CHAPTER XII—IDLENESS AND BLACK RESOLVES
AARON finds a Senate existence inexpressibly dull. He writes his Theodosia: “There is nothing to do here. Everybody is idle; and, so far as I see, the one occupation of a senator is to lie sunning himself in his own effulgence. My colleague, Rufus King, and others I might name, succeed in that way in passing their days very pleasantly. For myself, not having their sublime imagination, and being perhaps better acquainted with my own measure, I find this sitting in the sunshine of self a failure.”
Mindful of his issue, Aaron offers a resolution throwing open the Senate doors. The Senate, whose notion of greatness is a notion of exclusion, votes it down. Aaron warns his puffball brothers of the toga:
“Be assured,” says he, “you fool no one by such trumpery tricks as this key-turning. You succeed only in bringing republican institutions into contempt, and getting yourselves laughed at where you are not condemned.”
Aaron reintroduces his open-door resolution; in the end he passes it. Galleries are thrown up in the chamber, and all who will may watch the Senate as it proceeds upon the transaction of its dignified destinies. At this but few come; whereupon the Senate feels abashed. It is not, it discovers, the thrilling spectacle its puffball fancy painted.
Carked of the weariness of doing nothing, Aaron bursts forth with an idea. He will write a history of the War of the Revolution. He begins digging among the papers of the State department, tossing the archives of his country hither and yon, on the tireless horns of his industry.
Hamilton creeps with the alarming tale to Washington. “He speaks of writing a history, sir,” says sycophant Hamilton. “That is mere subterfuge; he intends a libel against yourself.”
Washington brings his thin lips together in a tight, straight line, while his heavy forehead gathers to a half frown.
“How, sir,” he asks, after a pause, “could he libel me? I am conscious of nothing in my past which would warrant such a thought.”
“There is not, sir, a fact of your career that would not, if mentioned, make for your glory.” Hamilton deprecates with delicately outspread hands as he says this. “That, however, would not deter this Burr, who is Satanic in his mendacities. Believe me, sir, he has the power of making fiction look more like truth than truth itself. And there is another thought: Suppose he were to assail you with some trumped-up story. You could not come down from your high place to contradict him; it would detract from you, stain your dignity. That is the penalty, sir”—this with a sigh of unspeakable adulation—“which men of your utter eminence have to pay. Such as you are at the mercy of every gutter-bred vilifier; whatever his charges, you cannot open your mouth.”
Aaron hears nothing of this. His first guess of it comes when he is told by a State department underling that he will no longer be allowed to inspect and make copies of the papers.
Without wasting words on the underling, Aaron walks in upon Jefferson. That secretary receives him courteously, but not warmly.
“How, sir,” begins Aaron, a wicked light in his eye—“how, sir, am I to understand this? Is it by your order that the files of the department are withheld from me?”
“It is not, sir,” returns Jefferson, coldly frank. “My own theories of a citizen and his rights would open every public paper to the inspection of the meanest. I do not understand government by secrecy.”
“By whose order then am I refused?”
“By order of the President.”
Aaron ruminates the situation. At last he speaks out: “I must yield,” he says, “while realizing the injustice done me. Still I shall not soon forget the incident. You say it is the order of Washington; you are mistaken, sir. It is not the lion but his jackal that has put this affront upon me.”
Idle in the Senate, precluded from collecting the materials for that projected history, Aaron discovers little to employ himself about in Philadelphia. Not that he falls into stagnation; for his business of the law, and his speculations in land take him often to New York. His trusted Theodosia is his manager of business, and when he cannot go to New York she meets him half way in Trenton.
Aside from his concerns of law and land, Aaron devotes a deal of thought to little Theodosia—child of his soul’s heart! In his pride, he hurries her into Horace and Terence at the age of ten; and later sends her voyaging to Troy with Homer, and all over the world with Herodotus. Nor is this the whole tale of baby Theodosia’s evil fortunes. She is taught French, music, drawing, dancing, and whatever else may convey a glory and a gloss. Love-led, pride-blinded, Aaron takes up the rôle of father in its most awful form.
“Believe me, my dear,” he says to Theodosia mere, who pleads for an educational leniency—“believe me, I shall prove in our darling that women have souls, a psychic fact which high ones have been heard to dispute.”
At the age of twelve, the book-burdened little Theodosia translates the Constitution into French at Aaron’s request; at sixteen, she finds celebration as the most learned of her sex since Voltaire’s Emilie. Theodosia mere, however, is spared the spectacle of her baby’s harrowing erudition, for in the middle of Aaron’s term as senator death carries her away.
With that loss, Aaron is more and more drawn to baby Theodosia; she becomes his earth, his heaven, and stands for all his tenderest hopes. While she is yet a child, he makes her the head of Richmond Hill, and gives a dinner of state, over which she presides, to the limping Talleyrand, and Volney with his “Ruins of Empire.” For all her precocities, and that hothouse bookishness which should have spoiled her, baby Theodosia blossoms roundly into womanhood—beautiful as brilliant.
While Aaron finds little or nothing of public sort to engage him, he does not permit this idleness to shake his hold of politics. Angry with the royalties of Washington, he drifts into near if not intimate relations with the arch-democrat Jefferson. Aaron and the loose-framed secretary are often together; and yet never on terms of confidence or even liking. They are in each other’s society because they go politically the same road. Fellow wayfarers of politics, with “Democracy” their common destination, they are fairly compelled into one another’s company. But there grows up no spirit of comradeship, no mutual sentiment of admiration and trust.
