Nancy Isenberg. Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr. New York: Penguin Books, pp. xx + 540

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1 72 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY Nancy Isenberg. Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr. New York: Penguin Books, pp. xx This judicious and extremely well written biography seeks to redress the unfair disparagement of an intriguing figure. Aaron Burr has been negatively caricatured, his intentions distorted in countless studies of America s founders, both individual and collective, by midnineteenth-century enemies and more recent authors, including Joseph Ellis, whose work has been much lauded. Moreover, if history is said to be the discipline of context, the best biographies need to be contextualized with historical discipline. Professor Isenberg of the University of Tulsa does not overwhelm us with a tedious life-andtimes, yet effortlessly displays her mastery of New York and federal politics from 1791 onward. The national picture is tricky enough, but what happened in New York, a tangle of shifting individuals, alliances and coalitions, is impossible to understand without the author s sure-handed guidance. She never lets us forget how very corrupt and nasty competition in the new republic could be. To take one prime example, she offers a compelling and fresh new take on Republican Party politics in 1804, the period when that party was just beginning to gel. This is something most of us assuming a clear coalescence with Thomas Jefferson s historic victory in 1800 tend to forget. Jefferson s victory was muddied and muddled because he and Burr received an equal number of votes, and the Constitution had not anticipated a party system that would specify who was the presidential nominee and who was the vice-presidential. Hence the tie had to be decided early in 1801 in an unprecedented, complicated way by the House of Representatives. In Isenberg s account, Burr played an honourable role in that Byzantine process.(255-57) Isenberg s research readily surpasses that of her many predecessors, in part because she has unearthed letters not written by or to Burr, but by others who provide their perspective on Burr s motives Michael Kammen, review of Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, by Nancy Isenberg, Journal of Historical Biography 4 (Autumn 2008): 72-76, Journal of Historical Biography This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

2 REVIEWS 73 and actions, so often inscrutable to us. She has broadened the database and the historical context. If Burr took bribes on land deeds in 1799, so did Alexander Hamilton. In fact, what emerges with special clarity in this study is that unabashed land speculation was at the very heart of American politics during the first generation following Yes, Burr was involved and took some serious losses, but they seem modest compared with the huge hits taken by others even less prudent. Honour was nonetheless a meaningful part of the context in which these things happened for so many at the time, and especially Burr. As a student at the College of New Jersey (Princeton), he had written at length about honour, and when he held a military command in Westchester County, New York, in , he deeply resented so-called patriots who sought assignments that would enable them to plunder locals illicitly. That was scheming, which Burr detested. The famous rivalry and fatal duel between Alexander Hamilton and Burr inevitably takes a prominent part in Isenberg s narrative, which deals with the events with notable clarity. A patronage blunder by Hamilton inadvertently helped to place Burr in the United States Senate in 1792.(106) One almost has the sense that Hamilton never quite got over his mistake. From then until 1803 Burr would become the ceaseless object of Hamilton s attacks, attacks in which others increasingly took part. His accusers charged that Burr was devoid of principles and privately reckless (financially embarrassed ). Yet they recognized that he was personally powerful because he was capable of heading a popular party.(119) It is certainly true that Burr was far more populist in his approach than was Hamilton. Indeed, Burr genuinely sought to open greater socio-economic opportunities for the middle-class, in contrast to the far more elitist Hamilton. Burr knew all about Hamilton s extra-marital affair with Maria Reynolds in 1792, because both were politicians and lawyers practicing within the same tight orbit, and they were largely privy to each other s affairs. It would be Hamilton, however, who constantly provided innuendo about Burr as a libertine, an accusation that perhaps had some validity later during Burr s years as a widower, and in 1801 a scurrilous Federalist handbill reproduced in the book

3 74 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY identified Burr with Cataline, a notorious Roman voluptuary who seems to have had a seductive impact on young men and women alike.(222, , 410) It is true that Burr did attract serious followers among young men, but their devotions were professional, based upon admiration of Burr s style and what seemed to them his professional integrity. Isenberg makes this clear repeatedly throughout, just as she also illuminates (164) Hamilton s long history from 1779 onward of provoking duels until the fatal one in 1804 a selfdestructive phenomenon that has prompted previous scholars to believe that Hamilton suffered from some sort of death wish. (For the author s careful account of the notorious duel episode, see pages 256 through 269.) Isenberg deserves special praise for her meticulous care in reading all of Hamilton s extensive correspondence, and for showing how his phrasing varied to suit his recipient and his purposes. As she lucidly explains: Incongruously, Hamilton would turn Burr s moderation on its head and equate it with lack of principle (and in saying so mean moral principle) when he knew full well... that Burr was acting in predictable fashion for a New York office seeker. Hamilton s peevish characterization of Burr as a man devoid of principle obscures the fact that straddling parties was the way New York governors were elected at this time. (143) The author s treatment of Burr s famous filibustering plans in , and his August 1807 trial for treason in Richmond over which he was fortunate to have Chief Justice John Marshall preside, is once again a model of clarity in its handling of a very complex narrative.(351-63) Isenberg seems a bit too casual in excusing Burr s secretive schemes on the grounds that Burr s goals were widely shared and attracted much sympathy west of the Appalachians. Many others also hoped to make illicit incursions to rid North America of French, Spanish and Canadian competitors.(284-86) But it is most likely that Burr s primary object was to recoup his financial losses by acquiring speculative landholdings in Louisiana, and there is little evidence that he intended to capture and become the king of Mexico, as was widely alleged. Nonetheless, his actions were covert and to-

4 REVIEWS 75 tally uncoordinated with the federal government in Washington. Because John Marshall despised Jefferson, Burr was acquitted. Had a different judge presided, Burr might easily have been hanged as a traitor. Isenberg is particularly strong in demonstrating the needless miscommunication between Burr and Jefferson in , much of which she blames on Jefferson s dislike and mistrust of Burr. Jefferson does not come off very well in these pages, sometimes appearing frankly duplicitous.(364, 251) Isenberg repeatedly and explicitly characterizes Burr as a feminist because he so greatly respected the minds of his beloved wife and daughter, both named Theodosia.(55, 74-76, 81, 83, 243) All of his private journals were engagingly, sometimes whimsically, addressed to them, and he did adhere to radical views regarding female educational equality, ideas in which he was influenced by Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft. When the author insists that Burr was odd because he was the only founder to embrace feminism, (413) I have to pause when I consider the recently published, detailed correspondence between John and Abigail Adams. Isenberg also acknowledges that in Burr s middle and later years he seems to have seduced countless women and very likely spawned several illegitimate children. This is not quite feminism as we understand the term today. Burr does emerge, ultimately, as a genuine intellectual as well as a very gifted legal mind. He clearly had a philosophical bent and was treated as an equal by Jeremy Bentham when Burr spent time in London trying to figure out what to do next when his options had winnowed to a slender few. Burr definitely deserves to be considered a cosmopolitan and learned member of the American Enlightenment. I find the essence of Isenberg s ultimate assessment clearly on target. Minimizing Burr s achievements or the quality of his mind, merely reminds us how imperfect historical memory is. Burr not only possessed political genius, he was a popular organizer and active thinker, a busy legislator, and a man of progressive ideas. But he was also a man of his time, which meant that his financial speculation was what we would call unsound. (406)

5 76 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY In Fallen Founder we have a richly informative study of a figure who has fascinated many creative writers, ranging from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Eudora Welty to Gore Vidal. To appreciate what Burr has meant to American historical fiction, the reader needs to begin with the best historical biography. This is it. Michael Kammen Cornell University