February 25, 1813.
Your letter of the 10th, my friend, is received. This assurance of my fate was not wanting. Authentic accounts from Bermuda and Nassau, as late as January 30, connected with your letter from New-York of the 28th, had already forced upon me the dreadful conviction that we had no more to hope. Without this victim, too, the desolation would not have been complete. My boy—my wife—gone, both! This, then, is the end of all the hopes we had formed. You may well observe that you feel severed from the human race. She was the last tie that bound us to the species. What have we left? In surviving the 30th of June [1] I thought I could meet all other afflictions with ease, yet I have staggered under this in a manner that I am glad had not a witness. Your letter of January 28 was not received till February 9. The Oaks, for some months visited only at intervals, when the feelings the world thought gone by were not to be controlled, was the asylum I sought. It was there, in the chamber of my wife, where every thing was disposed as usual; with the clothes, the books, the play-things of my boy around me, that I sustained this second shock, doubled in a manner that I could not account for. My son seemed to have been reanimated, to have been restored to me, and to have just perished again with his mother. It was the loss of both pressing upon me at the same moment.
Should it be my misfortune to live a Century, the 30th of June and the 10th of February are so impressed upon my mind that they will always seem to have just passed. I visited the grave of my boy. The little plans we had all three formed rushed upon my memory. Where now was the boy? The mother I cherished with so much pride? I felt like the very spirit of desolation. If it had not been for a kind of stupefaction and confusion of mind which followed, God knows how I should have borne it. Oh, my friend, if there be such a thing as the sublime of misery, it is for us that it has been reserved.
You are the only person in the world with whom I can commune on this subject; for you are the only person whose feelings can have any community with mine. You knew those we loved. With you, therefore, it will be no weakness to feel their loss. Here, none knew them; none valued them as they deserved. The talents of my boy, his rare elevation of character, his already extensive reputation for so early an age, made his death regretted by the pride of my family; but, though certain of the loss of my not less admirable wife, they seem to consider it like the loss of an ordinary woman. Alas! they know nothing of my heart. They never have known any thing of it. Yet, after all, he is a poor actor who cannot sustain his little hour upon the stage, be his part what it may. But the man who has been deemed worthy of the heart of Theodosia Burr, and who has felt what it was to be blessed with such a woman's, will never forget his elevation.
JOSEPH ALSTON.
This distressing correspondence between Colonel Burr and Governor Alston was continued during the year 1813; but the unfortunate Theodosia was never again heard of, except in idle rumours and exaggerated tales of her capture and murder by pirates. These reports, it is believed, were without foundation. The schooner on board which she had taken passage probably foundered, and every soul perished in a heavy gale which was experienced along our whole coast a few days after her departure from Georgetown.
Colonel Burr, on his return to the United States, mingled but little in society. He only knew those who first recognised him. In the ordinary conflicts of the political parties of the day he seemed to feel but little interest, and rarely interfered. From them he sought neither honour nor emolument. He pursued his profession, however, with great ardour and some success; but was continually embarrassed, and sometimes experienced great difficulty from the pressure of his old debts. The following extract will afford some general idea of his situation.
TO JOSEPH ALSTON.
New-York, October 16, 1815.
I have found it so difficult to answer that part of your letter which regards myself and my concerns, that it has been deferred, though often in my mind. At some other time I may give you, in detail, a sketch of the sad period which has elapsed since my return. For the present, it will suffice to say that my business affords me a decent support. If I had not been interrupted in the career which I began, I should, before this, have paid all my debts and been at ease.