
The Murder of Aaron Burr by the Governess of New York
Margaret Moncrieffe tells Zulu West a harrowing tale
This excerpt is about New York Governess Margaret Moncrieffe, who tells the tale of her abusive husband, Aaron Burr.
This is a sneak peek into Part Two of my upcoming novel, Restive Souls, an alternative history novel about an African empire that rises in the Carolina Low Country. This excerpt will be removed in the near future, depending on publication status. The story takes place about 20 years after the failed colonial rebellion against the British.
The narrator is a high priestess, Shyllandrus Zulu (aka Zulu West), the granddaughter of a Zulu adventurer from South Africa captured in West Africa and sent to the U.S. as a slave. Margaret Moncrieffe has come to visit her on behalf of the New England Federation, which, like the Carolina Union, continues to be part of the crown. The Carolina Union has just become an independent nation, similar in stature to Canada, with ties to the crown.
Excerpt from Restive Souls Part 2: Carolina Rising; Zulu’s Tale (1801–1804)
After formal introductions, we were seated at each end of a long, thick walnut table. As soon as drinks of water and cold tea were brought to us, she began speaking with surprising candor.
“I can only imagine,” she said, through thin aristocratic pink lips that glistened against a face so white I felt somewhat concerned that she bore the pallor of disease, “that you see in me the very essence of what you abhor.” She smiled slightly. Apparently, this was a woman who liked to get right to the point. “I cannot find fault in this. For nearly two hundred years, your people were treated as less than citizens.”
I wanted to interject with a remark about what an understatement that was, but I restrained myself. It would have been a poor reward for her immediate show of empathy.
“So let me tell you a simple story. It shan’t wash away the horrors of the days before emancipation, but perhaps it will provide some perspective upon my person.” She sipped her cold tea with a daintiness I had not yet personally encountered.
“When I was fourteen years old, I found myself trapped behind enemy lines shortly after Washington fled New York. For me at that time, being behind enemy lines meant being in British-held territory.
“I was in Kingsbridge. Now, Kingsbridge, your Grace, was a region within New York City that received its name from a bridge built by slaves. The bridge spanned a rather rowdy creek named Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which was a tidal strait that connected the Hudson River to the Harlem River. The original settlers in the area were mostly Dutch, and they found the waters difficult to traverse.” At this moment, I wanted to correct her and inform her that the Dutch were most certainly not the first settlers there, but I listened instead.
“To compound the problem, the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil, where it met the Hudson, was surrounded by tall cliffs. The only way to cross anywhere in the area was by a ferry owned by a Dutchman named Johannes Verveelen, who was so determined to maintain his control of the river crossing that he erected fencing over the one other part of that waterway that could be crossed, which is where Kings Bridge is now. The fencing was torn down by people determined to cross as soon as it was erected, then rebuilt, then torn down again. On and on it all went until a rich Dutch aristocrat, the Lord of the Manor of Philipseborough, Frederick Philipse, purchased the land in the area and used slaves to build Kings Bridge. And there you have it. The name Kingsbridge.
“Shortly after the war, the Dutch African Reformed Congregation, an offspring of the Dutch Reformed Church, which, perchance, had been sympathetic to slaves, took over control of the bridge as well as Philipse’s lucrative shipping business, plantation, and provisioning depot.”
She looked at me in a manner that suggested that I should consider all this information as important as she did. I was interested, but I had yet to understand its significance. As I came to know the governess, I learned that stories like this were part of her fabric, like the clothes she wore. She loved local history and was unable to tell a story without such detail.
“Of course, this is not the story,” she said. “As I mentioned, I was fourteen, living amongst the rebels in New Amsterdam, unable to care for myself. A dashing young American soldier by the name of Aaron Burr was presented to me as my protector. Oh, my, but was his face the cause of my utter breathlessness.” She giggled a little, surprising me with its almost childlike affect. “I do declare that if a Lilliputian were to sit atop his head, the little fellow could slide down and off Aaron’s nose, so perfect was the soft descent from forehead to tip of nose, which was matched by a crescent jawline below that captured my young, impressionable eyes each time they encountered it.”
