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Any present from you charms me; but I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me to find that you had already introduced me to so great and celebrated a person as Jeremy Bentham. At such a distance, amid so many new and interesting objects, to think constantly of me; that I should be present to your thoughts, and the subject of your conversations during your first interview with a man so calculated to absorb all your attention, and so likely to converse on things of a very different order from me and my concerns, delights and flatters me really more than I can express.
Theodosia Burr Alston to Aaron Burr, 1808 (via houseblennerhassett)
Even tho we never seem to talk anymore, have a Burr pin-up
———
i am going to choke and die and this will be the image that is up on my screen when the paramedics come and find me
(Source: billfuckinghader)
Define ‘Proteus’ - An Aaron Burr Music Mix (Or, Retreating Inward and Self-Destructing Via Your Own Disdain for Mainstream Politics)
This is the Age of Enlightenment, thinks Aaron. Like, get with it. Federalist? Republican? What is the point of slapping a label on everything? We’re all immoral, self-centered humans. There is no God, there is no Heaven or Hell, and ideologues are SO passé—and too mainstream. He’d tell you what political party he belongs to, but it’s super progressive and kind of underground. You’ve probably never heard of it.
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…Why, then, it may be asked, is this journal published? Because, unless the editor deceives himself, unambitious as it is, it will amuse the reader; because it illustrates the character of a distinguished man, whose influence has been felt in his country’s fortunes and whose name will live in her history; and because the character illustrated is amiable, interesting, and not without instruction to the observer. This man of dark intrigue and remorseless design, as it has pleased politicians and reviewers, clerical and lay, to represent him, is here shown in an artless auto-biographic narrative, which could not be feigned, to have been one of the most amiable and playful of men; like the little children whom he so remarkably and characteristically loved, he was pleased with the slightest incidents, lively and happy in the humblest circumstances, and incapable of harbouring a lasting resentment…Let those who may object to the absence of philosophic remark in the following pages answer whether, in such exhibitions of temper and control of mind, there was not the highest and most admirable philosophy?
the copy of burr’s journal that i received in the mail yesterday contained this publisher’s note and i stared at it for five thousand years. (via houseblennerhassett)
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It is very kind indeed to write me so often. Your last is from
Petersburgh. ‘Like gods,’ forsooth; why, you travel like—; that,
however, was a very pretty allusion. I have repeated it a dozen times and more. Your other letters also contain now and then a spark of Promethean fire: a spark, mind ye; don’t be vain.
Aaron Burr to Theodosia Burr Alston, 1801
aaron burr was the sassiest bitch
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I have a very beautiful elegy on a lady whom you love better than any one in the world; even better, I suspect, than L. N., and I was about to send it, but I won’t till I hear from you: a nice, handsome letter; none of your little white ink scrawls. They talk of adjourning. No; I won’t tell you that either. I have nothing to say of myself, nor any thing to ask of you which has not been often asked. Tell me that Mari is happy, and I shall know that you are so. Adieu, my dear little negligent baggage. Yes; one question. Do you leave your cards T. B. A. or Joseph A.? What are L. N.’s? And one injunction repeated. Do not suffer a tooth to be drawn, or any operation to be performed on your teeth.
A. Burr
Aaron Burr to Theodosia Burr Alston, 1802
yes thank u dentist burr
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You will be glad to hear me say something of [Burr’s] very fascinating powers in conversation. It may seem strange, if not incredible, that a man who had passed through such vicissitudes as he had, and who must have had such a crowd of early and pressing memories on his mind, should be able to preserve a uniform serenity and even cheerfulness, but such is the fact.
His manners were easy and his carriage graceful, and he had a winning smile in moments of pleasant intercourse, that seemed almost to charm you. He would laugh, too, sometimes, as if his heart was bubbling with joy, and its effect was irresistible. Nobody could tell a story better or an anecdote better than he could, and nobody enjoyed it better than he did himself. His maxim was ‘suaviter in modo, fortiter in re’ [gently in manner, firmly in action]. Yet, where spirits and a determined manner were required, probably no man ever showed them more effectively. Although comparatively small in person, and light in frame, I have seen him rebuke, and put to silence, men of position in society greatly his superiors in physical strength, who were wanting in respect in their language toward him.
Judge John Greenwood, in a paper presented before the Long Island Historical Society. (via houseblennerhassett)
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The press was instrumental in crafting Burr’s identity through sexually ambiguous, politically charged allusions. He was, for instance, compared to Catiline, the notorious Roman conspirator, whose sexual debauchery matched his zeal for luxurious self-indulgence. Burr was called a ‘proteus’, a term that had overtones of sexual insatiability found in the ‘hermaphrodite’; and he was invested with the hypnotic and seductive power of the rakish libertine of the moralist literature then in fashion. Drawing on the language of politeness and sociability, critical commentators portrayed Burr as the overly cultivated, suave courtier, a dandified figure who corrupted his young male admirers and the Republican Party at the same time.
Nancy Isenburg, The ‘Little Emperor’: Aaron Burr, Dandyism, and the Sexual Politics of Treason
Nothing like a little sexual ambiguity to drive the constituents wild.
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Burr’s rather remarkable political identity deserves scrutiny. More than any other member of the founding generation, he has captured the literary and sexual imagination of all kinds of writers—biographers, confessional autobiographers, political novelists, writers of gothic romances, even pornographers. Yet his obvious sexual appeal has eluded historians.
Nancy Isenburg, The ‘Little Emperor’: Aaron Burr, Dandyism, and the Sexual Politics of Treason
(Source: sadiemaeglutz)
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Through life, Colonel Burr committed an error, if he did not display a weakness, in permitting his reputation to be assailed, without contradiction, in cases where it was perfectly defensible. His enemies took advantage of the sullen silence which he was known to preserve in regard to newspaper attacks. Under these attacks he fell from the proud eminence he once enjoyed to a condition more mortifying and more prostrate than any distinguished man has ever experienced in the United States.
Matthew Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr
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…Burr’s dramatic career reveals the powerful role of gendered, sexualized discourses in constructing public identities and demolishing political reputations. From Burr’s arrival on the national scene as a U.S. senator from New York in 1792, until his trial for treason fifteen years later, his political body became terrain for debating partisan loyalty, which in a crucial way prefigured his later incarnation as a full-fledged traitor. Burr’s identity, moreover, does not fit neatly into one simple category. While his contemporaries debated his alleged crimes, and his defenders sought to clear his name, Burr emerged as a hybrid figure, representing at once a ruthlessly ambitions, decadent, self-centered traitor, and the elegant emblem of an admirable masculine audacity. As his contested behavior moved to the center of two national scandals—the election of 1800, during which he was accused of trying to steal the election from Jefferson, and his treason trial in 1807—Burr’s public persona was increasingly sexualized. Whether involving scurrilous rumors of his debauchery or praise of his virile masculine presence, Burr’s gendered body affected how his political transgressions were exposed or refuted in the press.
Nancy Isenburg, The ‘Little Emperor’: Aaron Burr, Dandyism, and the Sexual Politics of Treason
