“His respect for the abilities of Colonel Burr was quite as exalted as for those of Hamilton; but he had no confidence in his honesty or truth, and, consequently, very soon got rid of him.  Burr’s liaison with Margaret Moncrief destroyed entirely the little regard left for him in the mind of Washington.  I asked Colonel Talmadge if Burr and Hamilton ever were friends.  They were very close friends apparently; but it was palpable that each entertained a jealousy of the other, however much they strove to conceal it.  They were both ambitious, and felt the way to preferment was through the favor of the commander-in-chief.  Burr was the more sensitive and the more impulsive of the two.  They knew the abilities of each other, and they knew these were highly appreciated by the General; and at the moment when this jealousy was likely to interfere with this friendship, Burr left the position of aide to the General.  He knew he had forfeited the confidence of Washington, and he figured in the army very little after this.  The rivalry, however, did not cease here, nor did the secret enmity in their hearts die.  The world is not aware of the true cause of the hatred between them, and it may never be.

“You are aware,” continued the colonel, “that your preceptor, Judge Reeve, is the brother-in-law of Colonel Burr.  If I speak freely of him, it is because I know him, and because you seem curious to pry into these secret histories of national men.  It is not to be repeated to offend Judge Reeve, or disturb our relations as friends; for we are such, and have been for fifty years.

“Colonel Burr has ever been remarkable for abilities from his boyhood.  Reeve and the celebrated Samuel Lathrop Mitchell were his classmates, and agree that he had no equal in college.  They were educated at Princeton.  Burr showed not only talent, but application, and a most burning ambition.  He showed, too, that he was already unscrupulous in the use of means to accomplish his object.  There are stories told of his college-life very discreditable to his fame.  He was as remarkable in his features as in his mind.  His capacious forehead, aquiline nose, and piercingly brilliant eyes, black as night, with a large, flexible mouth, Grecian in form, made him extremely handsome as a youth.  His manners were natural and elegant, and his conversational powers unequalled.  They are so to-day.  Think of these gifts in a man uninfluenced by principle, and only obedient to the warmer passions.  He ever shunned collective society, and seemed (for the time, at least) totally absorbed by one or two only.  The eloquence of manner, as the persuasion of words, was in him transcendent.  The whispered sophisms of his genius burned into the heart, and it was remarked of him, by one wise and discreet, that he could, in fewer words, win the sympathy and start to tears a female auditor, than any preacher in the land.  From boyhood he seemed to have the key to every heart he desired to unlock.  Fatal gift! and terribly fatal did it prove to many a victim, and especially to that gifted but frail girl—­Margaret Moncrief.