“As if ability matters,” I argued, in frank disbelief. “As if these were ordinary times and not ones in which you tell me you stand to lose your head!”
It was exactly the wrong thing to say, and I realized it even before my husband stiffened. I shouldn’t have appealed to his sense of self-preservation over the good of the nation. I was speaking, after all, to a man who’d been willing to fight and die for it. And I’d just questioned his willingness to do just that in the presence of our proud, patriotic son.
Fortunately, and to my surprise, Philip was on my side. “Father, the country won’t survive Mr. Jefferson.”
Alexander held up his hands to fend us both off. “I’m not an apologist for Jefferson. His politics are tinctured with fanaticism and he’s a contemptible hypocrite. But he’s vain. He isn’t zealot enough to do anything that will destroy his popularity or our union. By contrast, Burr will disturb our institutions to secure permanent power and wealth. He’s an American Cataline.”
Cataline. Another accursed old Roman who’d plotted to overthrow the republic. I remembered perfectly well a time when Burr jested that the Constitution was nothing but a miserable paper machine, but I said, “You’re allowing your resentments to get the better of your reason.”
After all, though Jefferson always seemed to loom large, he’d been gone from our daily lives a long time, whereas Alexander had more recently tangled with Burr, been embarrassed by Burr, and been bested by Burr. My husband was too proud now to let Burr win. But I was not that proud. “Give Burr what he wants and you might win him to the Federalist point of view.”
“A groundless hope,” said my husband. “No, Burr is one of the worst men in the community. Sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to try everything, and wicked enough to scruple nothing. From the elevation of this man, may heaven preserve us!”
Philip and I remained in mutinous disagreement. In fact, the argument in our household went on almost as long as it did in Congress, through thirty-five rounds of ballots. And while Congress debated, so did we. Upon waking and sleeping. At breakfast and dinner. Before church and after church. And never in my life did I see anyone hector Alexander more relentlessly, or effectively, than my son did that winter.
While I sliced bread for the younger boys one morning after prayers, Philip argued, “By denying Jefferson the presidency and throwing support to Burr, we could split the Republican vote in the next election. The Federalists must support Burr.”
Alexander might have made it out the door if he could have resisted an argument. But of course, he couldn’t. Another father—perhaps any other father—might’ve resented Philip’s arguments as the insolent yappings of a young pup. But Alexander was proud of our son’s political passion and afforded him the same respect he’d give any other man in a political argument.
That is to say, he went on at length, ruthlessly smashing every argument Philip made, as if they were no more than a swarm of buzzing gnats.
“There is no circumstance,” Alexander concluded, “not in the entire course of our political affairs, that has given me so much pain as the mere idea that Mr. Burr might be elevated to the presidency by the means of the Federalists. Jefferson is by far not so dangerous a man and he has, at least, pretensions to character. Let the people have their choice.”
With this, Alexander looked to me, as if to applaud the superior merit of his argument, but I thought Philip had the right of it. That’s why I said, “We know Burr. He isn’t the sort of cold-blooded man who would murder his political enemies.”
Oh, how it chills me now to remember the way Alexander replied, “He is precisely that cold-blooded.”
Part FourThe War for History
Chapter Thirty-Two
Spring 1801
Harlem
IN A LITTLE rowboat upon the Hudson, the rising tide pushed us away from our old life toward the site of our new home, our place of respite, and of our exile . . .
For Jefferson was the president. And there was nothing to do but survive the outcome.
Alexander was never able to convince me, Philip, or his Federalist Party that Jefferson was for the best—but he’d managed to convince a single elector from Delaware to switch his vote, and that had been enough.
I could only hope his gamble paid off—especially since Martha Washington called Jefferson’s election “the greatest misfortune our nation has ever experienced.”
But since my husband had helped him win the election, we were cautiously optimistic that Jefferson would not seek reprisals against us for my husband’s long and vociferous political opposition.
“There it is,” Alexander said as he rowed us to shore, his eyes shielded from the sun by a straw hat that looked nearly comical atop his general’s head. He nodded at a bucolic spot on a forested hilltop. I looked up, a glint of sunlight off the dark green water momentarily blinding me, then I saw it.
Our new home upon this river along which I’d lived so much of my life. But unlike the Pastures or the little house at De Peyster’s Point or our rented town houses, this home was ours.
Thirty-five acres. Barns, sheds, stables, gardens, orchards, chicken houses, duck ponds, and all.
The existing little farmhouse was to be replaced by a much grander mansion that my husband wished to call the Grange, after the lands of his supposed noble ancestor in Scotland. And Alexander was trying to turn a mind long attuned to the architecture of government to the simpler architecture of a house. “What say you about black marble for our fireplaces?”
As we floated pleasantly along the muddy shoreline, alone together for the first time
