Content area
Full Text
A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr
Arnold A. Rogow.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
Since that fateful day in July, 1804, when Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, his reputation was shredded by historians who found significant accomplishments in the work of a founding father and little merit in the dubious legacy of Aaron Burr. On the one hand, Hamilton's reputation was built on his contribution to the establishment of a lasting, reliable, and balanced federal constitutional system, one whose integrity seemed to match that of its creator. On the other hand, Burr's legacy was summed up as consisting of the winning and losing of elections in New York, unsuccessfully scheming for high office in the federal government, holding the position of vice president for one term in the Jefferson administration, a finding of innocence by trial of scheming to separate a portion of the American west for the purpose of creating a new state, and the killing of Alexander Hamilton.
Arnold A. Rogow, writer and political scientist, who has studied the role of personality or character in several of his six previous books that dealt with aspects of political history, takes on in this book a classic historical problem of the character of Aaron Burr and how it affected his friendship with Alexander Hamilton. Rogow utilizes standard biography, printed and manuscript sources, and a look into historical fiction; he then turns his considerable power of analysis and logical thinking loose on the issues. The result is a book that brings together scattered quotes and passages from many of the founding fathers, their friends, enemies, and lovers and weaves them into an intriguing...