The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

and lay upon the cold earth naked and house- the departed ; a sermon preached, even among less and hopeless, yet, in obedience to the great the tombs. laws of the drama, the awful catastrophe was Aaron Burr was one of the most remarkable reserved for the fifth act. From first to last, men of his day. Alive or dead, there is no having no faith in Man, no hope for himself be- speaking of him without a shudder. Beyond yond that which lurks in the bosom of a cool the every-day acceptation of the word, he was and crafty gambler, who depends upon over- a great man; for wiser and better men were reaching all who may happen to think better of afraid of him, and he made himself felt, and him than he deserves, he played, whatever heard himself acknowledged whithersoever he might be the stake, as if playing for his own bent his way. If he but lifted his finger in soul with the Enemy of man ; without sympa- earnest, or breathed aloud, in the day of his thy, remorse or compunction ; heedless of all strength, all the political and social and moral consequences either to himself or to those whom elements of society about him were disturbed. he pretended most to love on earth. His eye He carried a truncheon, like a thunderbolt, never quailed —his hand never shook — ‘‘ his whose authority, from first to last, during a feet were swift to shed blood.’’ eriod of thirty years, it was death to question. What shall be said of such a man? Is he to hile yet a youth, his elder brethren did obei- pass away untouched by earthly retribution? sance to him, and as he waxed older, they an example rather than a warning to others? prostrated themselves in his path, and he tram- Are the ambitious and the unprincipled to be- ———— pled upon them, and spurned them. lieve that they have nothing to fear from the And yet — notwithstanding all this, and not- judgments of men? Is there to be no profit in withstanding the profound impression he ap- dealing justly with these disturbers of the peace, pears to have made upon all who associated after death? Or shall his name be suffered to with him, or made war upon him, during the perish forever, lest in troubling the dead we busiest part of a long and eventful life ; in the may trouble the quick! Or shall it be remem- camp and in the cabinet, in the senate chamber, bered as a nightmare that weighed upon our we  AARON BURR. fathers, awake or asleep; and haunted them And what was that one virtue? We shall alike in the battle-field and the senate-cham- see. It was the virtue of endurance. Up to ber! the very day of his death, you find him, like Is it enough to say of such men — they are no Hannibal, and like Napoleon, self-sustained, more! Will society breathe freer? will the great amid the wreck and ruin of all his cherished pulses of human life carry on their ‘‘ healthful hopes; in desolation and bereavement and music,’’ as if nothing strange had happened, weariness of life, beyond the power of lan- when such men depart from among us? What guage to describe — thunder-blasted and alone if, by summoning them to reappear upon earth, = >otself-sustained ! to stand up in their grave-clothes, before the he overthrow of all his mighty schemes; Future they defied and scoffed at; before the the utter ebbing of that faithless and fathomless children of those whom they have so mightily ocean, which had borne him onward so long and wronged, we may oblige them to declare the so triumphantly ; the sudden and total eclipse truth, to uncover their festering hearts before of all the splendors that had so long beset his all the world, to lay bare the secrets that were path —of all the blazing trophies he had - buried with them? What should restrain us — heaped together at so much cost of labor, and and who would venture to rebuke us ? sacrifice of principle —the noon-day shipwreck eee ~et Do the Living owe so much to the Dead, and of every earthly hope —all these things he the Dead nothing to them? Are we never to withstood, as if they were the idle drifting know of a truth, and to judge for ourselves, phantoms of sleep, instead of being what they who the great men of this world are? Must were — overwhelming, dread and vast realities. we take everything upon hearsay, all we so He bore them all, if not submissively, and earnestly desire to know, upon trust? In that with humble resignation, at least in silence and dread charnel-house, the buried human heart, with dignity —manfully and uncomplainingly; once alive and sweltering with unholy fire, the and all this, without the consolations of a re- living who are alike selfish, unsparing and res- ligious faith; without the consciousness of a olute, and who, while they stop at nothing to well-spent life; without friendship, without effect their purposes, are not altogether beyond sympathy, and without hope. Like imperial the reach of hope, may find somewhat to alarm Cesar, he gathered his robe about him, and their consciences, to teach them worldly wis- covered his face, fell,— and in the very midst dom, if nothing better, and to make them doubt of those who but the other day were his obe- che SRS NT and parley with the Destroyer, if nothing more, dient slaves. ‘The moment he had overstepped when they find themselves beset on every side the fiery circle that held them in awe, the by the sensual and the loathsome ; when their spirits he had conjured up, turned upon him and very spirits fail them before the harlotry of the tore him in their wrath. And still, unlike imagination ; and the bale-fires that kindle of Hannibal and Cato, and the mighty of other themselves at the approach of unhallowed ap- days, and unlike him, ‘‘ from whose reluctant petite, or ‘‘ the last infirmity of noble minds,”’ hand the thunderbolt was wrung,”’ the Uncon- are like lions in their path. querable of our day, he forebore to lift his hand For the encouragement of those who are against Himself —the Lord’s anointed — but toiling for mastery over themselves, before stood still, and waited the coming of Death, as they venture to push for dominion over others; a monarch would the approach of an ambassa- and who are neither afraid nor ashamed be- dor laden with kingly gifts. cause of the ‘‘ world’s dread laugh,”’ to say, If Aaron Burr was not a great man, what when they are sorely buffetted, ‘‘ Get behind was he? If with his one virtue, standing up me Satan!’? And as a warning to all who, alone in its gigantic proportions, unhelped and whatever else they may have done, have not unsustained, yet steadfast as the living rock, he yet surrendered body and soul to the blandish- could endure life, with all its disappointments ments of Ambition, nor been swallowed up and trials and emptiness, when he knew he quick among the whirlpools of the hour, it may had nothing to hope on this side the grave, and be worth while to look into the history of Aaron not much on the other: when he felt that he Burr’s life. had lived in vain, and that he was already for- What an epitaph to begin with! He cum- gotten; and this, year after year, when he bered the earth for eighty years ; troubling the longed for death and was not afraid to die— spirits of men with a visible awe ; warring with what kind of a man must he have been, if that usages and with principles as with nations; one single virtue had gathered to itself other overthrowing all that opposed him, till his foot virtues, alike serene and lofty, and their fellow- rested upon the very threshold of empire —tum- ship had continued on earth for eighty years? bled headlong to the earth, at the very moment Would not this whole country have been the of his final triumph — and dying at last, friend- happier — whole ages, better and wiser — that less, and homeless, and childless, without sym- Aaron Burr had lived¢ pathy or fellowship — and literally forgotten, Would his enemies have been able to write years before the earth had closed over him ! upon his grave then, aught to compare in awful significance with what his best friends are “Leaving an ovTLAw’s name to other times, obliged to write now — Aaron Burr is no more. Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.” De mortuis nil nisi bonum.  8. 7 THE PIONEER. Ge oT cM Let us look into his life. Up.to the last, and ‘into the causes of the failure of the preced- even upon his death-bed, if we may believe his ing campaign, and passing a vote of censure, ae as biographer, ‘‘ he was far more tenacious of his which it was believed would provoke the high- military, than of his professional, political or spirited Virginian to withdraw; a plan which moral character.’’ And well he might be! smacks marvellously of the temper, and craft, In obedience to his death-bed , injunction, and courtesy, which always characterized the in- = wi therefore, let us try to understand first his mil- trigues of Aaron Burr. Suaviter in modo, for- a itary character. titer in re, was the motto he wore blazoned, not He joins the revolutionary armies without only upon his banner and shield, but upon his experience or preparation, while he is yet in