Born in 1756, Burr rose to political fame when he ran for president under the Democratic-Republicans in the election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson and Burr tied in the election, so the House of Representatives had to decide Jefferson as President and Burr as Vice President. As President, Jefferson found himself drastically different from Burr and wrote that there had been "little intimacy" and "little association" between himself and Burr. In 1804, Burr ran for governor of New York, but lost, blaming Alexander Hamilton's political machinations. They proceeded to duel and Burr fatally shot Hamilton while he was still Vice President. He remains today the only vice president who has killed someone and remained in office.
However, before he became Vice President, he served in the Senate, advocating for women's rights, freedom of the press, and helped Tennessee achieve statehood. His feminist views were fairly advanced compared to his colleagues, admiring Mary Wollstonecraft's work.
Yet after leaving office as Vice President, he was beginning to be accused of treason. His murder of Hamilton left him incredibly unpopular in the East, so he supposedly sought to achieve political status in the West. He was accused of plotting to entice the Western States to leave the Union as he colonized the West and become a separate country. Essentially, he tried to divide the United States into two countries. He was also accused of conspiring to start a war against Spain in order to acquire the Western territory and Mexico.
He was tried in the Supreme Court for treason and found not guilty by Chief Justice John Marshall for lack of evidence. Marshall believed that without evidence of treasonous actions, Burr could not be convicted of treason. He reached the ultimate low of his political career after the trial and spend the following four years in self-imposed exile in Europe.
The question that remains today is whether Burr should be studied in schools as a villainous figure. Despite accusations of treasonous behavior, Burr did help Tennessee achieve statehood when he served in the Senate and he advocated for women's rights and freedom of the press. Is it just for Burr to be painted solely as a villainous figure?
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/30/liberals-love-alexander-hamilton-but-aaron-burr-was-a-real-progressive-hero/
https://www.history.com/news/aaron-burrs-notorious-treason-case
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-great-trial-that-tested-the-constitutions-treason-clause
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Aaron_Burr.htm
This is a super thorough blog post and I learned so much that I didn't know about Aaron Burr. I think that in general school and a lot of historical reenactments paint him as the villain because it is really easy to paint a murderer as a villain. But, I do think that schools should talk about how he did advocate for women's rights, which is very important as most people back then did not advocate for women's rights at all. If I knew that he had, I probably wouldn't have hated him as much as I did. On a more macro level, it's important to be aware of the knowledge we create or the epistemology of how we reproduce events that have happened in our history because it affects the perception people have and how we can view people of certain races or identities.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really well written blog post. I learned a lot about Burr, for instance about his feminist views, fight for freedom of press and his contributions to Tennessee's statehood. I think this shows how a lot of information about a person is omitted to help better paint an image of a villain, rather than that of a whole complete person. I think that at times that it seems easier to paint a person as a villain because it is simple to see someone as just bad, rather than have to evaluate both the good and bad a person has done.
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