In the hundreds of stories told about Burr after his death, writers vary as to whether they admire or despise him, but there is one point they generally agree on: He was a man capable of conquering and ravishing men as well as women. Lest the inference be misconstrued, to be ravished is to be enchanted—hypnotically entranced and brought into a state of submission before the object of affection. Virtually every account of Burr’s life describes a man of unquenchable desires: for power over men, and for the hearts of women.
Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton (2004) continues in this tradition, calling Burr an assassin (“He shot to kill”), despite an abundance of contrary historical evidence. Chernow invents a remorseless Burr, casually bedding his mistress nine days after Hamilton’s demise. He claims that Burr was “such a dissipated, libidinous character” that whatever Hamilton might have said to provoke the duel was justifiable. Of course, it should now be clear that Hamilton was not one degree less libidinous than Burr, should such things matter to history.4
Even for those novelists who did not conceive of Burr as demonic, many still imagined him as a man of unhealthy drives, of relentless ambition, a man who was ruled by his body instead of his mind. In his two-volume novel based on Burr, Burton: or, The Sieges (1838), the Reverend Joseph Holt Ingraham explained the origin of his subject’s conspiracy-driven downfall. As the rake turned traitor, Burr’s early debaucheries prefigured his later grand scheme; his conquests on the “sofa” were merely a rehearsal for his imperial ambitions against a supine West. Such early accounts are not surprising, for at the time of his death, Burr was known as the nation’s most successful “ladies’ man”; the publication (also in 1838) of his private journal provided information about his sexual life that his well-protected peers did not have to submit to posthumously.5
The theme of enchantment and seduction was also applied to Burr’s relationship with his daughter, which for many fictional writers amounted to his greatest obsession. Some writers actually blamed Theodosia for his fall from grace. In Famous Belles of the Nineteenth Century (1901), Virginia Peacock claimed that the moment Theodosia was married to Joseph Alston—and thus no longer the sole admirer of Burr—“the retrogressive period of Burr’s life began.” In The Magnificent Adventure (1916), Emerson Hough fashioned Burr into a pimp by persuading his daughter to seduce Meriwether Lewis and foil the Lewis and Clark expedition. Others claimed that a “consuming love” for his daughter lured Burr into that “wild and dazzling dream of a Mexican empire.” In My Theodosia (1941), Anya Seton hinted at incest, but stopped short of making the claim outright. Gore Vidal’s best-selling Burr (1973) implied that incest was the motive for the famous duel with Hamilton. Burr issued his challenge because Hamilton had spread malicious lies about the father and daughter’s unnatural love.6
Sexual rivalry, born of jealousy, is another stock theme in the posthumous career of Aaron Burr. It forms the basis of Jerome Dowd’s 1884 play, Burr and Hamilton: A New York Tragedy. Yet the most humorous portrayal of rivalry and jealousy among the founders has to be Charles Nirdlinger’s play The First Lady of the Land (1914). In a story ostensibly about Dolley Payne Todd prior to her marriage to James Madison, Nirdlinger gives Burr top billing among her suitors, and highlights his wit and debonair style. Here the reticent Madison fears losing his future wife to the irresistible Burr. Jefferson, whose character never appears on stage, is constantly running to play his fiddle in order to hide his fear of Burr and women.7
Modern popularizers have responded to this old theme of sexual competition, adding a heavy dose of psychological jargon. In his Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character (1999), former National Parks Service official Roger Kennedy contends that Hamilton was Burr’s “fatal twin,” a variation on the Cain and Abel parable, or Romulus and Remus, who were actual twins. Consumed with envy, his Hamilton is a suicidal masochist: “He arranged to have Burr kill him,” writes Kennedy. Similarly, Arnold Rogow’s A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (1998) reduces the duel to Hamilton’s maladjusted personality and flawed “character structure.” As in Kennedy’s vision, the duelists are mirror images of each other. But for Rogow, Hamilton’s death wish is rooted in his denial of an “underlying homoerotic” attraction to Burr. Hamilton’s inner demons (in this case, his gay identity) consume him.8
All of these themes can be traced back to the 1790s and 1800s. As early as 1795, Federalists attacked Burr as a man overwrought with jealousy over Hamilton’s fame and success. The sexually specific identification of Burr with the Roman pervert Cataline was first used by Hamilton, then by the editor James Cheetham, and eventually by Jefferson; this seemed to be a convenient means of portraying Burr as a man driven by passions—ruled by his body. Recall that the Roman general had a reputation that included slaughtering his son, wife, and brother, and sleeping with young men, his sister, and daughter. This is also why Gore Vidal’s hunch that incest led to the Burr-Hamilton duel was not pure invention. It was already a part of the gossip Hamilton had circulated against Burr.
