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Summary
Summary
This book restores Aaron Burr to his place as a central figure in the founding of the American Republic. Abolitionist, proto-feminist, friend to such Indian leaders as Joseph Brant, Burr was personally acquainted with a wider range of Americans, and of the American continent, than any other Founder except George Washington. He contested for power with Hamilton and then with Jefferson on a continental scale. The book does not sentimentalize any of its three protagonists, neither does it derogate their extraordinary qualities. They were all great men, all flawed, and all three failed to achieve their full aspirations. But their struggles make for an epic tale.
Written from the perspective of a historian and administrator who, over nearly fifty years in public life, has served six presidents, this book penetrates into the personal qualities of its three central figures. In telling the tale of their shifting power relationships and their antipathies, it reassesses their policies and the consequences of their successes and failures. Fresh information about the careers of Hamilton and Burr is derived from newly-discovered sources, and a supporting cast of secondary figures emerges to give depth and irony to the principal narrative. This is a book for people who know how political life is lived, and who refuse to be confined within preconceptions and prejudices until they have weighed all the evidence, to reach their own conclusions both as to events and character.
This is a controversial book, but not a confrontational one, for it is written with sympathy for men of high aspirations, who were disappointed in much, but who succeeded, in all three cases, to a degree not hitherto fully understood.
Author Notes
Roger G. Kennedy has served as Director of the National Park Service, as Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, and as Vice President, Finance, of the Ford Foundation. He has written nine books, has appeared in his own series on the Discovery Channel, and was a White House correspondent for NBC. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kennedy (whose career has included stints as director of the National Park Service and CFO of the Ford Foundation) provides a dense rehash of well-known facts about the converging careers of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Far less accomplished than Thomas Fleming's Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America (Forecasts, Sept. 20), Kennedy's tome is hindered by overblown language and a surfeit of detail. He writes that he hopes to hasten Burr's "return from the exile on that shadowy periphery to which Jefferson consigned him." But Burr's is a tough reputation to resurrect. Since there's no memoir in his own hand arguing the justice of his actions, Kennedy relies instead on journals and (remarkably) letters to Burr's own daughter containing what Kennedy calls "Burr's accountant's notations of sexual encounters for pay" during his exile in Paris. Kennedy suggests Jefferson's charge of treason against Burr was politically motivated. Yet historians concur Burr fomented a genuine plot for insurrection in the West. Where, the reasonable reader asks, can we find middle ground between these opposing notions? If there is a middle ground, it is terrain for which Kennedy fails to draw a credible map. Illus. 40,000 first printing; BOMC and History Book Club alternate selections. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In a study of three Founders, Kennedy, director emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and a prolific author (Hidden Cities, 1994, etc.), demonstrates his devotion to underdogs, in particular Aaron Burr. New York attorney general and vice president of the US, Burr was once tapped as Jefferson's successor to the presidency, but his political career shriveled when he lost a gubernatorial election, and in 1806, Jefferson accused him of treason. His papers were lost, and his daughter, his most promising hagiographer, died before beginning a biography of her dad. That 19th-century notables including Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Quincy Adams maligned Burr as a womanizing rapscallion didn't help Burr's reputation. A spin doctor's nightmare? In Kennedy's hands, Burr appears admirable: a proto-feminist, taken with Mary Wollstonecraft's writings; a defender of Kennedy's other favorite underdog, Native Americans; and a committed abolitionist. Kennedy explores the careers and characters of Hamilton and Jefferson as well, arguing that they cannot be understood without first knowing Burr. If Burr is the hero of this book, neither Jefferson nor Hamilton is quite the villain'each was ``ambitious,'' each ``on occasion noble, generous, and touching in [his] willingness to express [his] affections.'' Kennedy has a penchant for unsubstantiated psychobabble. Pause critically when he waxes Oprah-esque about the psychic damage done to Burr and Hamilton by traumatic childhoods; raise a quizzical eyebrow at his suggestion that Jefferson's vitriol was stoked by Burr's matchmaking'in introducing James Madison to Dolley Payne, Burr no doubt altered the relationship of ``the great little Madison'' and the Sage of Monticello, two ``brilliant and lonely men'' who had toiled together as ``bachelor partners'' for 14 years after the death of Jefferson's wife, though that's hardly grounds for branding your VP a traitor. Kennedy is no Gore Vidal, yet, in an engaging and lightly ironic tone, he offers a worthwhile portrait of powerful politicians in early America. (30 photos) (First printing of 40,000; Book-of-the-Month Club and History Book Club alternate selections; author tour)
Booklist Review
