26
Closing Arguments
New York State Supreme Court
New York, New York
April 1784
Burr’s strategy over the next three days seemed to be to wear everyone down. He did so by calling a veritable parade of witnesses, all of whom said more or less the same thing: that Caroline Childress had operated a bustling alehouse on Water Street all through the occupation, serving any British soldier or sympathizer who came in. Alex didn’t know why this should be any more damning than the simple fact that Mrs. Childress, like her deceased husband, had herself been a loyalist, until he heard the increasing murmurs from the gallery. Burr’s witnesses made Ruston’s Ale House sound like a raucous establishment. Not improper, per se, but it seemed as if Mrs. Childress had partied through the war. Alex was able to counter the latter claim by getting Burr’s witnesses to admit that Mrs. Childress was in fact rarely if ever in the bar room, being usually occupied with managing inventory and production and staff, and when she did appear, she was dressed soberly in honor of her fallen husband. Still, the impression was that she was creating a festive space for the redcoats who had seized Manhattan. With each successive witness, the murmurings grew louder, till eventually they approached outright jeers. But even worse than this was the fact that Judge Smithson did not silence them, but only shook his head in tight-lipped anger at the account of the festivities.
Alex knew he had to go on the counteroffensive. After Burr’s twelfth witness, a scruffy-looking man of about thirty named Robert Frye, had delivered his clearly rehearsed account, Alex was awarded cross-examination. He had eschewed any questions for Burr’s previous witnesses, but this time he all but leapt from his chair.
“Mr. Frye,” he said as he strode across the room. “You seem to be very well acquainted with the goings-on in Mrs. Childress’s alehouse. Is that because you are a neighbor of hers?”
“Why no, sir,” Frye said. “I live on a small farm just north of the city.”
“Ah. So your accounts are hearsay then?”
Alex knew this wasn’t the case, but he had an idea how Frye would respond. The farmer struck him as a proud man, and he didn’t disappoint Alex.
“What I said I seen with my own eyes!” he said huffily, turning to the judge and nodding at him. “I don’t make up stories, and I don’t pass on gossip, Your Honor!”
Alex dug the knife in deeper.
“So I take it you are a loyalist then?”
“Your Honor, please,” Burr said, standing up. “Mr. Hamilton’s question would seem to have no point other than to insult the good name of Mr. Frye.”
“If it please, Your Honor, I do have a point in mind,” Alex rejoindered.
Judge Smithson frowned at him. “Get there quickly, counsel.” He turned to Frye. “You may answer Mr. Hamilton’s question.”
Frye had been squirming in his seat with his desire to speak.
“I am absolutely one hundred percent not a loyalist, sir, and I resent the implication! I am a patriot through and through.”
“Very good, sir,” Alex responded with feigned deference. “I myself served in the Continental army with General Washington, as did my estimable colleague Mr. Burr. Well, he did not work with General Washington, but he did serve somewhere.” Alex paused as a few snickers ran through the room. “But may I ask, Mr. Frye, why you as a patriot drank in a loyalist bar?”
“I never said Ruston’s was a loyalist bar. Why, there were lots of us patriots who drank there!”
“More patriots than loyalists, would you say?” Alex asked in an innocent voice.
“I should say so. I don’t suppose we’d have felt comfortable otherwise.” Frye’s voice had lost some of its certainty, and he turned to Burr’s desk. Alex moved quickly to interpose himself between the witness and his lawyer. At last, his robes proved good for something. He was as wide as jib sail, and completely concealed the squirming lawyer from his nervous witness.
“I just want to make sure that I understand you fully. You’re telling me that Mrs. Childress ran Ruston’s as an establishment for anyone who chose to enter, loyalist or patriot, but generally speaking more of her clientele were American patriots rather than redcoats.”
For the first time, Frye seemed to realize what he’d done. His face fell, and he craned his neck to find Burr’s eyes.
“Mr. Frye?” Alex prompted. “Did you understand the question, or do I need to repeat it?”
“I, um, I believe you have described the place accurately,” Frye said, trying to sound formal, as if that would undo the damage of his testimony.
