Poetry of Conspiracy

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St. Olaf College

Aristocracy, Aaron Burr, and the

Poetry of Conspiracy

When Aaron Burr was captured and brought to trial for treason

in , the account of his filibuster in the Mississippi Territory instantly

became one the great episodes of conspiracy and intrigue in American his-

tory. Once a rising star in the Democratic-Republican ranks, whose po-litical career came to an ignominious end with the killing of Alexander

Hamilton, the former vice-president was accused of leading a conspiracy

of American and foreign agents for the purpose of, among other things, in-

citing a rebellion of territorial citizens against the American government,

raising an army to liberate Mexico from Spanish control, even creating

an independent nation in the Southwest (to be ruled by Aaron Burr). Yet

while the Burr Conspiracy of has long been a favorite topic of

historians,1 what is not generally remembered is that this was not the first

time Burr was publicly charged with conspiracy and treason. More than a

decade earlier, in , he had been accused in print of plotting against his

country, of conspiring to establish himself ruler of a vast American empire,

and of entering into a clandestine agreement with a foreign agent. Almost

universally forgotten among students of Burrs life and career, moreover,

is that these accusations came in the form of a poem.

The work that first accused Burr of plotting against his country was theanonymous verse satireAristocracy,aworkthatstandsnotonlyastheearli-

est major political attack against Burr but more remarkably as an uncanny

foreshadowing of the most notorious events of his later life. Published in

two parts in January and March of , the poem appeared amid a period

of bitter satiric warfare in which poets representing both parties were en-

gaging elected officials, newspaper editors, and each other, over a variety

of issues: the implications of the French Revolution for American poli-

tics, the emergence of Democratic societies, the Whiskey Insurrection inPennsylvania, and the unresolved diplomatic tensions between the United

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States and Great Britain. Against this backdrop, the author ofAristocracy

would present Burr largely as he has been remembered in our own time, as

an unprincipled politician who had aligned himself with the Democratic-

Republicans merely as a strategy to further his political ambitions. Moreinsidiously, however, the poem portrays Burr as the leader of a dangerous

Coalition that seeks to destroy the general influence of the people (Aris-

tocracyI. iii) and usurp absolute power for himself and his accomplices.

As a poem promising to uncover a secret plot to reverse the political

outcome of the American Revolution, moreover, Aristocracyannounced

itself as belonging to a specific subgenre of conspiracy poems that had

appeared during the early s as a literary and ideological protest against

the administration of George Washington. Usually the work of writers rep-resenting the Democratic-Republican opposition, such as Philip Freneau

and St. George Tucker, such poems purported to expose the secret ambi-

tions of men like Hamilton and John Adams to eradicate the present repub-

lican government and replace it with one more closely resembling mon-

archy or aristocracy. For the Federalist author ofAristocracyto use Aaron

Burrthe very emblem of an American patricianto turn the charge of

aristocracy back onto the Democrats themselves was itself something of

an ingenious tactic, and one that would contain important implicationsconcerning the meaning of aristocracy and the question of what actually

constituted an aristocratic threat to the American republic.

Yet the real satiric brilliance ofAristocracyarises from the fact that it

was never meant simply as a work of political satire. Rather, it was also the

occasion for an elaborate practical joke designed by a Federalist wit to pass

off a satire against Burr in the guise of a Democratic expos of a Federal-

ist conspiracy. This was no simple trick, but one that involved using the

Democratic press as an unwitting participant in a literary game of bait-

and-switch. Advertising the poem in the Philadelphia Auroraas nothing

less than a scourge against American aristocrats, the author published the

first installment of the poem as a deliberate misrepresentation of its satiric

project, presenting it not as a work of satire but as documentary proof of

an actual conspiracy perpetrated against the people of the United States.

Not until the appearance of the second installment of the poem was the

nature of the ruse revealed:Aristocracywas not an assault against a Fed-eralist plot to restore titled prerogative in America, but a counter-attack

against the political intrigues of Aaron Burr. More significantly, it was a


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complex burlesque of the broader discourse of conspiracy that pervaded

the Democratic-Republican critique against Federalism.

The author ofAristocracyhas never been definitively identified, and infact, the uncertainty over the poems authorship has been tied to a more

general confusion over its precise satiric purpose. Taking at face value the

insinuations of the poems title, the edition ofThe Cambridge History

of American LiteraturedescribedAristocracyas a satire against the alleged

aristocratic notions of the federalists (), and this remained the pre-

vailing interpretation despite the fact that Charles Evans had tentatively

attributed the poem to Richard Alsop, co-author of the staunchly Federal-

ist series The Echo. But why would a Federalist poet represent membersof his own party as perpetrating an aristocratic plot against the American

republic? Only in recent decades has this puzzle been solved, with Charles

Modlins realizing that the poems unnamed villaina figure known only

as Aristuswas not a Federalist at all, but Aaron Burr ():Aristocracy,

then, was unquestionably the work of a Federalist, and its purpose was to

redirect the charge of aristocratic back against one of the Democrats

own emerging leaders. Yet even this explanation tells only part of the story

of the poems satiric design: coming in the midst of a paper war in whichmuch had been made of a conspiracy of Federalist aristocrats, Aristocracy

