CHAPTER XIII—THE GRINDING OF AARON’S MILL
AARON tells his friends that he will not go back to the Senate. He puts this resolution to retire on the double grounds of young Theodosia’s loneliness and a consequent paternal necessity of his presence at Richmond Hill, and the tangled condition of his business; which last after the death of Theodosia mère falls into a snarl. Never, by the lifting of an eyelash or the twitching of a lip, does he betray any corner of his political designs, or of his determination to destroy Hamilton. His heart is a furnace of white-hot throbbing hate against that gentleman of diagonal morals and biased veracities; but no sign of the fires within is visible on the arctic exterior.
Polite, on ceaseless guard, Aaron even becomes affable when Hamilton is mentioned. He goes so far with his strategy, indeed, as to imitate concern in connection with the political destinies of the rusty Schuyler, now exceedingly on the shelf. Aaron has the rusty Schuyler down from his shelved retirement, brushes the political dust from his cloak, and declares that, in a spirit of generosity proper in a young community toward an old, tried, even if rusty servant, the State ought to send the rusty one to fill the Senate seat which he, Aaron, is giving up. To such a degree does he work upon the generous sensibilities of mankind, that the rusty Schuyler is at once unanimously chosen to reassume those honors which he, Aaron, stripped from him six years before.
Hamilton falls into a fog; he cannot understand the Aaronian liberality. Aaron’s astonishing proposal, to return the rusty one to the Senate, smells dangerously like a Greek and a gift. In the end, however, Hamilton’s enormous vanity gets the floor, and he decides that Aaron—courage broken—is but cringing to win the Hamilton friendship.
“That is it,” he explains to President Adams. “The fellow has lost heart. This is his way of surrendering, and begging for peace.”
There are others as hopelessly lost in mists of amazement over Aaron’s benevolence as is Hamilton; one is Aaron’s closest friend Van Ness.
“Schuyler for the Senate!” he exclaims. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” whispers Aaron, with Machiavellian slyness, “that I want to get rid of the old dotard here. I am only clearing the ground, sir!”
“And for what?”
“The destruction of Hamilton.”
As Aaron speaks the hated name it is like the opening of a furnace door. One is given a flash of the flaming tumult within. Then the door closes; all is again dark, passionless, inscrutable.
Aaron runs his experienced eye along the local array. The Hamilton forces are in the ascendant. Jay is governor; having beaten North-of-Ireland Clinton, who was unable to explain how he came to sell more than three millions of the public’s acres to McComb for eightpence.
And yet, for all that supremacy of the Hamilton influence—working out its fortunes with the cogent name of Washington—Aaron’s practiced vision detects here and there the seams of weakness. Old Clinton is as angry as any sore-head bear over that gubernatorial beating, which he lays to Hamilton. The clan-Livingston is sulking among its hills because its chief, the mighty chancellor, was kept out of the President’s cabinet by the secret word of Hamilton—whose policies are ever jealous and double-jointed. Aaron, wise in such coils, sees all about him the raw materials wherefrom may be constructed a resistless opposition to the Party-of-things-as-they-are—which is the party of Hamilton.
One thing irks the pride of Aaron—a pride ever impatient and ready for mutiny. In dealing with the Livingstons and the Clintons, these gentry—readily eager indeed to take their revenges with the help of Aaron—never omit a patrician attitude of overbearing importance. They make a merit of accepting Aaron’s aid, and proceed on the assumption that he gains honor by serving them. Aaron makes up his mind to remedy this.
“I must have a following,” says he. “I will call about me every free lance in the political hills. There shall be a new clan born, of which I must be the Rob Roy. Like another McGregor, I with my followers shall take up position between the Campbell and the Montrose—the Clintons and the Livingstons. By threatening one with the other, I can then control both. Given a force of my own, the high-stomached Livingstons and the obstinate Clintons must obey me. They shall yet move forward or fall back, march and countermarch by my word.”
