CHAPTER VII 



AARON BURR 



Undoubtedly some readers are already impatient 

 at the delay in dealing with Aaron Burr. There 

 was a time when it was the fashion to refer to 

 Colonel Burr as sufficiently infamous to prove that 

 heredity was of no appreciable value. As a matter 

 of fact it is rather refreshing to have one upon 

 whom the imagination can play. It simply inten- 

 sifies the white light of the rest of the record. 



Colonel Burr was not a saint after the model pre- 

 sented by his father, the Rev. Dr. Aaron Burr, the 

 godly president of Princeton; by his grandfather, 

 Jonathan Edwards ; or by at least 1,394 of the other 

 members of the family of Mr. Edwards. There is 

 no purpose to give him saintly enthronement, but 

 it may not be amiss to suggest that the abuse of 

 him has been overdone. 



Colonel Aaron Burr died at eighty after thirty 

 years of the worst treatment ever meted out to a 

 man against whom the bitterest enemies and the 

 most brilliant legal talent could bring no charge 

 that would stand in the eyes of the law. I have 

 no purpose to lessen the verdict of prejudice, for 

 the study of the Edwards family is all the more 



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