was intended in large part to mislead actual Democrats into buying and

reading a work that seemed at first to confirm their suspicions. Only in the

process of committing themselves to working out the poems coded refer-

ences would such readers discover not only thatAristocracywas directed

against Burr but that they had all along been participating in an interactive

burlesque of precisely what the poem was ridiculingthe tendency to give

credence to conspiracy theories.2

Why the author ofAristocracy would have chosen to fashion such a

complicated burlesque must be understood, first, in the context of the

satiric warfare of . These years constituted a high point of satiric

attacks and counterattacks between Federalists such as Alsop, Lemuel

Hopkins, and Theodore Dwight, and Democratic-Republicans like Philip

Freneau and St. George Tuckereach side holding to what William Dowl-

ing has described as a notion of poetryas ideological intervention (Poetryand Ideology ix). Tuckers Probationary Odes of Jonathan Pindar, for

instance, had relentlessly unmasked the likes of Adams and Hamilton as


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unsympathetic to the concerns of the common people, and this point no

doubt resonated with members of the Democratic-Republican societies

throughout , amid Washingtons criticism of the societies in the wake

of the Whiskey Insurrection and Burrs explicit defense of them on thefloor of the Senate.3 For their part, Federalists in Congress had made much

of the connection between the Pennsylvania rebellion and the so-called

self-created societies, and throughout , Federalist poets had published

several satires against the clubs, including an anonymous lampoon of the

New York Democratic Society entitled Democracy: An Epic Poem, By Aqua-

line Nimblechops.4 Yet by February , it appeared that the Democratic-

Republican wits had retaliated in kind, for the following advertisement

began appearing daily in the pages of Benjamin Franklin BachesAuroraand General Advertiser:

ARISTOCRACY,

AN EPIC POEMBOOK FIRST,

THIS DAY PUBLISHED . . .

The Author of this little book will repurchase of anyone who, on perusal,

will say he has not got the worth of his money. N.B. All applications must

be attended with proof that the applicant is not an aristocrat, which classof people are hereby notified not to purchase, as this book contains no

gratification for them.

(February , )

For those enticed by this advertisement into buying a copy of the poem,

both the full titleAristocracy: An Epic Poemand the preface seemed

to confirm that the poem was a direct retaliation for Democracy: An Epic

Poem. In the preface, the reader is addressed by the editor, who immedi-

ately raises the public criticism of the Democratic societies as the occa-

sion for this poems publication: At a time like the present, when the

executive and legislative powers have united to denounce the POPULAR

SOCIETIES; . . . it behoves every lover of this country, every advocate for

the equal rights of man, to awake from the dream of delusive security,

and exert every energy of his nature, to enlighten and preserve his fellow-

citizens (.iii). Yet as the editor goes on to explain, the point of this poem

will be to expose a very different threat to national security. For althoughthe DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES have been stigmatized by opprobrious


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epithets of anarchists and Disorganizers, he writes, this is nothing more

than a misdirection created by a dangerous coalition which exists (ac-

tively, if not formally) to destroy the general influence of the people (.iii).

The real danger, conversely, is posed by the spirit of aristocracy, whichhas remained alive in America since the time of British control. Indepen-

dence may have put an end to the specific designs of the British ministry

to saddle us with an hereditary nobility, but it did not destroy the secret

longing which had been excited by the artifices of the vile instruments of

the mother country (.iv). Indeed, there have been several attempts to re-

store aristocratic rule in America since the Revolution, and the poem that

follows will tell the story of one such plot, which the editor asserts involves

both Americans and a number of Foreign Envoys (.v).The -line poem itselfbilled as Aristocracy: Book Firstsets the

stage for what promised to be a full-length, multivolume epic. Befitting

such claims, the story beginsin medias res, with the main character and

leader of the plot, Aristus, alone in a forest. Having apparently suffered a

setback in his plans, he curses both his fate and the weakness of his fel-

low conspirators, whom he believes to have betrayed him. In Homeric and

Miltonic tradition, moreover, the first book includes a descent into the

underworld, as the story moves abruptly to a depiction of Satan on histhrone in Hell: Satan has overheard Aristuss soliloquy and immediately

calls together an audience of Tartarean Potentates to announce his latest

plan to reclaim America as his own. Recognizing in Aristus a kindred spirit

who labours to extend / My spreading sway, Satan arranges for Aristus

to be visited by a European envoy who will serve as an accomplice to his

plot (.). With the conclusion of this foreboding speech, the first book of

Aristocracycomes to a close.

That the poem would eventually reveal itself as a satire against Burr is

hardly hinted at in the first book. Instead, the narratives main outlines

support the insinuations of the preface, that this is an attack against Fed-

eralists, toward whom the epithet aristocratic had usually been directed.

Thus, for instance, the opening lines of the poem draw precisely on the lan-

guage used in other anti-Federalist verse to present the party of Hamilton

and Adams as a coterie of patricians who longed to revive the rituals of the

English court and to impede, as much as possible, the progress of freedomand republicanism:


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INTRIGUES, and Heroes, whose unequalld toil

Dard Freedoms progress many a year to foil;

For many a year Columbias realm who bowd,

Leading, meteorous, the deluded crowd:Illustrious chiefs! who sought the bliss divine,

In lordly pomp and titled pride to shine;

While, bent beneath their oligarchic sway,

Their native land should tremble and obey. (.)

