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Page 12
The "Jukes" had no inherited capacity or training upon which they could
safely presume. Their only chance lay in nursing every germ of hope by
means of industry and education, through the discipline of the shop,
the training of the schools, and the inspiration of the church. Did
they appreciate this? Far from it. Instead of developing capacity by
training, not one of the 1,200 secured even a moderate education, and
only twenty of them ever had a trade, and ten of these learned it in the
state prison.
On the other hand, although the Edwards family inherited abundant
capacity and character, every child has been educated from early
childhood. Not all of the college members of the family have been
discovered, and yet among the men alone I have found 285 graduates and a
surprisingly large number of these have supplemented the college course
with post-graduate or professional study. Just as the "Jukes" have
intensified their degeneracy by neglect, the Edwards family has
magnified capacity and character by industry and education.
Among the 285 college graduates of the Edwards family there are thirteen
presidents of colleges and other higher institutions of learning,
sixty-five professors of colleges, and many principals of important
academies and seminaries. Forty-five American and foreign colleges and
universities have this family among the alumni. From this family have
come presidents for Yale, Princeton, Union, Hamilton, Amherst, the
University of California, the University of Tennessee, the famous
Litchfield (Conn.) law school, the Columbia law school, and Andover
Theological Seminary. Among these are such men as President Timothy
Dwight, Yale, 1794-1817; Theodore Dwight Woolsey, Yale, 1846-71; Timothy
Dwight, Yale, 1886-97; Jonathan Edwards (Jr.), Union, 1799-1801; Daniel
C. Gilman, Johns Hopkins; Merrill E. Gates, Amherst; and Edwards A.
Park, Andover.
CHAPTER VII
AARON BURR
Undoubtedly some readers are already impatient at the delay in dealing
with Aaron Burr. There was a time when it was the fashion to refer to
Colonel Burr as sufficiently infamous to prove that heredity was of no
appreciable value. As a matter of fact it is rather refreshing to have
one upon whom the imagination can play. It simply intensifies the white
light of the rest of the record.
Colonel Burr was not a saint after the model presented by his father,
the Rev. Dr. Aaron Burr, the godly president of Princeton; by his
grandfather, Jonathan Edwards; or by at least 1,394 of the other members
of the family of Mr. Edwards. There is no purpose to give him saintly
enthronement, but it may not be amiss to suggest that the abuse of him
has been overdone.
Colonel Aaron Burr died at eighty after thirty years of the worst
treatment ever meted out to a man against whom the bitterest enemies and
the most brilliant legal talent could bring no charge that would stand
in the eyes of the law. I have no purpose to lessen the verdict of
prejudice, for the study of the Edwards family is all the more
fascinating because of one such meteor of error. It must be confessed,
however, that a study of the last thirty years of Colonel Burr's life
makes one more exasperated with human nature under a political whip than
with Colonel Burr's mistake.
At forty-nine Aaron Burr was one of the most brilliant, most admired,
and beloved men in the United States. For thirty years his had been a
career with few American parallels. He had but one real and intense
enemy, and that man had hated him all those years. Alexander Hamilton
had never missed an opportunity to vilify Mr. Burr, and his attack had
never been resented. Calmly had Aaron Burr pursued his upward and onward
course, simply smiling at the vituperation of Hamilton. Could those two
men have agreed, they would have been the greatest leaders any nation
ever had. Their hatred was as expensive as was that of Blaine and
Conklin in after years.
Every age must have a political scapegoat, one upon whose head is
placed symbolically the sins of the period, and after he is sent into
the wilderness of obscurity it becomes a social and political crime to
befriend him. There have been several such in our country's history, and
there will be others. Aaron Burr suffered more than any other simply
because the glory from which he departed was greater.
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