When Aaron sets up as a Rob Roy of politics, he is not compelled to endless labors in constructing a following. The thing he looks for lies ready to his hand. In the long-room of Brom Martling’s tavern, at Spruce and Nassau, meets the “Sons of Tammany or the Columbian Order.” The name is overlong, and hard to pronounce unless sober; wherefore the “Sons of Tammany or the Columbian Order,” as they sit swigging Brom Martling’s cider, call themselves the “Bucktails.”
The aristocracy of the Revolution—being the officers—created unto themselves the Cincinnati. Whereupon, the yeomanry of the Revolution—being the privates—as a counterpoise to the perfumed, not to say gilded Cincinnati, brought the Sons of Tammany or the Columbian Order, otherwise the Bucktails, into being.
The Bucktails, good cider-loving souls, are solely a charitable-social organization, and have no dreams of politics. Aaron becomes one of them—quaffing and exalting the Martling cider. He takes them up into the mountaintop of the possible, and shows them the kingdoms of the political world and the glories thereof. Also, he points out that Hamilton, the head of the hated Cincinnati, is turning that organization of perfume and purple into a power. The Bucktails hear, see, believe, and resolve under the chiefship of Aaron to fight their loathed rivals, the Cincinnati, in every ensuing battle of the ballots to the end of time.
The word that Aaron has brought the Buck-tails to political heel is not long in making the rounds. It is worth registering that so soon as the Clintons and the Livingstons learn the political determinations of this formidable body of cider drinkers—with Aaron at its head—they conduct themselves toward our young exsenator with profoundest respect. They eliminate the overbearing element in their attitudes, and, when they would confer with him, they go to him not he to them. Where before they declared their intentions, they now ask his consent. It falls out as Aaron forethreatened. Our Rob Roy at the head of his bold Bucktails is sought for and deferred to by both the Clintons and the Livingstons—the Campbell and the Montrose.
Some philosopher has said that there are three requisites to successful war: the first gold, the second gold, the third gold. That deep one might have said the same of politics. Now, when he dominates his Tammany Bucktails—who obey him with shut eyes—and has brought the perverse Clintons and the stiff-necked Livingstons beneath his thumb, Aaron considers the question of the sinews of war. Politics, as a science, has already so far progressed that principle is no longer sufficient to insure success. If he would have a best ballot-box expression, he must pave the way with money. The reasons thereof cry out at him from all quarters. There is such a commodity as a campaign. No one is patriotic enough to blow a campaign fife or beat a campaign drum for fun. Torches are not a gift, but a purchase; neither does Mart-ling’s cider flow without a price. Aaron, considering this ticklish puzzle of money, sees that his plans as well as his party require a bank.
There are two banks in the city, only two; these are held in the hollow of the Hamilton hand. Under the Hamilton pressure these banks act coercively. They make loans or refuse them, as the applicant is or is not amenable to the Hamilton touch. Obedience to Hamilton, added to security even somewhat mildewed, will obtain a loan; while rebellion against Hamilton, plus the best security beneath the commercial sun, cannot coax a dollar from their strong boxes.
Aaron resolves to bring about a break in these iron-bound conditions. The best forces of the town are thereby held in chains to Hamilton. Aaron must free these forces before they can leave Hamilton and follow him. How is this freedom to be worked out? Construct another bank? It presents as many difficulties as making a new north star. Hamilton watches the bank situation with the hundred eyes of Argus; every effort to obtain a charter is knocked on the head.
Those armed experiences, which overtook Aaron as he went from Quebec to Monmouth, and from Monmouth to the Westchester lines, left him full of war knowledge. He is deep in the art of surprise, ambuscade, flank movement, night attack; and now he brings this knowledge to bear. To capture a bank charter is to capture the Hamilton Gibraltar, and, while all but impossible of accomplishment, it will prove conclusive if accomplished. Aaron wrinkles his brows and racks his wits for a way.