New Amsterdam was the name eighteenth-century residents of New York called a small but thriving Dutch district in Manhattan.
I couldn’t guess what a Lilliputian was, but I imagined it was a small being from a story she knew as a child.
“Aaron’s kindness knew no limitations. And he brought to me such kind gifts. It was not long after that we declared our love for one another. Alas, we were separated for a time, as Aaron found himself in battle during those desperate hours following Washington’s capture in Trenton. New Amsterdam and the rest of the York were in flames, your Grace, with freed slaves running amok and capturing ports, plantations, and overthrowing their masters at every turn. As a young colonial girl, I was terrified, truly.
“I briefly sheltered with a young family whose enslaved father had been killed trying to escape Philipse’s shipping depot. I learned much of the woes of the African people during those few months. ‘Tis not the same as living them, I shall grant you, but such stories they told were horrifying to my young, innocent ears.
“You see, the stories they told were quite different than those I was taught. The Dutch, it was said, were kind to slaves. Offered them provisions, allowed them to church, even provisioned books to read. But the conditions they worked under, and at such impossibly young ages, were cruel, appallingly so, their masters harsh. Surely, I am not providing any information considered newsworthy to you. I merely wish to reflect upon my own revised education and outlook.
“Well, Aaron never forgot me. He returned to Staten Island, where I had remained in hopeful waiting with the newly emancipated family. Soon after, Aaron and I married. Upon which, your Grace, almost as quickly as the lights went out on our first night together, he apparently felt determined that I live the life of the least favored of slaves.
“He took me whenever he wanted, no matter my mood or even ability to consort with him, and he forced upon me such trials that when I did as little as whimper a minor objection, he’d beat me about the face with a riding crop, which he always kept on his person, for that sole purpose, I do believe. I shan’t go into further detail, other than to say those occasions facing the riding crop were among my better moments spent within his company.”
I had earlier thought I detected long, subtle scars across her otherwise beautiful face, but the torch and lantern light at dusk was such that I had dismissed my original observations. Now, it seemed, those markings ran deep, and in a sense, I could see the same scars in her eyes, as well.
“This next part of my tale is most difficult, your Grace, and I come to you from New Amsterdam with the hope that you can convince me of God’s forgiveness.”
Up until now, I had thought this to be a diplomatic mission.
“The year was 1780. I had endured his cruelty for three years. I will admit to wondering in those years why I had chosen this life. By that I mean every day that I chose not to kill myself meant that I was choosing to live through another round of his cruel intentions. One day, I found his pistol, which he had proudly used in a duel not a year before, and your Grace, I do not to this day know how or why my aim was so true, but I shot Aaron in the head and did not cry one tear.”
I had not heard this story. The governess of New York a murderer? Had New York society also wrestled with jurisprudence like our own congregation? Here she was before me, a free woman.
“Do not misunderstand. I do often struggle with my Christian conscience. But at that moment, my aim was pure and my intent unwavering. I shot him dead, your Grace, and for that, I don’t know what kind of God can forgive me. But the jury at my trial most certainly did. I told them the tale much as I have told you, and I was formally acquitted.”
“And now you are governess. That is an impressive leap.”
“You do not approve of me.”
“On the contrary. I am most impressed with your fortitude. You were quite young. And tortured.”
The governess touched her face with her fingertips. “The scars you see were much more pronounced during those days. I am grateful to the jury, even after all these years, that they saw in my face an act of violence against, well, what else to call it? A child. For that I was.
“Tis a horrible effect on both one’s honor and soul to deliver the death of one’s own husband, your Grace.”
