Not the Devil We Know

...A key error of the traditional view is its reduction of Burr’s motivations to rootless ambition and sardonic malignity...

...The ratification controversy of 178788 is a case in point...

...He agreed that Jefferson was the Republican choice for President, but was justly offended by the Jeffersonians’ assumption that he was inferior to their hero and refused to demean himself by declaring himself unworthy of the office...

...Isenberg cites these facts with no comment, apparently oblivious to the difficulties Burr’s stance created for him in the eyes of others...

...Rather, his legal ordeal was the product of President Thomas Jefferson’s suspicious vindictiveness...

...The loss of most of Burr’s papers in a tragic 1813 shipwreck (which also claimed the life of his only child, Theodosia Burr Alston) does not daunt Isenberg...

...She has grounded her book on extensive research, principally in the 1980s microfilm edition of Burr’s surviving papers, supplemented by other primary sources...

...The links between debates about political abstractions and the harsh realities of interest and ambition were powerful and persistent in contests over principles of constitutional design, republican government, and an increasingly democratic politics...

...Fallen Founder also shows how Burr— as New York’s attorney general, one of its two U.S...

...That precedent has governed all subsequent impeachment trials...

...senators, and a founder of the Tammany Society—played a pivotal role in developing both popular and partisan political activity at the local, state and national levels...

...The second problem concerns interpretation as well...

...In addition, it confirms characteristics highlighted in earlier biographies: Burr’s distinction as a practicing lawyer, his propensity to engage in risky speculations in land (a trait he shared with Washington, among others), and his habit of chronicling his life in startlingly intimate diaries addressed to women—starting with his older sister, then his wife, and finally his daughter...

...Yet Despite Fallen Founder’s numerous virtues, it has two related problems...

...Setting the record straight, the author seems to believe, requires trashing Burr’s traducers—but her rendering of their motivations is thin and unpersuasive...

...Burr meets the test in four or possibly f ive ways alluded to in Fallen Founder, but not drawn together to form a clear pattern: First, as an architect of popular and partisan politics Burr recast the nation’s political culture...

...Isenberg hints this is her view as well...

...Electors were to vote for two men, with the winner becoming President and the runner-up becoming Vice President— the theory being that both were worthy of the top job...

...Though many scholars and writers identify a blend of philosophical depth and political acumen as the defining characteristics of the Founding Fathers, Isenberg’s treatment of Burr suggests that we must broaden the term to encompass all who significantly influenced the development of the Constitution...

...To his peers and to much of posterity, Burr therefore seemed the kind of political leader history taught was most dangerous to liberty...

...When Jefferson and Burr tied in 1800, Jeffersonians (including Madison) felt Burr should defer to Jefferson...

...So Burr emerges as a key shaper of the Constitution’s language, structure and importance—even though he did not help frame or adopt it, or write major polemics on any side of the great constitutional issues of his era...

...Isenberg, co-holder of the Mary Frances Barnard Chair at the University of Tulsa, thinks otherwise...

...Fifth, when Burr mortally wounded Hamilton in their notorious 1804 duel, he may have had an impact on the development of American constitutionalism that he neither intended nor imagined...

...forthcoming, “The Founding Fathers Reconsidered” Nancy Isenberg seeks to change our image of a historic American villain...

...His skill at organizing public sentiment challenged the topdown model of political leadership favored by conservatives like Hamilton...

...In making her case for Burr as an honest man, a sincere patriot, and a pragmatic politician unjustly deprived of his rightful place in the American pantheon, she charges that the largely uncritical veneration of the Founding Fathers masks the complex, nuanced politics of the period and transforms fallible human beings into demigods...

...Third, Burr’s last major act as Vice President—presiding over the Senate’s impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase—was his finest hour on the national political stage...

...Burr established that an impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding governed by law and the rule of law, not a political process driven by political expediency...

...Isenberg demonstrates that while Burr may have sought to rebuild his career in the old Southwest, and may have listened to talk of disunion among the region’s residents, he was innocent of treason...

...Still, it seems a step too far to dismiss the force of political ideas as a source of the enmity exhibited by Burr’s adversaries...

