American Emperor

Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America

By: David O. Stewart

Narrated by: Andrew Garman

A spellbinding storyteller, historian David O. Stewart traces the canny and charismatic Aaron Burr from the threshold of the presidency in 1800 to his duel with Alexander Hamilton. Stewart recounts Burr’s efforts to carve out an empire, taking listeners across the American West as the renegade vice president schemes with foreign ambassadors, the U.S. general-in-chief, and future presidents.

©2011 David O. Stewart (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

“A lively but judicious portrait of grand … ambition.” (Evan Thomas)

Well done history and biography

Having read Gore Vidal’s Burr, I wanted to learn the true story of these men. The author presents a fair and even handed evaluation of Burr, Jefferson, Wilkinson and the other main participants in the historical events that comprise this book. It’s a fascinating tale of early America and the development of the United States . Burr was a bright and ambitious man who should have continued to enjoy a fruitful political career, but who was brought down by the duel with Hamilton and the hatred of Jefferson. Highly recommended.

Error often is to be preferred to indecision

"I live my life as I deem appropriate and fitting; I offer no apologies, no explanations."
- Aaron Burr

From the author's website:
This vivid biography portrays Aaron Burr, the third vice president, as a daring and perhaps deluded figure who shook the nation’s foundations in its earliest, most vulnerable decades.

In 1805, the United States was not twenty years old, a largely unformed infant. The government consisted of a few hundred people. The immense frontier swallowed up a tiny army of 3,300 soldiers. Following the Louisiana Purchase, no one even knew where the nation’s western border lay. Secessionist sentiment flared in New England and beyond the Appalachians.

Burr had challenged Jefferson, his own running mate, in the presidential election of 1800. Indicted for murder in the dueling death of Alexander Hamilton in 1804, he dreamt huge dreams. He imagined an insurrection in New Orleans, a private invasion of Spanish Mexico and Florida, and a great empire rising on the Gulf of Mexico, which would swell when America’s Western lands seceded from the Union. For two years, Burr pursued this audacious dream, enlisting support from the General-in-Chief of the Army, a paid agent of the Spanish king, and from other Western leaders, including Andrew Jackson. When the army chief double-crossed Burr, Jefferson finally roused himself and ordered Burr prosecuted for treason.

The trial featured the nation’s finest lawyers before the greatest judge in our history, Chief Justice John Marshall, Jefferson’s distant cousin and determined adversary. The case became a contest over the nation’s identity: Should individual rights be sacrificed to punish a political apostate who challenged the nation’s very existence? In a revealing reversal of political philosophies, Jefferson championed government power over individual rights, while Marshall shielded the nation’s most notorious defendant. By concealing evidence, appealing to the rule of law, and exploiting the weaknesses of the government’s case, Burr won his freedom.

Afterwards Burr left for Europe to pursue an equally outrageous scheme to liberate Spain’s American colonies. Finding no European sponsor during four nomadic years, he returned to America and lived to an unrepentant old age.

American Emperor’s vivid account of Burr’s tumultuous life offers a rare and eye-opening description of the brand new nation struggling to define itself.

Verdict from this listener:
Anyone who opposed Alexander Hamilton could not have been all bad.
And the man who rid the world of him ought rightly be considered a hero.

Very good, given lack of source material.

The problem with Aaron Burr is that he left nothing behind. As the author notes, Burr refused to conduct business in writing. So we are left with other people's accounts of Burr's life, all of which are tainted by the reporter's perspective. Stewart does a good job of giving space to all the varied views of Burr but as a consequence I came away more than a bit confused. With that said, this book is very much worth the time, especially in the passages which describe Burr's various trials. The insight given into how the legal system operated at the time, and the degree to which it was driven by personal animosity, is great.

American Emperor or not?

Great description of the struggles of Aaron Burr life but of the early years of democracy. Especially recommend to those who believe our government has run rather smoothly till now.

Good companion for Hamilton fans

Enjoyed it, but would have liked more detail about the denouement of his life. His post-trial to death period was kind of glossed over. Enjoyed the bulk of it, though. Burr was an intrepid character and, quite possibly, innocent of true treason.