Letters полностью

Thus I found myself, full of misgivings, in the country & state of my birth, for the 1st time since Mother & I had left them in 1783, when I was seven. I crost “glad Chesapeake” to the broad Choptank & Cooke’s Point, half expecting to be greeted by some version of “Henry Burlingame IV.” There were the frozen marshes of my childhood, the geese flown down from Canada to winter, the graves of good Maggie Mungummory & divers ancient Cookes, the tall-topt pines, the house of my ancestors (long since sold out of the family, & in need of repairs), the ice-blue water lapping chillily at the beach. The scene spoke to me of my namesake’s journey north to where those geese came from (I mean my grandfather’s, A.C. III’s), to learn the truth about his derivation & then to deal with it. ’Twas a tale I’d had in mythic outline, so to speak, from Mother, and from “Father” in the opprobrious detail rehearst in my 2nd letter (I had not yet seen all the diaries & other documents). I was nearing 30, sans course or cause or calling; I had not been to Castines Hundred myself since my 10th year. It was time.

Now we move more swiftly, as my life has moved through the eight years since. I spent that winter as a guest of the Pattersons in Baltimore, acquainting myself with American society in that city as well as in Philadelphia &, especially, the new capital town of Washington, still a-building. There Jefferson, friend of Barlow & of France as his predecessor had not been, was in the new President’s House, having been elected by the House of Representatives after a tie vote with Aaron Burr in the electoral college. Tho he opposed the strong navy built under John Adams’s administration (with the help of the Barbary pirates, who had already broacht “our” treaty!), the same amity with Napoleon that put an end to the naval quarrels between France & the U. States had made possible Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana from the First Consul. “America” now extended even west of the Mississippi, no one knew how far, some said all the way to the Pacific; Jefferson was sending an expedition from St. Louis to find out. Already nearly a million people had crost the line Pontiac fought for, and settled west of the Appalachians; Jefferson’s purchase would redouble that flow of settlers onto Indian lands, now going for $2 the acre. But as the Burr-Jefferson campaign made clear (and the earlier disputation over where the new capital should be built), the union of states was fragile yet; much, much was in the balance. I convey’d Barlow’s regards to the President, who pleasantly inform’d me that I was “much changed” since he had known me as Joel’s ward in Paris. He instructed me to advise Barlow that building lots, both in the city proper & in Georgetown, were still cheap: B. would do well to buy a few now if he was interested. But he should probably postpone his return to the country (another of my errands was to make this inquiry) until after the coming election, when the Republicans expected to sweep the field. Once reelected with a clear mandate, Jefferson could respond favorably to Barlow’s proposal that a national university be establisht in the capital, as suggested in George Washington’s will. He promist to invite Barlow himself to preside over its establishment.

Before I could sound him out on the question of a free state for Indians & manumitted or escaped African slaves — who since 1795 had been living together peacefully in the refugee Iroquois villages along the Grand River valley — he astonisht me by asking candidly whether I believed my father dead. I replied, I could but hope so, and ask’d him why he ask’d. Because, he said, he had heard from Mr. Alexander Hamilton, who had marshal’d his defeat of Burr in the House elections, that the man he had so narrowly defeated — now Vice-President of the nation! — was scheming with someone known to Hamilton’s informants only as “H.B.,” to promote a war with Spain & lead an expedition to snatch Mexico. Given the prevailing scurrility of the political climate, where Burr’s “low morals” (like John Randolph’s “impotence” & Barlow’s “free-thinking”) were openly lampoon’d, it was perfectly likely that the rumor was a Republican fabrication. On the other hand, given Burr’s energy, competence, unpredictability, & great ambition, together with the fluidity of the international situation, the rumor might be true. There was more America between the Appalachians & the Mississippi than between the Atlantic & the Appalachians, & yet more west of the Mississippi than those two regions combined, all of it up for grabs; plus giant Mexico below & giant Canada above, great prizes both. Bonaparte’s example was infectious: many besides Aaron Burr must be dreaming, not only of empire, but of literal emperorhood. Even Barlow, Jefferson had heard, that utterly unmilitary man (from whom he had the legendary exploits of my father), had petition’d the French Directory to lead an expedition into Louisiana…