"
Burr spent several hours of each day in pistol practice, using the
cherry trees of Richmond Hill as targets. Thurlow Weed, in his
"Autobiography," has told of Burr's testament, written on the night
before the duel. Having neither money nor lands, but an infinitude of
debts, to bequeath his daughter, he left her a bundle of compromising
letters from women. The writers moved in circles where virtue was held
in esteem, and several were of the world of fashion. They had, with the
instinct of self-defence, which animates women even in that stage where
they idealize the man, omitted to sign their names. Burr supplied the
omission in every case and added the present address. That Hamilton
would throw away his fire was a possibility remote from the best effort
of Burr's imagination, and although he knew that no one could fire more
quickly than himself, he was not the man to go to the ground unprepared
for emergencies: if his daughter, now Mrs. Alston, would obey his hint
and blackmail, she might realize a pretty fortune. That Theodosia Burr,
even with the incentive of poverty, would have sunk to such ignominy, no
one who knows the open history of her short life will believe; but the
father, whose idol she was, insulted her and stained her memory, too
depraved and warped to understand nobility in anyone, least of all in
one of his own blood.
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