USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 18
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His conduct immediately after the duel was as remarkable as his char- acter. When he reached Richmond Hill from crimsoned Weehawken he took his accustomed morning bath, then his easy-chair in the library, where he was found reading by a young relative from Connecticut who arrived unexpectedly about eight o'clock. Parton says, "Neither in his manner nor in his conversation was there any evidence of excitement or concern, nor anything whatever to attract the notice of his guest." When breakfast was announced the two gentlemen proceeded to the breakfast- room together, and chatted pleasantly during the meal ; after which the cousin said "Good morning," and strolled towards the city, which he reached about ten o'clock. In Broadway he observed signs of consterna- tion or confusion, as if some extraordinary event had occurred, and when near Wall Street met an acquaintance, who exclaimed, " Colonel Burr has killed General Hamilton in a duel this morning !" " Why, no he hasn't," replied the young man promptly and positively ; " I have just come from taking breakfast with him." " But," said the other, " I have this moment seen the news on the bulletin !" The cousin was utterly incredulous, and denounced the report as false. He soon found, however, that the whole city was astir, and began to suspect that the terrible story was only too true. Thus completely could Burr command his features and preserve absolute composure.
Yet with all his coolness and cunning, his rapid and quick perceptions, and the recklessness with which he was ever ready to accomplish his ends, he was lamentably defective in judgment. He fancied himself a more pop- ular man than Hamilton. And certainly a more important man, as Vice- President of the nation ? It was not so very long since he had stood the idol of a great political party, second in influence and popularity only to one man in America. His self-sufficiency, thus flattered, was at higher ebb than his wisdom, else he would have foreseen that even party rancor, eager to maim the living, scorns to strip the slain. His reasoning facul- ties were not on a par with the brilliancy of his intellect. He treated the subject of the duel lightly in his private correspondence. On the 13th he wrote to his son-in-law, Governor Alston : "General Hamilton died yes- terday .. The malignant Federalists or tories, and the embittered Clin-
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tonians, unite in endeavoring to excite public sympathy in his favor and indignation against his antagonist. Thousands of absurd falsehoods are circulated with industry." Five days later he wrote again : "The event of which you have been advised has driven me into a sort of exile, and may terminate in an actual and permanent ostracism. Our most un- principled Jacobins are the loudest in their lamentations for the death of General Hamilton, whom, for many years, they have uniformly repre- sented as the most detestable and unprincipled of men - the motives are obvious. Every sort of persecution is to be exercised against me .. .. . You know enough of the temper and principles of the generality of the officers of our State government to form a judgment of my position."
For eleven days Vice-President Burr remained in the vicinity of Rich- mond Hill without daring to venture into the open air; but it becoming painfully apparent that he was soon to be arrested and arraigned for wil-
ful murder, he stealthily departed from the city one dark, cloudy July 21. evening. A little barge had been provided which lay silently near the shore of the Hudson below Richmond Hill. At ten o'clock, surrounded by a party of gentlemen, the Vice-President emerged from the beautiful mansion, never to enter it more, and walking to the water's. edge embarked in company with his faithful friend John Swartwout and a favorite servant, and soon was moving noiselessly down the river. All night the bargemen plied their oars, and at nine o'clock next morning, which was the Sabbath, paused in front of the lawn of Commodore Truxton's residence in Perth Amboy. The commodore was summoned from his study, greeted Burr courteously, and extended cordial hospitali- ties ; Swartwout returned immediately to New York. The commodore said, " In walking up to my house the Vice-President told me they had spent most of the night upon the water, and a dish of good coffee would not come amiss. I told him it should be furnished with pleasure. As soon as we got to the piazza, I ordered breakfast, which was soon pre- pared, as the equipage of that meal was not yet removed below." The commodore on Monday drove Burr in his own carriage to Cranberry, some twenty miles beyond ; from whence the fugitive was conveyed in a light wagon to the Delaware, which having crossed, he made his way by back roads to Philadelphia.
