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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
what’s the worst word you can say on club penguin
i’m still on
i still haven’t been banned
I’M LITERALLY IN TEARS
and i only got banned for 24 hours
history meme. ten moments: the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton at Weehawken, New Jersey.
On the morning of July 11, 1804, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were rowed across the Hudson River in separate boats to a secluded spot near Weehawken, New Jersey. There, in accord with the customs of the code duello, they exchanged pistol shots at ten paces. Hamilton was struck on his right side and died the following day. Though unhurt, Burr found that his reputation suffered an equally fatal wound. In this, the most famous duel in American history, both participants were casualties. […] they managed to make a dramatic final statement about the time of their time. Honor mattered because character mattered. And character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive. Eventually, the United States might develop into a nation of laws and established institutions capable of surviving corrupt or incompetent public officials. But it was not there yet. It still required honorable and virtuous leaders to endure. Both Burr and Hamilton came to the interview because they wished to be regarded as part of such company. (The Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis)
(Source: yachttweiler)
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While [Burr’s] critics painted the Burrites as fops, and Burr himself was readily criticized for his ‘cunning’ and ‘treachery’, both those who admired him and those who detested him saw Burr’s erotic appeal in terms of his refined hypermasculinity—his ‘audacity’. Hamilton understood the attraction of Burr’s ‘audacity’, a quality that expressed an admirable boldness and spirit, as well as impertinence. In the election of 1800, Hamilton was consumed with a genuine fear that many men in the Senate would be drawn to his ‘dashing projecting spirit’. ‘Dashing’ implied an elegance of bodily deportment, a boldness of character, and an irresistible essence, which commanded respect and the approving gaze of male and female admirers.
Nancy Isenburg, The ‘Little Emperor’: Aaron Burr, Dandyism, and the Sexual Politics of Treason
I really tried to come up with further explanation for this one. I really did. But this quote means exactly what you think it means.
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Sexual deviance obviously was the more scurrilous of Cheetham’s charges. Burr’s ‘precious band,’ as he called this unnatural faction, was ‘actuated by personal attachments’; they idolized Burr, and were ‘so extremely close,’ forming an emotionally intimate, sexually uncertain alliance. The homosexual overtones were intentional: like other all-male confederacies and combinations, Burr’s band was united in either ‘vice’ or ‘pleasure.’ Cheetham conjured clear images of elite dissipation from a knowledge of the sexual underworld of the theater, bawdy houses, and English mollyhouses (the worlds of ‘pleasure’), and the dark dens of secrecy and crime associated with pirates and banditti. By 1804, Cheetham was identifying the Burrites with ‘strolling players,’ continuing to associate the faction with sexual promiscuity and male prostitution.
Nancy Isenburg, The ‘Little Emperor’: Aaron Burr, Dandyism, and the Sexual Politics of Treason
watch this right now
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Another poem…made punning capital with Burr’s name. Like a plant bur, Burr’s political machinations and his followers ‘stick to their folly, as close as a Burr.’ Three times, the poet repeats that there is ‘sting in a Burr,’ from ‘intrigue, art, oppression’ and ‘deception.’ The thematic line of the poem employs sexual innuendo and a double entendre: ‘By a Man to be rul’d, or be prick’t by a Burr.’ The word prick’t simultaneously alluded to ‘prick’, a vulgar term for penis, and ‘prick’, a point or puncture. To be ‘prick’t by a burr’ crassly implied male sexual penetration of another male, and, conversely, sexual submission by a man. As revealing, the word pricket, according to Johnson’s Dictionary, was slang for male buck, that is, a young male animal. And ‘buck’, like another popular slang term, ‘puppy’, referred to a dashing young fellow, or dandy.
Nancy Isenburg, The ‘Little Emperor’: Aaron Burr, Dandyism, and the Sexual Politics of Treason
A good 65-70% of Aaron Burr’s problems arose from him literally being too sexy.
being drunk makes you cry about dead people
I love her so much I want to die.
Burrite Party Mansion
I know what you are thinking: ‘FINALLY! a playlist for the sexy sodomite in all of us, narcissistic and disdainful of mainstream 18th century american politics and ready 2 party with virile young men’
- (listen) -
