July 11, 2023 • 45 mins
On the 219th anniversary of the infamous duel, Author Ben Thompson and Professor of History Dr. Pat Larash discuss Aaron Burr, the American Vice President who was surprisingly quite a bit more badass than most people like to give him credit for.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. It is a cool, misty morning on
the placid shores of Weehawken, New Jersey, on July eleventh,
eighteen oh four. Decades of animosity, of political intrigue, lies, jealousy,
and treachery will now be settled here on a lonely,
(00:23):
dueling field, just across the river from New York City,
a well dressed man, a former United States District judge,
opens a leather case containing a matching pair of fifty
six caliber flint lock pistols. Two men take the weapons.
Each is a veteran of the Revolution, a war hero
hardened by battle. Each has laid their lives on the
(00:45):
line for the cause of American independence. They stand back
to back. One of these men is Alexander Hamilton, the
country's first Secretary of the Treasury and a founding father
who helped frame the Constitution. But I'm not telling his story.
This is about the other man, Aaron Burr, the sitting
Vice President of the United States, and the small crowd
(01:10):
watches anxiously as the two men walk ten paces, find
their appointed marks, and turn to face each other. The
next six seconds will change America forever, prase. The judge
calls for the duellists to present. Each man lowers his weapon,
takes aim, and fires. Hello and welcome back to Badass
(01:41):
of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I'm
here with my co host, doctor Pat Larish. Pat.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Welcome back, Hey, Ben, and howdy badasses.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
How was your Fourth of July?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You know, it was pretty cool. It was you know,
a lot of food, a lot of friends, a lot
of loud noises that scare pets at night.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
A lot of it was very patriotic. A lot of
patriotism happening.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
A lot of patriotism happening. Yes, if by patriotism you
mean eating veggie hot dogs with lots of condiments.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Sure that can be considered patriotic as far as I'm considered.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, Yeah, there we go. How was yours?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
That was great? It was great. And we had our
episode come out on the fourth of July that we
did on the Great American Badasses, and that was a
really fun one to do. I really enjoyed it was. Yeah,
And this week we decided kind of a couple of things. One,
we had had so much patriotism last week with all
(02:36):
of our you know, hamburgers and flame grilled steaks and
Core's light and veggie dogs. Fireworks, right, and fireworks and
all of that good stuff. This week, we thought maybe
we would do something a little different. Maybe we would
talk about a guy who was famous for a number
of things, but one of them being suspicions of treason.
(03:00):
We're going to go from full patriotism to suspicions of treason.
But it but pat It's not just because we are contrarians.
There's like a significance to why we're going to do
this episode today, right.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, it's because today, on the day this episode comes out,
it's the two hundred and nineteenth anniversary of an important
historical event, which is the Duel, the.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. And Aaron Burr
is an interesting guy because he is actually way more
badass than you'd think, and he has so much more.
There's so much more to his character than just that
he shot the former Secretary of the Treasury. And yeah,
(03:44):
we're gonna talk about that today.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And you know, badasses are human beings and the things
that makes them badass are the things that make them badass,
and the things that make them flawed human beings might
be different things, they might be related of the things
that makes some bad ass. And I think Aaron Burr
is someone who is famously bad ass, but then in
a moment of rage kind of torpedo their entire career
(04:11):
and legacy. And that's kind of a thing in this episode.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, and allegedly torpedo his entire career and tried to
create his own empire in New Mexico. And we'll get
to that. I think, let's start. Let's start, I guess
at the at the beginning. So Pat, there's there's one
thing that I most remember Aaron Burr for before Hamilton.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I guess, way before Hamilton.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, you probably remember also the milk commercial Got Milk.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yep, Yeah, there's this. This was back when Got Milk
commercials started.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Being a thing. And the guy in the Got Milk
commercial says Aarber.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Oh for ohoa whoa.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Hernber?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Okay, Yes, he was famous for being the topic of
a Got Milk commercial. And in that commercial, there's a
guy listening to a radio station. They have a call
in show and the trivia question is who shot Hamilton?
And that famous duel, and this was before Hamilton the Musical,
so not everyone on the street knew this particular fact, right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, it was like, you know, the million dollar question
on the radio, and then it cuts to the dude
and he's basically lives in an Aaron Burr museum. He's
got the bullet in the glass case, and he's eating
a peanut butter sandwich and his milk cup is empty
and he can't If he'd had milk, he could have
drank the milk and washed out the peanut butter and
said Aaron Burr correctly, but with a mouthful of peanut butter,
(05:44):
he can't get it out and he doesn't win the prize.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
So yeah, that was what Aaron Burr was famous for
back when that commercial came out, and these days he's
famous not for the gotten Milk commercial, but for being
in Hamilton the Musical.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But our portrayal of Aaron Burr for this podcast will
be entirely based off of the historical literature that we've
come across during our research.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Indeed, indeed, and maybe a little bit of our own imaginations.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, I mean, and also there is the fact that
he's kind of like one of the most famous murderers
in American political history. So you know, that kind of
is going to warm its way into the conversation a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So before we get too far, let's pause for a
moment or two. Hear a few words from our.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Sponsors, and we're back, and let's just pick up right
where we left off.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
So, yeah, so who is this guy? Who's this guy?
Before the famous duel? He was badass from a young age.
He's got kind of a hard luck story. His parents
died when he was two, so he was an orphan.
On the other hand, that didn't prevent him from getting
into Princeton at age thirteen. I suspect they were a
little more flexible with ages back then. He didn't have
(07:01):
to take the SATs, for example, they hadn't been invented yet.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
And you know, in.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
College maybe, I mean, I don't know, but I think
you did go to college earlier. I don't know about thirteen.
That does sound kind of doogie howser like, but I mean,
I guess for a lot of people, they were basically
going to die in a war somewhere between eighteen and
twenty five. So all the life expectancy, I know, life
expectancy was like twenty five years or something like that.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, different expectations, different life paths. And I also think
what they called college might have overlapped a little bit
with what we might consider more of a high school.
But yeah, be that as in Ah was admitted at
age thirteen as a sophomore, and so by whatever standards,
he was pretty advanced. He graduated at age sixteen Summa
(07:47):
cum laude with a law degree.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
That's the big one, right, Suma, that's the top of
the class one. Yes, I get the magnas in the
sumas mixed up. Magnus seems like it should be bigger,
but I guess Suma is well the highest.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, Magna with big praise. Summa is with highest praise,
like the summit of a mountain.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I forget. I forget that you speak Latin.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So yeah, so Simma cum laudi it's a big deal.
You know, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Simma cum laudi. Princeton's a big deal. And we should
say that he's from New Jersey, so Princeton's kind of
the local school. I don't know if that's like it
was probably still pretty hard to get into, especially for
a thirteen year old, but it was kind of down
the street from where he grew up.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
He managed to get in, he managed to succeed, and
at age sixteen, he graduates with his summa cum laude
and his law degree in hand, and he starts a
career as a lawyer in New York at age nineteen. Yeah, overchiever.
So when Aaron Burr is nineteen, that's around the time
when in the world, well, okay, in the American colonies,
(08:52):
you start having the shall we say, tensions between the
colonists and England. And these tensions get to a point
where okay, oh yeah, there's a war and the Battle
of Lexington and Conquered happens, and the shot heard around
the world is indeed heard around the world. Okay, not literally.
What is Aaron Burdo? He says, I'm going to enlist,
(09:13):
So he marches on over and he signs up to
fight against the British.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So far this is sounding very patriotic and very fourth
of July appropriate.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah exactly, or eleventh of July is the case maybe,
And you know, he has a meteoric rise through the
ranks of the army. He becomes one of the youngest
colonels in the Continental Army. This is like a pattern
forming here, right.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, colonel is a high rank too.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, and he.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Gets involved in the American assault on Quebec City. Now
this is a New Year's Eve thing, and this is
Quebec in the middle of winter.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And the Battle of Quebec is interesting, right, We don't
talk about it enough, but like, you know, the Americans
invaded Canada during the American Revolution and it was this
whole endeavor that maybe we'll talk about at some point
on the podcast in the future. But yeah, like Benedict Arnold,
that guy maybe you've heard of him, Like, he leads
a he leads an army up north to invade Canada
and they attack, They like launch a full on assault
(10:09):
of Quebec City on New Year's Eve in the snow,
in the cold, all of that, and Arnold is wounded
during the battle, and Aaron Burr is credited as being
like one of the three guys who ran to the
front to personally drag the wounded general out of the battle,
out of the gunfire and get him to safety.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And that's our boy, Aaron Burr. And also Benedict Arnald,
who most people know is like the treason guy.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, but he's he's more than that. And we might
talk about him at some point too, because he didn't
want to leave the battlefield when he got shot in
the leg attacking the city, and Aaron Burr had to
basically wrestle him off the battlefield because Arnold wanted to
get up and run back out there, and Burr was
just like, no, you're done. You gotta take a break.
You can't you can't even walk. You're gonna bleed out
(10:53):
if you go back out there.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Don't be a hero. You got to live for the
next day. So this is what's happening in Quebec City.
This is how they're ringing in the New Year. And
only about a few hundred American soldiers actually survived from this.
Aaron Burr obviously is one of them.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, because they marched from they marched from New York
all the way up through Canada, using like canoes and
stuff and yeah, and then they attack and it's a
defeat and they have to kind of walk all the
way back, being chased by the British the whole time.