I told her of our experiments in criminal law, and I reported on our current crisis, as well as my current wait on the results of Diderot’s search for the fugitive Chastain and the Tsărăgĭ outlaws who were associating with him. I would later wonder what might have happened were I to include Chastain’s name in the telling.
Then I smiled at her. “What would we do with you if you had acted this way in our camps?” I wondered aloud. “Abuse against women is a great crime. It also is one hidden by the thick walls of family and home. Women who don’t report on the abuse of their husbands, or other violence perpetrated against them, well, they must, to survive, take matters of survival to sometimes extreme ends. But fighting back in this way. It is not done. This isn’t a criticism. It’s simply fact.”
“He was a man of stature. I never once considered reporting his actions to anyone. He would have killed me, for one thing, and nobody would have thought much of it.” She looked at me silently as if in thought for a moment. “I never, also, considered a bullet to his head. I can say I wished to end the experience, but I had no plans to do so. The gun was a lucky accident.”
“And one not likely to often repeat itself in the life of others suffering the same treatment. Besides, another bit of good luck for you was a sympathetic jury. It could have gone the opposite way.”
“I was quite fortunate. But there is a story behind that jury as well, your Grace. After Aaron’s death, I ran off, with but a few blankets and the least amount of clothing you could imagine. I found my way up north, to the home of James and Elizabeth Baumfree, newly freed slaves who lived in a grand estate about 80 miles north along the Hudson from New Amsterdam and just east of the river into some pretty foothills of the Catskill Mountains. After the war, the estate had been taken by force from the Hardenbergh clan, who presided over two million or so acres that they purchased from the Esopus, who you may know as the Lenape. Well. They were an offshoot of sorts of Lenape, I believe.”
Margaret shrugged, then continued. “I can’t say for certain, of course. The Hardenberghs were the Lower Catskills’ most prolific slave owners, and when the tide of the war turned and the slaves were emancipated, word spread much more quickly up the Catskills than one would expect. It being somewhat remote, and all.
“Well. It was a surprise. It was as if word was spread by the wind itself, your Grace, and the slaves, they barely waited at all. I’m told they were emboldened by the emancipation with the thought that the law would be with them, and they took one manor after another until all the Hardenbergh land was theirs.
“The Hardenberghs’ many slaves became the very army that ran the family out of the Catskills, and to where, to this day, I don’t know.
“The freed slaves quickly established a church, the Kadesh-moo,” and at that, Margaret giggled, “which I believe was actually intended to mean Holy Cow, but some words were lost in translation, perhaps.”
“Kadesh is the Hebrew word for holy,” I acknowledged.
“Precisely, but moo, well that is the spoken word of the cow,” she laughed. “And very similarly to your own Diderot, they used their church to build local businesses and even a rudimentary form of local government, as well as a strong militia to protect their newly acquired land. They established dozens of log cabins on the grounds, overnight, it seemed, as well, to better house the newly freed slaves.
“My. I must attempt to shorten my story, or your eyes will grow thick and heavy with boredom.”
“No, my dear, it is all quite interesting to me. To hear stories describing how people from my homeland performed similar acts, independent of one another, and without any coordination. It is fascinating to behold.”
“Indeed,” she said. “It is, perhaps, a miracle of God.”
I nodded at that.
“Well, two former slaves, Qussaba and Dijean, led me by carriage along with a small entourage of armed men to New York when word that bounty hunters were searching for me came rolling through the hills. We had a small contingent of imposing warriors with us, your Grace. I suspect we looked quite the fright to the poor Dutchmen we encountered upon my return to New Amsterdam. The men, militiamen, they were dressed in the most remarkable and colorful effluence, with beads and shells and feathers adorning every part of their bodies and faces not covered by cloth. They had shaved heads wrapped in finely polished wire, rings in their noses and ears, bracelets consisting of — I must say that it seemed hundreds of rings.
