Burr in the Saddle

HISTORIAN Nancy Isenberg’s attempt, in this new book, to rehabilitate Aaron Burr brings to mind the fifth labor of Hercules: cleaning the Augean stables in a single day. So much filth has accumulated around him, over the ages, that clearing his name seems an impossible task. All the abuse flung at Burr by his political enemies—charges of sexual debauchery, overweening ambition, fiscal profligacy, and, ultimately, treason—still sticks to him like glue.

If previous historians have offered less than charitable interpretations of Burr’s motives and actions, Isenberg is more than generous in Fallen Founder. She goes to great pains to unearth the “real” Aaron Burr: a man possessed of deep principles, unfailing as a gentleman, an enlightened thinker with a strong sense of personal dignity. His early childhood was marked by death—two and a half years into his life, Burr had lost his parents and grandparents, and had himself twice come close to the grave. (Those parents and grandparents were no small figures: His maternal grandfather was the theologian Jonathan Edwards, his father, Aaron Burr Sr., the president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton.)

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Sarah M. Bramwell

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HISTORIAN Nancy Isenberg’s attempt, in this new book, to rehabilitate Aaron Burr brings to mind the fifth labor of Hercules: cleaning the Augean stables in a single day. So much filth has accumulated around him, over the ages, that clearing his name seems an impossible task. All the abuse flung at Burr by his political enemies—charges of sexual debauchery, overweening ambition, fiscal profligacy, and, ultimately, treason—still sticks to him like glue.

If previous historians have offered less than charitable interpretations of Burr’s motives and actions, Isenberg is more than generous in Fallen Founder. She goes to great pains to unearth the “real” Aaron Burr: a man possessed of deep principles, unfailing as a gentleman, an enlightened thinker with a strong sense of personal dignity. His early childhood was marked by death—two and a half years into his life, Burr had lost his parents and grandparents, and had himself twice come close to the grave. (Those parents and grandparents were no small figures: His maternal grandfather was the theologian Jonathan Edwards, his father, Aaron Burr Sr., the president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton.)