Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  Praise for Fallen Founder by Nancy Isenberg

  “For two hundred years, Aaron Burr occupied a privileged place in the innermost circle of American political hell, alongside Benedict Arnold and Joe McCarthy. Yet as Nancy Isenberg reminds us, Burr is a strange choice for that unholy trinity. . . . Isenberg offers justice to a maligned man.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Isenberg’s call for a better, less fetishistic history of the Founding Fathers is eloquent and inspiring. And her study of Burr is full of insight and new research. It is an important and engaging account.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Isenberg’s meticulous biography reveals a gifted lawyer, politician and orator who championed civility in government and even feminist ideals, in a political climate that bears a marked resemblance to our own.”

  —The Washington Post

  “In a sterling biography, historian Nancy Isenberg presents an Aaron Burr who was ‘a man of possibilities, a mirror of an energetic young nation’—as well as a man of great personal charm, attractive to women and attracted to them. For Isenberg, it was his political promise and his personal energy that made Burr not just a contrast to the nation’s Founding Fathers, but a threat that led to his fall.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Isenberg is at her best in her vivid description of the nasty political infighting that characterized early American politics. . . . The Burr described in this well-documented biography (with its more than one hundred pages of notes) is a far more complex and intriguing figure than the one portrayed in traditional histories.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Nancy Isenberg of the University of Tulsa has written a remarkable biography that makes one rethink Burr’s life and also the peculiarities of eighteenth-century politics in America. Some of the sketches are positively charming in their style and sweep.”

  —The Washington Times

  “A persuasive reconsideration of possibly the most scandalous figure in American history. . . . Isenberg skillfully submits a brief that her subject, himself an innovative and elegant attorney, would have been proud to author. . . . Splendid biography.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Isenberg effectively broadens our view of history, providing some keen insights into the highly contentious post-revolutionary period, and establishing Burr’s legitimate role within it.”

  —BookPage

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nancy Isenberg is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at Louisiana State University, and also writes regularly for Salon.com. Fallen Founder was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in biography and won the Oklahoma Book Award for best book in nonfiction. She is also the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Charlottesville, Virginia. Her newest book is White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

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  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007

  Published in Penguin Books 2008

  Copyright © Nancy Isenberg, 2007

  All rights reserved

  Map illustrations by Adrian Kitzinger

  PHOTO CREDITS: 1: Library of Congress; 2: Yale University Art Gallery, Trumbull Collection; 3: Courtesy of Brian D. Hardison; 4: Courtesy of I.N. Phelps Stokes Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation; 5: Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.; 6: From the Aurora General Advertiser, January 8, 1801; 7: Broadside originally printed in 1801; reprinted in 1804, Burr Papers, microfilm collection, reel 4; 8: Aaron Burr by John Vanderlyn, courtesy the Collections of the New-York Historical Society; General James Wilkinson by Charles Willson Peale, courtesy of the Independence National Historical Park Collection, Philadelphia; 9: Nineteenth-century engraving, author’s collection; 10: Aaron Burr by Henry Inman, courtesy of the Collections of the New-York Historical Society

  ISBN: 978–0–670–06352–9 (hc.)

  ISBN: 978-0-14-311371-3 (pbk.)

  ISBN: 978-1-101-20236-4 (ebook)

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  Cover art: Portrait of Aaron Burr attributed to Gilbert Stuart; from the collection of the New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, New Jersey

  Version_2

  For Andy

  PREFACE

  Aaron Burr (1756–1836) stands apart from the other founders—then and now. He is remembered, first, as the man who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton; second, as a vice president turned traitor; and third, as a womanizer. Historians have favored “nation builders” George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, whose published papers are voluminous. Burr has been left chiefly in the hands of imaginative writers: popularizers of history, novelists, playwrights, producers of cheap gothic romances, and even a pornographer. This is just the beginning of an explanation for why Aaron Burr has been mishandled by students of history—and textbook writers—for almost two centuries.1

  Non-historians have written biographies of Burr, but this book marks the first time a professional historian has undertaken to tell his life story. Oddly, even the most recent, and most respected, interpreters of the founding generation have unconsciously mimicked fictional portrayals of Burr. Historians have failed to do the legwork; that is, to read the bulk of Burr’s papers on microfilm, scour old newspapers, and track down documents in archives.2 For too long, prejudiced characterizations of Burr have been repeated as received wisdom. Burr has been called many things, in ascending order of dangerousness: mysterious, mentally unstable, and congenitally evil—a shallow opportunist devoid of political principles. Moralizing has substituted for historical analysis. And yet, despite all the vitriol thrown at Burr, he had many reliable friends and large numbers of supp
orters, something his detractors still find difficult to explain. During his lifetime, friends and foes alike recognized that Burr was a skilled politician and an enlightened thinker; this underscores why he was considered a genuine national leader and a dangerous opponent, and why he rose to the U.S. Senate and the vice presidency.

