Aaron Burr
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Aaron Burr (February 6, 1756–September 14, 1836), also known as "That guy who shot Hamilton" was a Founding Father and United States politician who served as the third vice president of the United States from 1801 to 1805. He is ranked the among the worst vice presidents in US history by Time.[1]
Thomas Jefferson selected Burr as his running mate in the 1800 US election, but Burr proved to be a rogue agent by attempting to sabotage Jefferson and take the presidency for himself.[2] In 1804, his personal conflict with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton escalated into a duel in which Burr fatally shot Hamilton. Burr's political career died the same day that Hamilton did.
After his political downfall, Burr was involved in a far-fetched scheme to take over the southwestern United States and form a nation led by himself. In 1807, US authorities arrested him in Alabama on charges of treason, but he was eventually acquitted of the charges by then-Chief Justice John Marshall. With his reputation and finances in tatters, Burr briefly fled to Europe to escape his creditors before returning to New York to quietly practice law until his death in 1836.
Aaron Burr is also the subject of the 1973 Gore Vidal novel Burr, which caused Michele Bachmann to become a Republican.[3]
Duel with Hamilton[edit]
The action Burr's most famous for is easily his duel with Alexander Hamilton on July 11, 1804, which resulted in Hamilton's death. Hamilton and Burr already had a great dislike of each other due to their different politics (Hamilton was a Federalist and Burr was a Democratic-Republican, the progenitor of the Democratic Party), but Hamilton being the person who crushed both Burr's bid for the Presidency in 1800 and his attempt to become Governor of New York in 1804 despite running on a more Federalist platform specifically in hopes of gaining support from the exact group that Hamilton represented nationally.[4][note 1]This resulted in a hatred between the two, which was settled through violence.[5]
According to legend, Hamilton had no intention of actually shooting Burr, with one source writing that he "had already told confidants and made clear in valedictory letters that he intended to throw away his shot, possibly by purposefully shooting wide of Burr."[6]
Still, even Hamilton's death did not fully end the feud between the two, as when Burr's wife Eliza Jumel needed a divorce lawyer, she turned to none other than Hamilton's son Alexander Hamilton Jr.[7] However, lest you think the feud continues to this day "the ghosts of Burr and Hamilton's infamous feud seem to have died with him — two descendants of the pair are reportedly kayak and canoe buddies in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood."[8]
Treason trial[edit]
Burr was put on trial for treason in 1807, with the specific event that caused this being when Burr’s longtime friend, General James Wilkinson, decided to turn him in. Wilkinson sent a message to federal authorities and President Jefferson that Burr intended to entice the western states to leave the US and form a new nation led by himself – with the support of England. Jefferson then alerted Congress about Burr’s plan and ordered his arrest. The adventure in question being a plan by Burr to take over land belonging to Spain and Mexico, although with possibly attempting to get other western states to leave the United States and join his new nation.[9]
The trial was presided over by Jefferson's longtime political enemy and then-Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. Burr was acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence. Jefferson was outraged, and even reportedly wanted impeachment charges to be filed against Marshall due to this decision.[9] Jefferson's already existing disagreements with Marshall, primarily stemming from Marshall's Federalism, were deepened greatly, with Jefferson saying to John Adams in 1814 that Marshall twists his words "as he did to twist Burr’s neck out of the halter of treason."[10]
The guy behind the filibuster[edit]
Burr is the man behind the now infamous filibuster, defined as "a loosely defined term for action designed to prolong debate and delay or prevent a vote on a bill, resolution, amendment, or other debatable question."[11] Before Burr, debate in the Senate ended when a majority of Senators had voted to end debate on a piece of legislation. Burr, however, got rid of that stipulation and instead allowed to the Senate to have unlimited debate if they so chose.[12]
Not all bad?[edit]
Burr was ahead of his time in many ways. For instance, he passionately argued for the rights of immigrants to the United States at a time when many of the other Founders were hostile to non-Anglos. He also was a fan of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
and an advocate for the idea that men and women were equal to the point of giving his daughter a full education which was very rare at the time; he would be mocked by Hamilton for this stance.[13] He was also an opponent of slavery, pushing a bill for the immediate abolition of slavery in New York when most of the other lawmakers supported a gradual abolition bill that ended up passing, though like some other founding fathers he was a bit of a hypocrite as he had owned slaves himself.[14]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Funnily enough, this exact fact was one of the things Hamilton criticized Burr for, with one writer summing up an argument Hamilton made as:
Hamilton’s belief that Burr was a calculated politician, governed by his own ambition rather than by set principles. He wrote that Burr had been aligned with the Democratic-Republicans, either because he believed in those values (“from principle”) or because he thought that it would make it easier for him to win (“from calculation”). If Burr’s decision was based on his principles, Hamilton stated that he would not change his principles at a time when the Federalist party was struggling. If Burr had made a strategic decision, he was not going to “relinquish the ladder of his ambition” for the good of the Federalist party.[4]
References[edit]
- ↑ America’s Worst Vice Presidents. Time.
- ↑ The best – and worst – VP picks. CNN.
- ↑ Two for tea: Republicans Bachmann and Palin have much in common
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 “The ladder of his ambition”- Hamilton, Burr, and the 1804 New York Gubernatorial Race
- ↑ Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr's Duel
- ↑ Burr-Hamilton duel
- ↑ Worst 5 Vice Presidents in American History
- ↑ Long After Alexander Hamilton's Death, His Son and Rival Aaron Burr Dueled in Divorce Court
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Aaron Burr’s trial and the Constitution’s treason clause
- ↑ John Marshall
- ↑ About Filibusters and Cloture
- ↑ The weird rule that broke American politics
- ↑ Liberals love Alexander Hamilton. But Aaron Burr was a real progressive hero., Nancy Isenberg, Washington Post 30 March 2016
- ↑ Aaron Burr Jr. and John Pierre Burr: A Founding Father and his Abolitionist Son, Sherri Burr, Princeton