Despairing of ever getting any money out of Burr, Blennerhassett concentrated on his son-in-law Alston, demanding $35,000 on pain of publishing a pamphlet disclosing the Governor’s connection with the conspiracy. Alston, now Governor of South Carolina, is reported to have given him $10,000. Blennerhassett’s next venture was the purchase of a cotton plantation in Mississippi. In spite of Margaret’s loyal support this too was a failure.
At this point the acting Governor of Canada, an old and intimate friend, managed to find a seat for Blennerhassett on one of the provincial courts of the Dominion. So in 1819, disposing of what interest remained to him in the island and the plantation, he moved with his wife and sons to Canada and took up his residence in Montreal. But this solution of his problem proved temporary—he was turned out of office by what he described as the “capriciousness of the British ministry.”
All that was left to him now were claims to property still existing in Ireland. So in 1822 the Blennerhassetts set sail from Canada for home. Nothing came of the claims and, after living for a time with a maiden sister of Harman’s in England, the Blennerhassetts sought refuge on the island of Guernsey. That was Blennerhassett’s last move. There he died in 1831, leaving Margaret with little or no money and two dependent sons.
In 1842 Mrs. Blennerhassett decided to return to the United States and petitioned Congress for payment for the boats and stores seized at Marietta, Ohio, in the winter of 1806–07. On her arrival in New York with one of her sons, Henry Clay, who was then in the Senate, interested himself in her case. He described her as living in absolute want, presented her petition, and advocated its justice. But the petitioner died before the Senate had time to act.
Thus ended the tragic story of the Blennerhassetts, though they themselves may not have considered it so. For the love that had been the cause of their adventures in the new world sustained them to the last. Yet their later years were a far cry from the romantic dreams in which Blennerhassett stood at the right hand of the Emperor Aaron I while Margaret presided as first lady in waiting to the Princess Theodosia. Such was the heavy penalty the Blennerhassetts had to pay for Harman, as his partner Woodbridge put it, having “all kinds of sense except common sense.”
For some fifteen years Aaron Burr continued to practice law in New York City successfully. At the age of 77 years he had one last romantic passage which culminated in his marriage to the widow Jumel, for which nothing good could be said on either side. The episode soon ended in divorce. Time for the Colonel was now fast running out. Yet how many of his enemies had he already survived! Death came to him at last in September, 1836, at the age of 80 years.
The body of Aaron Burr was laid to rest in a grave beside those of his father and his grandfather in the cemetery at Princeton.
One evening at twilight many, many years later, two visitors stood at the foot of the grave. Instinctively both of them had removed their hats as they approached the spot. They were Burr’s biographer Walter Flavius McCaleb and Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University. They remained for a moment in silence. It was broken by Wilson’s voice, pitched very low: “How misunderstood—how maligned—”
This from a historian who must have been acquainted with all the facts. Even in death, and in spite of the passage of time, Aaron Burr still exercised his fascination.
