Burr by Gore Vidal - Assignment Example

? BURR, BY GORE VIDAL Burr, by Gore Vidal Burr, the first novel in Gore Vidal’s seven-novel “Narrative of Empire” series, covers the period 1775-1836. The well-researched novel, as fictionalized by Vidal and narrated by Charles Schuyler, a young apprentice in Aaron Burr’s New York law office and aspiring journalist, spotlights the life of Aaron Burr, his Revolutionary contemporaries and America’s Founding Fathers (“Narratives of Empire” n.d.). Burr, the Man, and Burr, the Novel Burr is a dismissal of the perfect portrayals of the Founding Fathers in American history books. Aaron Burr’s life is extraordinary — he became the 3rd vice president of the U.S and nearly won presidency; he killed his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel; he schemed a traitorous attempt, conniving with James Wilkinson , the country’s military general commander and altogether a political spy of the foreign territory, to separate the Western states and fuse them with Spanish Mexico; he aspired to become king of the supposed new empire; he was later charged with incitement of rebellion, ordered arrested by President Thomas Jefferson, and held to face charges of treason but was in the end acquitted by the country’s chief justice who was Jefferson’s rival; in humiliation, he escaped his country for many decades and finally returned a disgraceful and insignificant aged man (Wood 1984). In American prose, Aaron Burr is the most idealized and denigrated historical icon. Numerous poems, lyrics, lectures, fictional life stories, plays and novels have patronized Burr’s legend. However, beyond all wasted literature and exaggerated imaginative ploys, serious historians avoided his sensationalized fiction and romance. What kept them distant were the scarce, discrete and scattered documentations of Burr’s political career and memoirs. It was only in the 1970s when his papers from over 200 text repositories and personal compilations were gathered, made into microfilm reels, and made accessible to the academic world. The compilation of the microfilms and the newly exposed files of Burr had been carefully selected and seriously reprinted in two volumes to recreate the details of Burr’s unsuccessful, terrible public career. This two-volume printed information was the first introduction of Burr’s life in American history and an illumination of his unexciting, ordinary daily events in politics and business that collectively construct a different depiction of Burr — an ordinary politician (Wood 1984). For several years, Aaron Burr has been unjustly vilified by scholars; his accomplishments disregarded and deficiencies emphasized while justifying others, particularly his contemporaries, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Indisputably a disappointment to some and notoriously famous to many, Burr, being a man of great character, his part in American history was bigger than the recognition he received. History should never forget Burr's solid dedication of ending slavery and his serious support for feminism (Kennedy 2000). The novel is packed with accurate historical detail taken from authentic historical records. In the afterword, the author admitted his use of only two fictional characters, namely, Charlie Schuyler (the narrator), "based roughly on the obscure novelist Charles Burdett," and William de la Touche Clancey, a "Tory sodomite" with a tongue that "darts in and out of his mouth like a lizard's catching flies," who Vidal swears to his readers, "could, obviously, be based on no one at all." The others are real iconoclastic historical characters in the novel who appear not to be "in the right places, on the right dates, doing what they actually did." The character’s dialogues are taken from actual correspondence and genuine documents (Lehmann- Haupt 1973). However, the novel despite its historical truthfulness is politically untrue. The iconoclastic perception could have been more realistic when constructive accounts are truly accredited and certified, as in this case: Although Hamilton liked to take credit for my exclusion, Jefferson told me privately that it was actually President Washington who did not want me examining too closely his military record. Yet Washington had nothing to fear from me. Although I would have depicted him as the incompetent general he was, I would also have demonstrated how he was the supreme creator of this union; how his powerful will and serpentine cunning made of a loose confederation of sovereign states a strong federal government graven to this day in Washington's sombre Roman imperial image (“Counter-Cultural Perspective” July 11, 2013). Hamilton, Burr and the Duel On Weehawken grounds in New Jersey, the 1804 duel with Hamilton is the most prominent episode in Burr’s life and probably one of the most memorable in American social history. Alexander Hamilton was Burr’s friend and former partner in a law firm. Later, these two men were estranged; their ideals differed and clashed, finally settling in a duel. Burr killed Hamilton. Sam Swartwout, Burr’s old friend disclosed a secret — Burr’s anger stemmed from Hamilton’s alleged accusation of Burr having incest relationship with Theodosia, his attractive and clever daughter (Vidal 1973, 53). Hamilton being a Federalist and Burr being a Republican had collided continually in politics. In 1791, Burr won the Senate seat over Philip Schuyler, the influential father of Hamilton’s wife, who would have backed Hamilton’s political plans had he won. In 1800, Burr published Hamilton’s supposedly private article, a critique of Federalist Adams: "The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States" which humiliated Hamilton and further amplified gaps in the Federalist group. In the same year, Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied for presidency; Hamilton campaigned for Jefferson’s victory. Ultimately triggering both men to violence ensued when Burr, attempting to resume power, left the Republican Party and ran independently for gubernatorial seat in 1804, which earned the Republicans’ distrust. Hamilton urged all Federalists to withdraw support for Burr. Burr lost the position. In Burr’s attempt to revitalize his political career, he challenged Hamilton to a duel which he [Hamilton] accepted to save reputation. Both