Historian and public servant Kennedy reassesses the personalities, careers, and power struggles of three of the most influential architects of the American republic. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton have been admired and respected by generations of scholars, whereas historians have treated the unfortunate Aaron Burr much less kindly. Seeking to rescue Burr from the ignominy to which he has been consigned, the author reevaluates his contributions to the founding of the U.S., his tangled relationships with Hamilton and Jefferson, and his enduring legacy to democracy. In addition to being the consummate political animals of their time, Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson were exceedingly ambitious, intelligent, and visionary leaders committed to promoting both themselves and the country they loved. A penetrating revisionist analysis of three fascinating statesmen and a formative chapter in American history. --Margaret Flanagan
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | p. xv |
Preface | p. xvii |
Part 1 Character and Circumstance | p. 3 |
Chapter 1 p. 7 | |
Character | |
Gentlemen | |
Hotspur and Bolingbroke | |
Sacrificial Suicide Pretensions to Character | |
The Chesterfieldian Fallacy | |
Candor | |
Chapter 2 p. 21 | |
Circumstance | |
Party and Faction | |
Emulation, Rivalry, and Ambition The West and Slavery | |
The Character of Burr | |
Chapter 3 p. 33 | |
The Fatal Twins | |
Burr, Hamilton, and the Consolations of Religion Hamilton and the Consolations of Home | |
Pain and Wrath | |
Chapter 4 p. 44 | |
I Wish There Was a War | |
Staff Work | |
The Cincinnati and Thomas Jefferson | |
Colonels Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson | |
Where is Jefferson? John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and the Question of Character | |
Chapter 5 p. 56 | |
Politics, Love, Learning, and Death | |
The Women | |
Burr and Washington A Hypocrite or a Dangerous Man? | |
Oaths and Other Words to Be Kept Dueling Founders | |
Dr. Cooper Eavesdrops | |
Chapter 6 p. 75 | |
Fascination | |
Jachin and Boas | |
Equal and Opposite Assisted Suicide | |
The Code | |
Part 2 Character Tested by Slavery and Secession | p. 87 |
Chapter 7 p. 89 | |
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1790s and the First Jim Crow Period The Fourteen-Year Campaign | |
Good Company | |
Religion, Conviction, and Abolition | |
The Manumission Society | |
The Presence of Washington Burr, Hamilton, Jefferson, the French, and the Blacks | |
The Center Holds: Burr, Jay, and Moderation | |
Removal: Red and Black | |
Chapter 8 p. 111 | |
Misdemeanors in Kentucky and Tennessee | |
Secession, Filibustering, and James Wilkinson | |
Washington Copes with Secession | |
The French Incite Secession and Filibustering | |
George Rogers Clark: Frustrated Filibuster | |
Chapter 9 p. 127 | |
Filibustering as Policy, Glory, or Adventure | |
Wilkinson and Wayne Hamilton and Wilkinson | |
Hamilton's Will | |
Strict Construction Burr and Disunion | |
Chapter 10 p. 147 | |
Washington, Western Pennsylvania, and Secession | |
Erring Sisters and Their Siblings | |
Albert Gallatin and Secession | |
Riots and Reaction | |
Braddock's Field and Washington's March | |
A Tempest in a Teapot? | |
Georges Collot Burr, Gallatin, and the Election of 1800 | |
Gallatin Attempts to Keep Two Friends | |
Chapter 11 p. 172 | |
Character, Economic Interest, and Foreign Policy | |
The Quasi-War and the Black Speech | |
Private War and Private Embarrassments | |
Part 3 In the Wake of the Hurricane | p. 183 |
Chapter 12 p. 185 | |
Clamor and Retreat | |
Sanctuary | |
The Truxtons | |
The General The Biddles Come to the Rescue | |
Chapter 13 p. 195 | |
Southern Hospitality | |
Gin, Green Seed, and Empire | |
Patriotic Gratitude and Yankee Ingenuity | |
The Attractions of Florida | |
The Presences of History | |
Three Generations of McIntoshes and Slavery | |
Family Southern Communications | |
Chapter 14 p. 214 | |
Fort George | |
Don Juan McQueen | |
Bowles, Slavery, and McQueen John Houstoun McIntosh | |
Caballing in the Carolinas with the Scots Virginia Complications | |
Part 4 The Great Valley | p. 231 |
Chapter 15 p. 233 | |
Burr and the Middle Ground | |
Among the Stockbridges Joseph Brant | |
Chapter 16 p. 242 | |
"A Country of Slaves" | |
Turning Oglethorpe Around | |
Seminole Carondelet and Servile Insurrection | |
Militia Matters | |
Calming Mr. Jefferson | |
Part 5 The Expedition | p. 255 |
Chapter 17 p. 257 | |
Intentions, 1800-1805 | |
Absurd Reports | |
The Manic Burr Goes West On to the Hermitage, New Orleans, and the Clergy | |
Casa Calvo, Grand Pre, Morales, and Recruiting | |
La Chaumiere du Prairie | |
Wilkinson's Fidelity Wilkinson's Estimates | |
Jefferson Recomputes the Odds | |
Chapter 18 p. 283 | |
Whose Valley? | |
A Garden with a Past | |
Burr's Lost Paradise Empire, Sanctuary, and Speculation | |
Chapter 19 p. 292 | |
Mr. Jefferson's Colleagues | |
Neutral Ground | |
In the Shoes of Thomas Adam Smith | |
George Morgan for the Prosecution | |
John Adams and the "Lying Spirit" of the Virginians | |
Meanwhile, in Bruinsburg Captain Hooke | |
Chapter 20 p. 305 | |
The Thinking Part of the People | |
The Jury Convenes at Jefferson College Senator Plumer Reports | |
The Charge of Filibustering | |
Mr. Jefferson's Private Armies and the Opinion of Another Jury | |
The Mississipi Federalists Silas Dinsmoor | |
Robert Ashley | |
Thomas Rodney and Old '76 John McKee | |
Chapter 21 p. 333 | |
The Wheeled Cell and the Trial | |
Rousing the Neighborhood Benjamin Hawkins | |
The Case of Bollmann | |
Elijah Clarke and His Trans-Oconee Ruins | |
Fort Wilkinson | |
Chapter 22 p. 347 | |
Precedents and Justice | |
Recalling a Real Rebellion Consolation Prizes | |
French Accessories | |
Chapter 23 p. 359 | |
Groundsprings of Wrath | |
West by Southwest | |
Cherchez les Femmes | |
Postscript | p. 371 |
John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Other Women | |
James Parton Attempts a Rescue | |
The Falling Man | |
Adams, Abolition, and Jefferson | |
Adams and Jefferson | |
The Worst and the Best | |
Appendix Biases and Apologies | p. 389 |
Notes | p. 395 |
Bibliography | p. 435 |
Index | p. 453 |