Having drawn to his support the two most powerful influences of the State, Aaron makes search for an issue. He looks into the mouth of the public, and there it is. Politicians do not make issues, albeit poets have sung otherwise. Indeed, issues are so much like the poets themselves that they are born, not made. Every age has its issue; from it, as from clay, the politicians mold the bricks wherewith they build themselves into office. The issue is the question which the people ask; it is to be found only in the popular mouth. That is where Aaron looks for it, and his quest is rewarded.
The issue, so much demanded of Aaron’s destinies, is one of those big-little questions which now and then arise to agitate the souls of folk, and demonstrate the greatness of the small. There are twenty-eight members in the National Senate; and, since it is the first Senate and has had no predecessor, there exist no precedents for it to guide by. Also those twenty-eight senators are puffballs of vanity.
On the first day of their first coming together they prove the purblind sort of their conceit, by shutting their doors in the public’s face. They say they will hold their sessions in secret. The public takes this action in dudgeon, and begins filing its teeth.
Puffiest among those senate puffballs is the rusty Schuyler. As narrow as he is arrogant, as dull as vain, his contempt for the herd was never a secret. As a senator, he declares himself the guardian, not the servant, of a people too weakly foolish for the safe transaction of their own affairs.
It is against this self-sufficient attitude of the rusty Schuyler touching locked senate doors that Aaron wages war. He urges that, in a republic, but two keys go with government; one is to the treasury, the other to the jail. He argues that not even a senate will lock a door unless it be either ashamed or afraid of what it is about.
“Of what is our Senate afraid?” he asks.
“Of what is it ashamed? I cannot answer these questions; the people cannot answer them. I recommend that those who are interested ask General Schuyler.”
The public puts the questions to the rusty Schuyler. Not receiving an answer, the public carries the questions to the legislature, where the Clinton and Livingston influences come sharply to the popular support.
“Shall the Senate lock its door?”
The Clintons say No; the Livingstons say No; the people say No. Under such overbearing circumstances, the legislature feels driven to say No; and, as a best method of saying it, elects to the Senate Aaron, who is a “door-opener,” over the rusty Schuyler, who is a “door-closer,” by a majority of thirteen. It is no longer “Aaron Burr,” no longer “Colonel Burr,” it is “Senator Burr.” The news heaps the full weight of ten years on the rusty Schuyler. As for son-in-law Hamilton, the blasting word of it withers and makes sick his heart.