  Unlike those founders who acted to secure their records in late life and who allowed aides to publicize their personal and political morals, Burr did not toot his own horn, nor did he defend himself with an eye to posterity. As his wife and daughter did not survive him, they could not do so either. Many of Burr’s papers were lost in a shipwreck, and others were sold off, making a fuller reconstruction of his life difficult. Because of all that was said against him, and because he was, and is, admittedly, hard to know, attempting a fair assessment of Aaron Burr is a demanding task.

  Many of the lies and exaggerations that obscure the real Burr focus on his relationship to Alexander Hamilton. Historians have been too trusting of Hamilton’s portrait of Burr, discounting his partisan motives in blackening Burr’s name. Only half of that story has been told. Hamilton, an extremely motivated political thinker, was also a master of backroom politics. He was known for his poison-tipped pen, viciously attacking anyone he believed stood in the way of his political dominance. When it came to his sense of Burr as a competent rival, first in New York politics and later in presidential politics, Hamilton overreacted. He systematically sought, over a period of many years, to ruin Burr’s chances through insults, slights, and writing campaigns. The great irony is that Hamilton routinely accused Burr of lacking a moral compass, when no evidence exists that the self-possessed Burr ever insulted Hamilton.

  The essential problem in Americans’ understanding of the Burr-Hamilton relationship is that it has only been described to them in personal, pathological, or sexual terms. The relationship has been removed from politics, where it rightly belongs. To put it succinctly, it was not any issue relating to moral character, but Hamilton’s aggressive style of politics that led to his duel with Burr. At the dueling ground itself, Hamilton gave Burr every indication that he intended to fire in earnest; not to waste his shot, as Hamilton apologists continue to insist to this day.

  How can history have gotten Burr so wrong? I can offer several suggestions. First, Burr was ganged up on by politically powerful combinations during his lifetime, his morals attacked merely as a political dirty trick. Next, he lacked a sympathetic posterity, whereas the other founders had legions of descendants responsible for celebratory publications. Finally, shoddy research over the years has plagued the study of both Burr the politician and Burr the man, reducing his legacy to oversimplifications, for which popular biographers are principally at fault. Writers tend to have an unconscious need to construct a narrative that features noble minds, courageous arms, and a foil (or black sheep) against whom the “good guys” are to be compared. The truth about most popular history is that even when it is not patriotically inspired, it is made up of dangerous shortcuts. As things stand, popular treatments disparaging Burr have proven quite seductive.3

  History is not a bedtime story. It is a comprehensive engagement with often obscure documents and books no longer read—books shelved in old archives, and fragile pamphlets contemporaneous with the subject under study—all of which reflect a world view not ours. We cannot make eighteenth-century men and women “familiar” by endowing them and their families with the emotions we prefer to universalize; nor should we try to equate their politics with politics we understand. But this is what popular biographers do, and as a result, everything we think we know about Aaron Burr is untrue. It is time to start over.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book began because I was curious about scandalous trials in American history. I was eventually drawn to the scandal-bound Burr, who had been sketched many times, but whose mixed reputation has never been convincingly analyzed. I have had a lot of help along the way from other historians who desired a fresh study of Burr. As the editor of Burr’s political correspondence, Mary-Jo Kline deserves my particular gratitude, because she and her team did a tremendous job in preparing two superb volumes and putting together the guide to the microfilm collection. Mary-Jo patiently fielded many queries, and gave me much useful advice. Talented editors are invaluable partners in historical scholarship.