He was welcomed upon his arrival by some of his former friends, and at once appeared in the streets, on foot and on horseback, exactly as if nothing had happened. In accordance with his ruling principle, to make little of life's miseries and much of its pleasures, he renewed a flirtation with a beautiful Philadelphia belle whose hand had been refused him a year or two before. "I am very well, and not without occupation or
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amusement," he wrote to Theodosia. "I shall be here for some days. How many cannot now be resolved." Being advised that warrants had been issued for his arrest, and that an application had been made to Governor Lewis requiring him to demand the murderer from the governor of Pennsylvania, he offered to surrender on condition of receiving a guar- anty that he should be released on bail. But no such guaranty could be given him, and he prepared for further flight. He addressed Theodosia on the 11th of August, saying, " Pray write over again all you have written since the 25th of July, for the letters now on the way will Aug. 11. not be received for some time. Celeste seems more pliant. I do believe that eight days would have produced some grave event ; but, alas ! those eight days, and perhaps eight days more, are to be passed on the ocean. If any male friend of yours should be dying of ennui, recommend him to engage in a duel and a courtship at the same time."
He took refuge for a month upon an island off the coast of Georgia, and then made his way to his daughter's home in South Carolina, travel- ing four hundred miles of the distance in an open canoe. After ten days of rest he commenced a long land journey to Washington, determined to appear at the assembling of Congress, and perform his duty as president of the Senate. He found upon reaching the seat of government that he had been indicted for murder by New Jersey also, as the duel was fought within the limits of that State. He wrote to Theodosia : "There is a con- tention of a singular nature between the two States of New York and New Jersey. The subject in dispute is, which shall have the honor of hanging the Vice-President. You shall have due notice of time and place. Whenever it may be, you may rely on a great concourse of company, much gayety, and many rare sights."
Meanwhile Richmond Hill was sold by Burr's creditors to John Jacob Astor for twenty-five thousand dollars, and the amount distributed among them. But the sum was not enough to liquidate Burr's indebtedness by at least seven or eight thousand dollars ; thus he was liable to imprisonment for debt if he appeared in New York. His assets were of course un- available, his income nothing, his practice gone, and two great sovereign States were anxious to consign him to an assassin's doom. At the same time he discharged the duties of his office all winter in Washington unmolested, and was treated with as much consideration, apparently, by the officials of the government as before the duel. He was as cheerful, witty, courtly, and complaisant as ever. His motions in walking were always . a little stooping and ungraceful ; although of about the same stature as Hamilton, he never stood erect like the murdered statesmen. He had an eminent authority of manner, however, whenever it suited
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his purposes ; and he is said to have presided with great dignity in the Senate, and particularly at the impeachment trial of Judge Samuel Chase, which, commencing on the 4th of February, ended on the 1st of March in a verdict of acquittal. The Senators, as judges of this august court, were placed in a grand semicircle on each side of the Vice-President, an imposing array of judicial authority. One of the newspapers of the day said "Burr conducted the trial with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil." The next day, March 2, Burr took formal leave of the Senate in a speech that produced unexpected and profound sensation. And on March 4 Jefferson was sworn the second time into the Presidential office, while George Clinton, the ex- governor of New York, and head of a family whom Burr considered his bitterest enemies, became Vice-President.
Aaron Burr vanished from the political arena never to reappear. With- in six days he wrote to Theodosia of his purpose to travel in the West. " This tour has other objects than mere curiosity. An operation of busi- ness which promises to render the tour both useful and agreeable," he said. Thus we catch the first gleam of that scheme of matchless daring which in its development only proved how true had been the instinct of Hamilton in warning his country against placing power in the hands of this unprincipled and energetic adventurer.
The impression left upon the New York mind by the death of Hamilton was fatal to the practice of dueling within her borders. The absurdity of the sacrifice of such a life to maintain the "honor " of a profligate like Burr intensified with every turn of the earth in its orbit. Civilized com- mon-sense was awakened. A recent act of the Legislature had made the sending and accepting of a challenge punishable with disfranchisement and incapacity to hold office for twenty years ; but such had been the state of public sentiment hitherto that parties concerned in a duel only had to maintain secrecy beforehand, and the world ignored the consequences, as well as the law. A number of persons knew that Burr and Hamilton were making preparations for a duel, yet no hindrance was interposed. It is said that but for the testimony of Rev. Dr. John M. Mason, who visited Hamilton at his request in his dying moments, and of Bishop Moore, who administered the sacrament to him, and remained at his bedside until all was over, there would never have existed a word of legal evidence that the duel had been fought !1 With both of these eminent clergymen Hamilton conversed freely, and declared with the utmost sincerity of heart that he had no ill-will against Burr. "I used every expedient to avoid the interview," he said, " but I have found, for some time past, that
