Pickering was not so intelligent as Cabot, Parsons, and Ames; his temper was harsher than theirs; he was impatient of control, and never forgot or wholly forgave those who forced him to follow another course than the one he chose. Cabot’s letter showed a sense of these traits; for though it was in the nature of a command or entreaty to cease discussing disunion, if the Federalist party in Massachusetts were to be saved, it was couched in gentle language, and without affecting a tone of advice suggested ideas which ought to guide Federalists in Congress. Pickering was to wait for the crisis. Inaction was easy; and even though the crisis should be delayed five or ten years,—a case hardly to be supposed,—no step could be taken without a blunder before the public should be ready for it. With this simple and sound principle to guide them, conservatives could not go wrong. Cabot there left the matter.

Such gentleness toward a man of Pickering’s temper was a mistake, which helped to cost the life of one whom conservatives regarded as their future leader in the crisis. Pickering was restive under the sense that his friends preferred other counsellors; whereas his experience and high offices, to say nothing of his ability, entitled him, as he thought, to greater weight in the party than Hamilton, Cabot, or Rufus King. Backed by Tracy, Griswold, and other men of standing, Pickering felt able to cope with opposition. His rough sense and democratic instincts warned him that the fine-drawn political theories of George Cabot and Theophilus Parsons might end in impotence. He could see no reason why Massachusetts, once corrupted, might not wallow in democratic iniquities with as much pleasure as New York or Pennsylvania; and all that was worth saving might be lost before her democracy would consent to eat the husks of repentance and ask forgiveness from the wise and good. Cabot wanted to wait a few months or years until democracy should work out its own fate; and whenever the public should yearn for repose, America would find her Pitt and Bonaparte combined in the political grasp and military genius of Alexander Hamilton. Pickering, as a practical politician, felt that if democracy were suffered to pull down the hierarchy of New England, neither disunion nor foreign war, nor “a very great calamity” of any kind, could with certainty restore what had once been destroyed.

Cabot’s argument shook none of Pickering’s convictions; but the practical difficulty on which the home Junto relied was fatal unless some way of removing it could be invented. During the month of February, 1804, when the impeachment panic was at its height in Congress, Pickering, Tracy, and Plumer received letter after letter from New England, all telling the same story. The eminent Judge Tapping Reeve, of Connecticut, wrote to Tracy:[106] “I have seen many of our friends; and all that I have seen and most that I have heard from believe that we must separate, and that this is the most favorable moment.” He had heard only one objection,—that the country was not prepared; but this objection, which meant that the disunionists were a minority, was echoed from all New England. The conspirators dared not openly discuss the project. “There are few among my acquaintance,” wrote Pickering’s nephew, Theodore Lyman,[107] “with whom I could on that subject freely converse; there may be more ready than I am aware of.” Plumer found a great majority of the New Hampshire Federalists decidedly opposed. Roger Griswold, toward the end of the session, summed up the result in his letter to Oliver Wolcott:—

“We have endeavored during this session to rouse our friends in New England to make some bold exertions in that quarter. They generally tell us that they are sensible of the danger, that the Northern States must unite; but they think the time has not yet arrived. Prudence is undoubtedly necessary; but when it degenerates into procrastination it becomes fatal. Whilst we are waiting for the time to arrive in New England, it is certain the democracy is making daily inroads upon us, and our means of resistance are lessening every day. Yet it appears impossible to induce our friends to make any decisive exertions. Under these circumstances I have been induced to look to New York.”

The representatives of the wise and good looked at politics with eyes which saw no farther than those of the most profligate democrat into the morality of the game. Pickering enjoyed hearing himself called “honest Tim Pickering,” as though he were willing to imply a tinge of dishonesty in others, even in the Puritan society of Wenham and Salem. Griswold was to the end of his life a highly respected citizen of Connecticut, and died while governor of the State. That both these worthy men should conspire to break up the Union implied to their minds no dishonesty, because they both held that the Republican majority had by its illegal measures already destroyed the Constitution which they had sworn to support; but although such casuistry might excuse in their own consciences the act of conspiracy, neither this reasoning nor any other consistent with self-respect warranted their next step. Griswold’s remark that the procrastination of New England had led him to look to New York was not quite candid; his plan had from the first depended on New York. Pickering had written to Cabot at the outset, “She must be made the centre of the confederacy.” New York seemed, more than New England, unfit to be made the centre of a Northern confederacy, because there the Federalist party was a relatively small minority. If Massachusetts and Connecticut showed fatal apathy, in New York actual repulsion existed; the extreme Federalists had no following. To bring New York to the Federalism of Pickering and Griswold, the Federalist party needed to recover power under a leader willing to do its work. The idea implied a bargain and an intrigue on terms such as in the Middle Ages the Devil was believed to impose upon the ambitious and reckless. Pickering and Griswold could win their game only by bartering their souls; they must invoke the Mephistopheles of politics, Aaron Burr.

