Volume 31, Number 1 · February 2, 1984
The Revenge of Aaron Burr
By Gordon S. Wood
Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr
edited by Mary-Jo Kline, with Joanne Wood Ryan
Princeton University Press, Vol. II, 735 pp., $125.00 (both volumes)
Aaron Burr is no ordinary historical figure. What can one do with a man who skyrocketed to the vice-presidency of his country and almost seized the presidency; who challenged and killed the leader of the opposition; who organized a venture into the West perhaps to break up his own country or at least to dismember a foreign empire; who allied himself in this venture with a man, James Wilkinson, who was both the commanding general of his country's army and at the same time a paid secret agent of the foreign empire; who was eventually accused of sedition by this same commanding general, ordered seized by the president, chased, captured, and brought back to the East to stand trial for treason in the president's home state; who, though finally acquitted by the opinion of the chief justice of the country, who was the president's enemy, fled his country in disgrace, only returning years later to live out his life in obscurity.
Review, 3996 words
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