And a lot of Americans end up being captured or
killed during this expedition. But it speaks a lot to
Aaron Burr that he survives this and that his commander
(11:29):
is Benedict Darnold. But it makes a lot of I mean,
it's it's a credit to Birr that Arnold gets out
of this too, because totally, Yeah, we're basically like acting
commander for the most Like, he's a senior officer now
after the general goes down and he's got to kind
of help his guys escape, and you know, they do,
and they get they get out of there, and he
gets back and he continues fighting in the war. This
guy's an American hero so far, so far. Yeah, he
(11:52):
actually gets transferred to George Washington's command for a while.
You've heard of George Washington. I've heard of him.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yes, And Erin Burr led a regiment in the Battle
of Monmouth, and he later fought off the British in
the amphibious invasion of Manhattan. And amphibious here we're not
talking toads and frogs. We're talking an invasion by land
and by sea. I think it's safe to assume this
was not an invasion by air because invasions by air
had not been invented yet so this is Erin Burr.
(12:19):
He's under the command of George Washington. And this sounds
like it could be cool, But this is a motif
that comes up from time to time in the life
of Erin BurrH. He did not get along with George
Washington and he was transferred again. So our boy, Erin
Burr finds himself in Southeast New York and garrison duty.
(12:40):
But he kept on with his bad assery.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I mean, it's kind of awesome that at some point
Aerin Burr probably told George Washington to get lost, right.
He probably said something along the lines of go after
yourself to George Washington, because it seems like like Washington
was kind of hurting for experienced officers and talented soldiers,
just really any warm bodies that could fill out a uniform.
(13:03):
So for him to like anger George Washington enough to
be transferred out of frontline duty. And this guy's an
experience vet, he's an experienced leader of soldiers. He's he's
led troops in Quebec City, He's led troops during the retreat,
he led troops at Monmouth.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
He's no slouch.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, you don't demote a regimental commander or like put
him out into into garrison duty in southeastern New York
without him angering you in some way. And I just
want to say that maybe there could be an argument
made it's kind of badass to piss off George Washington.
You have to have some serious guts.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I think, yes, serious guts, maybe a little bit of recklessness.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
He was kind of like a famous asshole from what
I understand, Like he pissed off a lot of people
in his life. He espoused a lot of the things
we talk about for badasses that he just went all
out and was like, yeah, that kind of attitude, that
kind of like ambitious like empire building at ititude. Sometimes
people the wrong way.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
So he somehow managed to get on George Washington's bad side.
He finds himself in Southeast New York and garrison duty,
and he nevertheless managed to keep on with his bad assery.
So there were loyalist guerilla fighters here and there and
British loyalists, and he dealt with that. And in addition
to the guerrilla soldiers, there was also a group of
(14:23):
about two thousand well trained British soldiers outside of New
Haven in Connecticut, and Aaron Burr did what apparently one
could do in those days, and he threw together a
bunch of people. A lot of these were Yalees. This
is a Princeton guy putting together a bunch of Yalies.
He's a new Haven.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
He joins forces with a ragtag bunch of about a
thousand volunteer citizen soldiers. There are just people pulled together
to form a makeshift militia and they fight off the
two thousand or so well trained British soldiers.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, and that is a thing that happened in the days.
You just raised the militia. Like, I don't know how
you managed this before social media. I can't consistently coordinate
like five people to get together for Dungeons and Dragons
every week. But yeah, Aaron Burr's just like, hey, let's
do a militia. Who are these people that kind of
just come out there and are like all right, cool, I'll,
you know, take the weekend off from my studies at
(15:15):
Yale to like fight the British while I'm out numbered
two to one, you know. But then when the battle's over,
they just go home. They're like, okay, well that was it. Later, guys,
I got to go back to school. I'm not gonna
be marching around fighting doing this more than once.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I wonder if for some of them it was like
defending your particular little hometown or your particular little area,
you know, like you were more motivated to do that.
And so one thing leads to another, and the Americans
gain their independence from the British crown and Erin Burr
restarts his law career. Remember how he had that.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Law degree, Prince in Law.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, Princeton doesn't even have a law school anymore. They
consider it a trade school. They don't do trade schools.
Oh no, I'm not making that. My wife went there.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
So Aaron Burr restarts his law career. He gets into politics.
We'll get back to that a little bit later. He
marries a woman named Theodosia Bartow Prevost, and she is
the widow of a British officer and she's ten years
his senior. And that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, go Erin Burr.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Right, yeah, yeah, So he marries Theodosia. There's nothing wrong
with that, But in those days it was highly unusual
for the woman to be much older than the man
in marriages like this. He was attracted to her intelligence,
her wit, maybe her political leanings also, And how did
the two of them meet. Well, back when the War
of Independence was going on, Theodosia was married to this guy,
(16:41):
Jacques Marcus Prevost, that's the British officer. But even though
she was married to a British officer, she was actually
on the American patriots side.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And hmm, this is interesting, right, Aaron Burr must have
been very convincing. Actually, this is a theme we're going
to keep seeing from Aaron Burr in the future.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Yeah, he's charming.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
He was very charming. He was a charming guy in
the eighteenth century. Women liked him.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, he was charming in a certain way. And
I know earlier we said he had a way of
putting people off, but when he could be charming, he
was very, very charming. So how did they actually meet.
Theodosia Barto Prevost is lending her house to secret meetings.
Who shows up there? Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette.
(17:26):
These are all big names and the American struggle for independence.
Her house was briefly headquarters for George Washington and three
guesses who else was president?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
At these secret meetings. Aaron Burr, Yes, yes, and she
must have found him charming, more charming than Lafayett or
Washington or Hamilton.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I mean, maybe not over Lafayette. I don't know, maybe
she didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But after the war they get married. Their daughter is
also named Theodosia, and Aaron Burr, honestly, by the standards
of his day, he was, you know, we could consider
him kind of a proto feminist. He got his daughter,
Theodosia a great education. I'm talking like a male level education.
She went to an all boys' school I guess it
technically wasn't all boys when she was there, and she
(18:13):
learned to speak four languages. She learned how to shoot
rifle from horseback.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
That's pretty rad, right, and like, yeah, he wanted to
make to make sure that his kid was badass and
had all of the appropriate skills of being badass.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yep, pass on the bad ass rey to the next generation.
So anyway, Aaron Burr is doing his thing, working on
his law career, his political career. He works his way
up to New York State Attorney General, and he actually
promoted racial and gender equality in his day. He publicly
advocated for giving people who were formerly enslaved the right
to vote. He was an abolitionist, and he was elected
(18:49):
to the Senate in seventeen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
All men are created equal, right, like, it was kind
of the thing they were fighting for.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It sounds like, yeah, Now, keep in mind, this is
Aaron Burr, and he doesn't always get along with other people.
And one of the people that he was currently not
getting along with was the first Secretary of the Treasury,
Alexander Hamilton, whom you might know from such great hits
as the guy on the ten dollar bill.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, and here's the story with Hamilton. Hamilton's a Federalist.
The Federalists were looking for a strong centralized government, which
at the time meant something different than it does today.
It just meant like, let's have a United States of
America instead of letting all the states do their own thing.
But Burr is a Democratic Republican, which is the party
(19:36):
that broke into both the Democrats and the Republicans, a
little bit more decentralized than what Hamilton was envisioning, a
little bit weaker, and he didn't like federal banks, you
know that kind of stuff. And Burr and Hamilton ran
against each other. So Burr ran against Hamilton's father in
law in the seventeen ninety one Senate election b one.
(20:00):
Hamilton was mad about it, but Hamilton's brother in law,
the son of the guy who was defeated, was also
mad about it, and that guy challenged Burr to a
duel pistols at don. It was Aaron Burr's first duel.
The one with Hamilton was not his first rodeo. He
had one before that. Yeah, and so Aaron Burr is
going to duel Alexander Hamilton's brother in law and dueling
(20:24):
the pistols at dawn thing that's illegal in the United
States at this time. You weren't allowed to duel. It
was forbidden. But Burr, who it's worth mentioning, had just
been elected US senator, was like, yeah, I'm in, Like,
let's do this, Like I beat your dad in the election,
and now we're just going to go. Let's do it.
(20:44):
Pistols at dawn, let's duel. That seems like an appropriate
response to this. And so they get together and you know,
the whole back to back ten paces turn and fire
with the flintlock pistol, which was not incredibly accurate, but
you know, you had to do it. You had to
defend your honor. If somebody challenged you to a duel
in this time, you couldn't just walk away. You had
(21:06):
to retain your honor in this scenario.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, it was part of the culture.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, right, exactly in this day. It wasn't like a
John Wick gunfight. Right. You had a flintlock pistol that
took you about twenty to thirty seconds to reload, and
you didn't reload it. You took the ten paces, you turned,
you shot your shot, and it hit or it didn't hit.
You didn't reload. The duel was over. Your honor was satisfied,
your opponent's honor was satisfied. Everybody was happy, I guess,
(21:32):
in the sense that anybody can be happy in a gunfight.
But you didn't just stand there and keep shooting until
somebody was dead. You fired one shot.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, you let off some steam. There's a non zero
chance that both people walk away, okay.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, And at the end of the day, you were
you were brave and you did the thing that you
had to do. So they do the ten paces, they
turn and fire first shot, miss it and Hamilton's brother
in law that shot is so close that it clips
a b off of Burr's jacket. There was a close call,
but he lived, He was uninjured, there was no damage, yeah,
(22:06):
no blood drawn. And that's Aaron Burr's first duel. And
that's how it ends. That's it. We both have done
our thing, and you know, now we can shake hands
and have a beer. And I'm not mad at you
for beating my dad in the US Senate election anymore.
