24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Chronicle of a Brilliant but Dangerous Man, February 25, 2002
This review is from: Aaron Burr : Conspiracy to Treason (Hardcover)
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, on in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.--Article. III. Section. 3 of The Constitution of the United States of America.
In Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason, Buckner F. Melton, Jr., a historian and professor of law at the Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has written a fascinating chronicle of the most sensational treason trial in U.S. history, and paints an intriguing portrait of one of the most charismatic American leaders of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Aaron Burr (1756-1836) is probably best known as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel at Weehauken, N.J., on July 11, 1804. He fought in the American Revolution, became a first-rate lawyer, and an important political figure, serving as vice-president of the U.S. during Thomas Jefferson's first term (1801-05).
Although Burr was acquitted in his trial for teason in 1807, the evidence strongly indicates that he was the ringleader in a plot to establish an independent nation in "the Western Country," the vast heartland that lies west of the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains.
The foreman announced: "We of the jury say that Aaron Burr is not proved to be guilty under this indictment by any evidence submitted to us. We therefore find him not guilty." Many jurors personally believed that Burr had committed treason, but in their opinion the prosecution had not met the burden of proof. Burr survived his journey into the hangman's shadow.
"The beginning of wisdom," said Socrates, "is the definition of terms." And the Burr conspiracy trial boiled down to the definition, or interpretation, of the Treason clause in the U.S. Constitution. What precisely is an "overt act" of treason? What did our founding fathers mean by "levying war"? What exactly is "treason"? When does a person cross the line from engaging in lesser crimes to committing treason against the United States?
Early in this book (p. 55), Melton writes, "No one will ever know what Burr was really up to." And a bit later (p. 112), he says: "Maybe Burr really had changed his plans, but maybe he was blowing more smoke. That was the problem; his stories were confusing, his actions ambiguous. No one knew, for sure, just what was happening, except for Aaron Burr." Finally (p. 235): "I don't pretend that book is the definitive story of the conspiracy or the trials of Aaron Burr, much less his full biography. I doubt that such things can ever be written. . . . The ultimate version--if anyone ever writes it--will be massive, full of fact and conjecture--yet it will still fall short of the truth, for the truth died with Burr."
Why then read Aaron Burr? Because the story of Aaron Burr is history written at its most engaging. Melton's vigorous narrative creates a portrait of one of the most dangerous characters ever to strut across the stage of American history. And his narrative provides a moral: "If we are to govern ourselves, we must remember the danger of a brilliant mind driven by frail human needs. That is why I have written this book--to provide a reminder."
Melton chronicles the intriguing struggle between the Federalists and the Republicans, and provides, in addition to Burr, fascinating sketches of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Wilkinson (the commander-in-chief of the military forces in the West), and John Marshall, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason, Melton vividly recreates an America of two centuries ago, and does so in a delightful literary style.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Book has subtle but major flaw(s), March 3, 2007
This review is from: Aaron Burr : Conspiracy to Treason (Hardcover)
I am going to have to differ with my fellow reviewers in their opinions both about Melton's book and about Burr himself.
Melton is an attorney and a law professor. He is also the author of another book that I enjoyed a great deal (and have reviewed also): "The First Impeachment." However, I don't feel that Melton's Burr Conspiracy book contributes much to the existing opinions on Burr, the Burr Conspiracy, or the trial.
While the book is well-researched and well-written -- and as a fellow historian, scholar, writer, book author (and also someone with a law degree), I understand the difficulties in doing that and appreciate Melton's work generally -- I have several complaints about this book, which I think are central to the issue of who Burr was and what he was up to. To be fair, my complaint is not solely against Melton but against his sources.
Before I get into my complaints, though, let me mention that the best discussion of the Burr trial I have seen to date is in volume 3 of Albert J. Beveridge's
THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL, VOLUME III ONLY.
Melton, as a practitioner of the discipline of law, knows how to find and use primary and secondary source material. However, in this book he relies heavily on Thomas P. Abernethy's
Burr Conspiracy, while almost completely ignoring Walter F. McCaleb's book
The Aaron Burr Conspiracy. In my view, this is a huge omission, since I feel that McCaleb's book is the most important book on the conspiracy, unraveling as it does many of the mysteries of Burr's intentions in that period.
Secondly, Melton also relied heavily on Dumas Malone's multi-volume biography of Jefferson
Jefferson and His Time (Six Volume Set, 1: Jefferson the Virginian, 2: Jefferson and the Rights of Man, 3: Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, 4: Jefferson the President, First Term 1801-1805, 5: Jefferson the President, Second Term 1805-1809, 6: Jeffe.... Malone was a man who excused a great deal of Jefferson's criminal behavior with a virtual wave of the pen and was strongly biased against Burr.
