Page 21 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

[Burr] kept open house for nearly two months, and Committees were in session day and night during the whole time at his house. Refreshments were always on the table, and mattresses were set up for temporary repose in the rooms.

—From the diary of Benjamin Betterton Howell

New York City

March 30, 1800

“Did you visit Mrs. Ashmore?”

As usual, Hamilton wasted no time on polite nothings. With the trial of Levi Weeks called for the following morning, counsel had met for one last conference to prepare their strategy.

“I did,”

said Aaron.

They were once again in Hamilton’s office, in the chairs with no padding, with the salt-scented wind whistling through the cracks in the wood. March appeared to have decided to go out like a lion as well as in like one.

As for Aaron, he was busy playing the lamb. He had allowed Hamilton to convene this meeting at his office; he graciously ignored the fact that Hamilton was ordering him about as though Aaron were one of his clerks. He had his own reasons for not wanting Hamilton anywhere near Richmond Hill.

Let Hamilton crow; he’d have his wings clipped soon enough.

Brockholst was bristling on Aaron’s behalf, but Aaron answered calmly, “I called on Mrs. Ashmore at 884 Bowery Lane yesterday. Mrs. Brown, as she sometimes prefers to be called. The house is a distillery—with other diversions to be had.”

“It’s a brothel?”

said Brockholst, diverted.

“Not as such,”

Aaron replied. “At least, not officially.”

Brockholst gave a barking laugh. “Did you sample the wares?”

“Only the brandy,”

said Aaron blandly.

Although there had been one engaging piece by the name of Eliza Brown who had offered him a cordial, quite cordially. Not a relation of Mrs. Ashmore, alias Mrs. Brown, he’d been informed. It was remarkable what a wide array of unrelated persons named Brown one might encounter.

Mrs. Ashmore, as far as Aaron could tell, catered to a clientele of small tradesmen, men like Richard Croucher. She provided a veneer of respectability and a great deal of home-brewed brandy.

While he might not have sampled all the wares, Aaron considered his visit to Mrs. Ashmore an afternoon well spent.

Mrs. Ashmore herself couldn’t vote in the upcoming elections—a fact his Theo had so frequently deplored—but many of her clientele could. Men in their cups tended to be suggestible. Mrs. Ashmore had provided several valuable pieces of information—not about the Weeks affair, which was largely beside the point, but the political and personal preferences of her visitors.

They had parted well satisfied with each other—although not so well satisfied as some of Mrs. Ashmore’s customers.

Back at Richmond Hill, Aaron had added the details Mrs. Ashmore had given him to his growing roster of the name, political leanings, financial situation, and temperament of every eligible voter in the city of New York.

Even now, as he sat here in Hamilton’s office, docilely letting Hamilton order him about, the list was being divided among Aaron’s corps of volunteers. Theodosia was hard at work, providing refreshments and endless streams of coffee, with pallets on the floor for those who might need to rest from their labors. Among his volunteers, he had Dutch speakers, German speakers, French speakers; he had elegant young men and forthright farmers. Whatever the nature of the man, Burr would find someone who could persuade him.

Hamilton might have his army, but Burr felt that his election apparatus was an altogether more military arrangement, and likely to be of longer standing.

Hamilton, in happy ignorance, was brooding on the Weeks affair. “So Croucher might have passed the well that night.”

“Mrs. Ashmore was insistent that he hadn’t left the party—but I would take her word for what it’s worth.”

“And what’s that?”

“Whatever you’re willing to pay for it.”

In a house where everything was for sale, information was just another form of coin.

“Do you think he’s bribed her?”

“I think,”

said Aaron, “that he is a client of such long standing that it would ill behoove her to contradict him.”

“What does it matter?”

demanded Brockholst, trying fruitlessly to find a more comfortable position in a chair designed for a much smaller man. “Are we to ascertain the whereabouts of every one of the prosecution’s witnesses? I hear Colden has bound over seventy-odd persons.”

“Not just a witness.”

Something appeared to be worrying Hamilton; he lacked his usual bombast. “I spoke to Levi Weeks. He says he saw Richard Croucher embracing Elma.”

“It seems a great many people embraced Elma,”

murmured Aaron. “One can hardly claim it as a distinguishing characteristic.”