But even the aggressively masculine image of Burr—whether as a satanic or a libertine predator—does not encompass the range of his sexualization. Fiction writers have as easily gravitated to the inverse image of the dandy/dilettante. In 1901, in A Dream of Empire of the House of Blennerhassett, William Henry Venable had Burr playing the fop. As a “Brummel[l] of exterior properties,” he was satirized for his meticulous attention to dress, his polished boots, and his (implicitly feminized) clean-shaven face. By this time, Brummell, too, had become a caricature, no longer invoking the masculine ideals of restraint and audacity so admired in the early nineteenth century. This dandified Burr exudes sexuality from every pore. He is not simply a ladies’ man but a sexual hybrid, especially alluring to young boys. The celebrated southern writer Eudora Welty captured this theme in her story “First Love” (1943). It is told from the perspective of a young deaf boy who, upon seeing Burr for the first time, cannot but react in sexual terms—he says he feels ravished. As the boy watches the crowd at Burr’s trial in Mississippi, the courtroom becomes a stage: Burr is a dazzling orator, a man of gestures, the embodiment of sexual energy.9
Of course, when Federalists attacked Burr as a man of surfaces, they intended only a slur against the Burrite party by uncovering his allure among young men. When Burr ran for governor in 1804, these Burrite “boys,” dandies and “strolling players,” were likened to male prostitutes. This is not to say that Burr was not fascinating; he was. But he was also frank and reasonable. The objectification of Aaron Burr instructs us that politics in the early republic was a highly personalized competition. Performances mattered. The classic showdown between Burr and Wilkinson during the treason trial was infused with competing ideals of masculine behavior.
In that year of 1807, an anonymous Federalist writer captured this problem perfectly. In his “Portrait of Burr,” he claimed that there was “no human creature more reserved, mysterious, and inscrutable”—echoing what Cheetham had written. Recall again that the unprincipled editor had contended that no proof was necessary to show that Burr had tried to steal the 1800 election from Jefferson because, as a rule, Burr wrapped his every action in mystery. Many historians have followed this rule of thumb, arguing that circumstantial evidence is proof enough to assert Burr’s backroom dealing over the winter months of 1800–01. In the 1807 “Portrait,” the Federalist writer also described Burr as the “epitome” of “Chesterfield and the graces.” To the ladies, he is “all attention . . . he gazes on them with complacency and rapture”; he displays “those captivating gestures . . . those dissolving looks, that soft, sweet, and insinuating eloquence, which takes the soul captive before it can prepare for defence.” Burr was “exemplary, an illustrious instance of the capriciousness of popular admiration.” He was all show and no substance. He had a feminine allure, soft and sweet—a “proteus” indeed, who could sexually transform himself while in the company of his male and female admire
rs.10
We may not understand this language as particularly insulting, or possessing the power to intimidate, dismiss, or castigate as much as the overt sexual slurs related above. But, in fact, Burr’s contemporaries read the Chesterfieldian caricature as the deepest cut in a man’s reputation, and fatal to his public career. It convicted Burr of emptiness, of being all smoke and mirrors. This is another critical caricature that still finds its way into modern historical prose, justifying the position that Burr was a man without ideas—a faux founder at best. Calling him an “enigma” is another way to reduce him to a trivial mystery or a pale riddle. His insignificance is a given. He may be used to add color to the founders’ story; he may be introduced as a diversion within the larger story. That is precisely what has happened.
The consensus among historians seems to be that Burr was never at the center of any “real” political activity except as an operative, a man who was skilled in a certain kind of strategy but who was otherwise devoid of ideas or beliefs. Hamilton’s self-serving charge that Burr lacked principle, combined with the political satire and lurid fiction that painted him and his supporters as dandified politicians, has actually taken the place of real historical scholarship. Joseph Ellis sums up the consensus view in his Founding Brothers (2000): “And Burr, if I have him right, is the odd man out with the elite of the early republic, a colorful and intriguing character to be sure, but a man whose definition of character does not measure up to the standard.”11
But we now know that Burr was more than a colorful character. And he was at least equal to the “standard” among the founding elite. His distorted life story shows, too, that sexuality was part of the political vocabulary of the founders. Historians have long since fallen prey to the trap of conflating Burr’s real sexual behavior with the political attacks of his enemies. They have allowed a two-dimensional portrait of Burr to serve as a foil, and have used him merely to lift up the character of other founders.