In this passage we encounter not simply the opposition of freedom and

aristocracy that will run throughout the poem but also the inversion of

perspective through which the speaker, far from condemning Aristus andhis circle for subverting freedoms progress, hails them as Heroes and

Chiefs and glorifies their desire to delude the crowd into giving up their

power to the oligarchs. In literary terms, this is the inverted or diabolic

perspective associated with the characterization of Satan inParadise Lost,

the epic to which this first book so directly alludes.5 At the same time, so

far as this inversion belongs not simply to a single diabolic character but

to the poem as whole, Aristocracyis also drawing on the tradition of the

eighteenth-century mock epic of representing a world in which traditionalvalues had been displaced or reversed. Variations on this convention can

be found in dozens of political verse satires published in America during

and after the Revolution, as figures such as Burgoyne or George III or John

Adams are portrayed as acknowledging and even celebrating theirown vil-

lainy.6 Against this background, the reader ofAristocracywould have been

wholly familiar with the portrayal of Aristus as an avowed enemy of repub-

licanism, as when he fantasizes about the possibility of usurping absolute

and arbitrary power:

And such must be the curst estate of those

Whose exaltation from the people flows;

Who on their fickle voice for power depend;

Servants to all, yet calling each a friend.

But O when titled place, and gainful might,

Oer a whole realm maintain usurped right,How blest the man who revels in the joy,

With strength to make, and vigour to destroy! (.)


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At the same time, as this passage illustrates, Aristus is not merely a dia-

bolical villain with an inverted system of values but a villain particular to

postrevolutionary American satire, for the value system Aristus here re-

verses is that of Republicanism, which he regards as no more than an ar-bitrary imposition on his personal ambitions, to be undermined at every

turn. It is in this sense thatAristocracyis seen to draw upon another, less

commonly known, category of early national verse, the poetry of con-

spiracy. This is a form of satire that, beyond simply unmasking some un-

flattering or unacknowledged truth about a public figure or group or in-

stitution, detailed a specific, deliberate conspiracy against America by a

narrow ring of enemies. In the early years of the Revolution, Philip Freneau

had all but single-handedly invented the genre in such poems as A Voyageto Boston() and General Gages Confession (), works involving

fantasy narratives that allowed the reader to eavesdrop on secret meetings

among Gage and his associates as they plotted to subjugate the American

colonies. The claim of such poems to reveal the private conversations of

avowed enemies of American liberty would prove powerful not only for

the duration of the war but also in the uneasy first years of the new repub-

lic, when poems began appearing that purported to expose secret plans to

subvert the effects of the Revolution and bring America once again underBritish or monarchical control. Indeed, before the Constitution had even

been ratified by all states, the new vice-president was already being un-

masked as

. . . a stickler for a crown,

Tainted with foreign vices, and his own,

Already plotting dark, insidious schemes,

Already dubbd a King, in royal dreams. (Church )7

In the political atmosphere of the early sdominated as it was by

the specter of the French Revolutionthe great power of poems of con-

spiracy arose not simply from their representation of the authors political

enemies as villains but from the compelling nature of the idea of conspiracy

itself, particularly as a means of comprehending the problem of ideologi-

cal delusion in an age otherwise characterized by enlightenment. As Louis

Althusser remarked a generation ago, the image of a conspiracy of des-pots and priests had given the philosophes and others an explanation as

to how, for so much of human history, most people accepted social and


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political inequality as part of the natural order (). And, as illustrated in

Joel BarlowsConspiracy of Kings()perhaps the best remembered of

all conspiracy poemsit also made sense to envision the modern age as

that crucial moment at which such plots were finally being exposed.

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Thepurpose of poems written in the service of exposing a conspiracy was thus

to present, in narrative terms, the conspirators as they behaved when they

were shrouded from public view, free to abandon their public disguises.

In this context, the ostensible purpose ofAristocracy is to tell the truth

about the real figure identified as Aristusto expose him as an unprin-

cipled leader, motivated solely by ambition and self-interest, and willing to

feign patriotism and republican virtue in order to delude a naive populace:

Yes, let the rich abjure, the poor despise;

TisSelfalone which charms each mortals eyes.

By this prest on; we evry danger dare,

In peace thats hidden, or reveald in war.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

While we, who vary as each coming day

In different forms shall public will display

And strive, beneath this mask of patriot zeal,Our proud aspiring wishes to conceal. (.)

That the poem professes to expose a coalition of men ruled by self-

interest rather than public virtue was hardly unusual during the poetry

wars of the s. What was unusual about Aristocracyand what pro-

vided readers with the first clue that all was not what it seemed about this

poemwas the more extraordinary claim made in the preface concerning

the historical truth of this particular conspiracy. Unlike other conspiracy

poems, which offered an admittedly fictionalized account of its partici-

pants engaging in their schemes, this poem claimed to be something far

more incriminating: a piece of material evidence of the specific plot per-

petrated by Aristus. For as the writer of the preface alleges, he is not the

author ofAristocracybut only its editor; the actual author, he explains,

was one of the plottersthe confidential friend of the man most active

in its promotion and probably more deeply implicated in it than he as-

sumes to be in the Poem (.v). The editor, on the other hand, presentshimself simply as a citizen who became suspicious that aristocracy had not

been wholly eradicated in America, and who thus undertook an investiga-


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tion into the character of Americas elected leaders: It was in the course

of this scrutiny, he writes, that the following POEM . . . came into my

hands (.iv).