I guess, I guess.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And that was the first Aaron Burr duel. And Aaron Burr,
aside from his button, survives. Both of the men survive,
but the Burr Hamilton rivalry doesn't go away. And remember
we had to specify that this was the first duel
of Erin Burr.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Right, and we kind of know where this is going.
And I want to say that this first duel must
have been in his mind at some point. Right. Burr
and Hamilton's father in law run against each other for election.
Burr wins, the father in law son gets mad, challenges
Burr to a duel and shoots lake. I mean, because
(22:59):
in this day you could they called it throwing your
shot away. But we've talked about a lot of people
walked away from these duels, you could just shoot your
gun up in the air or shoot it in general
vicinity of your opponent and basically miss on purpose. And
you guys would both miss each other on purpose, and
then you could go back to your friends and be like, yeah,
we had a fight, and like it was fine. You know,
(23:21):
Like I imagine this kind of like those high school
fights where nobody really wants to actually hit each other
and they just kind of stand around and push each
other and stuff. But you got to do it because
if somebody challenges you to a fight, you got to
fight them.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
It was kind of like that, Yeah you need to
save face, right, It was.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Kind of like that. And Burm misses and burs a
war hero. Maybe he wouldn't have missed if he didn't
feel like missing.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, he knows his way around a gun, even a flintlock, right.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
I mean, that's all he had was flintlocks, and so
he knew what he was doing with that gun, and
he didn't he didn't hit And maybe maybe he was
trying to kill this guy and he missed. We don't know.
But what we do know is that this guy put
a bullet so close to him that it knocked off
one of his buttons, and I think Burr was like, whoa,
what is that? Like, what was that all about? You know? Yeah,
(24:06):
b is a hothead and he does not forget stuff
like that.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, no, And it all comes back to Alexander Hamilton.
He's the Secretary of the Treasury. He's a powerful banker,
and he owns the Bank of New York. This happens
to be the oldest bank.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
In the United States. But the bank was well, they were.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Kind of discriminatory. Well, they tended to favor people who
were rich, they tended to favor federalists. And what Aaron
Burr did was maybe as a service to more people,
maybe as a way to troll Hamilton. Aaron Burr, like
you do, creates a rival bank. And Aaron Burr's bank
is Chase Manhattan. And yeah, I've heard of them.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I mean, I have a Chase card in my wallet
right now.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Uh huh. Yeah, they've got my mortgage.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So yeah, and actually, whoa, I'm doing the math on
that anyway. So Aaron Burr founded Chase Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love that. I love that he founded a bank,
uh huh, just to troll Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, I think
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Okay, so we were talking about the whole Aaron Burr
vice presidential thing, and he ran as Thomas Jefferson's vice
presidential candidate. So what happens here involves figuring out how
the electoral college worked before it worked the way it
does now. And the electoral college is pretty screwy even now.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yes's designed that way on purpose, like that's why they
do it.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, it was not designed to be simple. And in
the electoral college in these days, they wind up splitting
their votes. And okay, even though people went into it
thinking Burr was going to be the vice president and
Jefferson was going to be the president, the votes were
actually split for president. They were tied for president, and
Jefferson was kind of hoping that Burr would be chill.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
About its chill. Where's not a chill guy, Where's an
ambitious guy?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
No, he is not a chill guy. He's an ambitious guy.
He's a hothead. And then Alexander Hamilton starts bad. I
think Burr and Alexander Hamilton basically gets people, you know,
his federalist buddies to support Jefferson for president.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, okay, so the electoral College vote is tied Burr
and Jefferson, And the idea at the time was that
because they were on the ticket as Jefferson Burr, when
they tied for presidential votes would be the way it
was on the ticket. Jefferson president, Burr vice president. But
when they were going and kind of doing the thing
(26:28):
at the Electoral College, Burr was like, yeah, I mean whatever,
let's like, let's take this to the House of Representative,
Let's have the vote off, let's have the tiebreaker, because
at the time, that's how the constitution worked. And Burr
was like, actually, if we're going to be tied for
presidential votes, like, why don't I push my luck. I
either become president or I lose and I become vice president,
(26:50):
which is what you guys all want me to be anyway.
Why not?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
M h yeah, why not?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Why could that not happen? And in the way the
rules were written back then, these are the possibilities. But
on paper fine, but in practice this did nothing good
for the relationship between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. And
so Aaron Burr is vice president to a president who well, okay,
(27:15):
these two guys just mutually hate each other.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, and so that was like, what's the worst that
can happen is that Alexander Hamilton jumps on to Thomas
Jefferson's side because he, for a number of reasons we
have already enunciated, he he hates Aaron Burr, and so
he gets all of his guys to back Jefferson. Jefferson
when they go to the tiebreaker, wins by a humongous landslide,
(27:38):
and Burr blames Hamilton. And this is one more thing,
one more log on the fire. You're the reason I'm
not president, even though I wasn't supposed to be president originally.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
And this is why we have the twelfth Amendment, because
that amendment makes sure nothing like this happens again. And
so thanks to Aaron Burr, we've got that particular constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I love it. I love that this guy, like it
was such a pain in the ass they had to
make a constitutional amendment to get around his trolling. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
And the thing is, Aaron Burr wasn't the only troll
at the time though, because remember we've also got Alexander Hamilton.
He's still there and he continues to trash talk Aaron Burr.
He runs newspaper columns, which was about as close as
you could get to Twitter in those days. And the
two of them basically say, Okay, we're going to take
(28:32):
it outside. So they want to meet in a field.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
In New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Dynamic, we hawk in New Jersey. It's across the river
from New York City.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
But why New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, dueling is illegal in New Jersey, but the legal
penalties for dueling were not quite as severe in New
Jersey as elsewhere. It was slightly less illegal than some
other places, because because.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Nobody cares if you die in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Okay, on behalf of my co host apologize to all
of our excellent listeners from New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
And that's okay. I grew up in New Jersey. I
lived there until I was eight or nine. Anyway, they're
taking it outside now, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
They take it outside. They take it outside, specifically to
New Jersey. And this is July eleventh, eighteen oh four.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Hey, two hundred and nineteen years ago today upon the
release date of this episode.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yes, because you always want to celebrate the two hundred
nineteenth anniversary of events.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, that's the lucky the universary. Yeah, what's ones would
two paper I don't know what two hundred nineteen is styrofoam,
I don't know, classic explosives.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, there you go. So they're getting ready to duel
and someone has to provide the pistols that you duel with.
Alexander Hamilton is the one who actually provided the pistols.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
How do you decide on that? I don't know, Actually
is that the requester of the duel or do you
guys just have to get together before and be like,
I don't know, myn't I haven't maintained my pistols pretty well.
I got to get new ones, Like, yeah, yours are
much nicer, we should use yours. Yeah, or maybe years
are crappier. We should use yours because we'll be less
likely to hate each other.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, or yours yours are I don't know. Do you
do you want pistols that aim badly? Or do you
want pistols that aim well?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Like I mean, I think if you're providing the pistols,
you want one that aims well. And when that name's badly,
you just need to make sure you get the good one.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah, And so you do that thing like what is it?
Visini and the Princess Bride where except instead of like
poisoned drinks, it's like good pistol versus bad pistol. Okay,
how do you psyche your opponent into choosing the bad pistol?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Clearly I could not have put the good pistol in
front of you.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess it also depends on how
good an aim you think your opponent is, because, like Ben,
if in this highly unlikely scenario where you and I
have a duel, I would want you to have the
bad pistol with bad aim, unless that's assuming you're a
good shot, Like if you're actually aiming for me, I
would want to go wide. But if you're actually really
bad at shooting, maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how you would
do this. I don't know how you decide this, and
I don't know how to take the guns you're going
to bring with you.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Anyway, it's like the prisoner's dilemma, except different. Anyway, So
back to Dynamic Wee Hawk in New Jersey. They one
way or another selected their pistols, and Hamilton and Bird
did the thing where they stood backed back, walk ten paces,
you stop, you take aim, and you fire, and the
(31:21):
pistols provided by Alexander Hamilton were well okay. So Alexander
Hamilton's own pistol that he was using was, as you
were describing earlier, not necessarily great. It was about average
compared to the average accuracy of the guns and the
pistols at this time, In other words, not very good.
That's what happened with Alexander Hamilton's pistol just totally missed
(31:44):
the mark. Burr was unscathed. However, a tree twelve feet
away did receive a mild injury from a bullet, and
the pistol that Burr used, which was provided by Alexander Hamilton,
ironically was okay.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
So either the pistol was more accurate, or maybe Aaron
Burr somehow managed to compensate, or maybe he just got lucky,
or one way or another, Aaron Burr's bullet did find
as helm And you know our ip, Alexander Hamilton, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I me And Aaron Burr was a trained soldier, as
we said before, and he did have a very close
life and death encounter in a duel previously, so I
mean he might have had a motive.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, he had the experience, he had the training,
he had adrenaline going through his veins or something.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
And yeah, there's a lot of conversation about this, right
because we will never know Alexander Hamilton's intent in this duel.
We talked about throwing away your shot, which was where
you shoot and you miss on purpose in order to
satisfy your honor. And Hamilton missed by twelve feet and
(32:56):
so there's a chance that he did throw away his shot. Yeah,
we'll never know for sure because we can't ask him.
But these guns were also not particularly accurate. A flintlock
pistol at this time period is very rare for it
to be rifled, and so it's just a metal ball
kind of bouncing around a tube and shooting out. They
weren't extremely accurate, especially at the distance where you would
(33:17):
normally have a duel, so it wouldn't be that weird.