Gradually, like the power-imp emerging from Aladdin’s bottle, a scheme begins to take shape before his mental eye. Yellow fever has been reaping a shrouded harvest in the town. The local wiseacres—as usual—lay it to the water. Everybody reveres science; and, while everybody knows full well that science is nothing better than just the accepted ignorance of to-day, still everybody is none the less on his knees to it, and to the wiseacres, who are its high priests. Science and the wiseacres lay yellow fever to the water; the kneeling town, taking the word from them, does the same. The local water is found guilty; the popular cry goes up for a purer element. The town demands water that is innocent of homicidal qualities.
It is at this crisis that Aaron gravely steps forward. He talks of Yellow Jack and unfurls a proposal. He will form a water company; it shall be called “The Manhattan Company.”
With “No more yellow fever!” for a war-cry, Aaron lays siege to Albany. What he wants is incorporation, what he seeks is a charter. With the fear of yellow fever curling about their heart roots, the Albany authorities—being the Hamilton Governor Jay and a Hamilton Legislature—comply with his demands. The Manhattan Company is incorporated, capital two millions.
Aaron goes home with the charter. Carrying out the charter—which authorizes a water company—he originates a modest well near the City Hall. It is not a big well, and might with its limpid output no more than serve the thirst of what folk belong with any city block.
Well complete and in operation, the Manhattan Company abruptly opens a bank, vastly bigger than the well. Also, the bank possesses a feature in this; it is anti-Hamilton.
Instantly, every man or institution that nurses a dislike for Hamilton takes his or its money to the Manhattan Bank. It is no more than a matter of days when the new bank, in the volume of its business and the extent of its deposits, overtops those banks which fly the Hamilton flag. And Aaron, the indefatigable, is in control. At the new Manhattan Bank, he turns on or shuts off the flow of credit, as Brom Mart-ling—spigot-busy in the thirsty destinies of the Bucktails—turns on or shuts off the flow of his own cider.
After the first throe of Hamiltonian horror, Governor Jay sends his attorney general. This dignitary demands of Aaron by what authority his Manhattan Company thus hurls itself upon the flanks of a surprised world, in the wolfish guise of a bank? The company was to furnish the world with water; it is now furnishing it with money, leaving it to fill its empty water buckets at the old-time spouts. Also, it has turned its incorporated back on yellow fever, as upon a question in which interest is dead.
The Jay attorney general puts these queries to Aaron, who replies with the charter. He points with his slim forefinger; and the Jay attorney general—first polishing his amazed spectacles—reads the following clause:
“The surplus capital may be employed in any way not inconsistent with the laws and Constitution of the United States or of the State of New York.”
The Jay attorney general gulps a little; his learned Adam’s apple goes up and down. When the aforesaid clause is lodged safe inside his mental stomach, Aaron assists digestion with an explanation. It is short, but lucidly sufficient.
“The Manhattan Company, having completed its well and acting within the authority granted by the clause just read, has opened with its surplus capital the Manhattan Bank.”
The Jay attorney general stares blinkingly, like an owl at noon.
“And you had the bank in mind from the first!” he cries.
“Possibly,” says Aaron.
“Let me tell you one thing, Colonel Burr,” and the Jay attorney general cracks and snaps his teeth in quite an owlish way; “if the authorities at Albany had guessed your purpose, you would never have received your charter. No, sir; your prayer for incorporation would have been refused.”
“Possibly!” says Aaron.
