by very unintelligent, or extremely ill
intentioned people. . . . They were not aware,
doubtless, that the American Government . . . has
never ceased to make us substantial advances to
furnish us with supplies .... and that we have
always found in it the most friendly attitude, joined
to that wise and even timid policy which . . .
especially characterizes General Washington. . . .
Dazzled by a false popularity you have estranged
the only man who should be the spokesman for you
of the American people " the French Government
had not sat, recently, at the feet of Mr. Jefferson.
"It is not through the effervescence of an indiscreet
zeal that one may succeed with a cold and calculating
people. . . .

"Do not delude yourself any longer concerning the
brilliance of a false popularity which removes from
you the representatives of the people without whom
it will be impossible to bring to a successful close the
negotiations with which you are charged. Apply

206 LIVES AND TIMES

yourself to gaining the confidence of the President
and of the Congress; avoid . . . the perfidious
insinuations of those who wish to mislead you, and
be persuaded especially that it is by reason and not
by enthusiasm that you will be able to exercise
influence on a people which, even when it was making
war on its tyrants, never ceased to remain cold."

One hopes that Gen6t sent a copy of this letter to
Mr. Jefferson, and to the Democratic Societies of
Charleston and Philadelphia.

15

The general will of the people resided in the Con
gress, so they said, and it was to Congress that Gent
looked for his salvation, to Congress that he had
always looked.

"Our friends will sustain us with enthusiasm in
defending our rights in the next Congress/' he wrote
back to France, "disregarding General Washington
who sacrifices them to our enemies, and who will
never forgive me for having received from his people
a support great enough to cause the execution of our
treaties in spite of him. . . . The people are for
us, and their opinion differs greatly from that of
their government."

When Congress met, in December, Mr. Jefferson
sent three Senators to see Gen&t and effect a recon
ciliation for what purpose is not so manifest but
Genfet declined and waited for Congress to express
itself. It did so by agreeing to Mr. Washington's
condemnation " of a person who has so little respected

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 207

the mutual dispositions" of France and America.
The " appeal to the people" had done its work.

"Congress has met!" Gent exclaimed, a trifle
hysterically, but it was a black moment for him.
" Washington has unmasked himself, America is
befouled!"

Genet's successor, Citizen Fauchet whom Mr,
Hamilton described as a meteor following a comet
arrived in January, 1794, and presented himself to
Mr. Randolph, now Secretary of State in place of
Mr. Jefferson who was indulging in one of his sabbati
cal periods. Citizen Fauchet brought with him a
decree of the Committee of Public Safety disavowing
the "criminal conduct" of Gen6t, disarming all his
privateers, revoking all his Consuls, and request
ing his own arrest. Gent was actually to have
been executed aboard the fleet at Brest, without
trial. The decree was signed by Barere, Herault,
BiUaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Saint- Just and
Robespierre sinister names at the foot of any
document.

Mr. Washington, who had demanded his recall
but not his punishment, magnanimously refused to
permit the extradition of Gent. JBut Mr. Ran
dolph, "your friend," Gen6t afterwards wrote to
Mr. Jefferson,

"the man of precious confessions, added in con
fidence that I still had many friends; that it was
necessary to wait; but that if France persisted they
would examine if the power of the President, which
on this point was questionable, might not still afford
some expedient to do what France desired."

208 LIVES AND TIMES

One would hesitate to believe this if it were not
corroborated by Citizen Fauchet himself.

There was nothing left to do except to take over
Genet's enormous files of correspondence, the sorting
of which took nearly two weeks, and to examine his
accounts which showed that the French government
still owed him nine thousand francs, which he was
to try and collect, in vain, a good many years later.
As for his libel suit against Mr. Jay and Mr. King,
Citizen Fauchet reminded him that the family of an
Envoy could be held responsible with their lives for
his conduct, and suggested that the suit be dropped.
One would like to know at whose request.

From Charleston, on March 23, Mr. de Man-
gourit, his friend, wrote to him

1 ' I have received, Citizen, the circular in which you
announce to me your recall. Since the Republic
can only replace one virtuous mart with another I
console myself.

"The Convention, also, will not see the good which
you have done without rendering you a consoling
justice; there you will expose the picture of political
lies; this treacherous and hideous ingratitude will
astonish the incorruptible Robespierre. . . . That
Frenchman will be the first to give you the civic
kiss."