And even today with your adrenaline going and you know,
the barrel shaking and you pull the trigger funny or whatever. Like.
You know, if you've ever been to a pistol range,
it's hard to put one into the red from twenty
paces away if you don't have a little bit of
training and experience and using a firearm. So We don't know.
(33:39):
Did he miss did his gun malfunction? Was he missing
on purpose because he was just trying to satisfy his honor.
We don't know, and we'll never be able to ask him.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
And Aaron Burr, he had a lot of experience as
a soldier. He had training, maybe some combination of accuracy,
maybe a little bit of luck, maybe not.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Maybe it was all him. Be that as it may.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
He did not throw away his shot.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah. And look, this is like the most famous duel
in American history, right, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. And
you know, it's easy to think, oh, Hamilton, it's because
he's the guy on the ten dollars bill. But one
of the things that we can't overstate here is that
Alexander Hamilton was the former Secretary of the Treasury, and
(34:26):
when this duel happened, Aaron Burr was the Vice President
of the United States. He was still in office, like
he didn't have much to do because Thomas Jefferson hated
him and just didn't give him any work to do
or anything. But he was still technically the sitting vice
president when he killed this guy.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, these are high ranking public officials off.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
There in Weehawk and New Jersey having like an unsanctioned gunfight.
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, it's not later in their careers. This is while
they are in office. These were different days, man, you know.
But before we get into that, let's here a couple
ads from our sponsors. Okay, So, Ben, if you were
(35:13):
Aaron Burr and you found out that you just, oh
my goodness, you had just shot Hamilton, what would you do?
Would you hang your head in remorse and say, oh no,
oh no, I mean I hated his guts, but I
wanted to keep on butting heads for decades like Mega
Mind and Metro Man.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Or oh no, I was trying to throw my shot away.
I'm just such an awesome shooter that I couldn't not hit.
I don't know what happened, Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So what did Aaron Burr do? Did he preserve his
honor and turn himself in?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Aaron Byrd does not seem like a turn yourself in
kind of guy from what I understand of him so far.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Nope, he left town of course, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
And did he leave town to say the uncharted wild
of Canada or I don't know, international Waters. No, he
went right back to Washington, d C. And he just
kept vice presidenting all over the place.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
He went back to being the vice president to a
president that hates him because you know, you tried to
usurp the presidency from him at the last minute. Why
not why not continue surrounding yourself with people that you hate,
that hate you, and that you.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Hate and in addition to you serving the presidency, remember
he also shot and killed the former Secretary of the Treasury,
So you.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Know, yeah, perfect, Look, you walk back into DC like
a boss, like, dude, I killed the founding father. What
are you going to do to me? Right? What's the
House Committee going to do to me? Now?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
And there was stuff going on. Burr was in the
House of Representatives. There was a case going on where
Jefferson was trying to impeach Samuel Chase, who was at
the time the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And
it really was just a political thing. They didn't like
each other's political leanings, and Burr was.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Like, no, no, not cool, dudes. He called bullshit.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
And as it turns out, that's sent a precedent for
limiting the president's ability to pick a Supreme Court nominee
for purely political reasons. I mean, I don't know, it's
twenty twenty three. I don't know how well that's held up.
But whatever or is, I don't know. Am I getting
too political?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
No?
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I mean it definitely still happens. I don't think anybody's
going to debate that. But it's it is nice in
principle that Aaron Burr didn't want Supreme Court people to
be like politically motivated. I can totally get behind that.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
So back to eighteen oh four, Aaron Burr's term comes
to an end. He's done vice presidenting and okay, so
you might think, well, okay, maybe he'll go on to
have a spectacular career doing something else. He is a
little bit limited in his options. He did kill a
political rival, and yes, it was technically illegal in the.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
State of New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
It was also frowned upon by societ so his political
career was actually kind of tanked.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
He was still a lawyer, he still had a law degree,
He's still graduated Princeton and might be something to do.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Okay, So is that the path that he chose.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'm gonna guess No.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, this is where he supposedly allegedly tried to conspire
with the US Army Chief of Staff to basically break
off the Louisiana purchase and turn it into his own
little thing, an empire led by Aaron Burr, allegedly and
also allegedly maybe try to, you know, invade Mexico because
(38:35):
why not?
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Sure? Why not? Right? You hate Thomas Jefferson and he
hates you. He just bought a humongous chunk of land
from Napoleon. Why don't you install yourself as the emperor
of it and attack Mexico? Why not?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I mean, this is a guy who participated in an
invasion of Canada earlier in his career, So maybe he's.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Just trying to collect the whole set.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, didn't have to set the NAFTA set.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah yeah, And it wasn't really a successful invasion of Canada,
but still you know details, and so he, I mean,
I don't know how you do this. How do you
go about trying to create an independent Louisiana or what
or whatever? He wrote to various European nations allegedly requesting troops,
He requested money, didn't get much of a result. And
(39:24):
in all of this he just kind of manages to
be Okay. Eventually he does get caught and brought back
to Washington, d C. For guess what, treason. But the
thing is, at the trial, do you know who testified
against him?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I don't, probably Alexander Hamilton's dead, maybe Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
No one, trick question. No one testified against him. There
was no evidence. So that's why I kept saying allegedly
earlier it wasn't just a joke. Is this something made
up at the time by people who didn't like him
cough cough Thomas Jefferson, or was it just god level
trolling anyway, Thomas Jefferson level trolling, which is pretty high
(40:01):
quality trolling.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Alexander Hamilton from beyond the grave. You know, the Federalists
they weren't happy with him, right, Jefferson didn't like him
after you know, he killed Hamilton. That kind of rubbed
some of the Federalists the wrong way. You know, basically
everybody kind of hated him at this point, and they're like, yeah,
he wants to become the Emperor of Texas and attack Mexico. Okay,
(40:23):
so you know, there's two ways we can go with this.
If we're looking at this from the badass of the
weak perspective Number one is that he.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
He pissed off all these people and they were just
trying to like find an excuse to kick him out
of the country. Right. It's kind of cool that all
of Congress can unite and the Presidency and everybody like
eventually unites to just kind of eject you from the
country because you've pissed off that many people. On the
other hand, maybe he did try to do it, and
I think I could make a convincing argument as to
(40:52):
why it would be badass to try to single handedly
like unite all of the American lands west of the
Mississippi to like create their own empire and invade Mexico.
We don't know the truth, but it seems like he didn't.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Do this right now, and whatever the actual truth, seems
like one way or another, he qualifies as a badass.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, and then that's kind of the end of the
Aaron Burr story. Right. He was, you know, Princeton at thirteen,
a revolutionary war hero. He was the vice president. He
killed the former Secretary of the Treasury and a duel,
and after this he kind of goes off to Europe.
You know, at some point his wife passes away, and
after that he's in Europe and he just basically again
(41:33):
allegedly goes around sleeping with every woman in Europe. And
I don't know, like we can't prove that or anything,
but I do want to say, and this is very weird.
This is a very weird twist to this story is
that there is like a weird erotic novel that was
written in the eighteen hundreds, a couple decades after Aaron
Burr was dead. And it's called The Amorus Intrigues and
(41:55):
Adventures of Aaron Burr.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
That's such a nineteenth century title.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, and it's it's terrible. I mean, I read it.
It was written anonymously, probably.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
So then you've read this.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I looked through it when I was working on my
badass article on Aaron Burr, and you know, it was
maybe somebody who was bitter about Aaron Burr. Maybe it's
entirely just garbage. Maybe it's just you know, erotic fan
fiction about vice presidents. Says you do back in the
eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
As you do.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, but you know, he, regardless of how much truth
is behind this, he was a very charming guy. Apparently,
and so much so that they wrote a trashy beach
novel about him. And there was a trilogy of erotic
novels about Aaron Burr that were written in the seventies.
But I didn't get my hands up.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
You mean you mean the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
The nineteen seventies. Yeah, probably also not very good.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Well, but either way, I mean they don't need to
be good.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, And you know that's it's just the principle of
the idea that a sitting vice president of the United
States managed to inspire such things. There's a bit about that,
I guess. Yeah. So an excellent comment on one of
the articles I was reading about the Amorous Intrigues and
Adventures of Aaron Burr, and it said that, apparently Rule
thirty four predates the Internet. I love to that comment
(43:13):
so much. I feel the necessity to include it here.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
If something exists, someone somewhere has as written erotic novel.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
About it, so as you do. That's humanity for you.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Apparently it's very true of the earliest art. He eventually
goes back to the United States after all the drama
kind of blows over with the treason and the murder
and all that stuff, and he does settle down and
become a lawyer in New York and he lives happily.
Ever after he dies in eighteen thirty six, he's old, rich, happy,
and you know, he made some bad decisions. He made
(43:51):
a bunch of people really mad, and at the end
of it he lived in old to be an old
man and retired.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
So I don't know, Okay, yeah, sometimes that happens.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Some times that happens. Yeah, not that we're endorsing murder
or treason, but no, you know, two hundred and nineteen
years ago today there was a dual fought between the
vice president of the United States and the former Secretary
of the Treasury. And yeah, vice President one.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
And so that's the story of Aaron Burr. He's a
really interesting character. He kind of went from being an
American hero to being run out of the country as
a trader. But thank you guys so much for listening
to the story today. We really appreciate you sticking with
us and listening to these. We'll be back next week
with hopefully something less treasonous.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Hopefully.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, all right, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me,
story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and
music and sound design is by Jude Brewer. Special thanks
(45:09):
to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the Week is
based on the website Badass Ofthweek dot com, where you
can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If
you want to reach out with questions ideas, you can
email us at Badass podcast at badassoftheweek dot com. If
you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell your
(45:32):
friends and your enemies if you want as.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
We'll be back.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. It is a cool, misty morning on
the placid shores of Weehawken, New Jersey, on July eleventh,
eighteen oh four. Decades of animosity, of political intrigue, lies, jealousy,
and treachery will now be settled here on a lonely,
(00:23):
dueling field, just across the river from New York City,
a well dressed man, a former United States District judge,
opens a leather case containing a matching pair of fifty
six caliber flint lock pistols. Two men take the weapons.