For those who scoured the pages of BachesAuroraand Thomas Green-leafsNew York Journal, here was something wholly unique: a document

(in the form of a poem) that did not simply expose a conspiracy or aristo-

crats but actually provided proof from the hand of one of its participants.

At the same time, however, the implications of the editors discovery nar-

rative raised a number of logical inconsistencies, most notably, that the

authorAristuss confidential friendpresents Aristus and his values in

such negative terms. Why, for instance, would such an author portray his

friend as wholly selfish, even to the point of declaring his devotion to self-interest alone? The editorconcedes that this may seem improbable (.vi),

but he insists that its true, and that he can prove it. For in the course of

his investigation, he writes, he also came into possession of another docu-

ment, a letter from the author of the poem to the real Aristus, which con-

firms that the members of Aristuss inner circle indeed spoke openly about

their amorality at least to each other: Let others think as they please,

the author writes, we, who have such ample experience, have long since

discredited the dream of disinterested benevolence. . . . Opinions of thissort are well enough to amuse the vulgar; and to be played off on those

weak, but well-designing men, who must have Scripture for every thing

they do. . . . I have no doubt of your inflexible adherence to that maxim

which has so long been the governing rule of our actions,That if the END

is desireable, we are not to hold question respecting the MEANS (.vi). As

the letter conveniently proves, this coalition of aristocrats is all the more

dangerous because its participants are devoid of any principles, whether

moral, political, or religious.

Yet this very lack of principles raised another contradiction that the

editor would find even more difficult to explain. The portrait of Aristus,

together with the authors letter, indicates that the members of his cabal

were freethinkers, men who (in the editors words) regarded Heaven and

Hell, Providence and Futurity, equally fabulous as the theology of the

Greeks or Hindoos (.vi). So why, the reader would be inclined to ask,

would the author have written a poem depicting the designs of his friendnot merely as immoral but as in some sense inspired by Satan? Of this turn

in the narrative, the editor can only conclude that it must have been a


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mere playof the [poets] fancy (.vi). This is accurate, but only in the sense

that the entire work is a play of fancy: for as the reader might have begun

to suspect by the end of the first book, the poem, the story surrounding

its composition, the conspiratorial author, and the editor who brings thepoem before the public are all fictional creations.

Still, the more important questions raised by the appearance ofAris-

tocracywere these: why would the poems actual author have allowed such

contradictions to arise by placing an otherwise consistent mock-epic of a

scheming politician inside a conspiracy narrative in which the poem de-

mands to be read not as ironic, but as a serious epic celebrating demonic

values? For that matter, what was the satiric purpose of including the story

of the poems composition and the character of the editor who jealouslyguards the rights and liberties of the people? The answers to these questions

would be revealed the following month with the publication ofAristocracy:

Book Secondand the identification of Aristus as Aaron Burr.

Despite the cryptic nature of the first book ofAristocracy, the poem

had provided one important clue as to the identity both of Aristus and of

the poems speaker or author who memorializes Aristuss plot. Early in

the poem, the speaker recalls his childhood as Aristuss earliest friendand describes the specific locale where the two boys had grown up: Hail,

native stream! he exclaims, Whose sweet wave winding seeks the neigh-

boring sea; / Whose flowry banks the pastoral city claim, / Which proudly

bears the Albion Virgins name (.). The reference here is to Elizabeth-

Town, New Jersey, Burrs childhood home, and the description of Aristus

and his childhood friend, in turn, suggested that the speaker might well be

Burrs best friend and brother-in-law, Matthias Ogden. The identification

of Ogden is further supported by the editors explanation in the preface

that the epic had been composed by Aristuss accomplice at his country

seat, whither he had retired, and where he died a few years since,with

the reputation of great Patriot (.v)! Ogden had in fact earned the reputa-

tion of a great patriot for his service as Brigadier General of the First New

Jersey Regiment before he died in Elizabeth-Town in .

Such hints notwithstanding, Burrs identity would easily have been

missed by many readers of the first book, and one suspects that this was in-tentional, to obscure the actual target of the poems satire until the appear-

ance of the second installment in late March of . As with the first, the


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second book ofAristocracyis introduced by the editor, who charges that in

the wake of the poems publication, some members of Aristuss circle have

sought to block his attempt to bring their conspiracy to light. Yet he vows

that he will not be deterred from the exercise of what he considers, an in-alienable right, by the threatened, or actual, interference of any man; how

highly soever he may rank in the good opinion of a certain description of

Americans (.v).

With this advertisement once again calling to mind the general Demo-

cratic suspicions of a Federalist plot, the stage was set for the surprise reve-

lation: that the head of this dangerous Coalition . . . to destroy the influ-

ence of the people (.iii) was, at least in name, a Democrat. Picking up

where the earlier installment had left off, Book Second describes the meet-ing between Aristus and the mysterious European envoy who had been

sent to America at Satans command. It is in the course of their interview

that Aristuss identity becomes obvious. Asked by the Envoy to give the

secret history of wavering power in America (.), Aristus recounts

the major events of the first decade of the republic, and as he tells the story,

he refers frequently to his own political career, which corresponds precisely

with Burrs. He reveals, for example, his frustration at having been passed

over for promotion in his military career, a remark that called to mindBurrs well-known resentment over not having been one of Washingtons

favorites.9 In the poem, such disregard is rendered all the more humiliating

by way of another reference to Burrs life, for Aristus is doubly wounded

by the fact that the commander-in-chief also had a special preference for

another young soldier, Alexander Hamilton:

. . . my ardent sword I reard,

And rushd to combat in my countrys cause;(For thus was calld my passion for applause)

Yet was I left, neglected, and alone,

While HE, capricious Fortunes favorite son,

Lost be the memory of his hated name!