  Several institutions have funded my work, and afforded me access to some wonderful archives. I would like to thank John Hench and the staff at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), in Worcester, Massachusetts, for granting me a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson fellowship. Multiple trips to the AAS led to rare finds in their manuscript and early American newspaper collections. Though I might have been viewed as an enemy invading the tranquil retreat of Monticello, Daniel P. Jordan and the International Center for Jefferson Studies gave me a fellowship and greeted me warmly. The new Jefferson Library was a joy to work in. Other institutions that aided my research include the New-York Historical Society; the New York Public Library; the Special Collections adjoining the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia; the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Library Company; the Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

  Friends and fellow scholars generously shared their research. I begin by thanking the always obliging Barbara Oberg, editor of the Jefferson Papers at Princeton University. David B. Mattern, Senior Editor of the Papers of James Madison, kindly sent me an important letter dealing with Burr’s filibuster. Cynthia D. Earman let me read her wonderful work on boardinghouse culture in Washington, D.C. I had several profitable conversations and e-mail exchanges with art historian Katherine C. Woltz, who is writing an original thesis on Burr’s protégé John Vanderlyn. Roland Baumann addressed my questions about John Swanwick, and his work was particularly useful for sorting out the mysterious caricature, “A Peep into the Antifederal Club.” Fellow early republican scholar Jeff Pasley discovered Matthew Livingston Davis’s manuscript in the New-York Historical Society, which provided new insights into the election of 1800 and the relationship between Jefferson and Burr. Bruce Kirby, Manuscript Reference Librarian at the Library of Congress, was good enough to track down a letter about Burr and Humboldt’s maps. And I especially appreciate Philip Lapsansky’s willingness to share his research on Lenora Sansay, a fascinating woman who deserves her own biography.

  One of the most enjoyable excursions in the course of writing this book was visiting Blennerhassett Island on the Ohio River, and meeting the historian Ray Swick, whose enthusiasm and generosity are unmatched. I appreciate, as well, a pair of research assistants who took the time to gather important materials from the Chicago Historical Society and Newberry Library: Nick Tate, a graduate student at the University of Tulsa, and Shannon Grady at Northwestern University. At the University of Tulsa’s McFarlin Library, the energetic Andy Lupardus assisted in uncovering details relating to Catherine Thompson. Brian D. Hardison generously prepared the photograph of Burr’s watch, and sent me copies of several Burr letters from his private collection. Finally, T. J. Stiles, a fellow biographer, kindly sent me an obscure newspaper article concerning Burr’s death.

  My deep appreciation extends to my literary agent, Geri Thoma, who carefully read and commented on the manuscript and helped at every stage of production. My editor at Viking Penguin, Wendy Wolf, had complete faith in the value of this project from the beginning, which kept me focused. She and her assistant Hilary Redmon offered very useful suggestions for manuscript revisions. I wish also to express thanks to David Waldstreicher and Peter Onuf, who read chapters and offered intellectual support; and to Michael Zuckerman at the University of Pennsylvania for inviting me to talk about the book-in-progress at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.

  This book is far better because of Andrew Burstein. I am lucky to
have a partner who not only shares my interest in the world of books but also has been a perfect sparring partner as I engaged with the knotty political issues chronicled in this biography. As a Jefferson scholar and early American specialist, Andy played devil’s advocate on a daily basis, encouraging me to refine arguments and improve the narrative. At the University of Tulsa, we have been afforded the time and resources to pursue our fascination with history and culture. I hope that this book will serve to highlight the value of the archive and the work of historians more generally.

  CONTENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PREFACE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  One. A MAN OF PROMISING PARTS

  Two. TO CONCERT WITH MY BROTHER OFFICERS

  Three. SUCH ARE THE LETTERS I LOVE

  Four. AN UNPREJUDICED MIND

  Five. A CERTAIN LITTLE SENATOR

  Six. THE STATESMAN AND THE SOLDIER

  Seven. THE RUIN OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

  Eight. LITTLE QUID EMPEROR

  Nine. WILL O’ WISP TREASON

  Ten. THAT STRANGER WAS AARON BURR

  Epilogue: HE USED NO UNNECESSARY WORDS

  NOTES

  INDEX

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. The College of New Jersey in 1776

  2. The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775 (1786)

  3. Map of the New York–New Jersey–Pennsylvania theater

  4. Photograph of Burr’s watch with illustrations of his wife and daughter

  5. A view of New York City (1797), by John Joseph Holland

  6. Land patents in New York State in the 1790s