Each is a veteran of the Revolution, a war hero
hardened by battle. Each has laid their lives on the
(00:45):
line for the cause of American independence. They stand back
to back. One of these men is Alexander Hamilton, the
country's first Secretary of the Treasury and a founding father
who helped frame the Constitution. But I'm not telling his story.
This is about the other man, Aaron Burr, the sitting
Vice President of the United States, and the small crowd
(01:10):
watches anxiously as the two men walk ten paces, find
their appointed marks, and turn to face each other. The
next six seconds will change America forever, prase. The judge
calls for the duellists to present. Each man lowers his weapon,
takes aim, and fires. Hello and welcome back to Badass
(01:41):
of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I'm
here with my co host, doctor Pat Larish. Pat.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Welcome back, Hey, Ben, and howdy badasses.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
How was your Fourth of July?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You know, it was pretty cool. It was you know,
a lot of food, a lot of friends, a lot
of loud noises that scare pets at night.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
A lot of it was very patriotic. A lot of
patriotism happening.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
A lot of patriotism happening. Yes, if by patriotism you
mean eating veggie hot dogs with lots of condiments.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Sure that can be considered patriotic as far as I'm considered.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, Yeah, there we go. How was yours?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
That was great? It was great. And we had our
episode come out on the fourth of July that we
did on the Great American Badasses, and that was a
really fun one to do. I really enjoyed it was. Yeah,
And this week we decided kind of a couple of things. One,
we had had so much patriotism last week with all
(02:36):
of our you know, hamburgers and flame grilled steaks and
Core's light and veggie dogs. Fireworks, right, and fireworks and
all of that good stuff. This week, we thought maybe
we would do something a little different. Maybe we would
talk about a guy who was famous for a number
of things, but one of them being suspicions of treason.
(03:00):
We're going to go from full patriotism to suspicions of treason.
But it but pat It's not just because we are contrarians.
There's like a significance to why we're going to do
this episode today, right.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, it's because today, on the day this episode comes out,
it's the two hundred and nineteenth anniversary of an important
historical event, which is the Duel, the.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. And Aaron Burr
is an interesting guy because he is actually way more
badass than you'd think, and he has so much more.
There's so much more to his character than just that
he shot the former Secretary of the Treasury. And yeah,
(03:44):
we're gonna talk about that today.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And you know, badasses are human beings and the things
that makes them badass are the things that make them badass,
and the things that make them flawed human beings might
be different things, they might be related of the things
that makes some bad ass. And I think Aaron Burr
is someone who is famously bad ass, but then in
a moment of rage kind of torpedo their entire career
(04:11):
and legacy. And that's kind of a thing in this episode.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, and allegedly torpedo his entire career and tried to
create his own empire in New Mexico. And we'll get
to that. I think, let's start. Let's start, I guess
at the at the beginning. So Pat, there's there's one
thing that I most remember Aaron Burr for before Hamilton.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I guess, way before Hamilton.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, you probably remember also the milk commercial Got Milk.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yep, Yeah, there's this. This was back when Got Milk
commercials started.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Being a thing. And the guy in the Got Milk
commercial says Aarber.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Oh for ohoa whoa.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Hernber?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Okay, Yes, he was famous for being the topic of
a Got Milk commercial. And in that commercial, there's a
guy listening to a radio station. They have a call
in show and the trivia question is who shot Hamilton?
And that famous duel, and this was before Hamilton the Musical,
so not everyone on the street knew this particular fact, right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, it was like, you know, the million dollar question
on the radio, and then it cuts to the dude
and he's basically lives in an Aaron Burr museum. He's
got the bullet in the glass case, and he's eating
a peanut butter sandwich and his milk cup is empty
and he can't If he'd had milk, he could have
drank the milk and washed out the peanut butter and
said Aaron Burr correctly, but with a mouthful of peanut butter,
(05:44):
he can't get it out and he doesn't win the prize.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
So yeah, that was what Aaron Burr was famous for
back when that commercial came out, and these days he's
famous not for the gotten Milk commercial, but for being
in Hamilton the Musical.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But our portrayal of Aaron Burr for this podcast will
be entirely based off of the historical literature that we've
come across during our research.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Indeed, indeed, and maybe a little bit of our own imaginations.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, I mean, and also there is the fact that
he's kind of like one of the most famous murderers
in American political history. So you know, that kind of
is going to warm its way into the conversation a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So before we get too far, let's pause for a
moment or two. Hear a few words from our.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Sponsors, and we're back, and let's just pick up right
where we left off.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
So, yeah, so who is this guy? Who's this guy?
Before the famous duel? He was badass from a young age.
He's got kind of a hard luck story. His parents
died when he was two, so he was an orphan.
On the other hand, that didn't prevent him from getting
into Princeton at age thirteen. I suspect they were a
little more flexible with ages back then. He didn't have
(07:01):
to take the SATs, for example, they hadn't been invented yet.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
And you know, in.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
College maybe, I mean, I don't know, but I think
you did go to college earlier. I don't know about thirteen.
That does sound kind of doogie howser like, but I mean,
I guess for a lot of people, they were basically
going to die in a war somewhere between eighteen and
twenty five. So all the life expectancy, I know, life
expectancy was like twenty five years or something like that.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, different expectations, different life paths. And I also think
what they called college might have overlapped a little bit
with what we might consider more of a high school.
But yeah, be that as in Ah was admitted at
age thirteen as a sophomore, and so by whatever standards,
he was pretty advanced. He graduated at age sixteen Summa
(07:47):
cum laude with a law degree.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
That's the big one, right, Suma, that's the top of
the class one. Yes, I get the magnas in the
sumas mixed up. Magnus seems like it should be bigger,
but I guess Suma is well the highest.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, Magna with big praise. Summa is with highest praise,
like the summit of a mountain.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I forget. I forget that you speak Latin.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So yeah, so Simma cum laudi it's a big deal.
You know, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Simma cum laudi. Princeton's a big deal. And we should
say that he's from New Jersey, so Princeton's kind of
the local school. I don't know if that's like it
was probably still pretty hard to get into, especially for
a thirteen year old, but it was kind of down
the street from where he grew up.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
He managed to get in, he managed to succeed, and
at age sixteen, he graduates with his summa cum laude
and his law degree in hand, and he starts a
career as a lawyer in New York at age nineteen. Yeah, overchiever.
So when Aaron Burr is nineteen, that's around the time
when in the world, well, okay, in the American colonies,
(08:52):
you start having the shall we say, tensions between the
colonists and England. And these tensions get to a point
where okay, oh yeah, there's a war and the Battle
of Lexington and Conquered happens, and the shot heard around
the world is indeed heard around the world. Okay, not literally.
What is Aaron Burdo? He says, I'm going to enlist,
(09:13):
So he marches on over and he signs up to
fight against the British.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So far this is sounding very patriotic and very fourth
of July appropriate.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah exactly, or eleventh of July is the case maybe,
And you know, he has a meteoric rise through the
ranks of the army. He becomes one of the youngest
colonels in the Continental Army. This is like a pattern
forming here, right.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, colonel is a high rank too.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, and he.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Gets involved in the American assault on Quebec City. Now
this is a New Year's Eve thing, and this is
Quebec in the middle of winter.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And the Battle of Quebec is interesting, right, We don't
talk about it enough, but like, you know, the Americans
invaded Canada during the American Revolution and it was this
whole endeavor that maybe we'll talk about at some point
on the podcast in the future. But yeah, like Benedict Arnold,
that guy maybe you've heard of him, Like, he leads
a he leads an army up north to invade Canada
and they attack, They like launch a full on assault
(10:09):
of Quebec City on New Year's Eve in the snow,
in the cold, all of that, and Arnold is wounded
during the battle, and Aaron Burr is credited as being
like one of the three guys who ran to the
front to personally drag the wounded general out of the battle,
out of the gunfire and get him to safety.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And that's our boy, Aaron Burr. And also Benedict Arnald,
who most people know is like the treason guy.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, but he's he's more than that. And we might
talk about him at some point too, because he didn't
want to leave the battlefield when he got shot in
the leg attacking the city, and Aaron Burr had to
basically wrestle him off the battlefield because Arnold wanted to
get up and run back out there, and Burr was
just like, no, you're done. You gotta take a break.
You can't you can't even walk. You're gonna bleed out
(10:53):
if you go back out there.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Don't be a hero. You got to live for the
next day. So this is what's happening in Quebec City.
This is how they're ringing in the New Year. And
only about a few hundred American soldiers actually survived from this.
Aaron Burr obviously is one of them.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, because they marched from they marched from New York
all the way up through Canada, using like canoes and
stuff and yeah, and then they attack and it's a
defeat and they have to kind of walk all the
way back, being chased by the British the whole time.
And a lot of Americans end up being captured or
killed during this expedition. But it speaks a lot to
Aaron Burr that he survives this and that his commander
(11:29):
is Benedict Darnold. But it makes a lot of I mean,
it's it's a credit to Birr that Arnold gets out
of this too, because totally, Yeah, we're basically like acting
commander for the most Like, he's a senior officer now
after the general goes down and he's got to kind
of help his guys escape, and you know, they do,
and they get they get out of there, and he
gets back and he continues fighting in the war. This
guy's an American hero so far, so far. Yeah, he
(11:52):
actually gets transferred to George Washington's command for a while.