“Oh no, sir,” Alex said. “I believe you have described Ruston’s Ale House accurately.” He turned to Burr. “No further questions.”
As he returned to his seat, his eyes found Governor Clinton’s where he sat in the back row. The governor’s eyes were two tiny seething slits, all but lost inside his plump cheeks, but you could still see the bile from fifty feet away.
ALEX’S CROSS-EXAMINATION MARKED a turning point in the trial. After two and a half days of hammering, Burr’s spirits seemed to sag. He was barely halfway through his list of witnesses, but he called subsequent ones with less obvious glee. He put them through their paces quickly, even cutting them off when they waxed on about the loyalist crowds swilling Ruston’s ale, knowing that Alex was just going to get the witness to confess that he had rubbed shoulders with all the loyalists he had just been maligning. Peter Goldman, a cooper, admitted he had sold barrels and baskets to redcoats. Matthew Landesmaan, a smith, had shod their horses and sharpened their swords. Frederick Karst, a fisherman, had sold them cod and clams, and so on down the line. After running through five more witnesses in the time he had previously spent on one, Burr rose from his seat.
“If it please, Your Honor, I would like to skip witnesses eighteen through thirty-one and proceed directly to witness number thirty-two.”
Alex glanced at the list of witnesses. Thirty-two was the last witness. He kept his face as still as possible, but inside he was crowing.
Judge Smithson, however, didn’t try to hide his relief. “By all means, Mr. Burr. It grows tiring watching your witnesses make your opponent’s case for him.”
Burr visibly paled. He took a moment to compose himself.
“Thank you, Your Honor. The State calls Antoinette Le Beau.”
Caroline sat up. “Mr. Hamilton!” she hissed.
Alex tried to reassure her as best as he could. He had told her Miss Le Beau was going to be testifying, but she was still trembling.
“Take strength, Mrs. Childress,” he said. “Remember, the Le Beaus are not your enemy.”
The doors opened and a girl of no more than seventeen entered the courtroom. She was dressed in smart but shabby clothing, as if, like Caroline herself, she had once enjoyed prosperity, but those days were even longer past than were Caroline’s. She walked down the aisle without looking to the left and took her seat in the stand. Her hand on the Bible was unshaking as she took her oath. Even Alex started to feel a little nervous.
Burr rose from his seat.
“I want to thank you, Miss Le Beau, for joining us here today. I know the court is not convenient for you.”
“Indeed, it is not,” Miss Le Beau answered. “I live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Passage by mail carriage and ferry is quite dear, and the cost of an inn is a burdensome expense to one such as myself.”
As if she paid for her own trip. Alex had no doubt Burr had brought her over himself and paid for her room and board out of his own pocket.
“Have you always lived in Harrisburg, Miss Le Beau?”
“Oh, good heavens, no. I’m a New York lass through and through.”
“Ah, so you lived in the city then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I ask where?”
“At Seventeen Baxter Street.”
A murmur in the courtroom. Burr had set the stage perfectly.
Burr retrieved a piece of paper from his table.
“Your Honor, here is a copy of the property deed for Seventeen Baxter Street dated April eighteenth, 1769. It shows the property belonging to one Jacques Le Beau, having been paid for in full over the course of the previous ten years.”
The judge glanced at the document and set it aside.
“Miss Le Beau,” Burr continued. “Would you please tell the court your relationship to Jacques Le Beau.”
“He was my father, Your Honor.”
Burr grinned in feigned modesty. “I’m just Mr. Burr. Judge Smithson is the honorable one.”
Antoinette turned to Judge Smithson. “Jacques Le Beau was my father, Your Honor. He died at the Battle of Monmouth.”
Alex twitched. He had already known Le Beau had died during the war, but he didn’t realize it was at Monmouth, where he himself had nearly been killed.
I may very well have been the person who wrote her informing her of her father’s death, he thought.
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Miss Le Beau,” Burr said. “And just so we’re absolutely clear, your father died fighting in the Continental army, yes?”
Antoinette nodded. “Yes, sir. He was a corporal in the Fourth New York.”