While Melton does also cite to various biographies of Burr (including Parton, Davis, Daniels, Todd, Lomask, Wandell & Minnigerode, and Parmet & Hecht -- nearly all the standard ones) and to Mary-Jo Kline's important collection of
Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr (as well as to much other solid primary source material), he does not cite at all to Roger G. Kennedy's ground-breaking, if rambling, book
Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character.
The reliance on Abernethy and Malone and the failure to study and include McCaleb and Kennedy constitute, for me, a major flaw in Melton's work. I believe this omission leads to a perpetuation of speculations and misconceptions about Burr, and since Melton has more credibility because of his credentials, this lends more weight to the inaccuracies.
Many Amazon reviewers note (as did Melton) that nobody will ever know what Burr's intentions were, that Burr was brilliant and charismatic, that "the best and the brightest are always fallible," that Burr lacked principles, that the bulk of Burr's letters never surfaced, that public opinion at or after Burr's trial "overwhelmingly concluded" that Burr was "up to no good," that the "evidence strongly indicates that [Burr] was the ringleader in a plot to establish an independent nation" in the West, and so on.
I stand alone in my disagreement with each of these statements. I believe Burr's intentions are discoverable. I am tired of hearing that Burr was brilliant and charismatic and lacked principles. Burr was intelligent and charming, but the brilliant/charismatic/unprincipled combination is grossly misleading and is used to justify all manner of unsubstantiated speculation and ill opinion about Burr.
The evidence does not "strongly indicate" that Burr was a "ringleader" in a "plot to establish an independent nation." Burr was merely one in a line of many -- including, by the way, Alexander Hamilton, and many others who were supported by Jefferson (both before and during his presidency) and his successors -- who wanted to "liberate" Spanish Mexico (and possibly even South American states), which included at the time, New Orleans.
Burr's plan was, if there was a U.S. declaration of war against Spain, to invade and liberate. He later said that Jefferson had sanctioned this plan. Absent such a declaration, Burr planned to make a (perfectly lawful) settlement north of New Orleans. The rest of his "intrigues" with agents of Britain and France were mere efforts to obtain funding (see McCaleb on this). He told those people what they wanted to hear.
Many before Burr had sought or obtained foreign funding for such expeditions(including George Rogers Clark, mentioned below, and U.S. Senator William Blount, whose enterprise some say VP Jefferson was secretly supporting). None were brought up on charges of treason. Some Westerners were even in Spanish pay -- including Jefferson's saw, James Wilkinson, and other eminent western citizens who were trusted by several Presidents -- and none were charged with treason.
But even if Burr did want to establish an independent nation, Jefferson himself had once verbally sanctioned the separation of the West from the East and the former's independence from the United States. On this issue, Burr was really on the tail end of a long line of westerners who wanted independence from the U.S. -- or who already felt they were independent. This included George Rogers Clark who was sponsored by then Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson on various covert missions, including an unlawful exploration of what was then the Spanish west. (See Kennedy's book.)
Much of Burr's personal correspondence apparently went down with his daughter at sea, but this was NOT MOST of his correspondence. There are 11 reels of microfilm of Burr's letters and another 16 reels that contain his orderly books, journal, and court documents.
Public opinion about Burr during the trial was not overwhelmingly against him. In fact, he had a tremendous amount of popular support, but with a President as your enemy, few friends will risk their careers to ally with you. Thus, friends who believed in him were afraid to stand up for him.
After all, Jefferson declared Burr guilty and ordered (or supported Willkinson in ordering) him to be taken dead or alive before his arrest or trial occurred.
While Burr may be the most famous of those Jefferson persecuted, Burr was not the only one whose life was ruined by Jefferson (or Wilkinson, for that matter -- and in this case, Burr had both men plotting against him, both knowing they were unjustifiably and illegally doing so). The full story of all Jefferson's victims has not yet been written, but for those interested in exploring the issue, I suggest David Leon Chandler's
The Jefferson Conspiracies: A President's Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis and Leonard W. Levy
Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side as well as Kennedy's book mentioned above. See also Richard Zacks
The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805.
Wilkinson's victims, by the way, included several assassinations and/or attempted assassinations.
Like the story of Jefferson and Wilkinson's many victims, Burr's story has not yet been fully written. While he was certainly a complex man, and while his "conspiracy" confusingly led in several directions at once, both the man and the story are discoverable. I hope one day to contribute further to these understandings, but in the meantime, I hope readers can separate fact from mere speculation or inference, including such as arises out of reliance on biased sources, which is the case in Melton's otherwise well-done book.
Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D.
Author of
The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America and Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious.
See also my legal articles:
(1) Aaron Burr and the Electoral Tie of 1801: Strict Constitutional Construction
(2) In the Absence of Democracy: The Designation and Material Support Provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Laws"
(3) The Dangerous World of Indefinite Detentions: Vietnam to Abu Ghraib
all available at www.jvbline.org.
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