220 years ago today, on July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was shot and killed by the sitting Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr. There is MUCH more to Burr’s story.

Besides murdering Hamilton in a duel that summer, Burr was involved in nefarious activities out west after his term as VP ended in 1805. In a nutshell, he tried to start a war with Mexico and possibly start his own empire. He would be tried for treason. Burr’s character flaws emerged before these two actions during the election of 1800.

The presidency was George Washington’s as long as he wanted it. Burr served with the Father of Our Country in the Revolutionary War, along with Benedict Arnold. He seemed to take after the latter more. After two terms, Washington retired to Mount Vernon (again), and in 1796, his vice-president John Adams ran against former Secretary Thomas Jefferson in the first contested presidential election.

The Constitution originally made the second-place finisher the vice-president. Adams won, and Jefferson became his vice-president. Additionally, there was no way to distinguish a vote for president or vice-president, which was not a problem in that election but would be next time.

Four years later, the first rematch in presidential elections occurred between Adams and Jefferson (we are in our seventh with repeat candidates in 2024). For the first time, political parties held caucuses, the forerunner of conventions. Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican party chose Burr as their vice-presidential choice, the first of several alliances between candidates of the two largest states New York and Virginia.

Burr’s morality surfaced that year when he and Jefferson tied with seventy-three electoral votes each. Someone was suppose to not vote for Burr, but that didn’t happen. Surprisingly, Burr refused to concede to Jefferson, and America faced a constitutional crisis. There was no president-elect until February 11th, when Congress met to finally choose the president on the 36th ballot. Until 1936, presidents were inaugurated on March 4th, it’s been January 20th since. Needless to say, he and Jefferson’s relationship was never close.

What happened? Burr’s ambitious nature saw a path where he could potentially do an end run around Jefferson and capture the Executive Mansion (White House was a term a century away) aligning himself with the opposition Federalist Party. Ironically, Hamilton supported Jefferson, his rival in the Washington administration. If you remember your high school social studies civics/government class, they began America’s first two-party system. As expected, Burr was not chosen again in 1804 and made his way west for more mischief. He was later acquitted on the charge of treason.

Please allow me to close with a few interesting anecdotes. The Twelfth Amendment cured some of the problems from 1800, Burr is not the only vice-president of the United States to shoot someone. In 2006, Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting partner while quail hunting.

There are no photographs of Burr as he died about the time the camera was invented but an image search produced the drawing you see above. Audacious Aaron Burr looks somewhat like The Grinch, which was confirmed by our nine-year-old Granddaughter Harlow, an unvarnished opinion. My wife Kim thought he looked more like a vampire.

If you are wondering, I have NOT seen Hamilton the Musical in any version. It’s not my thing, and I hope you enjoyed it, as well as this blog.