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1-021 The Deadly Rivalry: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr - I
Vol. 1- No. 21
1995
Lead: The history of the United States has been punctuated by a number of bitter political rivalries. Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts. Content: One of the earliest and most wasteful rivalries in the needy young Republic was the epic struggle between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. The conflict was personal, intellectual, political, social, and in the end, quite deadly. They first met as young officers in the Continental Army. Burr was a line officer and Hamilton was on the staff of General Washington. Burr was the son and grandson of presidents of Princeton. He was brash, brilliant, and nursed a smoldering ambition for greatness. It did not take long for the acute sensibilities of Hamilton to detect a real adversary for Washington's attention and future leadership in the struggling nation. Burr's rumored affinity for supple young bed partners irritated the General, and Hamilton began feeding him tantalizing gossip designed to firm up Washington's already bad impression of Burr's character. All of this might have been a historical footnote as the war petered out and the country set its sights on the future, save for the fact that both men decided to settle in New York. In the 1700s New York two parties dominated politics. One was Episcopalian; only very late in the Revolution did it began to shift away from its loyalty to Great Britain and was generally associated with the old, Dutch, aristocratic Schuyler family. The other party was middle class, Presbyterian in religious sentiment, and dominated by the Livingstons. Added to that complicated mix was a huge spurt of population growth in upstate and western New York, which brought another alliance into power that was affiliated with Revolutionary Governor George Clinton and his nephew DeWitt Clinton. Into this boiling caldron of politics stepped two of the most ambitious men ever to struggle for power in our history. Next time: the politics of the duel. The Producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. Copyright 1995 by Educational Broadcast, Inc. Resources Burr, Aaron. Memoirs of Aaron Burr, With Miscellaneous Selections from his Correspondence. Edited by Matthew L. Davis. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836-1837. Daniels, Jonathan. Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton Burr. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1970. Lomask, Milton. Aaron Burr. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux Publishing Company, 1972 (1982).
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