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It's interesting to note that Burr never engaged with any more 'affairs of honour' after his duel with Hamilton; no matter who insulted him, or even injured him. Chancellor Kent supposedly shook his cane at Burr while calling him a 'scoundrel' - one of the classic fighting words, along with 'liar', 'coward' and 'puppy' - and Burr just tipped his hat, responded that "The opinions of the learned Chancellor are always entitled to the highest consideration", and walked away.

In 1819, apparently the 63-year-old Aaron Burr received an unusual letter:

“Sir, Please to meet me with the weapon you chuse on the 15 of may where you murdered my father at 1 o'clock with your second. 8 May 1819. J.A. Hamilton.”

Burr initially wrote a very simple reply, along the lines of: “Boy, I never injured you: nor wished to injure your father. A. Burr”

…which would have been quite the rebuke, in Burr’s inimitably gentlemanly way, since James Hamilton was at that point 31 years old, and practicing law in New York. But Burr thought better of it, and instead decided just to ignore the affair entirely.

The letter was a forgery, but Burr’s response (and non-response) is very much at odds with reports of Burr's words on other occasions, such as from Bentham, which say that Burr went to Weehawken intending to kill Hamilton.

I rather suspect that the reason for the conflicting accounts of whether Burr intended to kill Hamilton is that Burr was conflicted about it himself, both before and after. But he certainly avoided ever getting into the same situation again.

From Parton's 1857 biography of Burr:

"One may read Mr. Davis's work, and Burr's European Diary, and the Report of his Trial for Treason, making in all more than three thousand octavo pages, and still be utterly unable to decide what manner of man he was, and what, in the great crises of his life, he either did or meant to do. I can confidently appeal to any one who has gone through those six ponderous volumes, to confirm the assertion, that they leave Aaron Burr, at least, to the consideration of the reader, a baffling enigma!"

Make that seven. I read the transcript of his trial for misdemeanour as well. And oh, Parton is not wrong. Burr is utterly baffling, but also completely charming.  What I wouldn't do to understand him a bit better...

I love the anonymous asks I get on Tumblr :)



One answer, of course, is 'judge for yourself'. In the youngest portrait of him we have, by Gilbert Stuart in about 1793, Burr is about 37. Good bone structure, straight nose, rather feminine lips and chin although the effect is counterbalanced by the obvious five o'clock shadow. Also somewhat balding and looks like he hasn't slept in a week, but then his wife was slowly dying a week's travel away at the time. His most notable feature is, of course, those large dark eyes, and they're striking in all of his face-on portraits; they seem to have been just as striking in real life. I will skip the terrifying "glow with the ardor of venereal fire" description, you get the idea.

There are no full length portraits of Burr, but we know that he was rather short (at 5'6 he was eight inches shorter than Jefferson, and even Hamilton got to call him Little Burr) and he's usually described as 'delicate' or 'meagre'. (Admittedly Adams does once describe him as 'fat as a Duck' but that may have meant a number of things; if it was a physical description, then it seems to have been a temporary state).

So if you like a sort of elfin anime look, Burr would have been very much the sort of thing you like.

But attractiveness goes beyond the physical. Burr was repeatedly described as witty, courteous, charming and elegant. His political enemies made massive hay out of his 'seductive' qualities. Heck, his letters and journal can disarm and charm at a 200-year distance. He also enjoyed the company of women and valued their minds, so there's that.

Finally, there's the evidence that a lot of men and women did find him very attractive. The men were probably drawn to his daring, apparent frankness, and paternal/mentoring instincts rather than actually wanting to jump his bones, but the same was *not* true of the women. Although Burr frequently paid for sex, he also had plenty of liaisons where the attraction was clearly mutual; including one instance where a woman who he'd previously paid seduced him and then refused to take his money.

There were, of course, dissenting views. In a letter to his daughter, Burr himself says:
A lady of rank and consequence, who had a great curiosity to see the vice-president, after several plans and great trouble at length was gratified, and she declared that he was the very ugliest man she had ever seen in her life. His bald head, pale hatchet visage, and harsh countenance, certainly verify the lady's conclusion. Your very ugly and affectionate father,
A. Burr

As with much that Burr writes, there is more than one way to interpret his words; but it's very easy to read this as the amusement of a man who is beyond being shaken by a single criticism.

It's OK to find Burr attractive. Most people did.

Me, exactly one year ago:
"If you finish your lunch with an affogato, adding Disaronno balances out the over-caffeination, yes?
(no)"

Aaron Burr, in Paris:
“Mem: Took coffee before going out this evening, contrary to all habit, and much afraid of insom., to guard against which have drank a 1/2 bottle of wine.”

Fanfic often makes a lot of Hamilton's having lived through a hurricane.

Everyone always forgets that Burr did too.

(Admittedly Hamilton was at an impressionable age and stuck in the aftermath, whereas Burr was 48 and just passing through the area, but still)

1. Book your passage, for £30, to be paid... later.
2. Jingle the two halfpence in your pocket.
3. Set out to sell literally everything that you own or have bought that is sellable.
4. Ask your official minder at the Alien Office for a passport in a fake name.
5. While you're there, try to sell him a book for £10. Be very surprised when, after asking you why you're selling, he loans you £10 and doesn't take the book.
6. Buy a pair of pantaloons that you don't want.
7. Discover that you have already sold virtually everything that is sellable, and what remains is definitely not worth £20.
8. Go to your official minder at the Alien Office and, in utter desperation, just beg him for the £20. Receive £20 and an amended passport that is good for any fake name you care to use.
9. Pack and ship all your belongings to be loaded onto the ship.
10. Miss your stagecoach. (To be fair, they changed the departure time on him)
11. Take the next stagecoach, arrive at Gravesend at 5pm, and discover that your ship sailed at noon and the Alien Office is closed.
12. Track down the local Alien Office bod so that you can go through customs and get the relevant stamp/signature/whatever.
13. Hire a boatman to chase your ship down the Thames.
14. After 12 miles, stop at a tavern to deal with the hypothermia caused by being on the Thames on a windy March evening without a greatcoat.
15. Buy some straw.
16. Continue down the Thames, but this time lying on the straw, and with the rowers having taken pity on you and thrown their greatcoats over you.
17. Have a nice snooze for the next 15 miles or so.
18. Around midnight, be woken up to finally board your ship and be reunited with all your belongings.

I don't think Burr ever made a stagecoach departure time in his life, and he *never* learned.

(I am also impressed that a man who struggled every night to sleep in an actual comfy bed, was apparently out like a light on a pile of straw in the bottom of a rowboat)

Burr, 5th November 1810: Has a carriage accident that badly injures his foot, such that he’s in constant pain, can't get a shoe on for about a month, and can't really walk anywhere.
Burr, 8th November 1810: After a misunderstanding with money changing, describes himself as "absolutely sans sous"

Burr to Theodosia, 10th November 1810: "The only consolation which I can offer you for this disappointment is, that my health continues unimpaired, and that I have the present means of support. A little addition to those means would not be inconvenient."

Oh, Burr.

(In the same letter, he mentions how much he wishes he had news of Luther Martin, and how fond he is of him. This is the only time he mentions Martin in his letters, and it's a week or two after his journal mentions a report that Martin was snide about him in court. For someone so apparently open you really have to do some cross-referencing and thinking to get anywhere near what's going on Burr's brain.)