“This may yet be of use to us,”

said Brockholst thoughtfully. “Our primary argument, of course, is that the wench did away with herself. Failing that, we open the prospect that one of her many other lovers had cause to do away with her.”

“How many are we up to now?”

inquired Aaron.

Brockholst counted them off. “Weeks, Ring, Croucher—and the neighbor claims the girl was away of nights and lied about her whereabouts. The prosecution will attempt to stir the emotions of the jury by painting her as a virtuous woman seduced and betrayed. They’ll be less sympathetic to a loose woman.”

“She was a bastard, after all,”

said Aaron.

“She was a woman betrayed by the men who promised to care for her,”

said Hamilton abruptly. “She deserves better from us.”

Levi Weeks deserved the defense for which his brother was paying dearly. Elma Sands, on the contrary, deserved nothing from them at all. “My dear sir,”

said Aaron, “you have done all in the service of justice which a man can possibly do.”

The diversion had served its purpose. Investigating Elma Sands had distracted Hamilton from Aaron’s other activities. Now it was time for Hamilton to stop before he complicated their case.

“This doesn’t change anything, I suppose.”

Hamilton was still occupied with his own line of thought. “If Croucher knew of Ring’s affair with the girl—and we know he knew—then he might have been moved to take advantage of her himself. That Levi saw Croucher embracing Elma doesn’t preclude Croucher from having seen Ring push her in the well. The rest all follows as before.”

“As one argument among many.”

Aaron held up a hand. “I know you hold the prospect of suicide in distaste, but the jury must at least be provided the option.”

Particularly since Ezra Weeks had made it clear he expected them to insist the girl had committed suicide and Ezra Weeks had a great deal to offer in the coming election if he so chose, in both money and influence.

Hamilton immediately took umbrage. “All those people heard cries from the well. . . .”

“Would you do the prosecution’s work for them?”

asked Brockholst in exasperation.

“We have,”

Aaron reminded him gently, “three doctors ready to testify that there were no marks of violence upon her, only such as might have been occasioned by drowning.”

“That does the girl an injustice—”

began Hamilton.

“The girl seen embracing three men?”

Brockholst barreled on before Hamilton could speak again, outlining the plan that he and Aaron had worked out the night before, without Hamilton to distract them. “I propose we proceed as follows. We open by introducing the possibility of suicide. Then we show the impossibility of the prosecution’s case: to wit, that there was no intimacy amounting to courtship; that even if there was intimacy, the girl was equally intimate with any other number of men; and finally, that the evidence shows that Levi never took out his brother’s sleigh and could not possibly have been at the well at the crucial time.”

“Why not begin with Ring?”

Hamilton’s ruddy face was troubled. “We know he was heard to have relations with her; we believe Croucher to have seen them together at the well. . . .”

“Because it is Levi on trial, and unless we refute any case against him, we leave ourselves open to failure. We have no proof against Ring, only speculation. Certainly,”

said Aaron temperately, “we will put the proposition to the jury—but as one of many elements.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

Hamilton didn’t like it, he clearly didn’t like it, but he knew enough to know Aaron was right. “Is that what you mean to put in your opening statement?”

“My opening statement?”

Aaron repeated.

The opening statement was the junior position, to be given to the less senior of the attorneys; the closing statement the position of honor.

“I had assumed you would wish to open our case,”

said Hamilton innocently. “Unless Livingston would prefer to do it?”

Aaron and Hamilton had both been admitted to the bar in 1782, but Aaron had been admitted in April; Hamilton in October. Brockholst had been a year behind them. By strict precedence, Brockholst should open; Aaron should close. And Hamilton shouldn’t be here at all.

“And the closing statement . . . ?”

inquired Aaron delicately.

Hamilton produced two closely written sheets of paper with a flourish. “I’ve already begun it.”

For Hamilton to deliver the closing oration made a powerful point, one that wouldn’t be wasted on the voting public when they went to the polls later in the month.

Aaron took the papers delicately by the edge. As usual, Hamilton had been writing with a pen with an indifferent nib and had watered his ink to the point of illegibility. But the words jumped out all the same.

Gentlemen of the Jury, I know the unexampled industry that has been exerted to destroy the reputation of the accused, and to immolate him at the shrine of persecution without the solemnity of a candid and impartial trial. I know that hatred, revenge and cruelty, all the vindictive and ferocious passions have assembled in terrible array and exerted every engine to gratify their malice. The thousand tongues of rumor have been steadily employed in fabrication . . .