You've heard of George Washington. I've heard of him.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yes, And Erin Burr led a regiment in the Battle
of Monmouth, and he later fought off the British in
the amphibious invasion of Manhattan. And amphibious here we're not
talking toads and frogs. We're talking an invasion by land
and by sea. I think it's safe to assume this
was not an invasion by air because invasions by air
had not been invented yet so this is Erin Burr.
(12:19):
He's under the command of George Washington. And this sounds
like it could be cool, But this is a motif
that comes up from time to time in the life
of Erin BurrH. He did not get along with George
Washington and he was transferred again. So our boy, Erin
Burr finds himself in Southeast New York and garrison duty.
(12:40):
But he kept on with his bad assery.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I mean, it's kind of awesome that at some point
Aerin Burr probably told George Washington to get lost, right.
He probably said something along the lines of go after
yourself to George Washington, because it seems like like Washington
was kind of hurting for experienced officers and talented soldiers,
just really any warm bodies that could fill out a uniform.
(13:03):
So for him to like anger George Washington enough to
be transferred out of frontline duty. And this guy's an
experience vet, he's an experienced leader of soldiers. He's he's
led troops in Quebec City, He's led troops during the retreat,
he led troops at Monmouth.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
He's no slouch.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, you don't demote a regimental commander or like put
him out into into garrison duty in southeastern New York
without him angering you in some way. And I just
want to say that maybe there could be an argument
made it's kind of badass to piss off George Washington.
You have to have some serious guts.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I think, yes, serious guts, maybe a little bit of recklessness.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
He was kind of like a famous asshole from what
I understand, Like he pissed off a lot of people
in his life. He espoused a lot of the things
we talk about for badasses that he just went all
out and was like, yeah, that kind of attitude, that
kind of like ambitious like empire building at ititude. Sometimes
people the wrong way.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
So he somehow managed to get on George Washington's bad side.
He finds himself in Southeast New York and garrison duty,
and he nevertheless managed to keep on with his bad assery.
So there were loyalist guerilla fighters here and there and
British loyalists, and he dealt with that. And in addition
to the guerrilla soldiers, there was also a group of
(14:23):
about two thousand well trained British soldiers outside of New
Haven in Connecticut, and Aaron Burr did what apparently one
could do in those days, and he threw together a
bunch of people. A lot of these were Yalees. This
is a Princeton guy putting together a bunch of Yalies.
He's a new Haven.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
He joins forces with a ragtag bunch of about a
thousand volunteer citizen soldiers. There are just people pulled together
to form a makeshift militia and they fight off the
two thousand or so well trained British soldiers.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, and that is a thing that happened in the days.
You just raised the militia. Like, I don't know how
you managed this before social media. I can't consistently coordinate
like five people to get together for Dungeons and Dragons
every week. But yeah, Aaron Burr's just like, hey, let's
do a militia. Who are these people that kind of
just come out there and are like all right, cool, I'll,
you know, take the weekend off from my studies at
(15:15):
Yale to like fight the British while I'm out numbered
two to one, you know. But then when the battle's over,
they just go home. They're like, okay, well that was it. Later, guys,
I got to go back to school. I'm not gonna
be marching around fighting doing this more than once.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I wonder if for some of them it was like
defending your particular little hometown or your particular little area,
you know, like you were more motivated to do that.
And so one thing leads to another, and the Americans
gain their independence from the British crown and Erin Burr
restarts his law career. Remember how he had that.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Law degree, Prince in Law.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, Princeton doesn't even have a law school anymore. They
consider it a trade school. They don't do trade schools.
Oh no, I'm not making that. My wife went there.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
So Aaron Burr restarts his law career. He gets into politics.
We'll get back to that a little bit later. He
marries a woman named Theodosia Bartow Prevost, and she is
the widow of a British officer and she's ten years
his senior. And that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, go Erin Burr.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Right, yeah, yeah, So he marries Theodosia. There's nothing wrong
with that, But in those days it was highly unusual
for the woman to be much older than the man
in marriages like this. He was attracted to her intelligence,
her wit, maybe her political leanings also, And how did
the two of them meet. Well, back when the War
of Independence was going on, Theodosia was married to this guy,
(16:41):
Jacques Marcus Prevost, that's the British officer. But even though
she was married to a British officer, she was actually
on the American patriots side.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And hmm, this is interesting, right, Aaron Burr must have
been very convincing. Actually, this is a theme we're going
to keep seeing from Aaron Burr in the future.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Yeah, he's charming.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
He was very charming. He was a charming guy in
the eighteenth century. Women liked him.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, he was charming in a certain way. And
I know earlier we said he had a way of
putting people off, but when he could be charming, he
was very, very charming. So how did they actually meet.
Theodosia Barto Prevost is lending her house to secret meetings.
Who shows up there? Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette.
(17:26):
These are all big names and the American struggle for independence.
Her house was briefly headquarters for George Washington and three
guesses who else was president?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
At these secret meetings. Aaron Burr, Yes, yes, and she
must have found him charming, more charming than Lafayett or
Washington or Hamilton.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I mean, maybe not over Lafayette. I don't know, maybe
she didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But after the war they get married. Their daughter is
also named Theodosia, and Aaron Burr, honestly, by the standards
of his day, he was, you know, we could consider
him kind of a proto feminist. He got his daughter,
Theodosia a great education. I'm talking like a male level education.
She went to an all boys' school I guess it
technically wasn't all boys when she was there, and she
(18:13):
learned to speak four languages. She learned how to shoot
rifle from horseback.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
That's pretty rad, right, and like, yeah, he wanted to
make to make sure that his kid was badass and
had all of the appropriate skills of being badass.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yep, pass on the bad ass rey to the next generation.
So anyway, Aaron Burr is doing his thing, working on
his law career, his political career. He works his way
up to New York State Attorney General, and he actually
promoted racial and gender equality in his day. He publicly
advocated for giving people who were formerly enslaved the right
to vote. He was an abolitionist, and he was elected
(18:49):
to the Senate in seventeen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
All men are created equal, right, like, it was kind
of the thing they were fighting for.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
It sounds like, yeah, Now, keep in mind, this is
Aaron Burr, and he doesn't always get along with other people.
And one of the people that he was currently not
getting along with was the first Secretary of the Treasury,
Alexander Hamilton, whom you might know from such great hits
as the guy on the ten dollar bill.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, and here's the story with Hamilton. Hamilton's a Federalist.
The Federalists were looking for a strong centralized government, which
at the time meant something different than it does today.
It just meant like, let's have a United States of
America instead of letting all the states do their own thing.
But Burr is a Democratic Republican, which is the party
(19:36):
that broke into both the Democrats and the Republicans, a
little bit more decentralized than what Hamilton was envisioning, a
little bit weaker, and he didn't like federal banks, you
know that kind of stuff. And Burr and Hamilton ran
against each other. So Burr ran against Hamilton's father in
law in the seventeen ninety one Senate election b one.
(20:00):
Hamilton was mad about it, but Hamilton's brother in law,
the son of the guy who was defeated, was also
mad about it, and that guy challenged Burr to a
duel pistols at don. It was Aaron Burr's first duel.
The one with Hamilton was not his first rodeo. He
had one before that. Yeah, and so Aaron Burr is
going to duel Alexander Hamilton's brother in law and dueling
(20:24):
the pistols at dawn thing that's illegal in the United
States at this time. You weren't allowed to duel. It
was forbidden. But Burr, who it's worth mentioning, had just
been elected US senator, was like, yeah, I'm in, Like,
let's do this, Like I beat your dad in the election,
and now we're just going to go. Let's do it.
(20:44):
Pistols at dawn, let's duel. That seems like an appropriate
response to this. And so they get together and you know,
the whole back to back ten paces turn and fire
with the flintlock pistol, which was not incredibly accurate, but
you know, you had to do it. You had to
defend your honor. If somebody challenged you to a duel
in this time, you couldn't just walk away. You had
(21:06):
to retain your honor in this scenario.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, it was part of the culture.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, right, exactly in this day. It wasn't like a
John Wick gunfight. Right. You had a flintlock pistol that
took you about twenty to thirty seconds to reload, and
you didn't reload it. You took the ten paces, you turned,
you shot your shot, and it hit or it didn't hit.
You didn't reload. The duel was over. Your honor was satisfied,
your opponent's honor was satisfied. Everybody was happy, I guess,
(21:32):
in the sense that anybody can be happy in a gunfight.
But you didn't just stand there and keep shooting until
somebody was dead. You fired one shot.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, you let off some steam. There's a non zero
chance that both people walk away, okay.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, And at the end of the day, you were
you were brave and you did the thing that you
had to do. So they do the ten paces, they
turn and fire first shot, miss it and Hamilton's brother
in law that shot is so close that it clips
a b off of Burr's jacket. There was a close call,
but he lived, He was uninjured, there was no damage, yeah,
(22:06):
no blood drawn. And that's Aaron Burr's first duel. And
that's how it ends. That's it. We both have done
our thing, and you know, now we can shake hands
and have a beer. And I'm not mad at you
for beating my dad in the US Senate election anymore.
I guess, I guess.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And that was the first Aaron Burr duel. And Aaron Burr,
aside from his button, survives. Both of the men survive,
but the Burr Hamilton rivalry doesn't go away. And remember
we had to specify that this was the first duel
of Erin Burr.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Right, and we kind of know where this is going.