The facts are indisputable: Aaron Burr was at the center of nation building and was a capable leader in New York political circles at a crucial period. Burr’s life was not only about sex; and yet sexuality was the stuff of politics. One need only read Hamilton’s constitutional theory in Federalist No. 6 to discover how readily sexual corruption (i.e., seductive women) could be equated with disunion. And Hamilton wrote these words long before he saw Burr as a threat to his political party or his personal ambitions. If one reads the newspapers, rather than simply relying on the published papers of prominent founders (Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams), it soon becomes clear that sexual satire pervaded politics. The sexualization of Aaron Burr was a means for his opponents to increase their political capital, because the vocabulary to do so was already a part of the political scene—not because of Burr’s particular shortcomings.12
Burr was, in fact, the “odd man out,” but not because he lacked character. He was odd because he was the only founder to embrace feminism. He was one who truly believed and adhered to the ideal that reason should transcend party differences. He was unique in that he refused to slander his political enemies behind their backs. He displayed an insatiable intellectual curiosity and read widely; his faith in Utilitarianism made him remarkably modern in imagining daring possibilities for social and political change. He consistently embraced an inclusive definition of democracy, defending freedom of speech, promoting the expansion of suffrage and economic rights to the middling classes, and battling prejudice against aliens, free blacks, petty criminals, and women. His moving words (in opposition to a law to disenfranchise aliens) before the New York Assembly in 1799 are worth repeating, for they remind us of his idealism:
America stood with open arms and presented an assylum to the oppressed of every nation; we invited them with the promise of enjoying equal rights with ourselves, and presented them with the flattering prospect of presiding in our councils and arriving at honour and trust; shall we deprive these persons of an important right derived from so sacred a source as our constitution[?]13
The evidence shows that as a proponent of equal rights, there was no one among the founders any more enthusiastic—any more genuine—than Burr.
Aaron Burr’s life represents the antidote to lazy history. His experiences, his mistakes, and his radical insights combine to give us a better picture of the political culture that defined his generation. To conceive of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and their ilk as they were on their best day is to compress the life of any modern president into the most memorable line in an inaugural address that someone else wrote for him. The founders were far more numerous than popular history suggests, and far less righteous and dignified. The historic memory does not hold much history. That is why Burr, the fallen founder, is more representative than one might otherwise imagine.
The founders contributed wisdom and often exhibited courage. But to remove them from political time as if they were ever, on a single day, holy men or paragons of virtue misses their true vocation and their true motivation. They did not live inside an impossibly romantic political forum where great minds communed on a regular basis to remind each other of their noblest ideals. They did not spend the bulk of their time sitting at their desks writing treatises, or standing before their congressional peers making sublime speeches. The lawyers among them were more typically engrossed in the ugly details of a property case, or in a dogged debate inside a courtroom; the many speculators among them mulled over the looming threat of debtor’s prison. They spent their time engaged in the polite banter of the tea parlor, and indulged in secret sexual trysts with prostitutes, mistresses, and, in the South, slaves.
These were our founders: imperfect men in a less than perfect nation, grasping at opportunities. That they did good for their country is understood, and worth our celebration; that they were also jealous, resentful, self-protective, and covetous politicians should be no less a part of their collective biography. What separates history from myth is that history takes in the whole picture, whereas myth averts our eyes from the truth when it turns men into heroes and gods.
NOTES
PREFACE
1. Two books demonstrate Burr’s unparalleled role in popular literature. Samuel H. Wandell, Aaron Burr in Literature (London, 1936); and Charles J. Nolan, Jr., Aaron Burr and the American Literary Imagination (Westport, Conn., 1980); and for pornography featuring Burr, see The Amorous Intrigues and Adventures of Aaron Burr (New York, 1861). Some extremely talented writers (Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eudora Welty, and Gore Vidal) have made Burr into a fictional subject, in part because of Burr’s controversial legacy.
2. To be clear, Mary-Jo Kline as editor of Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1983) (cited hereafter as Burr Papers), has performed a tremendous service for scholars in compiling and annotating Burr’s key political texts. But Kline’s edited volumes did not address his personal life or try to offer a complete picture of Burr as a historical figure. Refusing to do the research, modern historians have routinely failed to examine Burr’s papers on microfilm (27 reels), and many have ignored, or paid scant attention to, Kline’s edited volumes.
3. Treatments of Burr tend to see him as either a tragic figure or evil incarnate. Most biographers, even those sympathetic to their subject, portray him as a man without a political philosophy. Burr has been cast as an opportunist, or as a man who was somewhat mentally unstable. His political mistakes have been explained as a result of his almost childlike naïveté about political enemies. And his most recent biographer, Milton Lomask, has repeated the common portrait of him as Chesterfieldian gentleman, with a need to be constantly entertained. Others see him as harmless but insubstantial. Many later studies rely on James Parton, whose 1857 biography (and later editions) are filled with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated half-truths. See Parton, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr, 2 vols. (Boston and New York, 1892); Samuel Wandell and Meade Minnigerode, Aaron Burr: A Biography compiled from rare, and in
many cases unpublished, sources, 2 vols. (New York, 1925); Nathan Schachner, Aaron Burr: A Biography (New York, 1937); Herbert S. Parmet and Marie B. Hecht, Aaron Burr: Portrait of an Ambitious Man (New York, 1967); and Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 1756–1805 (New York, 1979) and Aaron Burr: The Conspiracy and Years of Exile, 1805–1836 (New York, 1982).
CHAPTER ONE
1. Philip Schuyler to Alexander Hamilton, Jan. 29, 1792, in Harold Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 27 vols. (New York, 1961–87), X: 579–81.
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