And with regard to the manners of the Carolinians he assured the young lady that if there was one State in the Union which could justly claim superiority to the rest, in social refinement and the art of elegant living, it was South Carolina, where the division of the people into the very poor and the very rich left to the latter class abundant leisure for the pursuit of literature and the enjoyment of society.
"The possession of slaves," he owns,
"renders them proud, impatient of restraint, and gives them a haughtiness of manner which, to those unaccustomed to them, is disagreeable; but we find among them a high sense of honor, a delicacy of sentiment, and a liberality of mind, which we look for in vain in the more commercial citizens of the Northern States. The genius of the Carolinian, like the inhabitants of all southern countries, is quick, lively, and acute; in steadiness and perseverance he is naturally inferior to the native of the North; but this defect of climate is often overcome by his ambition or necessity; and, whenever this happens, he seldom fails to distinguish himself. In his temper he is gay and fond of company, open, generous, and unsuspicious; easily irritated, and quick to resent even the appearance of insult; but his passion, like the fire of the flint, is lighted up and extinguished in the same moment."
Such discussions end only in one way. Theodosia yielded the points in dispute. At Albany, on the 2d of February, 1801, while the country was ringing with the names of Jefferson and Burr, and while the world supposed that Burr was intriguing with all his might to defeat the wishes of the people by securing his own election to the Presidency, his daughter was married. The marriage was thus announced in the New York Commercial Advertiser of February 7:—
"MARRIED.—-At Albany, on the 2d instant, by the Rev. Mr.
JOHNSON, JOSEPH ALSTON, of South Carolina, to THEODOSIA
BURR, only child of AARON BURR, Esq."
They were married at Albany, because Colonel Burr, being a member of the Legislature, was residing at the capital of the State. One week the happy pair passed at Albany. Then to New York; whence, after a few days' stay, they began their long journey southward. Rejoined at Baltimore by Colonel Burr, they travelled in company to Washington, where, on the 4th of March, Theodosia witnessed the inauguration of Mr. Jefferson, and the induction of her father into the Vice-Presidency. Father and child parted a day or two after the ceremony. The only solid consolation, he said in his first letter to her, that he had for the loss of her dear companionship, was a belief that she would be happy, and the certainty that they should often meet. And, on his return to New York, he told her that he had approached his home as he would "the sepulchre of all his friends." "Dreary, solitary, comfortless. It was no longer home." Hence his various schemes of a second marriage, to which Theodosia urged him. He soon had the comfort of hearing that the reception of his daughter in South Carolina was as cordial and affectionate as his heart could have wished.
Theodosia now enjoyed three as happy years as ever fell to the lot of a young wife. Tenderly cherished by her husband, whom she devotedly loved, caressed by society, surrounded by affectionate and admiring relations, provided bountifully with all the means of enjoyment, living in the summer in the mountains of Carolina, or at the home of her childhood, Richmond Hill, passing the winters in gay and luxurious Charleston, honored for her own sake, for her father's, and her husband's, the years glided rapidly by, and she seemed destined to remain to the last Fortune's favorite child. One summer she and her husband visited Niagara, and penetrated the domain of the chieftain Brant, who gave them royal entertainment. Once she had the great happiness of receiving her father under her own roof, and of seeing the honors paid by the people of the State to the Vice-President. Again she spent a summer at Richmond Hill and Saratoga, leaving her husband for the first time. She told him on this occasion that every woman must prefer the society of the North to that of the South, whatever she might say. "If she denies it, she is set down in my mind as insincere and weakly prejudiced." But, like a fond and loyal wife, she wrote, "Where you are, there is my country, and in you are centred all my wishes."
She was a mother too. That engaging and promising boy, Aaron Burr Alston, the delight of his parents and of his grandfather, was born in the second year of the marriage. This event seemed to complete her happiness. For a time, it is true, she paid dearly for it by the loss of her former robust and joyous health. But the boy was worth the price. "If I can see without prejudice," wrote Colonel Burr, "there never was a finer boy"; and the mother's letters are full of those sweet, trifling anecdotes which mothers love to relate of their offspring. Her father still urged her to improve her mind, for her own and her son's sake, telling her that all she could learn would necessarily find its way to the mind of the boy. "Pray take in hand," he writes, "some book which requires attention and study. You will, I fear, lose the habit of study, which would be a greater misfortune than to lose your head." He praised, too, the ease, good-sense, and sprightliness of her letters, and said truly that her style, at its best, was not inferior to that of Madame de Sévigné.
Life is frequently styled a checkered scene. But it was the peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty-one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune and sorrow. Never had her father's position seemed so strong and enviable as during his tenure of the office of Vice-President; but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious. Holding property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so deeply in debt that nothing but the sacrifice of his landed estate could save him from bankruptcy. At the age of thirty he had permitted himself to be drawn from a lucrative and always increasing professional business to the fascinating but most costly pursuit of political honors. And now; when he stood at a distance of only one step from the highest place, he was pursued by a clamorous host of creditors, and compelled to resort to a hundred expedients to maintain the expensive establishments supposed to be necessary to a Vice-President's dignity. His political position was as hollow as his social eminence. Mr. Jefferson was firmly resolved that Aaron Burr should not be his successor; and the great families of New York, whom Burr had united to win the victory over Federalism, were now united to bar the further advancement of a man whom they chose to regard as an interloper and a parvenu. If Burr's private life had been stainless, if his fortune had been secure, if he had been in his heart a Republican and a Democrat, if he had been a man earnest in the people's cause, if even his talents had been as superior as they were supposed to be, such a combination of powerful families and political influence might have retarded, but could not have prevented, his advancement; for he was still in the prime of his prime, and the people naturally side with a man who is the architect of his own fortunes.
On the 1st of July, 1804, Burr sat in the library of Richmond Hill writing to Theodosia. The day was unseasonably cold, and a fire blazed upon the hearth. The lord of the mansion was chilly and serious. An hour before he had taken the step which made the duel with Hamilton inevitable, though eleven days were to elapse before the actual encounter. He was tempted to prepare the mind of his child for the event, but he forebore. Probably his mind had been wandering into the past, and recalling his boyhood; for he quoted a line of poetry which he had been wont to use in those early days. "Some very wise man has said," he wrote,