Who still precedes me in the walks of fame;

Who, as I mount, still towrs above my flight,

With Jacob-craft, despoild me of my right. (.)

This passage is fascinating in its own right as an eerie foreshadowing

of the fatal conclusion of the Burr-Hamilton rivalry, but in the context of


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the poems main purpose, Aristuss bitterness here serves as an occasion to

satirize Burr as utterly consumed by ambition and self-interest. Even what

was arguably Burrs most virtuous act, his service in the Revolution, is at-

tributed merely to a passion for applause. Burr is similarly representedlater in the interview when Aristus, recounting his public career in the years

immediately following the Revolution, explains his decision not to align

himself either with the Federalists or the anti-Federalists during the Con-

stitutional debates. Historians have since suggested that Burr chose to stay

out of this fight merely as a political strategy, and the poem reaches the

same verdict: when the Envoy asks where was Aristus during this crucial

chapter in American history, Aristus replies that he was Silent, at home,

hoping that whateer thevent should prove, / Would still secure me eitherpartys love (.).10

It was at this point in his career, Aristus explainswhen he was in dan-

gerof becoming irrelevant in the new federal governmentthat he devised

a plan that would both propel him to the summit of power and under-

mine the ambitions of his rival, Hamilton. He would get himself elected

president:

Then might I hope the Empires highest seat;Then see my rival humbled at my feet;

The utmost object of my vows be found:

And pride, ambition, and revenge, be crownd. (.)

To do this, he would need to exploit the new spirit of partisanship that had

arisen in the first years of the new government. Aristus is wholly cogni-

zant of the threat posed by the hateful storm of PARTY (.) and has

no illusions about the motives of the new factions leader, Thomas Jeffer-

son, whom he describes as a wretched man who has somehow been im-

pelled to employ his learning and eloquence in the service of slandering his

government (.). Nonetheless, Aristus realized that by joining with the

Democrats, he would secure greater power faster, and thus, he tells the En-

voy, he entered into a secret agreement with Jefferson: Mark then, while

I the secret source disclose / Whence the first compact of our forces rose

(.).11 The second book concludes before Aristus divulges the details of

their agreement, but by this point, the satiric portrait of Burras one whoeyed the increasing democratization of the s and s as a force to be

harnessed for his own endswas complete.


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Aaron Burr {

The revelation that the true embodiment of aristocracy in America was

Aaron Burr would hardly have been surprising in one important sense.

Burr was a natural aristocrat by birth and in manner: he had descended

from one of New Englands most prominent families and was the son andgrandson of successive presidents of Princeton. Much of the poems satire,

then, is designed to register the irony that a patrician like Burr would have

risen to leadership among the Democrats. More fundamentally, however,

the identification of Burr as Aristus, coming as it does in the midst of his

recounting political strategies and secret deals, serves to raise the question

of what, precisely, constituted a so-called aristocratic threat to the repub-

lic. As the fictitious editor had explained in the preface, the danger posed

by the spirit of aristocracy was the establishment of an undue influ-ence in the hands of any particular description of citizens (.iv). Insofar as

the same concentration of power could arise by way of cultivating popu-

larity among the demos, however, the idea of a politician motivated solely

by self-interest represented a new and frightening possibility, the estab-

lishment of a class of demagogues whose power, while appearing to issue

from the people, actually represented a kind of practical oligarchy. This is

the possibility that is realized only gradually and retrospectively over the

course of the poem, as the reader recalls the oligarchic language of the firstbook ofAristocracyand suddenly grasps its connection with the politics

of Aaron Burr. Yes, fond Presumption bids me hope, ere long, Aristus

had proclaimed, Aided by thee, to bend the vulgar throng; / With titled

friends, in pomp sublime, to move, / And hold by Fear what now I gain by

Love (.).

Yet the secret deal with the Jeffersonians and even the dream of estab-

lishing absolute rule in America do not comprise the full measure of the

conspiracy outlined in the poem. The most outrageous charge leveled

against Burrinvolving, as in hisWestern excursion of , interna-

tional intrigue and possibly treasoncomes in connection with Aristuss

meeting with the Envoy. As in the case of Aristus/Burr, the identity of

the Envoy is revealed in the second book, and this revelation comes as no

less of a surprise in light of the poems earlier pretenses: for the Envoy

turns out to be an agent not of aristocratic Britain but Revolutionary

France, Edmond Charles Genet. In fact, the Envoys clandestine meetingwith Aristus comes in the midst of Genets notorious diplomatic mission

of , a point that is made unmistakable for the reader when the Envoy


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is met with precisely the kind of republican fanfare as that which greeted

the actual French ambassador:

Loud thundering cannon haild him to our shore,

And shouting thousands to his mansion bore;And on this day, this morn, with costly care,

A feast fraternal for his sake prepare. (.)