And I want to say that this first duel must
have been in his mind at some point. Right. Burr
and Hamilton's father in law run against each other for election.
Burr wins, the father in law son gets mad, challenges
Burr to a duel and shoots lake. I mean, because
(22:59):
in this day you could they called it throwing your
shot away. But we've talked about a lot of people
walked away from these duels, you could just shoot your
gun up in the air or shoot it in general
vicinity of your opponent and basically miss on purpose. And
you guys would both miss each other on purpose, and
then you could go back to your friends and be like, yeah,
we had a fight, and like it was fine. You know,
(23:21):
Like I imagine this kind of like those high school
fights where nobody really wants to actually hit each other
and they just kind of stand around and push each
other and stuff. But you got to do it because
if somebody challenges you to a fight, you got to
fight them.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
It was kind of like that, Yeah you need to
save face, right, It was.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Kind of like that. And Burm misses and burs a
war hero. Maybe he wouldn't have missed if he didn't
feel like missing.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, he knows his way around a gun, even a flintlock, right.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
I mean, that's all he had was flintlocks, and so
he knew what he was doing with that gun, and
he didn't he didn't hit And maybe maybe he was
trying to kill this guy and he missed. We don't know.
But what we do know is that this guy put
a bullet so close to him that it knocked off
one of his buttons, and I think Burr was like, whoa,
what is that? Like, what was that all about? You know? Yeah,
(24:06):
b is a hothead and he does not forget stuff
like that.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, no, And it all comes back to Alexander Hamilton.
He's the Secretary of the Treasury. He's a powerful banker,
and he owns the Bank of New York. This happens
to be the oldest bank.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
In the United States. But the bank was well, they were.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Kind of discriminatory. Well, they tended to favor people who
were rich, they tended to favor federalists. And what Aaron
Burr did was maybe as a service to more people,
maybe as a way to troll Hamilton. Aaron Burr, like
you do, creates a rival bank. And Aaron Burr's bank
is Chase Manhattan. And yeah, I've heard of them.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I mean, I have a Chase card in my wallet
right now.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Uh huh. Yeah, they've got my mortgage.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So yeah, and actually, whoa, I'm doing the math on
that anyway. So Aaron Burr founded Chase Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love that. I love that he founded a bank,
uh huh, just to troll Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, I think
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Okay, so we were talking about the whole Aaron Burr
vice presidential thing, and he ran as Thomas Jefferson's vice
presidential candidate. So what happens here involves figuring out how
the electoral college worked before it worked the way it
does now. And the electoral college is pretty screwy even now.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yes's designed that way on purpose, like that's why they
do it.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, it was not designed to be simple. And in
the electoral college in these days, they wind up splitting
their votes. And okay, even though people went into it
thinking Burr was going to be the vice president and
Jefferson was going to be the president, the votes were
actually split for president. They were tied for president, and
Jefferson was kind of hoping that Burr would be chill.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
About its chill. Where's not a chill guy, Where's an
ambitious guy?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
No, he is not a chill guy. He's an ambitious guy.
He's a hothead. And then Alexander Hamilton starts bad. I
think Burr and Alexander Hamilton basically gets people, you know,
his federalist buddies to support Jefferson for president.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, okay, so the electoral College vote is tied Burr
and Jefferson, And the idea at the time was that
because they were on the ticket as Jefferson Burr, when
they tied for presidential votes would be the way it
was on the ticket. Jefferson president, Burr vice president. But
when they were going and kind of doing the thing
(26:28):
at the Electoral College, Burr was like, yeah, I mean whatever,
let's like, let's take this to the House of Representative,
Let's have the vote off, let's have the tiebreaker, because
at the time, that's how the constitution worked. And Burr
was like, actually, if we're going to be tied for
presidential votes, like, why don't I push my luck. I
either become president or I lose and I become vice president,
(26:50):
which is what you guys all want me to be anyway.
Why not?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
M h yeah, why not?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Why could that not happen? And in the way the
rules were written back then, these are the possibilities. But
on paper fine, but in practice this did nothing good
for the relationship between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. And
so Aaron Burr is vice president to a president who well, okay,
(27:15):
these two guys just mutually hate each other.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, and so that was like, what's the worst that
can happen is that Alexander Hamilton jumps on to Thomas
Jefferson's side because he, for a number of reasons we
have already enunciated, he he hates Aaron Burr, and so
he gets all of his guys to back Jefferson. Jefferson
when they go to the tiebreaker, wins by a humongous landslide,
(27:38):
and Burr blames Hamilton. And this is one more thing,
one more log on the fire. You're the reason I'm
not president, even though I wasn't supposed to be president originally.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
And this is why we have the twelfth Amendment, because
that amendment makes sure nothing like this happens again. And
so thanks to Aaron Burr, we've got that particular constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I love it. I love that this guy, like it
was such a pain in the ass they had to
make a constitutional amendment to get around his trolling. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
And the thing is, Aaron Burr wasn't the only troll
at the time though, because remember we've also got Alexander Hamilton.
He's still there and he continues to trash talk Aaron Burr.
He runs newspaper columns, which was about as close as
you could get to Twitter in those days. And the
two of them basically say, Okay, we're going to take
(28:32):
it outside. So they want to meet in a field.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
In New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Dynamic, we hawk in New Jersey. It's across the river
from New York City.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
But why New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, dueling is illegal in New Jersey, but the legal
penalties for dueling were not quite as severe in New
Jersey as elsewhere. It was slightly less illegal than some
other places, because because.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Nobody cares if you die in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Okay, on behalf of my co host apologize to all
of our excellent listeners from New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
And that's okay. I grew up in New Jersey. I
lived there until I was eight or nine. Anyway, they're
taking it outside now, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
They take it outside. They take it outside, specifically to
New Jersey. And this is July eleventh, eighteen oh four.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Hey, two hundred and nineteen years ago today upon the
release date of this episode.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yes, because you always want to celebrate the two hundred
nineteenth anniversary of events.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, that's the lucky the universary. Yeah, what's ones would
two paper I don't know what two hundred nineteen is styrofoam,
I don't know, classic explosives.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, there you go. So they're getting ready to duel
and someone has to provide the pistols that you duel with.
Alexander Hamilton is the one who actually provided the pistols.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
How do you decide on that? I don't know, Actually
is that the requester of the duel or do you
guys just have to get together before and be like,
I don't know, myn't I haven't maintained my pistols pretty well.
I got to get new ones, Like, yeah, yours are
much nicer, we should use yours. Yeah, or maybe years
are crappier. We should use yours because we'll be less
likely to hate each other.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, or yours yours are I don't know. Do you
do you want pistols that aim badly? Or do you
want pistols that aim well?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Like I mean, I think if you're providing the pistols,
you want one that aims well. And when that name's badly,
you just need to make sure you get the good one.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah, And so you do that thing like what is it?
Visini and the Princess Bride where except instead of like
poisoned drinks, it's like good pistol versus bad pistol. Okay,
how do you psyche your opponent into choosing the bad pistol?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Clearly I could not have put the good pistol in
front of you.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess it also depends on how
good an aim you think your opponent is, because, like Ben,
if in this highly unlikely scenario where you and I
have a duel, I would want you to have the
bad pistol with bad aim, unless that's assuming you're a
good shot, Like if you're actually aiming for me, I
would want to go wide. But if you're actually really
bad at shooting, maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how you would
do this. I don't know how you decide this, and
I don't know how to take the guns you're going
to bring with you.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Anyway, it's like the prisoner's dilemma, except different. Anyway, So
back to Dynamic Wee Hawk in New Jersey. They one
way or another selected their pistols, and Hamilton and Bird
did the thing where they stood backed back, walk ten paces,
you stop, you take aim, and you fire, and the
(31:21):
pistols provided by Alexander Hamilton were well okay. So Alexander
Hamilton's own pistol that he was using was, as you
were describing earlier, not necessarily great. It was about average
compared to the average accuracy of the guns and the
pistols at this time, In other words, not very good.
That's what happened with Alexander Hamilton's pistol just totally missed
(31:44):
the mark. Burr was unscathed. However, a tree twelve feet
away did receive a mild injury from a bullet, and
the pistol that Burr used, which was provided by Alexander Hamilton,
ironically was okay.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
So either the pistol was more accurate, or maybe Aaron
Burr somehow managed to compensate, or maybe he just got lucky,
or one way or another, Aaron Burr's bullet did find
as helm And you know our ip, Alexander Hamilton, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I me And Aaron Burr was a trained soldier, as
we said before, and he did have a very close
life and death encounter in a duel previously, so I
mean he might have had a motive.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, he had the experience, he had the training,
he had adrenaline going through his veins or something.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
And yeah, there's a lot of conversation about this, right
because we will never know Alexander Hamilton's intent in this duel.
We talked about throwing away your shot, which was where
you shoot and you miss on purpose in order to
satisfy your honor. And Hamilton missed by twelve feet and
(32:56):
so there's a chance that he did throw away his shot. Yeah,
we'll never know for sure because we can't ask him.
But these guns were also not particularly accurate. A flintlock
pistol at this time period is very rare for it
to be rifled, and so it's just a metal ball
kind of bouncing around a tube and shooting out. They
weren't extremely accurate, especially at the distance where you would
(33:17):
normally have a duel, so it wouldn't be that weird.
And even today with your adrenaline going and you know,
the barrel shaking and you pull the trigger funny or whatever. Like.
