David O. Stewart - American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America

96 kbps, Unabridged, Read by Andrew Garman
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/american-emperor-david-o-stewart/1101575018

Overview
In this vivid and brilliant biography, David O. Stewart portrays Aaron Burr, the third vice president, as a daring and perhaps deluded figure who shook the nation’s foundations in its earliest, most vulnerable decade. Stewart’s vivid account of Burr’s tumultuous life offers a rare and eye-opening description of the brand-new nation struggling to define itself.

Publishers Weekly
Eschewing recent attempts to rehabilitate Aaron Burr (1756–1836), a brilliant member of the revolutionary generation but remembered mostly as Jefferson's vice-president who killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel, D.C. lawyer and historian Stewart (Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson) concentrates on the dramatic years of Burr's life that followed. His career in ruins, in 1806 Burr led an armed band down the Mississippi intending to detach western states from the Union and conquer Spanish-ruled Texas and Florida. Among his raffish coconspirators was Gen. James Wilkinson, commander of the U.S. Army, governor of Louisiana, and a paid Spanish agent. With matters well advanced, Wilkinson thought better of it and betrayed the plot. There followed an extensive pursuit and spectacular treason trial during which a vindictive President Jefferson schemed and failed to convict Burr. Great men behaving badly make for entertaining reading, so readers may roll their eyes, but will keep turning the pages of this meticulous, almost day-by-day account of a plot so bizarre that it's hard to believe it actually happened.

Kirkus Reviews
A fresh, vivid exploration of the exploits and trial of Aaron Burr (1756–1836), the most notorious figure of the early American republic.

In 1800, Burr came within one electoral vote of becoming president of the United States. Instead, as originally intended, he became Thomas Jefferson's vice president, serenely presiding over the Senate while under indictment for the murder of Alexander Hamilton in a duel, an unpleasantness with which Stewart (Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy, 2009, etc.) rapidly dispenses in satisfying detail. Dumped by Jefferson in 1804 and frozen out of national political influence, Burr turned to a fantastic scheme. In league with the odious Gen. James Wilkinson, commander of America's tiny army and a lavishly paid secret agent for the Spanish crown, Burr undertook to assemble a private army and redraw the map of North America by uniting the Spanish Floridas, Mexico and whatever American states and territories west of the Appalachians wished to join him, into a new nation under his own leadership. Burr's men were headed downriver for New Orleans when he was betrayed by Wilkinson, arrested and packed off to Richmond to stand trial for treason. Jefferson desperately wanted this conviction and actively meddled in the prosecution's trial strategy, but the presiding judge was Chief Justice John Marshall, a political foe determined to insist on due process for the widely despised defendant. A practicing attorney, Stewart works the miracle of making even early-19th-century legal opinions and argument accessible and vital to modern readers. Two parts adventure story and one part courtroom thriller, Burr's saga unfolds in "a North America of possibilities, not certainties," where borders shifted frequently. The author makes it all sound plausible and lays out this complicated story with admirable clarity, while also explaining the long-term significance of its outcome for individual rights, the judiciary and the stability of the young nation.

A persuasive, engaging examination of the post-political career of a shadowy and much-maligned figure from the era of the Founders.