To this they had made up their minds from the beginning. Burr’s four years of office were drawing to a close. The Virginians had paid him the price he asked for replacing them in power; and had it been Shylock’s pound of flesh, they could not have looked with greater care to see that Burr should get neither more nor less, even in the estimation of a hair, than the exact price they had covenanted to pay. In another year the debt would be discharged, and the Virginians would be free. Burr had not a chance of regaining a commanding place among Republicans, for he was bankrupt in private and public character. In New York the Clintons never ceased their attacks, with the evident wish to drive him from the party. Cheetham, after publishing in 1802 two heavy pamphlets, a “Narrative” and a “View,” attempted in 1803 to crush him under the weight of a still heavier volume, containing “Nine Letters on the Subject of Aaron Burr’s Political Defection.” Nov. 16, 1803, the “Albany Register” at length followed Cheetham’s lead; and nearly all the other democratic newspapers followed the “Register,” abandoning Burr as a man who no longer deserved confidence.

Till near the close of 1803 the Vice-President held his peace. The first sign that he meant energetic retaliation was given by an anonymous pamphlet,[108] which won the rare double triumph of political and literary success, in which ability and ill temper seemed to have equal shares. The unexpected appearance of “Aristides” startled New York. This attack recalled the scandal which Alexander Hamilton had created four years before by his pamphlet against his own President. “Aristides” wrote with even more bitterness than Hamilton, and the ferocity of his assault on the personal and political characters of the Republican leaders made the invectives of Hamilton and Cheetham somewhat tame; but the scandal in each case was due not so much to personalities of abuse as to breaches of confidence. “Aristides” furnished to the enemies of the Clintons and Livingstons an arsenal of poisoned weapons; but what was more to the purpose, his defence of Burr was strong. That it came directly from the Vice-President was clear; but the pamphlet showed more literary ability than Burr claimed, and the world was at a loss to discover who could be held responsible for its severities. Cheetham tried in vain to pierce the incognito. Not till long afterward was “Aristides” acknowledged by Burr’s most intimate friend, William Peter Van Ness.

An attempt to separate what was just from what was undeserved in Van Ness’s reproaches of the Clintons and Livingstons would be useless. The Clintons and Livingstons, however unprincipled they might be, could say that they were more respectable than Burr; but though this were true so far as social standing was concerned, they could not easily show that as a politician the Vice-President was worse than his neighbors. The New England Federalists knew well that Burr was not to be trusted, but they did not think much worse of him than they thought of De Witt Clinton, or John Armstrong, or Edward Livingston, at this moment removed from office by Jefferson for failing to account for thirty thousand dollars due to the United States Treasury. As a politician Burr had played fast and loose with all parties; but so had most of his enemies. Seeing that he was about to try another cast of the dice, all the political gamblers gathered round to help or hurt his further fortunes; and Van Ness might fairly have said that in the matter of principle or political morality, none of them could show clean hands.

Although Vice-President until March, 1805, Burr announced that he meant to offer himself as a candidate for the post of governor of New York in April, 1804. At the same time Governor Clinton privately gave warning of his own retirement. De Witt Clinton was annoyed at his uncle’s conduct, and tried to prevent the withdrawal by again calling Jefferson to his aid and alarming him with fear of Burr.

“A certain gentleman was to leave this place yesterday morning,” wrote De Witt to the President.[109] “He has been very active in procuring information as to his probable success for governor at the next election. This, I believe, is his intention at present, although it is certain that if the present Governor will consent to be a candidate, he will prevail by an immense majority.... Perhaps a letter from you may be of singular service.”