The most authoritative account of the relationship between Washington and Burr is found in the memoir of Matthew L. Davis, Burr’s friend of many years and his literary legatee. Davis states that Burr’s prejudices against Washington became so fixed and unchangeable that up to his dying day he referred to the retreat from Long Island with acrimonious feelings for the commander. It is equally certain, adds Davis, that for some reason Washington placed no confidence in Burr and was exceedingly hostile to him.
Following his retirement from military service Burr was admitted to the bar and opened a law office in Albany. He soon thereafter married Theodosia Prevost, a widow ten years his senior and already the mother of five children. She bore him two daughters. Little is known about one of them who appears to have died in early childhood. The other, bearing her mother’s name, lived on, as we shall see, to play a major role in the life of her father.
Letters of the elder Theodosia to her husband reveal an almost pathetic adulation. On at least one occasion Burr reacted with an impatience such as he seldom showed to anybody. Still, the marriage appears to have been on the whole a happy one, and it lasted twelve years until the death of Mrs. Burr in 1794.
Burr’s intellect, his political instinct, and his charm combined to speed him on his career. Casting his lot with the Jeffersonians, he was elected to the New York Assembly. He moved to New York City and soon was recognized as a leader at the bar. There he found Alexander Hamilton already firmly established both in law and politics, and soon to apply his power and genius to blocking Burr’s further progress. Hamilton, like Burr, was a veteran of the Revolution and had served on Washington’s staff; but, unlike Burr, Hamilton was highly esteemed by the Commander-in-Chief. The friendship and mutual confidence there cemented were carried on into civilian life and Hamilton, who shared Washington’s conservative views, entered the first President’s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. When Burr arrived in New York Hamilton was leader of the local Federalists and the Federalists controlled the town.
After the Revolution there was established in New York and other cities in the East an organization bearing the name of the Tammany Society. Its membership was composed of mechanics and like humble citizens and it was dedicated to social, patriotic, and charitable activities. Burr was the first man in public life to realize its potentialities as a political force and to use the New York organization for the advancement of his own political fortunes. Meanwhile he had been appointed Attorney General of the state and from that vantage point was elected to the United States Senate over General Schuyler, Hamilton’s father-in-law. The victory, naturally enough, served to aggravate Hamilton’s jealousy and increase his concern over this rising political rival.
So far had Burr progressed in popular esteem that, in the Presidential election of 1796, he received 30 electoral votes as against 71 for John Adams, the victor, and 68 for Thomas Jefferson. His term in the Senate having expired, he returned to the practice of law and also to the New York Assembly.
In the Presidential election of 1800 Burr’s meteoric political career reached its peak. He and Jefferson, running as Republicans, received an equal number of electoral votes and the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. For the first and last time Burr was within one vote of winning the nation’s highest honor. But, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson was elected. As was the rule in that day Burr, who had received the next highest number of votes, became Vice-President.
In the election Burr had put his political machine to such effective use that the Federalist monopoly in New York was broken and enough Republicans from the city won seats in the Assembly to give their party control. Since the Assembly chose New York’s electors, and since in the election of 1800 New York was the pivotal state, Burr could reasonably claim credit for swinging the election which threw the Federalists out of the government in Washington and put the Republicans in.
Hamilton was far from being a silent witness to these events. By now he was thoroughly alarmed not only for himself but for the safety of the nation whose future he saw in jeopardy if the Presidency were to go to a man of the caliber he judged Burr to be. With all the vigor at his command he threw himself into the contest to prevent Burr from winning the necessary votes. “As unprincipled and dangerous a man as any country can boast,” “as true a Cataline as ever met in conclave,” a man whose “private character is not defended by his most partial friends,” “bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country,” his “public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement”—these were among the extravagant epithets Hamilton applied to Burr in letters to friends. As much as he disliked Jefferson there was no question in Hamilton’s mind that the rangy Virginian doctrinaire was the lesser of the two evils. Burr could lay his failure to attain the Presidency to the violent animosity of Hamilton.
Burr’s political success in New York was disturbing not only to the Federalists but equally so to certain members of his own party. The New York Republicans were then divided into three factions made up of the followers of the Livingston and Clinton families and of Burr. All three groups were steeped in intrigue and so bankrupt of moral principle that there was little choice between them. Albert Gallatin, Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury and political mentor, was inclined to give a preference to Burr. Not so Jefferson.