He never went back to Richmond Hill to live again, though he later returned to New York and dwelt there for many years. He went, for a time, to Theo in the South, fearing arrest, but as a matter of fact, verdict or no verdict, the matter of Hamilton's death was never followed up. Burr came calmly back to the Capitol and finished his term as Vice-president. In his farewell speech to the Senate he said he did not remember the names of all the people who had slandered him and intrigued against him, since "he thanked God he had no memory for injuries!"
THE BUTTERICK BUILDING. A stone's throw from the site of the once-glorious house of Richmond Hill.
The year after the duel he evolved his monstrous and hare-brained plan of establishing a Southern Republic with New Orleans as Capital and himself as President. Mexico was in it too. In fact, President Jefferson himself wrote of the project: "He wanted to overthrow Congress, corrupt the navy, take the throne of Montezuma and seize New Orleans.... It is the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote!..."
General Wetmore loyally declares the scheme to have been "a justifiable enterprise for the conquest of one of the provinces of Southern America." But no one in the whole world really knows all about it. The sum of the matter is that he was tried for treason, and that, though he was acquitted, he was henceforward completely dead politically. Through all, Theo stood by him, and her husband too. They went to prison with him, and shared all his humiliation and disappointment. Affection? Blind, confident adoration? Never was man born who could win it more completely!
But America as a whole did not care for him any more. Dr. Hosack loaned him money, and, after his acquittal, he set sail for England, and let Richmond Hill be sold to John Jacob Astor by his creditors. It brought only $25,000, which was a small sum compared to what he owed, so he had another object in staying on the other side of the water: a quite lively chance of the Debtors' Prison!
Apropos of this, there is one rather human little tale which is comforting to read, dropped down, as it is, in the middle of so wildly brilliant a career, so colossally disastrous a destiny.
While Burr was living at Richmond Hill, he was often obliged to take coach journeys to outside points. One day he was on his way home from Albany and stopped at a roadhouse at Kingston. While he was eating and drinking and the horses were being changed, he saw a drawing which interested him. He asked to see more by the same artist, for he had a keen appreciation of skill in all lines.