1 Parton's Life of Aaron Burr ; Davis's Life of Aaron Burr.
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my life must be exposed to that man. I met him with a fixed determi- nation to do him no harm. I forgive all that happened." 1
The murderous custom was denounced from the pulpit on every hand. Among those who preached effective and celebrated sermons on the sub- ject of dueling were Rev. Samuel Spring, a college friend of Burr and his companion on the famous Canadian expedition in 1776 - father of the eminent theologian Rev. Dr. Gardner Spring of the Brick Church - and Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Nott, who was the same year appointed President of Union College. " Humiliating end of illustrious greatness," exclaimed Nott, with great feeling; "a loud and awful warning to a community where justice has slumbered - and slumbered - and slumbered - while the wife has been robbed of her partner, the mother of her hopes, and life after life rashly and with an air of triumph sported away. It is distress- ing in a Christian country, and in churches consecrated to the religion of Jesus, to be obliged to attack a crime which outstrips barbarism, and would even sink the character of a generous savage. The fall of Ham- ilton owes its existence to mad deliberation, and is marked by violence. The time, the place, the circumstances are arranged with barbarous cool- ness. The instrument of death is leveled in daylight, and with well- directed skill pointed at his heart. The man upon whom nature seems originally to have impressed the stamp of greatness, the hero who, though a stripling, contributed to Washington's glory on the field, the statesman whose genius impressed itself upon the constitution of this country, the counselor who was at once the pride of the bar and the admiration of the court, whose argument no change of circumstances could embarrass -- who without ever stopping, ever hesitating, by a rapid and manly march led the listening judge and the fascinated juror, step by step, through a delightsome region, brightening as he advanced, till his argument rose to demonstration, and eloquence was rendered useless by conviction - the patriot whose integrity baffled the scrutiny of inquisition, the friend whose various worth opposing parties acknowledged while alive, and on whose tomb they unite with equal sympathy and grief to heap their honors, yielded to the force of an imperious custom ; and, yielding, he sacrificed a life in which all had an interest - and he is lost - lost to his country - lost to his family - lost to us.
" I cannot forgive that minister at the altar who has hitherto forborne to remonstrate on this subject. I cannot forgive that public prosecutor, who, intrusted with the duty of avenging his country's wrongs, has seen
1 Bishop Moore's Letter ; Rev. Dr. Mason's Letter ; Reflections of Hamilton, a paper written by himself the evening before the duel ; Will of Hamilton, appointing John B. Church, Nicholas Fish, and Nathaniel Pendleton his executors and trustees.
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those wrongs and taken no measures to avenge them. I cannot forgive that judge upon the bench, or that governor in the chair of state, who has lightly passed over such offenses. I cannot forgive the public, in whose opinion the duelist finds a sanctuary. ... Do you ask how proof can be obtained ? How can it be avoided ? The parties return, hold up the instruments of death, publish to the world the circumstances of the interview, and even with an air of insulting triumph boast how coolly and how deliberately they proceeded in violating one of the most sacred laws of earth and heaven.
"Hamilton needs no eulogy. ... In whatever sphere he moved the friendless had a friend, the fatherless a father, and the poor man, though unable to reward his kindness, found an advocate. .. When truth was disregarded or the eternal principles of justice violated, he sometimes soared so high and shone with a radiance so transcendent, I had almost said so 'heavenly, as filled those around him with awe, and gave to him the force and authority of a prophet ' . . His last act more than any other sheds glory on his character. . . . He dies a Christian. .. . Let not the sneering infidel persuade you that this last act of homage to the Saviour resulted from an enfeebled state of mental faculties ; . . . his opinions concerning the validity of the Holy Scriptures had long been settled, and settled after laborious investigation and extensive and deep research. These opinions were not concealed. I knew them myself. Some of you who hear me knew them. And had his life been spared, it was his determination to have published them to the world, together with the facts and reasons upon which they were founded. ... To the cata- logue of professing Christians among illustrious personages may now be added the name of Alexander Hamilton; a name which raises in the mind the idea of whatever is great, whatever is splendid, whatever is illustrious in human nature." 1
The Legislature of New York was speedily memorialized for more stringent laws upon the subject of dueling ; and Pinckney, the vice-presi- dent of the Cincinnati, proposed to the New York division of that society henceforward to set its face resolutely against the practice. Other societies passed resolutions in harmony with the same disposition. Religion and
1 Discourse by Rev. Eliphalet Nott, D. D., July 29, 1804. President Nott was in severe domestic affliction at the time he delivered the above discourse, having lost his wife on the 9th of March, 1804. She was Sarah, the daughter of Rev. Joel Benedict, of Plainfield, Con- necticut, and twenty-nine years of age at the time of her death ; a lady rather small of stature, of fair complexion, expressive countenance, lighted with an uncommonly brilliant and penetrating eye, with a mind enriched by reading and taste refined by culture, and with great vivacity of manner. President Nott was born in 1773 ; he was the son of Rev. Samuel and Deborah Seldon Nott, of Connecticut. See p. 124 (Vol. II). History of the Waite Family ; The Benedicts in America, p. 88.
