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

his forehead. Inexorable as death and smooth as twentieth year, feeble and effeminate, smalj of oil, is but a fair translation of the legend. stature, and so youthful in appearance, that when Throughout his military career, you find him he. comes to be distinguished, as Colonel Burr, full of resource and courage, energetic, prompt he is mistaken for Colonel Burr’s son, and goes and wary; watchful to a proverb ; never taken by that name for a long while in the army. Hav- by surprise, never losing his self-possession, ing heard of Arnold’s design upon Quebec, the never sparing himself, nor ever faltering in his Gibraltar of the New World, he volunteers as a self-reliance for a single moment; now march- private, shoulders his musket, straps on his knap- ing a bedy of three hundred men against a ma- sack, and marches afoot from Cambridge to New- rauding party of the enemy three thousand buryport; baffling the best concerted schemes strong — surprising their sentinels, destroying of his guardian to thwart the enterprise. And their picket-guard, breaking up their camp, the next time we hear of him, he is on his way and returning in safety, after being two days to the Canadas, charged by Arnold himself with and nights without sleep, and marching thirty a confidential despatch fur Montgomery ; steal- miles in, less than ten hours; now parading a ing through our great northern wilderness, in corps of mutineers by moonlight, and going out the depth of winter, afoot and almost alone; single-handed against them, and cutting down and after enduring hardships more trying than the ringleader at the very instant of a precon- those which regenerated the effeminate Cesar, certed attack; now planning enterprise after narrowly escaping death by freezing and by enterprise, alike remarkable for boldness and drowning, by starvation and by the halter, he generalship — enterprises which others were reaches Montgomery, is appointed his aid-de- left to undertake and fail in, lest he should be- camp, volunteers to lead a forlorn hope, is with come conceited perhaps; and now establishing him in the midnight attack upon the citadel, in sucha character with the Commander-in-chief, a heavy snow-storm, and is almost the only that he ‘cannot be spared,’ even at the urgent survivor among the steadfast few that led the solicitation of General Gates himself ; now halt- assault — Montgomery and McPherson and ing his brigade under a heavy fire at the battle Cheesman being swept down at his side, by the of Monmouth, and offering up himself and his accidental discharge of that single cannon which men, a willing sacrifice to a soldier’s first duty saved Quebec—and the whole party being — obedience ; now broken down in health, de- obliged to retreat, with all their foremost men manding a furlough, and refusing it when of- either dead or dying — shattered to pieces, or tered, because it came with a letter from the bleeding to death upon the snow. Commander-in-chief, continuing his pay ; and Soon after this, we find him in Washington’s now leaping from a sick bed at the blast of a family by special invitation; and while he is trumpet, and taking command of the students yet under age, appointed aid-de-camp to Major- at College-green, throwing himself headlong General Putnam, aad bringing off a whole brig- upon.a body of British, and staying their march ; ade in safety from a position of exceeding peril, and always, from first to last, during the whole contrary to the opinion of General Knox him- of his military career, manifesting a firmness, a self, who regarded the project as altogether readiness, a coolness and a quickness, which on hopeless. That his character as a soldier, not a wider theatre, and in the schools of Europe, as a man, stood high with the Commander-in- would, have made him one of the first captains chief, may be safely inferred from the fact that of the age— perhaps of any age. he was appointed, a Lieutenant-Colonel by And yet we are called upon to believe that Washington himself, in his twenty-second year; this extraordinary man, this great soldier, in that he was immediately employed in the im- the maturity of his strength, and with all his portant and arduous duty of establishing and abundant resources gathered about him for the maintaining a line of communication along the very purpose, undertook the conquest of Mex- seaboard, and that soon after this, all the senior ico with less than one hundred and thirty men, officers were withdrawn, so as to give him all told! Not a tenth part of the strength of entire control of the militia posted for the de- Cortes, employed three hundred years ago upon fence of Valley Forge; and this, when Burr the very same