“And they were armed with the most fearsome of weapons. Muskets, of course, primitive ones, not like the Fergusons we encounter these days, but also long, fat machetes with blades that could cleanly slice a grape in half, so sharp were they. One of them carried a battle axe that seemed as big as his horse, and another a modified scythe whose blade glistened in the sun in such a way as to seem to have its own life, a life meant for nothing more than to search for a neck to sever.
“Understand, your Grace, that New York at the time was in much disarray. There were many skirmishes, and the ports had, as you know, been seized by newly freed slaves. Anglos and Dutch were not pleased by the turn of events, and they let their feelings known through the barrels of their muskets and the flames of their torches.
“Not a small part of me thinks that Cornwallis is still quite gleeful in any reminisces he may have about those first few chaotic and violent years after Washington’s capture. A suitable punishment for the colonial rebellion, he no doubt thought. Well, I digress. Qussaba and Dijean and the others brought me to a local African church, one protected by a powerful warlord named Mingo, who negotiated with the local constables the terms of my surrender.
“The terms were quite simple: That I be subject to the same kind of misfortune that slaves experienced under European masters.”
“A flogging?” I asked.
“No ma’am. Mingo insisted that I be tried not by a jury of my peers, but by a jury of his peers. The jury was chosen from a pool of nobody aside from Afrikers.”
“And the Europeans within the jurisdiction were agreeable to such a request?”
“Mingo had accumulated much power very quickly. And besides, the constable was happy to have me rounded up. He was quite convinced that I’d receive the type of justice he had contemplated. Aaron Burr was a man of society, after all. I was at this juncture quite convinced that I’d spend the rest of my days awaiting the gallows. These feelings were hardened when I met my attorney for the defense, a man named Jack Fortune, who had apprenticed for… well, nobody, your Grace. Nor was he a member of the Albany or New York City bar.
“He was as experienced in the law as you or I. He was, I thought, shortly after our first conversations, a flim-flam man. A huckster. A smiling, very charming, very funny, huckster. And also an Afriker, I must add. I considered this the seal on my doom.”
“And the men who brought you to this place. Did you feel betrayed by them?”
“Not at all. They truly were trying to find the best solution for my predicament, knowing that my capture by bounty hunters would be worse than the fate their people would muster, even if the result of their efforts led me into the graces of a court jester who had managed to talk his way into a courtroom. I must stress that they had offered me a choice. They didn’t bring me to New Amsterdam under my objections. I think they believed if they brought me to a church, I’d be safe.
“Well, I will keep the rest of the story short. Mr. Fortune used his charm, wit, humor, and most importantly, a profound ability to strike empathy into the most hardened creature, to convince the jury that I was the aggrieved party.”
“That you were the aggrieved party surely helped with his efforts,” I added.
Jack Fortune, of course, is the famous early nineteenth century Philadelphia lawyer made famous by the 1930s movie classic, “Fortune Abounds.” This was his first case. He was admitted to the Albany, Philadelphia, and New York City bars a few years after Moncrieffe’s trial.
When she nodded, a tear dripped out the corner of one eye along her cheeks. She shook her head and dabbed the tear with a kerchief. “I am so sorry,” she said. “But yes, that mattered. However, that fact gave me little hope of an acquittal, especially given, and I apologize for saying so, the animosity I felt from the jury for the simple grievance sustained by the color of my skin. An understandable grievance, I had learned during my residencies among freed slave families, I shall add.
“You see, observing Mr. Fortune in the courtroom was not dissimilar to watching a virtuoso among actors in a grand theater. I witnessed the hostility that had been lodged in the jurors’ eyes change to compassion as he spoke, as if watching clouds part from a rising moon.”
Notes
Cover art: Margaret Moncrieffe image part of the public domain. The charcoal drawing of Jack Fortune, of course, is not real. It’s borrowed from another public domain image. The artist Violet Infamy lives only in my imagination.
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I like your alternative history. I had to look up how Aaron Burr really died. If only you could rewrite the present in real time, today might be worth celebrating.