Given Genets association with the radical republicanism of the Giron-

dists, it might seem impossible that he could be portrayed as a fellow con-

spirator in an aristocratic plot. YetAristocracyrepresents Genet as Burrs

political twin, eager to capitalize personally on the popular frenzy sur-

rounding the French Revolution. Like Aristus, the Envoy reveals his truecharacteras he muses about the unprecedented power his popularity might

bring. Included in this speech is a reminder that Citizen Genet was not

so far removed from European aristocracy as he might have appeared: for

here the Envoy delivers an extended apostrophe to his (and Genets) diplo-

matic mentor, the Comte de Vergennes, wherein he calls on the deceased

ministers guidance as he plots his own latest strategy. It was Vergennes, the

Envoy declares, who had taught him that a true statesman owns no bind-

ing rules, but as his interest and his judgment guide, refashions himselfin the image of whoever currently holds power:

Kings, Lords, or People, as their powers prevail,

Still ever find him in the heavier scale;

And now, with duteous loyalty he bends;

Now, seems devoted to his patrons ends;

And bellows now, among the peoples friends. (.)

It is at this moment, importantly, that the actual aristocracy represented

by Vergennes and the republicanism of Genet are seen to dissolve into dif-

ferent versions of the very political threat against which the poems preface

had originally warned: the undue influence of a small coterie of political

opportunists.

At the same time, the allusion to Vergennes in this passage would

carry even greater significance in the context of the most pressing politi-

cal controversy of the winter of . For as the reader would haverecalled, Vergennes was not simply Genets diplomatic mentor but also

the French representative in the Paris Peace Treaty of . Equally


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Aaron Burr {

memorable was that Vergenness most formidable counterpart in negoti-

ating that treaty had been John Jay, who was now finalizing the new and

controversial treaty with Great Britain that would come to be known as the

Jay treaty. Against this backdrop, the otherwise tangential apostrophe toVergennes would serve as a reminder that during the negotiations of ,

Jay had suspected Vergennes of secretly working on behalf of its ally, Spain,

to undermine American claims to the Western Territories. In response, Jay

had singlehandedly moved to negotiate a separate peace with Great Brit-

aina tactic that ultimately brought France and Spain back to the negotia-

tions, and which was generally credited for securing for the United States

all of the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi.12

The strategic brilliance of the allusion to Vergennes and the first Jaytreaty thus arises from its reminding readers not only that Jay had a history

of diplomatic success but also that France, the favored nation of the Jeffer-

sonians, had a history of double-dealing with the United States. The in-

sinuation that Burr was in collusion with Genet, moreoverhowever his-

torically implausibleserved further to discredit Burr as one of the chief

critics of Jays mission and the treaty. Indeed, the movement of the narra-

tive from Burr to Genet and from Genet to Vergennes provides the answer

to the question of why the author ofAristocracywould have chosen thewinter of to initiate a satiric attack against Burr (who had, until then,

avoided the ire of Federalist wits). Quite simply, the poet saw an oppor-

tunity for a preemptive strikeat the precise moment that the Jay treaty

was expected to arrive in Philadelphiaagainst the man who would lead

the opposition to its approval by the Senate.13

The remainder of the epic, which seemed to be leading to another clan-

destine agreement between Burr and Genet, never appeared in print, and

most likely was never written. That the author would have chosen to aban-

don the idea of finishing the epic is not surprising, for by the end of the

second book,Aristocracy had served its satiric ends. It had discredited Burr

on the eve of the debate over the Jay treaty, and it had countered the Demo-

cratic poetry of conspiracy with a poem containing an opposing conspiracy

theory that was so incredible as to ridicule the entire discourse of secret

plots to destroy American liberty. For what is clear by the end of the poemis that the story of Aristus and the Envoy was never meant to be take seri-

ously, and that, indeed, it is not even the primary or real story being told


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Aaron Burr {

Thus, in addition to recounting the mock-epic story of Burrs political in-

trigues,Aristocracy has also been relating an equally satirical story about an

overzealous Democrat who has somehow come across a satire against Burr

and, failing to realize it, presents it to the world as proof of a Federalist con-spiracy. And as the pun on editor suggests, this editors misreading may

also have meant to call to mind the interpretive capacity of such real-life

editors as Benjamin Bache and Thomas Greenleaf, who were at that mo-

ment interpreting the Jay treaty as a deliberate attempt to bring the United

States once more under British control.

In the context of the elaborate ruse surrounding the poems misrepre-

sentation of its meaning, and particularly its advertisement in theAurora,

the character of the editor also symbolizes the actual unsuspecting readerwho may have been enticed into buying a copy of the poem expecting to

find an attack against the Federalists, only to realize he had been the victim

of a literary hoax. It is impossible to know whether any actual reader was

fooled in this way, but the very prospect must have delighted the anony-

mous wit who concocted the trick and those with whom he shared the

story. In social and political terms, what the poem-as-ruse provided was

a distinction between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans based on a

standard of wit and intellectual sophistication. On one side stood the au-thor and his friends, capable of composing and appreciating such a work of

complex irony and literary deception, and wholly unpersuaded by the logic

that had given rise to the discourse of political conspiracy. On the other

stood those like the editor, who saw enemies of liberty lurking everywhere

and imagined them behaving in reality like the diabolical characters found

in mock-epic poems. What is perhaps most ingenious about Aristocracy

is that it is structured in such a way as to locate individual readers within

one of these categories based on their experience of reading. Those who

found themselves taken in by the ruse would be forced to recognize their

image in the figure of the editor, while those who picked up on the poems

complex levels of irony would see themselves implicitly as belonging to a

community of literary, intellectual, and political sophistication.