enterprise, when Mexico was was known to be opposed to the Commander-in- peopled with naked barbarians. Instead of five chief, and to belong to a party, with Lee, hundred and eight men in armor, sixteen horses, and Gates, and Cadwallader for ring-leaders, one hundred and nine priests and supernumera- who were plotting to drive Washington from ries, with artillery and ships in proportion, the the army, by moving an inquiry in Congress armament of Fernando Cortes, Aaron Burr is % q 4 oa AARON BURR. 9 ready to overthrow the same vast empire, after Executory Devises, upon a pinch, would out- it has become rich and powerful, with one rank a whole library of such books as Beccaria, hundred and thirty backwoodsmen —a few flat- Montesquieu, Sir William Jones on Bailments, bottomed boats — the resources of Blannerhas- or Jeremy Bentham on Punishments and Re- set —and the verbal promises of General Wilk- wards, or on Morals and Legislation, the latter inson! Was the man mad! or was this only of which works he acknowledged to Albert a fetch, preparatory to driving the President and Gallatin, in 1793, was ‘‘ too dry for him.”’ both houses of Congress into the Potomac, as With regard to his eloquence, that chief ele- he had threatened ! ment of high professional character, it is enough So much for the military character of Aaron to say, that he was brief, clear, impressive, and Burr, that on which he so prided himself upon wholly destitute of imagination ; that notwith- his death-bed. Let us now look at him in his standing all this, he could not be followed by a professional character, as a lawyer. note-taker — and that, on bidding farewell to He was admitted at the age of twenty-six, the United States Senate, over which he had after a severe examination by the oldest and presided with astonishing dignity and impar- ablest of the New York bar, who had opposed tiality, he left the whole body in tears. his admission with all their strength. At the And now —as to the man’s political charac- age of thirty-three, he was appointed Attorney- ter. It was undoubtedly as much owing to the general of the state, and soon after a judge of intrigues and address of Aaron Burr —to his the supreme court of New York, which office getting possession of Hamilton’s letter and pub- i he declined. lishing it in the North before it had done its That-he was bold, acute, keen, wary and un- office at the South; and to his management principled, as great lawyers are exceedingly with regard to the leading measures and lead- apt to be, their lives being a game of chess, ing men of the day ; as to any, and perhaps all and victory their whole object ; and as the more other circumstances and combinations, that the abominable and hopeless their cases, the more old Federal party was overthrown. He was in creditable to them it is to prevail, not only in the legislature at an early period of his political the opinion of their brother lawyers, the bar career ; was run for governor—and then for and the bench, but in the opinion of those who the first office in the gift of the American pay the piper—the people —no professional people ; and after no less than thirty-six bal- man would ever think of denying. Certain of lotings, was, if not actually swindled owt of his great cases were gained in the very teeth of the presidential chair, so cunningly overreached established law, and against the opinion of the by Jefferson, in his management of the in- whole New York bar. In one at least, he pre- formal Georgia votes, that Jefferson was swin- vailed against the written opinions of such men dled in. as Alexander Hamilton, and those who trod Had Burr triumphed, and Jefferson failed, with him in the foremost rank of the profession, how different would have been the history of although settlements and purchases had been this Republic for the last thirty years! and how made, and buildings erected on the faith of different the life, and death, and history of these those opinions. ‘The steamboat case, the Eden two men! 4 eo cases, and his own trial for high treason would Burr would have been the great man — the be enough, were there nothing else, to show practical man—the statesman: Jefferson the that Aaren Burr was a great lawyer — one of philosopher, the visionary and the book-worm ; the greatest, all things considered, which this remarkable, not so much for salt mountains, country, so fruitful in great lawyers, has yet horned frogs, red plush breeches, or black Sally, produced. Still he was not a learned lawyer, as for having written the Declaration of Inde- nor by any means remarkable for comprehen- pendence and the Notes on Virginia; and for siveness. Principles he extracted with great having counselled the unconstitutional purchase ease and acuteness; but