Fallen Founder

I just finished a book about Aaron Burr called Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg

I remembered that Aaron Burr had been Thomas Jefferson's Vice President, had run for President, and that he was discredited for trying to break off the Western U.S. to start a new nation. This was before I read the book, just the remnants of school and who knows where else we learn the little details that are in our head.

What really happened? Isenberg's book is written around the premise that there were different stories going around about Burr. The book is a staunch defense of Aaron Burr as a misunderstood figure from history who was smeared in the press by his opponents. Isenberg contends that this misrepresentation of the facts spread by Burr's enemy's has persisted until today.

Isenberg paints many of the politicians of the founders era as self interested, self promoting, and brutal at infighting. She describes the Federalist/Republican politicians attacking each other through the press and with backroom deals. She spends a great deal of time going over research she turned up that paints a completely different story.

For one thing, the common story about Alexander Hamilton is that he fought in a duel against Aaron Burr, who shot and killed him, thus ruining Burr's reputation. Isenberg's version is that Hamilton had some kind of obsession about Burr and would not leave him alone. She makes it sound as if Burr tried to avoid the confrontation as long as he could, but finally couldn't put it off. The other commonly held belief is that Hamilton honorably shot in the air, while Burr deliberately took aim. She claims that Hamilton couldn't see well and had the wrong eye glasses, which is why he missed. Another aspect she brings out is that both parties had written letters prior to the duel that would have been released had they lost. Burr's was supposedly noble and gracious and expressed regret about the disagreement with Hamilton and respect for Hamilton. Hamilton's supposedly continued to cast dispersions about Burr, basically continuing his taunts from beyond the grave.

Isenberg says that they continued to try to prosecute Burr, even though the duel took place in New Jersey, and there was no law against dueling in New Jersey, just in New York. They supposedly took row boats across the Hudson just to have the duel in a location where it was legal.

The next chapter in the history that is turned around and debunked in this book is the events leading up to and surrounding his treason trial. In this version of history, Burr is duped by a double agent named General James Wilkinson and painted as the force behind a movement to secede the western Louisiana territory away from the U.S. and set himself up as King. I'm still confused after reading the book exactly what happened. It sounds to me that Burr was interested in trying to get parts of Mexico to break off and form an independent territory (which later happened with Texas, and also is reminiscent of how the U.S. got into the Mexican-American War). It seems that Wilkinson was trying to frame Burr on the Louisiana conspiracy and was not able to make this charge stick.

However, while not convicted of treason, Burr was thoroughly discredited in the public eye. Thomas Jefferson apparently wanted to find some way of prosecuting Burr, to the point that he eventually left the country.

Sadly, Burr never did regain his reputation, and lost his family as well. It's a tragic story that paints a sympathetic picture of the man. The subtitle of the book could have been, "Why could they not just leave this man alone!?"

There were some other details in the book that I found interesting. Burr apparently was an advocate for women's rights and equality about a hundred years early. He also fought in the American Revolution, but was not on the Washington side of the Army and therefore, did not prevail politically when Washington later came to power. He supposedly assured that Jefferson won the 1800 election by stepping down and giving the election to Jefferson, even though he had as many electoral votes (supposedly, by the rules of that time, the Federalists would have been able to appoint their own man as President in the event of a tie). The last detail that I found to be very interesting is that Burr owned an estate called Richmond Hill in Manhattan that he was forced to sell to John Jacob Aster for $32,000. This was divided up into lots and became Greenwich Village in New York City, making Aster incredibly rich in the process.

I suppose that Isenberg did not convince me that everything said about Burr was false, but she did make me wonder how much of what we've been taught is history being written by the victors.