Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 1756-1805 (Hardcover)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 443 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st Edition. edition (June 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374100160
• ISBN-13: 978-0374100162
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,847,726 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One vote away from the Presidency, April 9, 2006

By	trainreader (Montclair, N.J.) - See all my reviews

No historical figure could be described as an enigma more so than Aaron Burr, a colonel, lawyer, New York Legislator, U.S. Senator, Vice President, and the murderer of Alexander Hamilton. Although Burr had the advantage of coming from a line of presidents of Princeton, he lost both his parents early, and was raised by an uncle he had little feelings for. However, he was an extremely smart and ambitious youth, and made his way through education to become a distinguished soldier (except in the eyes of George Washington, who never trusted him) and a lawyer who practiced in New York. He was always aware of how important appearances were, so he lived far above his means, to the point of being in perpetual debt. Because of a combination of intelligence, ambition and fortunate circumstances, he found himself sought out by Democrat Republicans to be Jefferson's running mate against John Adams in the 1800 Presidential election. The truth was however, that Burr lacked any strong political views, and could have easily allied himself with the rival party, the Federalists. Burr, indeed had his ardent supporters (known as "Burrites") as well as arch-enemies (as Lomask points out, it's difficult to say when exactly Hamilton would fall into this category), not necessarily along party lines.

Burr attempted, as best he could, to keep himself above the struggles of the most powerful New York politicians, and he was, at first, uncontroversial enough to be nominated as Jefferson's running mate. However, because of a quirk in the electoral college (each elector had two votes), Aaron Burr received as many votes as Thomas Jefferson, placing the election between these two in the hands of Congress. Amazingly, Jefferson and Burr never spoke, but the Democratic Republican party asked Burr to announce that he would not serve if elected President, whereas the Federalists now supported Burr as the lesser of two evils (they thought Jefferson, who had served as Vice-President under Adams, would ruin the Country). Burr, playing the middle, refused to say anything, causing Jefferson, when he was finally elected after multiple votes were taken, to absolutely despise his Vice-President, to the point where Burr became a complete Washington outsider, even though he was supposedly the number two man.

Of course, the most notorious part of the first half of Burr's life was his feud with Hamilton, which arose from Burr's learning about a negative comment Hamilton allegedly made at a party concerning Burr's character (Burr was something of a cad) leading to, by far, the most famous duel in American History. And, if you read my review of Lomask's biography of the second part of Burr's life, you will see that the utterly bizarre life of Aaron Burr would become even more bizarre.

The subject matter of Lomask's two biographies, which are both quite good, cannot be more interesting. I do believe, however, that it's only a matter of time until we get a biography about this fascinating and strange man from a more top-flight biographer, perhaps Ron Chernow, who one would think would consider writing a book on Aaron Burr after his extremely well-received biography of Hamilton.