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humanity united in one deep, abiding frown. And since that time no man in New York, or in any other civilized State of this Union, has fought a duel without falling in the esteem of his contemporaries. Dueling had, strictly speaking, received its death-blow, and it never even tem- porarily revived.
" If," said Fisher Ames, "the popular estimation is ever to be taken for the true one, the uncommonly profound sorrow for the death of Alexan- der Hamilton sufficiently explains and vindicates itself. The public has not suddenly, but after an experience of five-and-twenty years, taken that impression of his just celebrity that nothing but his extraordinary intrin- sic merit could have made, and still less could have made so deep and maintained so long. It is with really great men as with great literary works, the excellence of both is best tested by the extent and durableness of their impression. It is safe and correct to judge by effects."
Three fourths of a century have since passed, and the facts and effects of Hamilton's life are now more vividly impressed upon the intelligence of America than ever before. And a fresh interest is awakening, not only in the genius, character, and services of the great statesman through whom New York took such a leading place in general affairs, but in the study of the origin and constitution of the nation whose existence has been vindicated by arms.
The Cincinnati erected a monumental tomb to his memory in Trinity Churchyard : and popular affection recorded his name indelibly upon the ever-forming map of the United States dozens of times repeated.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
Tomb of Hamilton. [Trinity Churchyard, New York City. ]
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CHAPTER XLIII.
1804 -1808.
INSTITUTIONS AND INVENTIONS.
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY. - ITS FOUNDERS. - JUDGE EGBERT BENSON. - JOHN PINTARD. - ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES IN AMERICA. - THE MEN OF LET- TERS. - THE ELGIN BOTANICAL GARDEN. -- DR. SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL. - CLUBS. - ORIGIN OF THE FREE SCHOOL SOCIETY. - ITS PURPOSE. - ITS FOUNDERS. -- THOMAS EDDY. - INSANE ASYLUM. - SOME OF THE PUBLIC-SPIRITED MERCHANTS. - THE FRIENDLY CLUB. - PHILANTHROPIC LADIES. - THE ORPHAN ASYLUM. - THIRTY- THREE CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS. - THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. - THE MEDICAL COLLEGE. - NEWSPAPERS. - SALMAGUNDI. - WASHINGTON IRVING. - FIRST STEAM- BOAT ON THE HUDSON. - ROBERT FULTON. - COLONEL JOHN STEVENS. - INVENTIONS AND EXPERIMENTS. - OCEAN STEAM NAVIGATION. - THE EMBARGO OF JEFFERSON.
T HE peculiar intellectual and social condition of New York in the earli- est decade of the present century is best illustrated through the in- stitutions which were springing into existence. The movement of the human mind taken collectively is always towards something better. But neither philosophy, scientific achievement, literary culture, the art of gov- ernment, nor religious knowledge can go much in advance of contemporary intelligence. The age furnishes the master-workman with materials, and from thence he builds. The growth of New York has ever been like a poem, whose beauty would be marred by leaving out a line here and there -- or like a tree, whose fruit would be curtailed by rejecting as of no account a portion of its branches and its flowers. To become acquainted with the actual whole, every opening bud must be analyzed and weighed in the balance. No fact means anything when standing alone. Every fact be- comes significant in proportion to the value of its setting, and so far as it reveals the quality and spirit of a people.