“His sacrifice will not be forgotten,” Burr said solemnly. “Now, Miss Le Beau, may I ask you why you left Seventeen Baxter Street, where you had lived since you were born?”
“Are you jesting, Mr. Burr? My sisters and I left because the British captured Manhattan. With a father and three brothers in the Continental army, my mother and sisters and I feared for our safety, and fled across the river.”
“Your brothers also served in the army?” Burr said, as if he didn’t know.
“Yes, sir. Pierre died defending Manhattan from the British invasion, and Louis died at Monmouth with my father. Only Jean made it back, though he left one of his legs at Yorktown.”
Another wince from Alex. The ties between himself and the witness were too close for comfort.
She turned to Judge Smithson. “He’d have been here, Your Honor, but he has yet to learn to get around well on his crutches. And the expense, well, was something we couldn’t spare.”
Judge Smithson nodded sympathetically. After his earlier boredom, he now seemed rapt by Antoinette’s story.
“Did the British offer you any compensation for your property?”
“Compensation? They told us we were lucky we were not imprisoned for aiding the enemy! My sisters and I feared for our virtue on more than one occasion. That we escaped unstained is the only silver lining in this whole sad affair.”
“And how have you lived since you left New York?”
“Hand to mouth, as my dress probably indicates. Our entire livelihood was tied up with the Baxter Street building. My father ran a very successful dry goods shop out of the first floor. Virtually all our stores were seized with the building, as well as most of the furniture, too. And with our menfolk away, there has been little besides cutwork and service for us girls. I once had dreams of marrying well and living in a fine house close to my parents. Now I hope to find work as a lady’s maid, so that at least I will live in a warm house, even if it’s not mine. Unless that is”—she looked at Mrs. Childress for the first time since she had entered the courtroom—“I can get back what is rightly my family’s.”
Again Caroline startled.
Again Alex tried to reassure her. “Remember,” he whispered. “You did not take her property, nor do you have it now. You have not transgressed against this girl.”
Yet all eyes in the courtroom were on Caroline, as if she had turned the girl out with a broom.
“No further questions, Your Honor,” Burr said.
“Mr. Hamilton?” Judge Smithson prompted.
“Your Honor, the defense would like to thank Miss Le Beau for traveling to the court today. We have no questions for her at this time.”
Miss Le Beau was dismissed and led from the courtroom. Burr waited until she was gone. Then, looking at Alex smugly, he said,
“The State rests, Your Honor.”
Judge Smithson turned to Alex again. “Would you like to call your first witness, Mr. Hamilton?”
Alex looked down at the witness list in front of him, a litany of names of people who would speak as glowingly of Caroline Childress as Burr’s witnesses had been scathing. But they would tell Judge Smithson nothing he didn’t already know: that Caroline had survived the occupation like thousands of other New Yorkers, anyway she could. On top of that, he couldn’t stop thinking of Angelica’s party, which was, of course, really Eliza’s party. Tonight was the night. Guests would be arriving in a matter of hours. He could not show up in his lawyer’s black robes, looking like a mourner at a medieval funeral.
“Mr. Hamilton,” Judge Smithson said again.
Alex looked at the judge. “Your Honor, the plaintiff rests.”
Judge Smithson looked confused. He blinked once, twice, a third time, so vigorously that his chin fat wiggled above his jabot. Finally, he nodded.
“Very well then. The court will take a half-hour recess for tea, and then reconvene at five o’clock for closing arguments.”
“But, Your Honor,” Alex said, taken aback. “Given the hour, oughtn’t we to wait until morning?”
“Oh no, young man. You seem to want to get this over with in a hurry. Well, let’s get it over with.”
Without another word, the judge gaveled once, then squeezed himself out of the courtroom by the rear door.
As Alex filed out of the main entrance, he saw that Governor Clinton was still sitting in his bench while the court cleared. The governor’s face was calmer than it had been earlier, which is to say that anger had given way to mere contempt.
“I do not know what your ploy is, Mr. Hamilton, but I assure you that you won’t take in a judge as perspicacious as Lewis Smithson.”
“Perspicacious?” Alex said. “I didn’t notice him sweating at all.”
With those parting words, he marched out of the room.