A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr

A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. By Arnold A. Rogow. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Pp. xvi, 351. Cloth, $27.50; paper, $14.00.) Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character. By Roger G. Kennedy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xix, 476. Illustrations, map. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $18.95.) As scholars speed away to explore the latest topics and employ the most fashionable of methodologies in American history, some of the oldest issues in our past remain popular and find a ready audience. Perhaps no subject has weathered the ebb and flow of academic fashion as has interest in our founding fathers. For much of the audience, of course, this has been nothing more than a national version of doing a family genealogy. Who gets credit for what? Who really wrote which document? Who was most influential at key moments in our past? However, there also has been interest in more universal, profound questions such as the measure of a man. What were these individuals really like? Demigods? Villains? Family men? Democrats? Racists? Misogynists? To a great extent, these are the topics of the two books being reviewed here. While both of these works explore old topics, both are clearly revisionist in their approach. In spite of their titles, they are really efforts to revive the reputation of Aaron Burr and to question traditional judgements about Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and other worthies of the day. All of these revisions have been around for some time, but they have not been explored as carefully or systemically as in these books. This new Burr is a curious and much more interesting character than the old blackguard popularly condemned for murdering Hamilton and committing treason by planning to divide the union in the West. Both Arnold A. Rogow and Roger G. Kennedy find Burr's childhood critical in understanding the man at Weehawken (site of the famous duel with Hamilton) and Richmond (location of Burr's last trial for treason). Position, power, and influence came easily to Burr, for he belonged to the distinguished Edwards family. His grandfather was none other than Jonathan Edwards of Great Awakening fame. He enjoyed all the benefits that a distinguished lineage granted in eighteenth-century America. Few doors were ever closed to Burr. Since his father and mother died early, he and his sister, Sally, were raised by an assortment of family members. Rogow finds it very significant that Burr was admitted without question to Princeton while poor Hamilton had to settle for Columbia. Ivy League admissions were apparently a factor in elite life even then! It was a war-actually the war: the Revolutionary War-that headed Burr towards Weehawken and Richmond. He saw combat early in the conflict, being wounded at Quebec, and distinguished himself on the battlefield at several other points. Jefferson, of course, found many reasons not to serve in the military, and Hamilton remained safely behind the lines as a staff officer tied to Washington. This last founding father-perhaps the founding father-deeply influenced Burr and his career. Feeling himself the social equal of Washington, Burr saw the commanding general at his worst-first in the retreat from New York in 1776 and then at places like Valley Forge-and was not impressed. With a soldier's dislike for incompetent commanders and staff officers who never suffer the consequences of mistaken orders, Burr never found himself included in Washington's orbit-understandable but a political hurdle after Washington became president in 1789. To oppose Washington, and ultimately his party, put Burr in the same circle as Thomas Jefferson, a most uneasy alliance of men who had little respect for each other. Rogow and Kennedy devote considerable attention to women in their stories-and rightly so. Rogow explores the painful ties between Hamilton and his mother, Rachael, while Kennedy spends a little time on Jefferson and Sally Hemings. …

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