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Aaron Burr Conspiracy

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Aaron Burr, the most misunderstood and complex of our founding fathers, is depicted in this book quite uniquely. Unlike Vidal's book, which too is interesting, this one doesn't victimize Burr, but tells it like it is. It suggests that there is a conspiracy outside Burr's conspiracy. A political frame-up from Jefferson himself to bring about the downfall of the Federalist Party. Trust me, if you're interested, this book in vital!

McCaleb's book has been out for years, but it seems that not everyone knows about it. For anyone who really wants to understand what Burr was doing in the supposed "conspiracy," this book is a must-read. McCaleb accomplished what few have done, either before or after him, in writing about Burr: refraining from unsupported mudslinging, he delves into the documents themselves and makes his own conclusions. Sometimes these conclusions are unfavorable to Burr, but, more importantly, they throw into relief not only Burr's actions, but those of President Thomas Jefferson (who publicly declared Burr guilty before he was tried and ghost-conducted the trial against him) and James Wilkinson (upon whom Jefferson relied, despite strong evidence that Wilkinson had been for years in the pay of the Spanish gov't).

I've owned a copy of this book for over fifteen years and the more I read about Burr, the more I appreciate McCaleb's work. His scholarship is excellent and no one since has surpassed him on this subject (the book was originally written in 1903 and was updated several times). His writing is wonderful, and his insights are invaluable.

Because of the fact that two lives were ruined among the many that were disrupted, strained and burdened by the complexity of political wars taken to the extreme, this "first political conspiracy" among our founding fathers legitimately deserves scruinty and re-evaluation in each generation for its lessons to remember. Far from an isolated event, scholarship shows that it was at the very heart of the interpretation and conclusion of whether, indeed, democracy can work, and how it can work to benefit participants, or to sacrifice them in a multiplicity of events that when bound together will inevitably produce either a good or a bad outcome, largely dependent upon the loyalty and dedication of the participants and their willingness to entertain different perspectives and personalities involved. By intuitive association, seeing both sides of the story is critical to appreciate the effects of "practicing politics" as a pagentry of honor to be played out upon a national public stage. It merely increases in complexity as the number of participants increases in recent history, and throws a cloud of suspicion over the entire process, generation to generation, the most recent examples, being, of course, JFK, RFK, and even the death of Martin Luther King, among others, perhaps, up to and including the most recent conspiracy/impeachment challenge of William Jefferson Clinton (though, presumably, no loss of life was apparent in that instance). The extent to which men (and women) may differ in political perspectives and express those within the culture of the times is the fulcrum upon which all of these political complications hinge, and have always, beginning with the Burr-Hamilton incident. The outcome in any a direct reflection of the cost/investment in political progress and our ability to accommodate the dimensions they require in hindsight, and to anticipate the future impact of similar divisions of political styles and the persons affected as much as it is upon the fabric of democracy itself. These cases form the "underbelly" of American democracy, its vulnerable parts that other government forms rarely encounter that much be accounted for in the United States due to the nature of its complex experiment that can become apparent only over time and may well determine its degree of success or failure ultimately as the ideal method of self government. It is as much a trial of America and her principles (in theory and in practice) arising from her Consitution and its history of effective performance to serve the needs of its citizens. Far from its idealistic roots, the obligation to assess its weaknesses can only help to strengthen the fragile pillars upon which it is built to insure the integrity of its structure without barnacles as the shining ship of state it professes to be and that we hold out to the world as the ideal form of government to insure total inclusion of all as stakeholders in a challenging venture of supreme importance to all. Beginning with this early period, the "line of legacies" that challenge democracy's foundation in all their complexity that together form the backside of the American family tree of political expression and its importance to the whole, exhibiting what might be called the "sole" of the democratic shoe, rather than its shiny, leather uppers usually presented complete with the holes of a nation that comes with the wear and tear of its arduous and endless journey bearing the weight of its existence as well as its choices.