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4.5
In David O. Stewart’s thrilling “American Emperor – Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America,” President Jefferson writes on P. 201, “Burr’s enterprise is the most extravagant since the days of Don Quixote.” (Simon & Schuster hardcover, 2011).Indeed, it’s hard to imagine even novelists John Grisham or John le Carre matching this true story’s plot for criminal intrigue, dark twists and brilliant turns, or creating such a cast of characters ranging from the intellectual Burr to a sinister American general on the secret payroll of the Spanish government, a cadre of wealthy backers and a band of hardened, whiskey-drinking frontier militiamen in pursuit of adventure, glory and gold. (The handsome, urbane Burr could a ride horse and shoot with the best of his backwoods followers.)Of course, the plot is not the author’s. It emerges entirely from the original imagination and daring-do of the inimitable Aaron Burr, a distinguished lawyer, veteran of the American Revolution, former vice president to Thomas Jefferson and the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in that infamous duel in New JerseyWhat David O. Stewart brings to this fairly-well known story is sterling clarity, no small feat in distilling one of the most complicated and still-controversial characters in American history. The author lets the compelling story tell itself in clear, sparse sentences, making the book a quick and enjoyable read.Burr’s illusive escapades ranged from wresting from the United States the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to invading Mexico to create an empire stretching around the Gulf of Mexico to Spanish-held Florida, which then reached from the Atlantic to the lower Mississippi.In negotiations with the Brits, the ex-VP of the United States asks London for a Royal Navy squadron to support his capturing New Orleans and to escort his still-phantom ships to Vera Cruz for his invasion of Mexico. If not, Burr threatens to give this historic opportunity to Napoleon Bonaparte and to restore French power in North America.Burr was finally arrested, tried and found not guilty of treason in a quirky jury decision that angered the prosecution, the president and the public, yet left the accused so tainted as a traitor that he protested the juror’s convoluted, truncated decision.The chapter on the trial, in the circuit court of legendary U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, is worth reading to see just how Burr escaped the jaws of justice as Jefferson’s attorney general is out lawyered by the former VP himself and his battery of high-powered legal help as well as Marshall’s stringently strict reading of the U.S. Constitution.The controversial acquittal of the hardy, hard-driven Burr and his colleagues, however, is not the end of his story.No more popular with his fellow Americans than traitor Benedict Arnold, the indefatigable Burr sails to Europe to purse once again British and later French support for his plan to set up his empire in Mexico. In the end he returns home broke and empty handed, practices law in New York City, marries again and continues his lifelong pursuit of women (he’s accused of adultery at age 77). If some label him an s.o.b., Aaron Burr was a fascinating s.o.b.In the last chapter of this succinct 306-page biography (plus bibliography, etc.), Stewart reviews the case against Burr as a traitor and weighs the pros and cons of his acquittal. He leaves the reader to render a verdict of guilty or not. He gives you his informed opinion as well. Written history doesn’t get much better than this.
