And with regard to the manners of the Carolinians he assured the young lady that if there was one State in the Union which could justly claim superiority to the rest, in social refinement and the art of elegant living, it was South Carolina, where the division of the people into the very poor and the very rich left to the latter class abundant leisure for the pursuit of literature and the enjoyment of society.

“The possession of slaves,” he owns,

“renders them proud, impatient of restraint, and gives them a haughtiness of manner which, to those unaccustomed to them, is disagreeable; but we find among them a high sense of honor, a delicacy of sentiment, and a liberality of mind, which we look for in vain in the more commercial citizens of the Northern States.  The genius of the Carolinian, like the inhabitants of all southern countries, is quick, lively, and acute; in steadiness and perseverance he is naturally inferior to the native of the North; but this defect of climate is often overcome by his ambition or necessity; and, whenever this happens, he seldom fails to distinguish himself.  In his temper he is gay and fond of company, open, generous, and unsuspicious; easily irritated, and quick to resent even the appearance of insult; but his passion, like the fire of the flint, is lighted up and extinguished in the same moment.”

Such discussions end only in one way.  Theodosia yielded the points in dispute.  At Albany, on the 2d of February, 1801, while the country was ringing with the names of Jefferson and Burr, and while the world supposed that Burr was intriguing with all his might to defeat the wishes of the people by securing his own election to the Presidency, his daughter was married.  The marriage was thus announced in the New York Commercial Advertiser of February 7:—­

     “MARRIED.—–­At Albany, on the 2d instant, by the Rev. Mr.
     JOHNSON, JOSEPH ALSTON, of South Carolina, to THEODOSIA
     BURR, only child of AARON BURR, Esq.”

They were married at Albany, because Colonel Burr, being a member of the Legislature, was residing at the capital of the State.  One week the happy pair passed at Albany.  Then to New York; whence, after a few days’ stay, they began their long journey southward.  Rejoined at Baltimore by Colonel Burr, they travelled in company to Washington, where, on the 4th of March, Theodosia witnessed the inauguration of Mr. Jefferson, and the induction of her father into the Vice-Presidency.  Father and child parted a day or two after the ceremony.  The only solid consolation, he said in his first letter to her, that he had for the loss of her dear companionship, was a belief that she would be happy, and the certainty that they should often meet.  And, on his return to New York, he told her that he had approached his home as he would “the sepulchre of all his friends.”  “Dreary, solitary, comfortless.  It was no longer home.”  Hence his various schemes of a second marriage, to which Theodosia urged him.  He soon had the comfort of hearing that the reception of his daughter in South Carolina was as cordial and affectionate as his heart could have wished.