From: diviney@milton.u.washington.edu (Pat Diviney)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.history,soc.history
Subject: The Incredible Colonel Burr  Part 1
Date: 23 Jul 92 03:10:51 GMT
Reply-To: diviney@u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

Here is a lecture given by one of my professors at the University
of Washington at Tacoma.  I thought the readers might find it
interesting.  I have transcribed it almost verbatim.





               PROFESSOR MIKE ALLEN'S LECTURE ON 

                ***THE INCREDIBLE COLONEL BURR***

     Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States.
Who was his Vice-President in 1800?   The *incredible* Aaron
Burr.  Jefferson's Vice-President, Colonel Aaron Burr or Vice-
President Aaron Burr or Senator Aaron Burr or Congressman Aaron
Burr, he had a number of titles.  He wanted to be, perhaps,
Emporer Aaron Burr but that's something we'll talk about tonight,
because no one even to this day knows what Aaron Burr was up to. 
He was too clever for that.

     Let me just preface all this with a thesis statement which
is very general, and that is that Aaron Burr's political career
was checkered with Constitutional crises.  If you study Burr's
career you can see some of the major Constitutional questions of
the early republic emerge.  These questions revolved around: 1.
the electoral college; 2. treason and the definition of treason;
3. Presidential prerogative or executive priviledge.

     Have you ever heard that before, executive priviledge?  In
referring to executive priviledge I'm not referring to Aaron Burr
who never became President, although he gave it his best shot.
I'm referring to Thomas Jefferson who became entwined in the
whole Burr affair and too was involved in the Burr treason trial.

     If you think this is some bit of arcane American past that
has no relevance whatsoever then I invite you to study the
Watergate hearings of the early 70's and the subpoenaing of the
Watergate tapes in which Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court in the case of U.S. v. Nixon bases his decision on
a precedent.  That precedent was the Aaron Burr treason trial of
1807.

     So, as we study Burr then we study a character whose life is
absolutely intertwined in American Constitutional history.  Those
are the three major issues that we will cover over the next week
because we are going to spend the whole week on Burr.  How many
of you have gotten started on the Burr chapter in "Levy"?  Go
ahead and be honest.  OK good, so you've got some idea of what
we're dealing with.

     Unfortunately for you, Levy assumes that you know a lot of
American history and I know this has been a problem for you.  So
what I'll try to do is just fill in the details and, I might add,
fill in a lot of the interesting stuff.  He's (Levy) so
interested in Constitutionality and Constitutional questions that
he leaves out all the juice.

     I'd like to talk about Aaron Burr by, first of all, telling
you a little bit about his career *before* he stood trial for
treason.  The strange case of Aaron Burr is peppered with
Constitutional questions.  John Adams once wrote of Burr,
"Ambition of military fame and ambition of conquest over female
virtue were the duplicate ruling powers of his life".

     He was widowed very early on and so he spent the prime of
his life in persuit of the opposite sex.  He eventually married a
couple of more times toward the end of his life.  Don't let me
get out of this lecture without telling you a little bit about
Aaron Burr in the 1830's because he was still around like 30
years after this all happened, in New York City.  He never went
to New Jersey though, because he was wanted for murder there and
that's part of the story of Aaron Burr.

     He was originally born in Connecticut and was a direct
descendant of Jonathan Edwards.  Anybody know who Jonathan
Edwards was?  He was a great Puritan leader.  So you talk about
being descended from the "original stock", Burr was a direct
descendant of Puritan immigrants.  So he had real good Whig
credentials.  He grew up in Connecticut in the 1750's and 1760's
and came of age about the time of the American Revolution.

     Indeed, he joined the Continental Army as a miltiaman, being
transferred as an militia officer into the Continental line and
he served with General Montgomery at the Battle of Quebec. 
Americans have always kind of had their eye on Canada, even
during the Revolutionary War.  Most Americans thought that Canada
could be the 14th colony.  So almost immediately, even before the
Declaration of Independence, there was an invasion of Canada in
1775 and this invasion was led by General Montgomery.  But
Montgomery was accompanied by a young Colonel, Colonel Aaron
Burr.

     Burr was his right-hand man in the expedition and they went
up to Quebec.  It was a disaster.  The weather was cold and half
their troops deserted, it was just an absolute disaster.  But
Burr stuck with him the whole time and they decided to go ahead
and attack anyway but were repulsed.  Any of you ever been to
Quebec City?  Absolutely incredible, it's a walled city on the
St. Lawrence River, an impregnable fortress as the Americans
learned.  So they assaulted Quebec, were thrown back and
Montgomery was killed.  

     Burr carried Montgomery out of Quebec city and back to the
American lines and so he was a hero.  He was decorated and
afterwards retired from the army.  So he got his taste of combat
and got enough combat so that he could launch a military career
based on that experience.  He then went back to Connecticut and
eventually to New York where he became an attorney and joined the
anti-Federalist party.  So he was an opponent of the
Constitution, in other words he was a Jeffersonian Republican.

