Extract

Aaron Burr was a consummate opportunist who negotiated with foreign powers and even considered launching a coup against his nemesis Thomas Jefferson. Burr’s great struggle with Jefferson provides the narrative thread to David O. Stewart’s compelling account of Burr’s later career. Burr’s contempt seemed to be vindicated by the president’s failure to act decisively as Burr’s conspiracy to destroy the union unfolded through 1806. When the plot fizzled, thanks to Gen. James Wilkinson’s timely betrayal and peace with Spain, Jefferson unleashed the powers of the federal government in legal proceedings that ultimately led to Burr’s acquittal on treason charges in Richmond, Virginia, federal court, with John Marshall presiding. Jefferson’s badly botched legal effort to destroy Burr sullied his own reputation as a high-minded constitutionalist. Burr went into European exile, pitching his imperial plots as long as anyone would listen, returning to the United States in 1812 and practicing law in New York until his death in 1836 at the ripe old age of eighty.

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