public services in civil life weigh so much as a feather in his behalf. They no longer remembered that only a few years earlier he had been the leader of his party in the National Senate, and that his appointment to the then critically important post of Minister to France had been urged by the unanimous caucus of his political associates in Congress. None of the notable honors that admirers had asserted to be his due, nor yet his effective work for his party, were now recalled. The years of provocation 1 which

1 Hamilton's pursuit of Burr was lifelong and increasingly venomous. It seems incredible that a man so transcendently great as Hamileasily the foremost creative mind in American statesmanship should have succumbed to personal animosities such as he displayed toward John Adams, and toward Aaron Burr.

ton

The rivalry of Hamilton and Burr began as young attorneys at the New York bar, where Burr was the only lawyer considered the equal of Hamilton. Hamilton's open hostility, however, first showed itself when Burr, then but thirty-five years of age, defeated Hamilton's father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, for the United States Senate. The very next year Hamilton prevented Burr from being nominated and elected Governor of New York. Then Burr was seriously considered for Vice-President, but Hamilton also thwarted this project.

When Burr was in the Senate, the anti-Federalists in Congress unanimously recommended him for the French Mission; and Madison and Monroe, on behalf of their colleagues, twice formally urged Burr's appointment. Hamilton used his influence against it, and the appointment was not made. At the expiration of Burr's term in the Senate, Hamilton saw to it that he should not be chosen again and Hamilton's father-in-law this time succeeded.

President Adams, in 1798, earnestly desired to appoint Burr to the office of Brigadier-General under Washington in the provisional army raised for the expected war with France. Hamilton objected so strenuously that the President was forced to give up his design. (See Adams to Rush, Aug. 25, 1805, Old Family Letters, 77; and same to same, June 23, 1807, ib. 150.)

In the Presidential contest in the House in 1801 (see vol. II, 533-38, of this work), Burr, notwithstanding his refusal to do anything in his own behalf (ib. 539–47), would probably have been elected instead of Jefferson, had not Hamilton savagely opposed him. (Ib.)

When, in 1804, Burr ran for Governor of New York, Hamilton

had led, in an age of dueling,' to a challenge of his remorseless personal, professional, and political enemy were now unconsidered in the hue and cry raised when his shot, instead of that of his foe, proved mortal.

Yet his spirit was not broken. His personal friends stood true; his strange charm was as potent as ever over most of those whom he met face to face; and throughout the country there were thousands who still admired and believed in Aaron Burr. Particularly in the West and in the South the general sentiment was cordial to him; many Western Senators were strongly attached to him; and most of his brother officers of the Revolution who had settled beyond the Alleghanies were his friends. Also, he was still in vigorous middle life, and though delicate of frame and slight of stature, was capable of greater physical exertion than most men of fewer years.

What now should the dethroned political leader do? Events answered that question for him, and, again attacked him. It was for one of Hamilton's assaults upon him during this campaign that Burr challenged him. (See Parton: Life and Times of Aaron Burr, 339 et seq.; also Adams: U.S. II, 185 et seq.; and Private Journal of Aaron Burr, reprinted from manuscript in the library of W. K. Bixby, Introduction, iv-vi.) So prevalent was dueling that, but for Hamilton's incalculable services in founding the Nation and the lack of similar constructive work by Burr, the hatred of Burr's political enemies and the fatal result of the duel, there certainly would have been no greater outcry over the encounter than over any of the similar meetings between public men during that period.

1 Dueling continued for more than half a century. Many of the most eminent of Americans, such as Clay, Randolph, Jackson, and Benton, fought on "the field of honor." In 1820 a resolution against dueling, offered in the Senate by Senator Morrill of New Hampshire, was laid on the table. (Annals, 16th Cong. 1st Sess. 630, 636.)

2 McCaleb: Aaron Burr Conspiracy, 19; Parton: Burr, 382.

beckoned forward by an untimely ambition, he followed the path that ended amid dramatic scenes in Richmond, Virginia, where John Marshall presided over the Circuit Court of the United States.

Although at the time Jefferson had praised what he called Burr's "honorable and decisive conduct " 1 during the Presidential contest in the House in February of 1801, he had never forgiven his associate for having received the votes of the Federalists, nor for having missed, by the merest chance, election as Chief Magistrate. Notwithstanding that Burr's course as Vice-President had won the admiration even of enemies, his political fall was decreed from the moment he cast his vote on the Judiciary Bill in disregard of the rigid party discipline that Jefferson and the Republican leaders then exacted.4

3

Even before this, the constantly increasing frigidity of the President toward him, and the refusal of the Administration to recognize by appointment any one recommended by him for office in New York," had made it plain to all that the most Burr could expect was Jefferson's passive hostility. Under these circumstances, and soon after his judiciary vote, the spirited Vice-President committed another impru2 Adams: U.S. 1, 331.

1 Vol. II, 545, of this work.

3 "His official conduct in the Senate.. has fully met my approbation," testifies the super-critical Plumer in a letter to his wife March 2, 1805. (Plumer, 331.)

"Burr is completely an insulated man." (Sedgwick to King, Feb. 20, 1802, King, IV, 74.)

"Burr has lost ground very much with Jefferson's sect during the present session of Congress... He has been not a little abused.. in the democratic prints." (Troup to King, April 9, 1802, King, iv, 103.) Also see supra, chap. 11; Adams: U.S. 1, 280; and Parton: Burr, 309. Adams: U.S. 1, 230–33; Channing: Jeff. System, 17-19.