     He worked his way up in New York politics and founded a
political club in New York City that was called the Society of
St. Tammany.  By the 1850's it was the Democratic political
machine in New York City, so Aaron Burr was an early and
important founder of the liberal movement in New York and
especially the urban wing of that movement that became Tammany
Hall.  I don't know whether you've ever heard of Tammany Hall
before but it was a very important political machine in the 19th
and 20th Centuries.  This organization "manufactured" votes for
Democrats and the Democratic party that we know today is directly
descended from the Jeffersonian-Republican party.

     So Burr was a good Jeffersonian-Republican, a good New York
Republican in other words a member of that party that was led by
Thomas Jefferson.  I know you're thinking, "If he was a
Republican how could he be a Democrat?".   That's why I say just
forget about the 20th Century, the names get mixed up.  At this
period of time if you were a liberal, you were a Republican.  
     Burr was one of the most famous of them.  He worked his way
up in New York politics and if you were going to be a New York
Republican you immediately gathered the enmity of the most famous
conservative New Yorker.  Who was that?  He was the right-hand
man of George Washington.  Alexander Hamilton.  Jefferson and
Hamilton were enemies, so too were Burr and Hamilton.  So
Jefferson and Burr had a lot in common even though one was from
New York and one was from Virginia.

     In 1800 when Jefferson ran for the Presidency, it was agreed
that Aaron Burr would be his running mate.  Although in those
days they didn't really have running mates, nor did they have
"tickets".  Most of the Republicans believed that Jefferson
should be President and Burr should be Vice-President.  The
beauty of that combination is that Jefferson is from Virginia and
Burr is from New York.  What better way to balance the "ticket"? 
Get a southerner and a northerner and that's how you win an
election.  The Jeffersonians, they were no fools.

     They put Burr on the ticket even though Jefferson didn't
trust him.  However they figured, as Vice-President he would be
harmless.  Because as we all know, as John Nance Garner, former
Vice-President of the United States once said.  Does anybody know
this quote? (affirmative reply)  Go ahead, please.  *"The Vice-
Presidency is not worth a pitcher of warm spit."*  

     He was Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1st and 2nd Vice-President. 
He had 4 or was it 3?  He went through a lot of them.  Anyway,
you farm these guys out to the Vice-Presidency and they can play
golf or whatever they do.  They are fairly harmless.  That was
the idea with Burr.  Unfortunately Burr was a little more
ambitious than that.  

     Now in order to understand the story you have to understand
the Constitution prior to the 12th Amendment.  Which is to say
you have to understand that in those days electors in the
electoral college didn't vote for a ticket, in other words they
didn't cast 1 vote, they cast 2 votes.  Both of those votes were
cast for the President and the idea was you voted for who you
thought was the best and then you voted for who you thought was
the 2nd best.  Then whoever came up 2nd best in the balloting
became Vice-President.  You see, the Constitution was written
before parties came into being.

     This is why Jefferson was John Adams' Vice-President.  In
early American history you sometimes see an instance of the
political opponent being the Vice-President and the winner being
the President.  Well that was a bad idea, you don't want to have
that kind of rivalry going on.  That's why they decided to run
Burr and make him Vice-President.

     The trouble was that each elector cast 2 votes, both for
President.  In the case of all the Republican electors then, they
would cast one vote for Jefferson and one vote for Burr because
they want Burr to be Vice-President.  In the election of 1800
there was a tie vote in the electoral college between Jefferson
and Burr.  This was because all those good, loyal Republicans did
exactly what they were supposed to do.  They each cast one vote
for Jefferson and one vote for Burr.  That's why we have the 12th
Amendment which provides for one vote for both a Presidential and
Vice-Presidential candidate who are on the same ticket.  But they
didn't have the 12th Amendment then.  The 12th Amendment is
sometimes called the "Aaron Burr Amendment".

     The problem turned out to be that in 1801 Jefferson and Burr
both had the same number of electoral votes, neither had a
majority.  What happens then?  It is thrown into the House of
Representatives.  A very interesting situation existed then, the
lame-duck Congress.  The Federalists had been booted out in
November but it wasn't inauguration time yet, obviously it can't
be inauguration time until you decide who's going to be
President.  

     So who serves in Congress in the meantime?  Have you ever
heard of a lame-duck Congress?  The old Congress that's been
voted out of office?  So all these Federalists were in power and
they got to play politics with which Republican was going to be
President of the United States.  They began to make deals and
Hamilton, amazingly, went over to Jefferson's side. 

     The problem, from Jefferson's point of view, is that Aaron
Burr didn't throw up his hands and say, "I do not want to be
President, it was never intended that I be President, I will not
serve if elected President, I defer to Thomas Jefferson."  This
is what he should have done.  Burr never did that.  He was
conspicuous by his absence during this whole affair.  Indeed,
when he did show up he was always patting somebody on the back or
shaking hands with somebody else.  

     In other words he was trying to play dirty.  He was trying
to defy the will of the majority basically.  He wanted to be
President.  He saw an opportunity that would get him to be
President through the House of Representatives.  Now that's a
long, convoluted story.  The only point I'm trying to make is
that Aaron Burr has already entered American Constitutional
history (the 12th Amendment).

Part 2 will focus on Burr's trip to the New Orleans Territory, his
arrest and subsequent trial for treason.  Stay tuned!
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