As the day for his trial approached Burr felt the need for Theodosia. His daughter was now in Charleston with her husband and little boy. But Burr was not the kind to yield to sentimentality. His appeal was quite impersonal; it might have been made to any stranger. It was based on logical reasons and did not for once intimate that in this crisis of his life he needed the affection and understanding which only Theodosia could give him.

“I want,” he wrote toward the close of July, “an independent and discerning witness to my conduct and to that of government. The scene which has passed and those about to be transacted will exceed any reasonable credulity, and hereafter will be deemed fables, unless attested by very high authority.”

If there was any doubt in his mind as to the outcome he evidently was determined not to let Theodosia know it. In his letter he breathed nothing but self-confidence. “I repeat what has heretofore been written, that I should never invite anyone, much less those so dear to me, to witness my disgrace. I may be immured in dungeons, chained, murdered in legal form, but I cannot be humiliated or disgraced. If absent you will suffer great solicitude. In my presence you will feel none, whatever may be the malice or the power of my enemies and in both they abound.”

It was as though Burr had trained his daughter from her birth with this critical moment in view. And the training had been carried out with all the puritan vigor that ran in the blood of the Burrs and the Edwardses. The child was the first born to the Colonel and his wife, the widow Theodosia Bartow Prevost. The event took place in 1783 while the Burrs were still living in Albany. The infant was named for her mother though Theodosia Prevost Burr professed that she wanted to name it for Aaron’s sister Sally.

Soon after the baby’s arrival the mother wrote to Sally’s husband, Tapping Reeve, announcing the event: “Providence smiled upon our wishes and on the 21st of June blest us with a lovely daughter ... and you will believe me, Reeve, when I tell you the dear little girl has the eyes of your Sally, and promises to be as handsome. I would also have given her her name; but Burr insisted on calling her Theo—assure my sister for me that I submitted with the greatest regret.”

The baby was barely five months old when the family moved to New York City, and there the child grew up. Soon after, another daughter was born to the Burrs, but she died in a few years and little is known about her. Early in little Theo’s life she exhibited a marked devotion to her father. At the age of four years Mrs. Burr was reporting, “Our sweet prattler exclaims at every noise, ‘There’s dear papa’ and runs to meet him.” It was said that her attachment for her father was not of a common nature and that when he was away she could not hear him spoken of without an apparent melancholy.

Such accounts sound suspiciously like an effort on Mrs. Burr’s part to flatter the Colonel into forgiving her for having presented him with two daughters and no sons. They might be dismissed as such had not their truth been clearly demonstrated by later events. By this time the once delicate baby had grown into a plump, gay little girl with rosy cheeks and a winning smile.

Little Theo’s upbringing became almost immediately the special care of the Colonel. The way he went about it suggests that subconsciously at least he was trying to make amends for her not being a boy. Wherever business might take him and however occupied he might be with his law practice and politics and other personal matters, his thoughts were never far away from his daughter and her training.

Burr was years ahead of his time in his acceptance of revolutionary theories on the education of women. Someone had put in his hands a book by the pioneer feminist Mary Woolstonecraft entitled Vindication of the Rights of Women. He had been greatly impressed by it. Writing to his wife he said: “I had heard it spoken of with a coldness little calculated to excite attention; but as I read with avidity and prepossession everything written by a lady, I made haste to procure it, and spent last night, almost the whole of it, in reading it. Be assured that your sex has in her an able advocate. It is, in my opinion, a work of genius.”

The burden of Miss Woolstonecraft’s argument was that women are as capable of receiving an education as are men, if not more so. Burr embraced the theory; or else he was determined to test it. Forthwith he proceeded to put it into practice in the education of his own daughter. To his wife he remarked: “But I yet hope, by her, to convince the world what neither sex appears to believe, that women have souls.” So obsessed was he with this idea that he later confided to his wife: “If I could foresee that Theo would become a mere fashionable woman with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever grace or allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence.” Strange sentiments coming from a man who in his usual contacts with women was reputed to be attracted chiefly by their physical attributes.

In his determination to give his daughter the same education he would have given a son the Colonel spared no expense in employing tutors. At this period, with a flourishing law practice, he was probably better off financially than at any time in his life. Two or more hours both in the afternoon and evening were reserved for the child’s instruction. And Theo proved an excellent student, thriving under what surely would have broken down the health of an ordinary child. By the age of ten years she was reading Horace, Terence, and Lucian and preparing to begin Homer and Vergil. Exercises in Greek grammar shared a place with the study of Gibbon. Her curriculum included as well philosophy and political economy, French and German.

The Colonel’s solicitude did not confine itself to Theo’s mind. It extended to her deportment, speech, expression, and dress as well. Nor was her musical education neglected. Under competent instruction she mastered the two popular instruments of the day—the pianoforte and the harp. Besides all this, in the hours set aside for recreation she was taught to ride, skate, and dance. Not even a princess being prepared to sit some day on a throne could have been subjected to a more well-rounded program of education than that which Colonel Burr bestowed on Theodosia.

