New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Aaron Burr

Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List

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United States CapitolAccording to a Washington Post report in the early years of the American republic over 1,700 Congressional representatives, Senators and Congressmen owned enslaved people. Despite a very clear conflict of interest they voted on the laws governing the country and the enslaved population. Some Representatives served in Congress long after slavery was finally abolished in New York State.

Five of the first seven U.S. Presidents were definitely slaveholders and at least five other later Presidents had family connections to slavery. Five of the Supreme Court Justices who ruled that African Americans had no citizenship rights under the Constitution in the 1857 Dred Scott decision were slaveholders. [Read more…] about Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List

Wall Street History: The Politics of New York’s First Banks

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Colonial currency from the Province of New York (1775)Prior to the American Revolution, there were virtually no banks in the United States. However, Alexander Hamilton, who was George Washington’s key advisor on financial matters, was familiar with the central banks of England and the Netherlands which had been key factors in the growth of the economy of those countries.

Unlike some agrarian Virginian politicians such as Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton believed that banking and credit was the key to the nation’s future. In 1781 he encouraged Robert Morris, the recently appointed Superintendent of Finance for the Continental government, to form the Bank of North America in Philadelphia. For a time up, until the British surrender of New York, this was the only Bank in the colonies. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Politics of New York’s First Banks

Trump Impeachment Recalls Aaron Burr’s Treason

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Donald Trump’s recent impeachment trial in which the President was accused of incitement of insurrection against the United States recalls to mind a case from more than 200 years ago.

In that case another New York politician, former Vice President Aaron Burr, whose personality was arguably not dissimilar from Donald Trump, was tried and acquitted of treason in 1807. [Read more…] about Trump Impeachment Recalls Aaron Burr’s Treason

New Historical Novel: Hamilton’s Choice by Jack Casey

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hamiltons choiceSince graduating from Yale Jack Casey has followed his love of American history to write historical novels with strong political themes.

In his new novel Hamilton’s Choice (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2020), author he offers a new answer to the 215-year-old question about why Alexander Hamilton met Aaron Burr in his fatal duel. [Read more…] about New Historical Novel: Hamilton’s Choice by Jack Casey

New Book, Programs Planned On Hamilton-Burr Letters

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letter exchanged between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron BurrFenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown has received funding for new programs and a publication based on 35 letters between American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr – the man who killed him in a duel in 1804.

These documents, although familiar to historians, have remained largely unknown to the public until recently when they were brought to light in the song “Your Obedient Servant” from the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. [Read more…] about New Book, Programs Planned On Hamilton-Burr Letters

Review: The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel

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the remarkable rise of Eliza JumelShe’s the woman who dueled with Aaron Burr and won. Move over Alexander Hamilton. The life of Eliza Jumel is a tale about a woman who pulled hard on her Yankee bootstraps to make good on the American dream.

Margaret Oppenheimer’s splendid book, The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel: Marriage and Money in the Early Republic (Chicago Review Press, 2015), takes readers along on a tale of intrigue, scandal and innuendo. Far from a steamy beach read featuring men in white wigs, this meticulously-researched tale paints a detailed and scholarly portrait of New York City and the way in which the city’s growth provided fertile ground for the ambitions of its heroine. [Read more…] about Review: The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel

Corset Portraits of the Loves of Aaron Burr

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Madame+Jume_RGB.BillOrcuttArtist Camilla Huey has a close to the skin interpretation of founding father Aaron Burr. While we know about his schemes to gain and keep political power, Huey tempts us to think about Burr’s gender politics. Was the former Vice-President who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, a full-fledged Lothario, or might there be another story?

The film “The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Binding and Corsetry”  premiering at Symphony Space at 95th St. and Broadway in Manhattan on Saturday, November 14 at noon offers a much more complicated and nuanced view of the man and his significant female others.  As Thomas Paine wrote in that revolutionary era “If we take a survey of the countries and the ages… we will find the women adored and oppressed. Man who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power,  in paying homage to their beauty has always availed himself of their weakness… at once their tyrant and their slave.” [Read more…] about Corset Portraits of the Loves of Aaron Burr

Aaron Burr Revised: Conspiracy, Treason and Justice

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Aaron Burr by John Vanderlyn in 1809. Courtesy of New-York Historical SocietyWho remembers Aaron Burr as anything more than Quick Draw McGraw shooting down the near-sighted Alexander Hamilton at dawn in 1804? But there is much more to the man, as Gore Vidal revealed in his intriguing 1973 historical novel, and other subsequent scholarship.

Two aspects of Burr’s varied career stand out in today’s world. First, his treason trial that closely examined issues of what counts as an act of war against one’s own government. And second, his relationships with a series of highly intelligent and accomplished women, reflecting his high opinion of the female sex and its potential. [Read more…] about Aaron Burr Revised: Conspiracy, Treason and Justice

The Albany Connections of Burr, Hamilton, and Schuyler

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Hamilton-burr-duelDuring the Revolutionary War, Alexander Hamilton served as an artillery captain and later a colonel and trusted aid to General George Washington. Colonel Aaron Burr also served in the Colonial Army and accompanied Benedict Arnold on his march through the Maine wilderness and his failed attempt to capture Quebec. Burr had been with General Richard Montgomery when Montgomery was shot and killed in Quebec. Later in the war, Burr was placed in charge of a regiment and his troops were stationed in Westchester County, New York. [Read more…] about The Albany Connections of Burr, Hamilton, and Schuyler