You know, if you've ever been to a pistol range,
it's hard to put one into the red from twenty
paces away if you don't have a little bit of
training and experience and using a firearm. So We don't know.
(33:39):
Did he miss did his gun malfunction? Was he missing
on purpose because he was just trying to satisfy his honor.
We don't know, and we'll never be able to ask him.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
And Aaron Burr, he had a lot of experience as
a soldier. He had training, maybe some combination of accuracy,
maybe a little bit of luck, maybe not.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Maybe it was all him. Be that as it may.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
He did not throw away his shot.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah. And look, this is like the most famous duel
in American history, right, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. And
you know, it's easy to think, oh, Hamilton, it's because
he's the guy on the ten dollars bill. But one
of the things that we can't overstate here is that
Alexander Hamilton was the former Secretary of the Treasury, and
(34:26):
when this duel happened, Aaron Burr was the Vice President
of the United States. He was still in office, like
he didn't have much to do because Thomas Jefferson hated
him and just didn't give him any work to do
or anything. But he was still technically the sitting vice
president when he killed this guy.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, these are high ranking public officials off.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
There in Weehawk and New Jersey having like an unsanctioned gunfight.
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, it's not later in their careers. This is while
they are in office. These were different days, man, you know.
But before we get into that, let's here a couple
ads from our sponsors. Okay, So, Ben, if you were
(35:13):
Aaron Burr and you found out that you just, oh
my goodness, you had just shot Hamilton, what would you do?
Would you hang your head in remorse and say, oh no,
oh no, I mean I hated his guts, but I
wanted to keep on butting heads for decades like Mega
Mind and Metro Man.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Or oh no, I was trying to throw my shot away.
I'm just such an awesome shooter that I couldn't not hit.
I don't know what happened, Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So what did Aaron Burr do? Did he preserve his
honor and turn himself in?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Aaron Byrd does not seem like a turn yourself in
kind of guy from what I understand of him so far.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Nope, he left town of course, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
And did he leave town to say the uncharted wild
of Canada or I don't know, international Waters. No, he
went right back to Washington, d C. And he just
kept vice presidenting all over the place.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
He went back to being the vice president to a
president that hates him because you know, you tried to
usurp the presidency from him at the last minute. Why
not why not continue surrounding yourself with people that you hate,
that hate you, and that you.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Hate and in addition to you serving the presidency, remember
he also shot and killed the former Secretary of the Treasury,
So you.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Know, yeah, perfect, Look, you walk back into DC like
a boss, like, dude, I killed the founding father. What
are you going to do to me? Right? What's the
House Committee going to do to me? Now?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
And there was stuff going on. Burr was in the
House of Representatives. There was a case going on where
Jefferson was trying to impeach Samuel Chase, who was at
the time the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And
it really was just a political thing. They didn't like
each other's political leanings, and Burr was.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Like, no, no, not cool, dudes. He called bullshit.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
And as it turns out, that's sent a precedent for
limiting the president's ability to pick a Supreme Court nominee
for purely political reasons. I mean, I don't know, it's
twenty twenty three. I don't know how well that's held up.
But whatever or is, I don't know. Am I getting
too political?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
No?
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I mean it definitely still happens. I don't think anybody's
going to debate that. But it's it is nice in
principle that Aaron Burr didn't want Supreme Court people to
be like politically motivated. I can totally get behind that.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
So back to eighteen oh four, Aaron Burr's term comes
to an end. He's done vice presidenting and okay, so
you might think, well, okay, maybe he'll go on to
have a spectacular career doing something else. He is a
little bit limited in his options. He did kill a
political rival, and yes, it was technically illegal in the.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
State of New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
It was also frowned upon by societ so his political
career was actually kind of tanked.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
He was still a lawyer, he still had a law degree,
He's still graduated Princeton and might be something to do.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Okay, So is that the path that he chose.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'm gonna guess No.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, this is where he supposedly allegedly tried to conspire
with the US Army Chief of Staff to basically break
off the Louisiana purchase and turn it into his own
little thing, an empire led by Aaron Burr, allegedly and
also allegedly maybe try to, you know, invade Mexico because
(38:35):
why not?
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Sure? Why not? Right? You hate Thomas Jefferson and he
hates you. He just bought a humongous chunk of land
from Napoleon. Why don't you install yourself as the emperor
of it and attack Mexico? Why not?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I mean, this is a guy who participated in an
invasion of Canada earlier in his career, So maybe he's.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Just trying to collect the whole set.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, didn't have to set the NAFTA set.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah yeah, And it wasn't really a successful invasion of Canada,
but still you know details, and so he, I mean,
I don't know how you do this. How do you
go about trying to create an independent Louisiana or what
or whatever? He wrote to various European nations allegedly requesting troops,
He requested money, didn't get much of a result. And
(39:24):
in all of this he just kind of manages to
be Okay. Eventually he does get caught and brought back
to Washington, d C. For guess what, treason. But the
thing is, at the trial, do you know who testified
against him?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I don't, probably Alexander Hamilton's dead, maybe Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
No one, trick question. No one testified against him. There
was no evidence. So that's why I kept saying allegedly
earlier it wasn't just a joke. Is this something made
up at the time by people who didn't like him
cough cough Thomas Jefferson, or was it just god level
trolling anyway, Thomas Jefferson level trolling, which is pretty high
(40:01):
quality trolling.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Alexander Hamilton from beyond the grave. You know, the Federalists
they weren't happy with him, right, Jefferson didn't like him
after you know, he killed Hamilton. That kind of rubbed
some of the Federalists the wrong way. You know, basically
everybody kind of hated him at this point, and they're like, yeah,
he wants to become the Emperor of Texas and attack Mexico. Okay,
(40:23):
so you know, there's two ways we can go with this.
If we're looking at this from the badass of the
weak perspective Number one is that he.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
He pissed off all these people and they were just
trying to like find an excuse to kick him out
of the country. Right. It's kind of cool that all
of Congress can unite and the Presidency and everybody like
eventually unites to just kind of eject you from the
country because you've pissed off that many people. On the
other hand, maybe he did try to do it, and
I think I could make a convincing argument as to
(40:52):
why it would be badass to try to single handedly
like unite all of the American lands west of the
Mississippi to like create their own empire and invade Mexico.
We don't know the truth, but it seems like he didn't.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Do this right now, and whatever the actual truth, seems
like one way or another, he qualifies as a badass.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, and then that's kind of the end of the
Aaron Burr story. Right. He was, you know, Princeton at thirteen,
a revolutionary war hero. He was the vice president. He
killed the former Secretary of the Treasury and a duel,
and after this he kind of goes off to Europe.
You know, at some point his wife passes away, and
after that he's in Europe and he just basically again
(41:33):
allegedly goes around sleeping with every woman in Europe. And
I don't know, like we can't prove that or anything,
but I do want to say, and this is very weird.
This is a very weird twist to this story is
that there is like a weird erotic novel that was
written in the eighteen hundreds, a couple decades after Aaron
Burr was dead. And it's called The Amorus Intrigues and
(41:55):
Adventures of Aaron Burr.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
That's such a nineteenth century title.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, and it's it's terrible. I mean, I read it.
It was written anonymously, probably.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
So then you've read this.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I looked through it when I was working on my
badass article on Aaron Burr, and you know, it was
maybe somebody who was bitter about Aaron Burr. Maybe it's
entirely just garbage. Maybe it's just you know, erotic fan
fiction about vice presidents. Says you do back in the
eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
As you do.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, but you know, he, regardless of how much truth
is behind this, he was a very charming guy. Apparently,
and so much so that they wrote a trashy beach
novel about him. And there was a trilogy of erotic
novels about Aaron Burr that were written in the seventies.
But I didn't get my hands up.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
You mean you mean the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
The nineteen seventies. Yeah, probably also not very good.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Well, but either way, I mean they don't need to
be good.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, And you know that's it's just the principle of
the idea that a sitting vice president of the United
States managed to inspire such things. There's a bit about that,
I guess. Yeah. So an excellent comment on one of
the articles I was reading about the Amorous Intrigues and
Adventures of Aaron Burr, and it said that, apparently Rule
thirty four predates the Internet. I love to that comment
(43:13):
so much. I feel the necessity to include it here.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
If something exists, someone somewhere has as written erotic novel.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
About it, so as you do. That's humanity for you.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Apparently it's very true of the earliest art. He eventually
goes back to the United States after all the drama
kind of blows over with the treason and the murder
and all that stuff, and he does settle down and
become a lawyer in New York and he lives happily.
Ever after he dies in eighteen thirty six, he's old, rich, happy,
and you know, he made some bad decisions. He made
(43:51):
a bunch of people really mad, and at the end
of it he lived in old to be an old
man and retired.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
So I don't know, Okay, yeah, sometimes that happens.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Some times that happens. Yeah, not that we're endorsing murder
or treason, but no, you know, two hundred and nineteen
years ago today there was a dual fought between the
vice president of the United States and the former Secretary
of the Treasury. And yeah, vice President one.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
And so that's the story of Aaron Burr. He's a
really interesting character. He kind of went from being an
American hero to being run out of the country as
a trader. But thank you guys so much for listening
to the story today. We really appreciate you sticking with
us and listening to these. We'll be back next week
with hopefully something less treasonous.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Hopefully.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, all right, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me,
story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and
music and sound design is by Jude Brewer. Special thanks
(45:09):
to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the Week is
based on the website Badass Ofthweek dot com, where you
can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If
you want to reach out with questions ideas, you can
email us at Badass podcast at badassoftheweek dot com. If
you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell your
(45:32):
friends and your enemies if you want as.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
We'll be back.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
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