Aaron’s feelings toward Jefferson, and the sources of them, find setting forth in a conversation which he holds with his new disciple, Senator Andrew Jackson, who has come on from his wilderness home by the Cumberland.
“It is not that I like Jefferson,” he explains, “but that I dislike Washington and Hamilton. Jefferson will make a splendid tool to destroy the others with; I mean to use him as the instrument of my vengeance.”
Jefferson, when speaking of Aaron to the wooden Adams, is neither so full nor so frank. The Bay State publicist has again made mention of that impressive ancestry which he thinks is Aaron’s best claim to public as well as private consideration.
“You may see evidence of his pure blood,” concludes the wooden one, “in his perfect, nay, matchless politeness.”
| “He is matchlessly polite, as you say,” assents Jefferson; “and yet I cannot fight down the fear that his politeness has lies in it.”
The days drift by, and Minister Gouverneur Morris is recalled from Paris. Washington makes it known to the Senate that he will adopt any name it suggests for the vacancy. The Senate decides upon Aaron; a committee goes with that honorable suggestion to the President.
Washington hears the committee with cloudy surprise. He is silent for a moment; then he says:
“Gentlemen, your proposal of Senator Burr has taken me unawares. I must crave space for consideration; oblige me by returning in an hour.”
The senators who constitute the committee retire, and Washington seeks his jackal Hamilton.
“Appoint Colonel Burr to France!” exclaims Hamilton. “Sir, it would shock the best sentiment of the country! The man is an atheist, as immoral as irreligious. If you will permit me to say so, sir, I should give the Senate a point-blank refusal.”
“But my promise!” says Washington.
“Sir, I should break a dozen such promises, before I consented to sacrifice the public name, by sending Colonel Burr to France. However, that is not required. You told the Senate that you would adopt its suggestion; you have now only to ask it to make a second suggestion.”
“The thought is of value,” responds Washington, clearing. “I am free to say, I should not relish turning my back on my word.”
The committee returns, and is requested to give the Senate the “President’s compliments,” and say that he will be pleased should that honorable body submit another name. Washington is studious to avoid any least of comment on the nomination of Aaron.
The committee is presently in Washington’s presence for the third time, with the news that the Senate has no name other than Aaron’s for the French mission.
“Then, gentlemen,” exclaims Washington, his hot temper getting the reins, “please report to the Senate that I refuse. I shall send no one to France in whom I have not confidence; and I do not trust Senator Burr.”
“What blockheads!” comments Aaron, when he hears. “They will one day wish they had gotten rid of me, though at the price of forty missions.”
The wooden Adams is elected President to succeed Washington. Aaron’s colleague, Rufus King, offers a resolution of compliment and thanks to the retiring one, extolling his presidential honesty and patriotic breadth. A cold hush falls upon the Senate, when Aaron takes the floor on the resolution.
Aaron’s remarks are curt, and to the barbed point. He cannot, he says, bring himself to regard Washington’s rule as either patriotic or broad. That President throughout has been subservient to England, who was our tyrant, is our foe. Equally he has been inimical to France, who was our ally, is our friend. More; he has subverted the republic and made of it a monarchy with himself as king, wanting only in those unimportant embellishments of scepter, throne, and crown. He, Aaron, seeking to protest against these almost treasons, shall vote against the resolution.
The Senate sits aghast. Aaron’s respectable colleague, Rufus King, cannot believe his Tory ears. At last he totters to his shocked feet.
“I am amazed at the action of my colleague!” he exclaims. “I——”
Before he can go further, Aaron is up with an interruption. “It is my duty,” says Aaron, “to warn the senior senator from New York that he must not permit his amazement at my action to get beyond his control. I do not like to consider the probable consequences, should that amazement become a tax upon my patience; and even he, I think, will concede the impropriety, to give it no sterner word, of allowing it any manifestation personally offensive to myself.”
As Aaron delivers this warning, so dangerous is the impression he throws off, that it first whitens and then locks the condemnatory lips of colleague King. That statesman, rocking uneasily on his feet, waits a moment after Aaron is done, and then takes his seat, swallowing at a gulp whatever remains unsaid of his intended eloquence. The roll is called; Aaron votes against that resolution of confidence and thanks, carrying a baker’s dozen of the Senate with him, among them the lean, horse-faced Andrew Jackson from the Cumberland.
Washington bows his adieus to the people, and retires to Mount Vernon. Adams the wooden becomes President, while Jefferson the angular wields the Senate gavel as Vice-President. Hamilton is more potent than ever; for Washington at Mount Vernon continues the strongest force in government, and Hamilton controls that force. Adams is President in nothing save name; Hamilton—fawning upon Washington, bullying Adams and playing upon that wooden one’s fear of not succeeding himself—is the actual chief magistrate.
As Aaron’s term nears its end, he decides that he will not accept reelection. His hatred of Hamilton has set iron-hand, and he is resolved for that scheming one’s destruction. His plans are fashioned; their execution, however, is only possible in New York. Therefore, he will quit the Senate, quit the capital.
“My plans mean the going of Adams, as well as the going of Hamilton,” he says to Senator Jackson from the Cumberland, when laying bare his purposes. “I do not leave public life for good. I shall return; and on that day Jefferson will supplant Adams, and I shall take the place of Jefferson.”
“And Hamilton?” asks the Cumberland one.
“Hamilton the defeated shall be driven into the wilderness of retirement. Once there, the serpents of his own jealousies and envies may be trusted to sting him to death.”