Mr. de Mangourit, of course, did not have the
slightest idea what he was talking about.

/'Without you, the liberty of the United States
would have perished, her treaties with France would

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 209

have been torn up, and the British Leopard would
have appeared a second time in America. . . .
" Adieu, Gen6t!"

16

Adieu, Gent. . . .

He was thirty-one years old; his career was ended;
behind him lay proscription and the scaffold, before
him exile. The sale of his furniture, and of his
carriage and horses, brought him just enough to buy
a small farm, at Jamaica on Long Island. The
Citizen Minister became the citizen farmer.

"All these infamies," he wrote to Mr. Jefferson a
few years later, referring to the closing episodes of
his official life, "have fully justified in the tribunal
of my conscience the course I have taken ... to
remain in America after rendering my accounts and
placing my papers in the hands of my successor in
an honorable manner; and although with little
fortune to bury myself in retirement and silence; to
meditate upon the great revolutions of the world;
to try to penetrate the secrets of nature; and above
all to isolate myself from the intrigues of courts and
the discouraging cabals of the people."

And then all his resentment against the man who
had done so much to ruin him, and against the whole
American influence on France, came out in an aston
ishing paragraph.

"I would to God, Sir," he exclaimed, "that doing
more justice to your talents, you had likewise con
secrated to the cultivation of the sciences the balance
of your life, after having labored in establishing the
independence of the United States. I wish that all

210 LIVES AND TIMES

the other envoys of the Federal government had
done the same. France would then perhaps have
passed without any suspended motion from one
energetic government to another. The blood of the
Bourbons, banished like that of the Tarquins, would
not have flowed upon the scaffold; the French people,
powerful and formidable, would have restrained Eu
rope and found allies . . . and the United States,
having conducted themselves strictly as an associa
tion of industrious merchants and peaceable farmers
who prefer the horn of plenty to the triumph of fame,
would nothave drawn upon themselves the resentment
of all parties who have succeeded each other in France,
and who have been all equally deceived. . . . "

But Gen6t was not entirely alone at Jamaica.
All during the trying months of his final conflict
with the Government, and afterwards, while he was
gathering together the odds and ends of his life for
a fresh start, there was a young lady at New York
who saw in him not the Citizen Minister, or the
citizen farmer, but just the citizen lover. It was
really to see her, probably, that he went to New
York on July 4, 1794, and marched with the officials
of the state in a long procession of French sym
pathizers, singing republican songs, and, if one is to
believe Mr. de Saixit-M6ry, hurling insults at the
royalist emigres on the sidewalk. And even here the
Federalists tried to interfere, saying that he already
had a wife in France; but the wedding finally took
place, at Government House, on the evening of
Thursday, November 6

"by the Rev. Dr. Rodgers, Citizen Edmond Charles
Gen6t, late Minister from the Republic of France, to

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 211

Miss Cornelia Tappen Clinton, daughter of His
Excellency George Clinton Esquire, Governor of
this State."

Miss Cornelia Clinton was twenty years old, a
yoting lady of consequence and great social position.

11 Honest, faithful and sincere, she cheerfully
retired with the man who had won her hand from
the agitated scene of the world to the shades of a
peaceful solitude. "

One seems, somehow, to learn more about Gen6t
from those few, simple facts, than from a multitude
of official records. Three of their children were born
at Jamaica; three others at Prospect Hill, near the
village of Greenbush opposite Albany, to which
they moved in 1800. She died on March 23, 1810,
aged not quite thirty-six, of consumption.

In the meantime, after the fall of Robespierre,
Gen6t had of course expected to be called back to
France. But Mr. Monroe, the new American Min
ister at Paris, objected, and, in spite of faithful Mr.
de Mangourit's exuberant outcries, Genet's name
remained on the list oLthe proscribed. It was not
until several years later that Mr, Monroe finally
explained to Gen&t the motives for his action.

"As a friend to free government," he told him,
"your name will be recorded in the history of the
present day, and your patient submission to the
censures you incurred, in the station of a frugal and
industrious farmer, will be a proof of the upright
ness of your heart and integrity of your conduct
while a victim to pure principles.

