s low enough, but deliberately to identify each
anonymous or initialled letter with the full name of the writer, for
the use of a biographer, is an act of treachery of which few men are
capable. To the credit of Davis, these letters were either returned to
their writers or consigned to the flames.

Burr was a politician by nature, habit and education. In his younger
days he easily enlisted the goodwill and sympathy of his associates,
surrounding himself with a large circle of devoted, obedient friends;
and, though neither a great lawyer nor a brilliant speaker, his
natural gifts, supplemented by industry and perseverance, and a very
attractive presence, made him a conspicuous member of the New York bar
and of the United States Senate. He was, however, the ardent champion
of nothing that made for the public good. Indeed, the record of his
whole life indicates that he never possessed a great thought, or
fathered an important measure. Throughout the long, and, at times,
bitter controversy over the establishment of the Union, his silence
was broken only to predict its failure within half a century.

It is doubtful if he was ever a happy man. In the very hours when he
was the most famous and the most flattered, he described himself as
most unhappy. So long, though, as Theodosia lived, he was never alone.
When she died, he suffered till the end. There has hardly ever been in
the world a more famous pair of lovers than Burr and his gifted, noble
daughter, and there is nothing in history more profoundly melancholy
than the loss of the ship, driven by the pitiless wind of fate, on
which Theodosia had taken passage for her southern home. Yet one is
shocked at the unnatural parent who instructs his daughter to read, in
the event of his death in the duel with Hamilton, the confidential
letters which came to him in the course of his love intrigues and
affairs of gallantry. It imports a moral obliquity that, happily for
society, is found in few human beings. As he lived, so he died, a
strange, lonely, unhappy man, out of tune with the beautiful world in
which he was permitted to exist upward of four score years. He had
done a great deal of harm, and, except as a Revolutionary soldier, no
good whatever.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CLINTONS AGAINST THE LIVINGSTONS

1804-1807

When Morgan Lewis began his term as governor tranquillity
characterised public affairs in the State and in the nation. The
Louisiana Purchase had strengthe