"- 5 VIII (-),IV,X 5VII1 III IV IX made of more V 10 1 5 III IX II 5 IX 1 VII 8 5 10 VIII IX 7 5 III II ( ) VIII 1 10 0 The advice comes with double force ~"

Aaron Burr wrote this letter to his son-in-law, Joseph Alston, nine days after his duel with Alexander Hamilton in Weehawken, New Jersey. On Friday, July 20, both the Grand Jury in New Jersey and the coroner's jury in New York were considering bringing charges against Burr. The coroner's jury planned to deliver a verdict the following Monday, and as Burr wrote in his discreet phrasing, "the result will determine my [Burr's] Movements." But he did not wait for a verdict; the next morning at 10 a.m. he left his home at Richmond Hill, New York, and traveled to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, finding his way eventually to St. Simon's Island, Georgia.

Earlier in 1804, Hamilton led the segment of Federalists opposed to Burr's nomination in the New York gubernatorial race. Mayor of New York Dewitt Clinton worked against Burr from the Republican side. Clinton used the American Citizen, edited by James Cheetham, as a mouthpiece for resurrecting scandalous allegations from the election of 1800. Together, they helped deliver a crushing defeat to Burr in the election of 1804. It is possible Burr felt that these same forces would conspire further, making the decision of the coroner's jury all but certain in the wake of Hamilton's death.

The question of Burr's flight may be answered in the remainder of the letter. However, its meaning is enshrouded by two different types of cipher. In the early republic, cipher was often used in the interest of privacy, and at the time this letter was written Burr had an understandable fear of having his mail intercepted and his plans exposed. Deciphering these messages will require the discovery of the appropriate key, which will likely involve a book that Alston and Burr agreed to refer to in the code. On July 29, 1806, Burr used such a method of cipher in a letter to James Wilkinson. The key to that code was based on the 1800 edition of Entick's New Spelling Dictionary (see Mary-Jo Kline's Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, Vol. 2, p. 984). Following the cipher on page one, a note at the bottom to "Enclose to Ch. Biddle" suggests Alston was instructed to deliver a message to Burr's friend, Charles Biddle of Philadelphia, whom Burr visited later that year.

Ultimately, this letter offers the possibility that hidden in the mystery of his cipher lie Burr's genuine motives, plans, and feelings at this critical moment in American history.

Robert Lee
Manuscript Cataloger

Note: Only page one of this three page letter has been transcribed due to the remaining pages being entirely in cipher. Every effort has been made to remain as true to the symbols used in the cipher, but for total accuracy refer to the image of the original document.