Colonel Burr’s prosperity was more apparent than real. Possessed of extravagant tastes and a flair for lavish entertainment, he was condemned forever to live beyond his means. In addition to his house in the city he purchased an estate outside which he named Richmond Hill. It comprised a commodious dwelling house, a stable, a dairy, numerous other appurtenances, and abundant ground.

Theodosia was barely ten years old when her mother, after an illness of several months, died of cancer. Since there was no one else for the Colonel to call on, at that tender age Theodosia assumed the exacting duties of acting as hostess for her father. This was no insignificant task as the Colonel delighted in extending the hospitality of his house to distinguished visitors who were constantly arriving in New York. Theodosia presided at table with dignity and poise and without self-consciousness in the presence of such notables as Talleyrand, Louis Philippe, and Jerome Bonaparte.

It is not surprising that her fame spread throughout the city and beyond it. An English traveler who had the privilege of being received at Richmond Hill noted in his diary that this precocious young lady was “elegant without ostentation, learned without pedantry” and “educated with uncommon care.” He found her speaking French and Italian with facility and “perfectly conversant with the writers of the Augustan Age.”

The Colonel schooled his daughter, too, in fortitude and stoicism, two qualities which he regarded as being among the higher virtues, and which he practiced so industriously himself. There was a tradition that even while she was little more than a child he required her to sleep alone in a remote part of the house the better to exercise her courage.

Yet in spite of this exacting routine, the prodigy lost none of her feminine charm. The English visitor at Richmond Hill observed that she “danced with more grace than any young lady in New York.” Theodosia is reputed to have had a number of suitors. When she had become famous many were attributed to her with whom she was barely if at all acquainted. Washington Irving’s name, for example, was linked with hers, though there is no convincing evidence that they ever met.

It was to be assumed that so gifted a young woman would be hard to please and that she was not likely to be won by an ordinary man. However, Theodosia proved not to be unconquerable. At the age of seventeen years she was writing to young Joseph Alston in Charleston, South Carolina: “I shall be happy to see you whenever you choose; that, I suppose, is equivalent to very soon.... My father laughs at my impatience to hear from you, and says I am in love.... I had not intended to marry this twelvemonth ... but to your solicitation I yield my judgment.”

Joseph Alston was in every way eligible. He was the son of Colonel William Alston, a South Carolina planter, whose wealth ran to land and slaves. He had read law and, at the age of 22 years, was the owner of two estates in South Carolina as well as a mansion on the Hudson River above New York. He already had displayed talent that promised to carry him far in his profession and in the public affairs of his state.

The young people, very much in love with each other, were married at Albany in February, 1801. After a honeymoon spent at Richmond Hill they journeyed to Washington to be present when the Colonel was inaugurated as Vice-President of the United States. From there Alston took his wife to Charleston where her personality earned for her the same popularity she enjoyed in New York.

Theodosia seems not to have been altogether happy with her in-laws. A letter is attributed to her in which she remarked: “We travel in company with the two Alstons. Pray teach me how to write two A’s without producing something like an ass.” This is one of the few unkind comments that has been credited to her. It suggests that the Alstons must indeed have been trying. On the other hand, how could ordinary elderly folk entertain a young woman who had been accustomed to the stimulating company of Aaron Burr?

In the spring of the year following their marriage a son was born to the Alstons. They named him Aaron Burr Alston. The Colonel was delighted. The boy was not yet two years old when his grandfather began planning for him the same exacting educational program he had imposed on his mother. “You do not say whether the boy knows his letters,” he wrote to Theo. “I am sure he may be taught them. He may read and write before he is three years old. This, with speaking French, would make him a tolerably accomplished lad of that age, worthy of his blood.”

Most remarkable of all Theodosia’s qualities was the genius she displayed in bestowing her affection equally upon her father and her husband without arousing the jealousy of either of them or bringing on herself charges of favoritism or neglect. In no case was the Colonel’s spell cast more magically than over his daughter. In her eyes he could do no wrong. Let others accuse him of political chicanery, let them question his integrity, let the public of New Jersey and New York condemn him as a murderer. Let the Government of the United States charge him with treason and its President declare that his guilt was beyond question. In the face of it all Theodosia remained steadfast, her faith unshaken. Though it must have been a mortification to her pride to know that he was in prison, she did not blame him but attributed this base treatment to the machinations of his enemies. Toward her husband Theodosia’s demonstrations of affection were eloquent. During their engagement she wrote him with all the girlish enthusiasm of her seventeen years: “Where you are, there is my country, and in you are centered all my wishes.” And again, on an occasion when they were separated from each other: “Every moment I feel that I have lost so much of your society which can never be regained.”

The birth of little Aaron left the mother weak and subject to physical disorders that she was never entirely to be free of. For a time she despaired of her life and in one of her melancholy moods she wrote Alston: “Death is not welcome. I confess it is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu, then, thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu! friend of my heart. May Heaven prosper you and may we meet hereafter.”