The complexity of the practical joke involved a degree of risk, of course,

for it invited the possibility that a plurality of readersFederalists as well

as Democratswould struggle unsuccessfully to make sense of the poemscontradictions and simply give up, perhaps before even realizing that the

satire was directed against Burr. And, in fact, at least one Federalist was


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} : ,

so deceived, writing in the Gazette of the United States a week after the

publication of the first installment of the poem to complain that it un-

fairly maligned Federalists, including our venerable and virtuous Presi-

dent (//). Yet the willingness of the author to compose a work sointricately ironic is itself enlightening, first, because it offers a rare glimpse

into the literary and ideological motivations behind political satire during

the s, and second, because this view, in turn, gives us a more complete

understanding of the development of literary Federalism between the time

of Washingtons presidency and that of Jeffersons.

As it has been told in recent years by William Dowling, the story of

literary Federalism after is one in which Federalist writers, recog-

nizing that their own political cause would not prevail, gradually turnedaway from the direct satiric engagement that characterized the s and

embraced an alternative ideal of literature as a sanctuary from politics, a

separate and timeless realm of literary or aesthetic values (Literary Feder-

alismix). What is illuminating aboutAristocracyin the context of this later

development is that it reveals, in , both possibilities operating simul-

taneously in the same poem. As a satire against Burr, the poem was indeed

engaging in a literary war over issues as specific as the Jay treaty and as

general as the democratization of American politics. As an ingenious lit-erary device intended to entertain a select audience, on the other hand,

Aristocracywas also an exercise in sheer aesthetic and comedic pleasure,

and it is clear that in composing the work in this way, the author was will-

ing to risk compromising its satiric effect for the public at large so as to

have his work appreciated by a few kindred souls. The appeal of this more

private element of the design ofAristocracyis that it helps explain why the

Federalists later retreat into the private realm of literary pleasure would

have seemed such a natural move. Poised as they were between these two

literary objectives, Federalist writers would continue to wage satiric war-

fare until it would become clear that they were doomed to the losing side,

at which point they would naturally embrace the element of their writing

that had nothing to do with captivating the public at large.15

One particular irony surrounding this image of a select group of Fed-

eralist wits ridiculing the conspiratorial logic of the Democrats, however,

is that before the end of the decade, the Federalists themselves would betaken in by accusations of a secret plot to overturn the government of the

United States. Attempting to comprehend the origins of radical republi-


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Aaron Burr {

of Jonathan Pindar (originally published in in Freneaus National Gazette),

which directs insinuations of conspiracy toward Adams, Hamilton, John Jay, and

others.

. Althusserdistinguishes between the twentieth-century conception of ideology as

a dynamic, autonomous historical force and its cruder eighteenth-century for-mulation, within which despots and priests forged Beautiful lies to convince

peopleto obey (). Barlows poem symbolicallyunmasks such lies, revealing

the ugly truth of monarchy:

Show me your kings, the sceptred horde parade,

See their pomp vanish! See your visions fade!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Displays the unclad skeletons of kings,

Sceptres of power, and serpents without stings. ()GordonWood makes a similarargument about the plausibility of conspiracy dis-

course in general in the s: conspiracy theories, he argues, made a special kind

of sense as an explanation of popular movements. While the French Revolution

would later influence the way Western thought explained such mass movements,

those witnessing the Revolution in the s were predisposed to an explana-

tion that accorded with an idea of autonomous, freely acting individuals who

were capable of directly and deliberately bringing about events through their de-

cisions and actions, thus making reasonable the notion of an identifiable cabal

of perpetrators (Conspiracy ).. That Burr had not been given a significant promotion by was surprising

both to himself and to Matt Ogden. When he was finally offered a commission to

the rank of lieutenant colonel, his letter of acceptance, addressed to Washington,

scarcely hid his wounded pride: I am . . . constrained to observe that the late

date of myappointment subjects me to the command of many who were younger

in the service, and junior officers the last campaign. . . . I would beg to know

whether it was any misconduct in me . . . which entitled the gentleman late put

over me to that preference (quoted in Lomask, :)?

. For more on Burrs silence on the Constitution as a matter of strategy or lackof principles, see Wood, Real Treason, ; Lomask :. For an opposing

view, see Schachner .

. Burr campaigned actively during the presidential election of , hoping to

secure votes for vice-president from Democratic-Republican electors. When

others in the party gave their preference to New York Governor George Clinton,

Burr withdrew himself from the race (though he still received a single electoral

vote). As Burr would later recount, he had struck a bargain with the Southern

Democrats such that he would be the vice-presidential choice in a deal,

he later claimed, the Virginian electors violated (see Schachner , ;Lomask :).

. For a detailed account of Jays suspicions of French treachery and his subsequent


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} : ,

maneuver to bring the negotiation to a speedy conclusion, see Bemis ;

Murphy .

. Burr had been the only Northern Senator to join in an attempt to block Jays

nomination as special envoy to Britain in the spring of . This move came as

a great surprise to Jay, who had up to that time been on good terms with Burr,despite their political differences (see Lomask :; Schachner ). A contem-

porary account of Burrs role in this debate is found in King :.