...Second, Burr’s role in the election of 1800 threw into sharp relief the problems with the original Electoral College...

...a devoted husband and father converted to feminism by the brilliance of his wife and daughter...

...An account of Burr’s 1807 trial for treason and the murky dealings that inspired it is particularly valuable...

...GREATER ATTENTION to political ideas and realities would have bolstered Isenberg’s criticism of posterity’s uncritical adulation of the Founding Fathers— and her desire to reformulate who deserves the designation...

...The electoral ordeal of 1800-01 led to the Twelfth Amendment (a Hamiltonian brainchild), which separated voting for the two positions and in the process denigrated the Vice Presidency—elevating for a generation the office of Secretary of State as the best steppingstone to the White House...

...Hamilton was the most intellectually formidable defender of the Constitution as a national document creating a vigorous general government...

...Isenberg rejects not only the demonization of Burr but the glorification of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and above all Alexander Hamilton...

...She sees Burr as the noble patriot, the innocent victim of dishonest foes who hid their scheming behind their enduring fame as Founding Fathers...

...In other words, Burr is a Founding Father...

...One controversial episode exemplifies the limits of Isenberg’s approach: Her version of the notorious 1804 duel with Hamilton gives Burr the benefit of every doubt, resolving every disputed point in his favor...

...But Isenberg treats those ideas as rhetorical camouflage for the clash of interests and the pursuit of personal ambition...

...a military hero of the Revolutionary War...

...By contrast, Freeman’s treatment of the duel in Affairs of Honor shows both men trying, with middling success, to navigate the complex labyrinth created by the intersection of honor culture and partisan politics...

...Conventional wisdom vilif ies Aaron Burr as an amoral intriguer, a sexual adventurer, a dueler and killer, and possibly a traitor...

...The result is a convincing portrait of Burr as a son and grandson of great Puritan divines...

...Since Burr struck them as lacking interest in the contending ideologies of the day, they concluded that he was in the political game to serve only his own ambition...

...They are simply meant to indicate further aspects of the enigmatic Aaron Burr’s life and career that might be explored in building on the new foundation she has provided...

...It further reveals that the lingering suspicion and resentment of him animating many Jeffersonians, and the President himself, led to Burr’s marginalization as Vice President and the denial of patronage to his supporters...

...He is thought to have been planning a new treatise on constitutional government to supplant The Federalist, and Burr prevented him from writing that book...

...And her wellwritten revisionist biography does much of what she sets out to do...

...The fatal shot also prevented Hamilton from instilling in young lawyers his views on constitutional interpretation...

...Ideas dominated political debate in the early Republic— ideas about what kind of government the United States should have, what kind of politics would best undergird that government, and what policies that government and politics would produce to serve the general good...

...When the nation divided over ratifying the proposed Constitution, Burr was conspicuous by his silence, to the extent of disclaiming efforts to make him a candidate for the New York Assembly or for the state’s ratifying convention...

...Fourth, as defendant and as one of his own attorneys in his 1807 trial for treason, Burr helped to confirm the Constitution’s narrow definition of the crime and the standard of evidence to be used in treason trials—preventing later Presidents and government officials from using the threat of treason prosecutions against their opponents...

...Switching heroes and villains, however, does not increase our understanding of Burr or his times...

...Fallen Founder vividly presents a challenging picture of a pivotal period in America’s history...

...In the process, she denies herself valuable historical and intellectual tools for understanding, instead of merely denouncing, the antipathy of Burr’s contemporaries toward him...

...First, though Isenberg challenges the conventional wisdom about the early Republic, she adopts its rhetorical framework, transposing white hats and black hats...

...To be sure, some praised Burr as a serene pragmatist who, unlike his rivals, avoided becoming the prisoner of an ideology or system of political theory...

...A recounting of Burr’s role in the 1800-01 electoral deadlock (paralleling the arguments presented by Joanne B. Freeman's 2001 monograph, Affairs of Honor—oddly not cited here) similarly affirms that he was an honorable man struggling to vindicate his reputation...

...My caveats should not detract from Nancy Isenberg’s achievement...