In the fateful summer of 1806 when Colonel Burr departed from the East “never to return,” he was joined in the western country by the Alstons—Theodosia, Joseph, and little Aaron. The Alstons were for a time guests of the Blennerhassetts on their island in the Ohio River. There Theodosia won the undying affection of Margaret Blennerhassett and the admiration of her husband Harman. Although the Alstons were not present at the time of the alleged “overt act,” their visit a short time before served to increase the public’s suspicion of Alston’s implication in the plot. His name, it will be recalled, was mentioned in Burr’s letter to Wilkinson of July 29.

The circumstance caused Alston intense embarrassment. He had become accustomed to the annoyance of receiving requests for loans from his father-in-law, but that was a small matter compared with the Colonel’s use of his name in so damaging a document as the cipher letter to Wilkinson. In his perplexity Alston unburdened himself in a letter to his friend Charles Pinckney, then Governor of South Carolina.

“I have,” he said, “received and read the President’s message with deep mortification and concern; but the letter annexed to it, stated to be a communication in cypher from Col. Burr to Gen. Wilkinson, exacted my unfeigned astonishment. “I solemnly avow that, when that letter was written, I had never heard, directly or indirectly from Col. Burr or any other person, of the meditated attack on that place, or any other part of the United States, than I have at this moment to suspect that our militia will be forthwith ordered on an expedition against Gibraltar. On the other hand, I had long had strong grounds for believing that Col. Burr was engaged by other objects, of a very different nature from those attributed to him, and which I confess the best sentiments of my heart approved. I need not add that those objects involved not the interests of my country.

“Without adverting to that integrity of principle, which even my enemies I trust have allowed me, can it be supposed that a man situated as I am—descended from a family which has never known dishonor, happy in the affection and esteem of a large number of relations and friends, possessed of ample fortune, and standing high in the confidence of his fellow-citizens—could harbor for an instant, a thought injurious to the country which was the scene of those blessings?

“Whatever may be thought of the heart of Mr. Burr, his talents are great beyond question, and to reconcile with such talents the chimerical project of dismembering the union, or wresting from it any part of its territory is difficult indeed.... He imagined perhaps—which, by the way, he had no right to do—that his influence would be sufficiently great to induce my assent and thought, therefore he might as well consider it already obtained; or which is more probable, he might have imagined that by the apparent concern of a number of persons from different States, a stronger impression would be made on his correspondent.”

Alston’s letter, of course, soon became public property. Could a young man have found himself in a more embarrassing position? His good name had been dangerously compromised. Alston rightly felt he should clear himself of the suspicions which mention of his name in the letter naturally aroused. But how could he do that without casting reflections on his father-in-law? And how could he cast reflections on his father-in-law without showing disloyalty to Theodosia? The effort was not altogether successful. The first paragraph of the letter was favorable to the Colonel in that it repudiated any idea that he was contemplating an attack on New Orleans or on any other part of the United States. It was as much a defense of the Colonel as it was of himself. But the closing passages did not express sentiments which were flattering or with which Colonel Burr could be greatly pleased.

The distinction made between Burr’s “heart” and his “talents” intimated that while the moral issue involved in a conspiracy against the Government would not have restrained him, his intelligence would have told him the idea of dividing the Union was impractical. Then Alston had gone on to state frankly that Burr had no right to use his name without his consent and to suggest that it had been only a cheap trick to impress Wilkinson. It definitely was not the sort of letter to help preserve peace in the family.

On the other hand, when the Government was stretching forth its mighty hand to grasp Burr certainly was no time for discord between him and his son-in-law. It was reported in some quarters that when Burr heard about the letter there was a scene between the two men. If so, wisdom and necessity triumphed over ill temper. Whatever their innermost feelings may have been, Burr and Alston presented to the world a solid front.

So the Colonel wanted Theodosia at his side. She was not well, but well or not there could be only one response to his request. The Alstons soon were on their way from Charleston to Richmond, taking little Aaron with them. The Colonel had time for one last letter: “I am informed that some good natured people here have provided you a house, and furnished it, a few steps from my ‘town house’ [he was referring to Luther Martin’s]. I had also made a temporary provision for you in my town house whither I shall remove on Sunday; but I will not, if I can possibly avoid it, move before your arrival, having a great desire to receive you in this ‘mansion.’ Pray, therefore, drive directly here.” It took more than confinement in the penitentiary to dampen Burr’s naturally ebullient spirits. The Alstons duly arrived in Richmond and drove directly to the penitentiary. They spent their first night there, then moved to the house the “good natured” Richmonders had offered them. From there Theodosia could supervise the menage of her father and Luther Martin in Martin’s house nearby. Her sojourn in Richmond witnessed a repetition of her triumphs elsewhere. The Federalist upper crust found her to be a welcome addition to their exclusive and accomplished society. She went about making friends everywhere until observers came to the conclusion that by her mere presence in Richmond she did more to further the cause of the defense than all of Burr’s brilliant array of counsel. Long after the actors in the drama had gone to their various rewards Theodosia’s stay in Richmond and the impression her exceptional personality made on the community was established as a part of local legend. She could scarcely have been treated with greater deference had she really been the empress with whose attempted creation Aaron Burr was charged.