Full Version: Aaron Burr
A friend of mine who is an historian asked me about Aaron Burr. He was struck by what a whitewash the article is, and wanted to know if any prominent cabal members were responsible. I took a look at the history and I don't recognize any of the personalities involved. There is an NPOV dispute tag, and one comment on the talk page says that the article reads as if it were written by Burr's mother. Can anyone here shed any light on the perps?
I'm not sure there's really anyone guilty here. From my experience, schools tend to whitewash his history quite a bit recently; I've seen textbooks which make him almost an equal of John Adams.
From what I've studied of Burr, he was not well-liked after his duel with Alexander Hamilton. His reputation was ruined and his ill-fated attempts to takeover parts of Spanish America made him even more vilified in the US.
Nothing I studied in high school or college agrees with this article's assertions about Burr. I would be putting a slew of citation needed just in the intro alone. Burr was a very cruel person especially in his very public spat with Hamilton. He practically goaded Hamilton into the duel. Hamilton may have even missed on purpose as he really didn't want to go along with it (though another witness at the duel thought he was very keen on killing Burr, we just don't know who was right). Still, he killed the most popular man in the US at the time and who had led the nation out of debt (something we today could not fathom being able to do but Hamilton did it).
Too many alarm bells going off to me as a History major. I don't know about the article writers/maintainers. And it looks like the Burr article gets a lot of vandalism.
It's terribly written and disorganized, too.
Nothing I studied in high school or college agrees with this article's assertions about Burr. I would be putting a slew of citation needed just in the intro alone. Burr was a very cruel person especially in his very public spat with Hamilton. He practically goaded Hamilton into the duel. Hamilton may have even missed on purpose as he really didn't want to go along with it (though another witness at the duel thought he was very keen on killing Burr, we just don't know who was right). Still, he killed the most popular man in the US at the time and who had led the nation out of debt (something we today could not fathom being able to do but Hamilton did it).
Too many alarm bells going off to me as a History major. I don't know about the article writers/maintainers. And it looks like the Burr article gets a lot of vandalism.
It's terribly written and disorganized, too.
Aaron Burr isn't a topic in popular culture, so it stands to reason no one on Wikipedia gave it much attention or care.
QUOTE(The Joy @ Tue 18th December 2007, 5:36pm) 
From what I've studied of Burr, he was not well-liked after his duel with Alexander Hamilton. His reputation was ruined and his ill-fated attempts to takeover parts of Spanish America made him even more vilified in the US.
Nothing I studied in high school or college agrees with this article's assertions about Burr. I would be putting a slew of citation needed just in the intro alone. Burr was a very cruel person especially in his very public spat with Hamilton. He practically goaded Hamilton into the duel. Hamilton may have even missed on purpose as he really didn't want to go along with it (though another witness at the duel thought he was very keen on killing Burr, we just don't know who was right). Still, he killed the most popular man in the US at the time and who had led the nation out of debt (something we today could not fathom being able to do but Hamilton did it).
Too many alarm bells going off to me as a History major. I don't know about the article writers/maintainers. And it looks like the Burr article gets a lot of vandalism.
It's terribly written and disorganized, too.
Wasn't he keen on overthrowing the United States as well and that he was let off easy by John Jay when he was caught? This comes form an account my friend gave to me about him, he did a report on Burr a few years back.
QUOTE
Burr was relentlessly defamed in the press, often by the writings of Alexander Hamilton...
Good find.
QUOTE(Derktar @ Tue 18th December 2007, 8:51pm)
QUOTE(The Joy @ Tue 18th December 2007, 5:36pm)
From what I've studied of Burr, he was not well-liked after his duel with Alexander Hamilton. His reputation was ruined and his ill-fated attempts to takeover parts of Spanish America made him even more vilified in the US.
Nothing I studied in high school or college agrees with this article's assertions about Burr. I would be putting a slew of citation needed just in the intro alone. Burr was a very cruel person especially in his very public spat with Hamilton. He practically goaded Hamilton into the duel. Hamilton may have even missed on purpose as he really didn't want to go along with it (though another witness at the duel thought he was very keen on killing Burr, we just don't know who was right). Still, he killed the most popular man in the US at the time and who had led the nation out of debt (something we today could not fathom being able to do but Hamilton did it).
Too many alarm bells going off to me as a History major. I don't know about the article writers/maintainers. And it looks like the Burr article gets a lot of vandalism.
It's terribly written and disorganized, too.
Wasn't he keen on overthrowing the United States as well and that he was let off easy by John Jay when he was caught? This comes form an account my friend gave to me about him, he did a report on Burr a few years back.
Burr conspired with an American general to take over a part of Spanish America and he hoped to make it his own nation since his political career in the US had plummeted. The general later betrayed him. I can't recall exactly why he was charged with treason, but I'm guessing leading a pro-American uprising against a friendly nation (Spain was on the US side was the thing.
QUOTE
It was written by one Senator that Burr had conducted the proceedings with the "impartiality of an angel and the rigor of a devil." Burr's heartfelt farewell in March 1805 moved some of his harshest critics in the Senate to tears. Unfortunately, except for short quotes and descriptions of the address, which defended America's system of government, it was never recorded in full.
WTF is this? Not neutral and very pretty and plenty flowery.
QUOTE(The Joy @ Tue 18th December 2007, 6:03pm)
Burr conspired with an American general to take over a part of Spanish America and he hoped to make it his own nation since his political career in the US had plummeted. The general later betrayed him. I can't recall exactly why he was charged with treason, but I'm guessing leading a pro-American uprising against a friendly nation (Spain was on the US side was the thing.
According to this account, Burr planned a military assault on New Orleans with the intention of making it his citadel in something that looks like a dress rehearsal for the later secession of the southern states and the Confederacy. This was the basis for the trial.
My friend Anton Chaitkin has a broader take on why Burr ought to be considered a traitor:
QUOTE
But two years into the Washington Presidency, Jefferson, in collaboration with Senator Aaron Burr and the Swiss aristocrat, Representative Albert Gallatin, launched a campaign of libel and dirty tricks against the administration. Washington was viciously maligned in a Jefferson-run newspaper, the Aurora; Hamilton was set up in a sex scandal and deliberately false bribery charges, the Reynolds affair, run by Burr and his cronies, and was driven from the government; and the administration's entire nationalist program was called "unconstitutional" and "aristocratic."
Burr and Gallatin were traitors, assets of the British Empire.
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Burr and Gallatin were traitors, assets of the British Empire.
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