212 LIVES AND TIMES

"I considered it a duty not to in j tire your fame or
detract from your merit while I was in France, but
to anticipate and prevent as far as I could any ill
effects which your collision with our government
might produce in the French councils. It was
natural, had you returned, that you should have
gone into a detail with your government of the
incidents attending your mission, and more than
probable that the communications you would have
made to it would have increased the jealousy which
it then entertained of the views of ours. . . .
Hence I was persuaded your return at the time might
be injurious, and was in fact averse to it. ...

"The whole of this has passed and is only recol
lected as interesting to ourselves. I, too, have had
my day of suffering. I served with zeal the cause
of liberty and my country, and was requited by
every injustice which could be rendered me, short
of imprisonment and death. This too has passed,
though it can never be recollected by me but with
disgust."

Napoleon, First Consul, finally invited Gen6t to
return, but the latter would have nothing to do with
a man who was thinking of making himself emperor,
and refused. He settled permanently at Prospect
Hill, and, with Lieutenant Governor Broome and
Mr. De Witt Clinton as sponsors, became a natural
ized American citizen in the presence, so family
tradition asserts, of Mr. Alexander Hamilton, who
addressed the Supreme Court and expressed the
opinion that it was a notable event and a compliment
to American institutions. *

In a way, Gen6t had, at last, appealed to the
American people. . . .

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 213

17

On July 31, 1814, Genet, for four years a widower,
married Miss Martha Brandon Osgood; a young
lady of twenty-seven daughter of Mr. Samuel
Osgood, the first Postmaster General who gave
him five children, and survived him by a good many
years.

Gen6t himself had still twenty years to live.
Noted everywhere for his courtesy, he occupied
himself extensively with Democratic politics and
prison reform; he was keenly interested in the Erie
Canal and other similar projects; he spent much of
his time in scientific research, and invented and
patented a lifeboat; he wrote many pamphlets on
learned subjects On the means of opening new
sources of wealth for the northern states, On public
health and public improvements, On the upward forces
of fluids and their applicability to several arts. . . .

But he was a disappointed man; he never forgave
what seemed to him his mother country's injustice
to him; he "felt himself so much injured that he
almost wished to avoid mankind," his wife told
Madame Ney.

. "Therefore this place surrounded by woods, at a
distance from the metropolis, suited hirn better than
any other. How often have I grieved that his
splendid talents should be buried in obscurity/'

Perhaps, too, the place surrounded by woods re
minded him of Mainville, and those happy, far-off
times with his sisters at Uncle Toto's; perhaps, at

214 LIVES AND TIMES

dusk sometimes, he almost heard the echoes of Uncle
Toto's flute, playing Charming Gabrielle and My
Merry Shepherd those old tunes while he thought
of old days, at Versailles in the little white suits, at
St. Petersburg in the handsome uniform of Dragoons,
at Charleston on the quarterdeck of the Embuscade,
at Oeller's Tavern at Philadelphia. Such different
days, for now they were very poor there were law
suits and mortgages and this old gentleman of
sixty-nine was obliged to write to his niece in France,
in 1832

"To tell you the truth, honors without emoluments
would not soften my distress. If it was not thought
proper to reinstate me here as Minister, I would
consent to accept the post of Consul General . . .
or even that of mere Consul at New York."

Mere Consul at New York. . . .
He died, at Prospect Hill, on July 14, 1834. They
buried him. at Greenbush, where

"Under this humble stone, are interred the remains
of Edmond Charles Gent, late Adjutant General,
Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul General from
the French Republic to the United States of America.
He was born at Versailles, Parish of St. Louis, in
France, January 8, 1763, and died at Prospect Hill,
Town of Greenbush, July 14, 1834.

"Driven by the storms of the Revolution to the
shades of retirement, he devoted his talents to his
Adopted Country, where he cherished the love of
liberty and virtue. The pursuits of literature and
science enlivened his peaceful solitude, and he
devoted his life to usefulness and benevolence. His

EDMOND CHARLES GENET, CITIZEN 215

last moments were like his life, an example of forti
tude and true Christian philosophy. His heart was
love and friendship's sun, which has set on this
Transitory World to rise with radiant splendor
beyond the grave."

Adieu, Gen6t. . . .

1 02 599

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