All these divers and sundry preparational matters, the subjection of the Clintons and the Livingstons, the political alignment of the Buck-tails swigging their cider at Martlings, and the launching of the Manhattan Bank to the yellow end that a supply of gold be assured, have in their accomplishment taken time. It is long since Aaron looked in at the Federal capitol, where the Hamilton-guided Adams is performing as President, with all those purple royalties which surrounded Washington, and Jefferson is abolishing ruffles, donning pantaloons, introducing shoelaces, cutting off his cue, and playing the democrat Vice-President at the other end of government. Aaron resolves upon a visit to these opposite ones. Jefferson must be his candidate; Adams will be the candidate of the foe. He himself is to manage for the one, while Hamilton will lead for the other. Such the situation, he holds it the part of a cautious sagacity to glance in at these worthies, pulling against one another, and discover to what extent and in what manner their straining and tugging may be used to make or mar the nation’s future. Hamilton is to be destroyed. To annihilate him a battle must be fought; and Aaron, preparing for that strife, is eager to discover aught in the present conduct or standing of either Adams or Jefferson which can be molded into bullets to bring down the enemy.
Aaron’s friend Van Ness goes with him, sharing his seat in the coach. Some worth-while words ensue. They begin by talking of Hamilton; as talk proceeds, Aaron gives a surprising hint of the dark but unsuspected bitterness of his feeling—a feeling which goes beyond politics, as the acridities of that savage science are understood and recognized.
Van Ness is wonder-smitten.
“Your enmity to Hamilton,” he says tentatively, “strikes deeper then than mere politics.”
“Sir,” returns Aaron slowly, the old-time black, ophidian sparkle flashing up in his eyes, “the deepest sentiment of my nature is my hatred for that man. Day by day it grows upon me. Also, it is he who furnishes the seed and the roots of it. Everywhere he vilifies me. I hear it east, north, west, south. I am his mania—his ‘phobia’. In his slanderous mouth I am ‘liar,’ ‘thief,’ and ‘scoundrel rogue.’ In such connection I would have you to remember that I, on my side, give him, and have given him, the description of a gentleman.”
“To be frank, sir,” returns Van Ness thoughtfully, “I know every word you speak to be true, and have often wondered that you did not parade our epithetical friend at ten paces, and refute his mendacities with convincing lead.”
Aaron’s look is hard as granite. There is a moment of silence. “Kill him!” he says at last, as though repeating a remark of his companion; “kill him! Yes; that, too, must come! But it must not come too soon for my perfect vengeance! First I shall uproot him politically; every hope he has shall die! I shall thrust him from his high places! When he lies prone, broken, powerless!—when he is spat upon by those in whose one-time downcast, servile presence he strutted lord paramount!—when his past is scoffed at, his future swallowed up!—when his word is laughed at and his fame become a farce!—then, when every fang of defeat pierces and poisons him, then I say should be the hour to talk of killing! That hour is not yet. I am a revengeful man, Van Ness—I am an artist of revenge! Believing as I do that with the going of the breath, all goes!—that for the Man there is no hereafter as there has been no past!—I must garner my vengeance on earth or forever lose it. So I take pains with my vengeance; and having, as I tell you, a genius for it, my vengeful pains shall find their dark and full-blown harvest. Hamilton, for whom my whole heart flows away in hate!—I shall build for him a pyramid of misery while he lives; and I shall cap that pyramid with his death—his grave! I can see, as one who looks down a lane, what lies before. I shall take from him every scrap of that power which is his soul’s food—strip him of each least fragment of position! When he has nothing left but life, I’ll wrest that from him. Long years after he is gone I’ll walk this earth; and I shall find a joy in his absence, and the thought that by my hand and my will he was made to go, beyond what the friendship of man or the favor of woman could bring me. Kill him! There is a grist in the hopper of my purposes, friend, and the mill stones of my plans are grinding!”
Aaron does not look at Van Ness as he thus brings the secrets of his soul to the light of day, but wears the manner of one preoccupied and in the spell of self. Van Ness shudders as he listens; and, while the slow words follow one another in hateful swart procession, a chill creeps over him, as from the evil monstrous nearness of something elemental, abnormal, fearsome. A sweat breaks out on his face. Neither his wits nor his tongue can frame remark for either good or ill. The brooding Aaron seems not to notice, but falls into a black muse.