Part 35

After the Troops had taken Possession of the City, the GENERAL [Washington] and GOVERNOR [George Clinton] made their Public Entry in the following Manner:

1. Their Excellencies the General and Governor, with their Suites, on Horseback.

2. The Lieutenant-Governor, and the Members of the Council, for the Temporary Government of the Southern District, four a-breast.

3. Major General Knox, and the Officers of the Army, eight a-breast.

4. Citizens on Horseback, eight a-breast.

5. The Speaker of the Assembly, and Citizens, on Foot, eight a-breast.

Their Excellencies the Governor and Commander in Chief were escorted by a Body of West-Chester Light Horse, under the command of Captain Delavan.

The Procession proceeded down Queen Street [now Pearl], and through the Broadway, to Cape's Tavern.

The Governor gave a public Dinner at Fraunces's Tavern; at which the Commander in Chief and other General Officers were present.

After Dinner, the following Toasts were drank by the Company:

1. The United States of America.

2. His most Christian Majesty.

3. The United Netherlands.

4. The king of Sweden.

5. The American Army.

6. The Fleet and Armies of France, which have served in America.

7. The Memory of those Heroes who have fallen for our Freedom.

8. May our Country be grateful to her military children.

9. May Justice support what Courage has gained.

10. The Vindicators of the Rights of Mankind in every Quarter of the Globe.

11. May America be an Asylum to the persecuted of the Earth.

12. May a close Union of the States guard the Temple they have erected to Liberty.

13. May the Remembrance of THIS DAY be a Lesson to Princes.

The arrangement and whole conduct of this march, with the tranquillity which succeeded it, through the day and night, was admirable! and the grateful citizens will ever feel the most affectionate impressions, from that elegant and efficient disposition which prevailed through the whole event.

Such was the journalism of that primitive day. The sedate Rivington, for so many years the Tory organ, was in no humor, we may suppose, to chronicle the minor events of the occasion, even if he had not considered them beneath the dignity of his vocation. He says nothing of the valiant matron in Chatham Row who, in the impatience of her patriotism, hoisted the American flag over her door two hours before the stipulated moment, noon, and defended it against a British provost officer with her broomstick. Nor does he allude to the great scene at the principal flag-staff, which the retiring garrison had plentifully greased, and from which they had removed the blocks and halyards, in order to retard the hoisting of the stars and stripes. He does not tell us how a sailor-boy, with a line around his waist and a pocket full of spikes, hammered his way to the top of the staff, and restored the tackling by which the flag was flung to the breeze before the barges containing the British rear-guard had reached the fleet. It was a sad day for Mr. Rivington, and he may be excused for not dwelling upon its incidents longer than stern duty demanded.

The whole State of New York had been waiting impatiently for the evacuation of the City. Many hundreds of the old Whig inhabitants, who had fled at the entrance of the English troops seven years before, were eager to come again into possession of their homes and property, and resume their former occupations. Many new enterprises waited only for the departure of the troops to be entered upon. A large number of young men were looking to New York as the scene of their future career. Albany, which had served as the temporary capital of the State, was full of lawyers, law-students, retired soldiers, merchants, and mechanics, who were prepared to remove to New York as soon as Rivington's Gazette should inform them that the British had really left, and General Washington taken possession. As in these days certain promises to pay are to be fulfilled six months after the United States shall have acknowledged the independence of a certain Confederacy, so at that time it was a custom for leases and other compacts to be dated from "the day on which the British troops shall leave New York." Among the young men in Albany who were intending to repair to the city were two retired officers of distinction, Alexander Hamilton, a student at law, and Aaron Burr, then in the second year of his practice at the bar. James Kent and Edward Livingston were also students of law in Albany at that time. The old Tory lawyers being all exiled or silenced, there was a promising field in New York for young advocates of talent, and these two young gentlemen had both contracted marriages which necessitated speedy professional gains. Hamilton had won the daughter of General Schuyler. Burr was married to the widow of a British officer, whose fortune was a few hundred pounds and two fine strapping boys fourteen and sixteen years of age.

And Burr was himself a father. Theodosia, "his only child," was born at Albany in the spring of 1783. When the family removed to New York in the following winter, and took up their abode in Maiden Lane,--"the rent to commence when the troops leave the city,"--she was an engaging infant of seven or eight months. We may infer something of the circumstances and prospects of her father, when we know that he had ventured upon a house of which the rent was two hundred pounds a year. We find him removing, a year or two after, to a mansion at the corner of Cedar and Nassau streets, the garden and grapery of which were among the finest in the thickly settled portion of the city. Fifty years after, he had still an office within a very few yards of the same spot, though all trace of the garden of Theodosia's childhood had long ago disappeared. She was a child of affluence. Not till she had left her father's house did a shadow of misfortune darken its portals. Abundance and elegance surrounded her from her infancy, and whatever advantages in education and training wealth can produce for a child she had in profusion. At the same time her father's vigilant stoicism guarded her from the evils attendant upon a too easy acquisition of things pleasant and desirable.

She was born into a happy home. Even if we had not the means of knowing something of the character of her mother, we might still infer that she must have possessed qualities singularly attractive to induce a man in the position of Burr to undertake the charge of a family at the outset of his career. She was neither handsome nor young, nor had she even the advantage of good health. A scar disfigured her face. Burr,--the brilliant and celebrated Burr,--heir of an honored name, had linked his rising fortunes with an invalid and her boys. The event most abundantly justified his choice, for in all the fair island of Manhattan there was not a happier family than his, nor one in which happiness was more securely founded in the diligent discharge of duty. The twelve years of his married life were his brightest and best; and among the last words he ever spoke were a pointed declaration that his wife was the best woman and the finest lady he had ever known. It was her cultivated mind that drew him to her. "It was a knowledge of your mind," he once wrote her,