It was classic Hamiltonian flourish, all self-righteousness and hyperbole. But powerful. There was no denying the sheer force of it, the way it moved the emotions just as he claimed the enemies of Levi Weeks had manipulated the emotions of the public.

We have witnessed the extraordinary means which have been adopted to enflame the public passions and to direct the fury of popular resentment against the prisoner. Why has the body been exposed for days in the public streets in a manner most indecent and shocking?—to attract the curiosity and arouse the feelings of numberless spectators.

“Such dreadful scenes,”

Aaron read aloud, “speak powerfully to the passions; they petrify the mind with horror—congeal the blood within our veins—and excite the human bosom with irresistible but undefinable emotions. When such emotions are once created, they are not easily subdued.”

No, they weren’t. They weren’t at all. Anyone seeing Hamilton delivering this speech would indeed have undefinable emotions stirred.

In cases depending upon a chain of circumstances, all the fabric must hang together or the whole will tumble down.

What was that but a veiled reference to the state of the country itself? A country fractured and fractious, in which Hamilton sought to position himself as the heir to General Washington, the man who could hold their fragile republic together in the face of forces seeking to break it apart.

Here was Hamilton, the champion of truth and reason, standing against artifice and base motives.

No, Aaron didn’t like it at all. Unless . . .

“Burr should close,”

said Brockholst, spoiling for a fight. “He’s the most senior of us.”

As a point of order, he was right. But order was one thing and policy another. Aaron had the glimmer of an idea which might work even better to his advantage.

Aaron held up his hand. “Must we quibble over matters of precedence?”

To Hamilton, he said, “Might I have a copy, so I might look it over at leisure?”

“Certainly.”

Now that he’d gotten his way, Hamilton was all generosity. “I’ll have one of my clerks copy it for you. Philip!”

Philip Church sauntered in. Aaron had fought a duel with young Church’s father last year, but there was no malice on either side. Church said a civil hello and took away the draft to copy.

“With your good grace,”

said Aaron to Brockholst, “I will attempt the opening statement. With your advice and guidance, of course.”

Brockholst looked like a kettle about to boil over. “You shall have that, of course. Although I feel strongly that you should—”

“I thank you.”

Aaron looked meaningfully at Brockholst. “It is, after all, the opening that sets the tone of the case.”

Brockholst subsided, giving Aaron what he fondly assumed to be a subtle nod. They were agreed on that, at least. Hamilton must not be allowed free rein to bungle the defense of Levi Weeks.

There were other reasons, as well. But those were Aaron’s business and no one else’s.

“As to the cross-examination of witnesses . . .”

Hamilton began.

“I believe we should share that equally,”

said Aaron. “With deference to Brockholst, who has the most experience in these matters.”

Brockholst bowed, a decidedly ironic expression on his face.

“We shall wish, of course,”

Aaron said smoothly, “to emphasize the harms that can be worked upon a man’s reputation even where guilt has not been assigned. Brockholst had that case a few years ago, a rape case . . .”

“Lanah Sawyer.”

Brockholst could always be distracted by past trials. “Yes, she accused Henry Bedlow of rape. He was acquitted after only a few moments’ deliberation, but Sawyer and her family so inflamed the public against him that he was hounded into poverty and debtors’ prison. The mob threatened to pull down my house for my part in defending him.”

“That is precisely what we must fight against,”

Hamilton said excitedly. “The thousand tongues of rumor . . .”

“As you so eloquently say in your closing statement,”

said Aaron gravely. “Ah, thank you.”

Philip Church had returned, offering Aaron a hastily written, ill-blotted copy of Hamilton’s oration.

Aaron folded it carefully, tucking it into the pocket of his waistcoat.

“I wish we had more time,”

murmured Hamilton. “I feel there’s something I’m missing, something I ought to have seen. . . .”

There was. But it wasn’t what Hamilton was thinking; Aaron was quite certain of that.

“Brockholst, you will walk with me?”

Aaron stood, taking up his hat and gloves. Now that this farce of a meeting was over, it was time for the real work to begin. “Gentlemen, I shall see you tomorrow in court.”