The careful reader, having traced in preceding chapters the results of New York's constant endeavor to provide means and methods for edu- cating all classes of her restless, questioning population, is prepared for further developments in her elaborate machinery for the maintenance of public schools. And we have presently to draw more fully the
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outline of her magnificent charities - the medicine for natural and moral evils - in which her generous extravagance has excelled through all her history that of any other city in the world. In the mean time a project was under consideration, neither educational nor charitable, but partaking of the nature of both, which was to become a priceless inheri- tance to all future generations.
Eleven well-known and highly accomplished and influential gentlemen met by appointment in the picture-room of the City Hall, in Wall Street, on the afternoon of the 20th of November, 1804, and agreed to organize a society for the collection and preservation of whatever 1804. might relate to the natural, civil, or ecclesiastical history of the United States in general, and of the great sovereign State of New York in partic- ular These gentlemen were Judge Egbert Ben- son, Mayor De Witt Clinton, the celebrated divines Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller, Rev. Dr. John M. Mason, Rev. Dr. John N. Abeel, and Rev. Dr. Wil- liam Linn, and Dr. David Hosack, Anthony Bleeck- er, Samuel Bayard, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, and John Pintard. After discussing the subject freely, a committee, con- sisting of Judge Benson, Rev. Dr. Miller, and John Pintard, was appointed to draft a constitution.
Judge Egbert Benson.
At a second meeting, [From the celebrated Painting by Gilbert Stuart.] on the 10th of December, other gentlemen of prominence were present, including Rufus King, Daniel D. Tompkins, and Rev. John H. Hobart. The constitution was read and adopted, and the institution thus founded was named the New York Historical Society.
The permanent officers were not chosen until the 14th of January, 1805, at which meeting the society was fully organized, with Judge 1805. Benson as president, Right Reverend Bishop Moore 1st vice-presi- dent, Judge Brockholst Livingston 2d vice-president, Rev. Dr. Miller corresponding secretary, John Pintard recording secretary, Charles Wilkes
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treasurer, and John Forbes librarian. The first standing committee con- sisted of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, Dr. David Hosack, Daniel D. Tompkins, William Johnson, John McKesson, Anthony Bleecker, and Rev. Dr. Mason.
Active measures were at once taken to secure books, manuscripts, letters, documents, statistics, and newspapers relating directly or remotely to Amer- ican history ; and pictures, antiquities, medals, coins, and specimens of natural history were industriously sought for the formation of a museum. The beginning was broad and comprehensive, and the nucleus was soon constituted of the vast and valuable collection which has become the pride of the city, and which may well challenge comparison with museums of a similar character established and fostered by an older civilization.
John Pintard, the acknowledged founder of this time-honored in- stitution, was an animated, cheerful, energetic man of forty-five, a New- Yorker by birth, a Huguenot by descent, who as a youth in Prince- ton College had enjoyed the special friendship of Dr. Witherspoon and formed a wide circle of learned and distinguished friends. He was early a student of public men and measures, and in addition to classical acquire- ments and familiarity with elegant literature, had some knowledge of law, and an exceptional fund of historical, geographical, and didactic in- formation. Dr. Francis says : " He was versed in theological and polemi- cal divinity, and in the progress of church affairs among us ever a devoted disciple. You could scarcely approach him without having something of Dr. Johnson thrust upon you. There were periods in his life in which he gave every unappropriated moment to philological inquiry, and it was curious to see him ransacking his formidable pile of dictionaries for radi- cals and synonyms with an earnestness that would have done honor to the most eminent student in the republic of letters."
He had traveled through the Western wilds and learned the history and habits of the Indians, was editor of The New York Daily Advertiser for several years ; and upon his return from New Orleans in the spring of 1804 published a topographical and medical review of that French metropolis, having while there minutely examined the condition of things. He engaged in commercial enterprises, but was ever rendering important civic services to New York; he was the first city inspector, appointed in 1804, originated the first savings-bank, which was organ- ized in the rooms of the New York Historical Society, was conspicuous in the formation of the American Bible Society, was the main-spring in the organization of the Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was an efficient auxiliary in furtherance of the canal policy of his illustrious and intimate friend, De Witt Clinton. Dr. Francis says: "The first meeting of our citizens in recommendation of this vast
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