The Jay treaty arrived in Philadelphia on March , a month after the

appearance of the first book ofAristocracyand days prior to the publication

of Book Second. As the congressional session was coming to a close, President

Washington called the Senate to a special session for June , to consider the

treaty. During the session, Burr was the principal spokesman for the tenthe

group of Democratic Senators opposed to the treaty. Burr personally moved

to postpone consideration of the treaty and negotiate a new treaty in its place(see Combs ). For his role in the ratification proceedings, Burr was sati-

rized by Lemuel Hopkins in The Democratiad(), in a passage that directly

and self-consciously echoes the satiric argument ofAristocracy:

Next in the train, the courtly Burr is seen,

With piercing look, and every varying mien

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Go search the records of intrigue, and find

To what debasement sinks the human mind

How far tis possible for man to go,

. . . . . . . . . . . .

While pride and pleasures; haughtiness and scorn,

And mad ambition in his bosom burn. ()

The footnote to this passage reads as follows: For the remainder of this character

seeAristocracyan epic poem, lately published ().

. Other examples of the editors interpretive failures include his confusion over

the Envoys apostrophe to Vergennes: There is no passage, in the whole of this

Poem, he writes, which has appeared more obscure to the Editor than the fore-going (.). The editor speculates momentarily that the deceased minister of

state being addressed in the passage might be Henry Dundas, Lord Melville,

former Lord Advocate to King George (thus demonstrating that he is misread-

ing the entire epic as relating to a conspiracy of Federalist Anglophiles, such that

Aristus would necessarily be visited by an envoy from Great Britain), before re-

calling that Dundas is still alive. Still, he unwittingly provides the reader with

a hint as to the true identity of the Envoys mentor: On consulting a literary

friend, to whom I shewed this Book, . . . he suggested, that, possibly, a recur-

rence to the History of the Treaty of Peace of , might afford a solution.Thereader must determine (.).

. In illustrating the degree to which Federalist satire simultaneously served po-


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litical and literary or aesthetic ends, Aristocracystands also as a point of con-

vergence between Dowlings and my own studies of literary warfare in the early

republic (see Dowling,Poetry and Ideology in Revolutionary Connecticut; Wells)

and David Shieldss work on the role of literary competition or contests of wit

within educated and polite society in eighteenth-century America. As Shieldshas shown, in the college-hall environment from which most of the satirists of the

s emergedFederalist or Democrat alikeliterary contests such as crambo

introduced one fully into the notion of social contest wherein the aspirant for

reputation matched skill with worthy opponents before a select audience with

the prospect of a decisive determination of superiority (). Against this back-

ground, political satirehowever earnest in its attempt to sway public opin-

ionis also a display of wit not wholly removed from such contests, and indeed,

the back-and-forth exchange of satiric verses that often characterized the poetry

wars of the s might well be conceived as a high-stakes game of crambo playedout on a public stage.

Abernethy, Thomas Perkins.The Burr Conspiracy. New York: Oxford Univ.

Press, .

Annals of the Congress of the United States. vols. Washington, D.C., .

Althusser, Louis.Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster.

London: New Left, .Aristocracy: An Epic Poem. Philadelphia, .

Aristocracy: Book Second. Philadelphia, .

Barlow, Joel.The Conspiracy of Kings; a Poem: Addressed to the Inhabitants of

Europe, from Another Quarter of the World. [Newburyport, Mass.], .

Bemis, Samuel Flagg.The Diplomacy of the American Revolution. .

Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press, .

Church, Edward.The Dangerous Vice. A Fragment. [Boston], .

Combs, Jerald.The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers.

Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, .Democracy: An Epic Poem, by Aquiline Nimblechops. New York, .

Dowling, William C.Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson: Joseph Dennie and

the Port Folio, . Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, .

.Poetry and Ideology in Revolutionary Connecticut. Athens: Univ. of

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Franklin, Benjamin V, ed.The Poetry of the Minor Connecticut Wits. Gainesville,

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Hiltner, Judith, ed.The Newspaper Verse of Philip Freneau: An Edition and

Bibliographical Survey. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston, .Hopkins, Lemuel.The Democratiad. Philadelphia, .

King, Charles R., ed.The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King Comprising His


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Letters, Private and Official, His Public Documents and His Speeches. vols. New

York, .

Livingston, William. Burgoynes Proclamation.New York Journal, Sept. .

Lomask, Milton.Aaron Burr. vols. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, , .

Melton, Bucker F., Jr.Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason. New York: John Wileyand Sons, .

Modlin, Charles E. Aristocracy in the Early Republic. Early American Literature

(): .

Murphy, Orville T.Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the

Age of Revolution, . Albany: SUNY Press, .

Schachner, Nathan.Aaron Burr: A Biography. New York: A. S. Barnes, .

Sensabaugh, George.Milton in Early America. Princeton: Princeton Univ.

Press, .

Shields, David S.Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America. Chapel Hill:Univ. of North Carolina Press, .

Trent, William Peterfield, et al.The Cambridge History of American Literature.

vols. New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, .

Wells, Colin.The Devil and Doctor Dwight: Satire and Theology in the Early

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Wood, Gordon. Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the

Eighteenth Century.William and Mary Quarterlyrd ser., (): .

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Poetry of Conspiracy

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