fired a shot, leaving Burr unharmed and Hamilton dead; however, Burr’s victory did not revive his political career at all but instead concluded it (“Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr's Duel” 2000). Lehmann-Haupt (1973) argues that according to Burr, as written in the novel, Hamilton initially fired but missed; he died dismayed by the false statement he told the world on the eve of the duel — that his first fire would be reserved. In Roger Kennedy’s Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character (2000), he claims that Hamilton’s unreasonable abhorrence of Burr sprung from his discovery that Burr was actually a reflection of him, like a "fatal twin" in whom Hamilton saw all that he mostly dreaded in himself. When he fired at him in the duel, he was totally immersed in hatred over a projected person, Burr, his replica ... “in the end he arranged to have Burr kill him” (42). Moreover, Hamilton was largely motivated by greed and bitterness, not by pursuit of prominence and acclaim, as some observers contest from facts (Kennedy 2000). Washington and Jefferson, Ranking Low in Burr’s Perspective In Aaron Burr’s scrutiny, George Washington was a useless leader of the military (Vidal 1973, 14). Moreover, he said that Washington was dull-witted; did not read books; lived luxuriously although he was not rich and always short of money; grammatically incorrect and unskilled in spelling due to poor education; and very religiously and morally principled. Burr spoke sarcastically of the first US president as having been “unable […] to organize a sentence that contained a new thought” (55-58). Jefferson, too, did not escape Burr’s mockery. “He was the most charming man I have ever known, as well as the most deceitful.” Jefferson was a respected hypocrite, declaring the “unalienable rights of man for everybody (excepting slaves, Indians, women, and those entirely without property),” Burr scoffed further that Jefferson attempted forceful seizure of the Floridas, ambitioned invasion of Cuba, and following his unlawful procurement of Louisiana, sent a military governor to run New Orleans against the residents’ will (Vidal 1973, 154; 160). Burr told Charlie, the novel’s narrator, that Jefferson gave up his individualist principles; rejected to protect his people, and at one time when the British military drew near Richmond, Jefferson escaped to Monticello and abandoned the state without a government. However, despite his misrule, he was never charged nor condemned because nobody was willing to relieve the disgraceful details of their collapsed state (177). On the other hand, Aaron Burr was mutually detested by Thomas Jefferson. In Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character (Kennedy 2000), Jefferson's detestation of Burr actually developed from jealousy and rivalry. In 1794, Burr’s introduction of James Madison to Dolley Todd disrupted a free partnership between Jefferson and Madison. Afterwards, when Jefferson’s mother and wife died, Dolley penetrated that partnership, and modified its working structure. For two dazzling and lonely bachelors to work together for more than a decade and someone intruded into that “mutual dependencies,” that was disastrous. When Burr interfered, Jefferson began to doubt Burr’s scheming intentions. And after Hamilton was out of the picture, Jefferson became a substitute host to Hamilton's “malignancy” (368). Jefferson, according to Lehmann-Haupt (1973) was an unprincipled statesman and an awkward meddler who could certainly not look anyone in the eye. Jefferson tore down Burr simply because Burr surrendered the presidency to him in the 1800 elections for no other reason than principle. In Burr’s opinion, Jefferson was a coward, a fraud, and a cruel man who merely wanted to climb to the pinnacle and greed for personal power, totally contradicting with the principles of freedom which was announced publicly in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and preserved in the Bill of Rights. Then again, as said by Burr, Jefferson was never an advocate for individual freedom (Vidal 1973, 219). Is Burr a presentation of believable and compelling view of American history? Aaron Burr’s story is substituted with Charlie’s personal accounts of Burr’s life making the readers progressively informed on the American history starting from the Revolution up to the final term of Jackson’s second administration. On the other hand, the historical details in Vidal’s Burr is not the typical history which is most presented in the academe (Riggenbach 2009, 50) but an “alternative American narrative” wherein the Founding Fathers are viewed rather differently from the way majority of readers are familiar with. Rather than being a symbol of American public virtue and American democracy and equality, Burr presents a view of America’s colonial era from a unique and contrary viewpoint, and a devastating analysis of America’s first founders. For instance, Burr describes George Washington’s conviction in a strong central government mainly to guard his enormous land properties in Mount Vernon, and Thomas Jefferson’s support of states’ rights basically as a political tactic to win votes and succeed in elections (Pease 1992, 269). In all of Gore Vidal’s series of American Chronicles, the Founding Fathers are not perfect, but imperfect mortals often obsessed with arrogance, hunger for power, and worship for fame and glory (Riggenbach 2009, 70). Gore Vidal somewhat recreates himself in the image of Burr: patrician, sarcastic, and cynical of all nationalistic goodness and delivered realities. If he was unprincipled and ruthless, the author implies he is no different from GeorgeWashington who was an excellent political general, worthless on the battleground but experienced at dictating Congress; and Thomas Jefferson, who was rather deceitful about territorial seizure for the then unripe America (Kirsch 2012). References “Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr's Duel.” 2000. Public Broadcasting Service. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/peopleevents/pande17.html (accessed 19 September 2013) “Counter-Cultural Perspective.” (July 11, 2013). Amazon Customer Reviews. http://www.amazon.com/Burr-A-Novel-Gore-Vidal/product-reviews/ 0375708731?pageNumber=7 (accessed 20 September 2013) Kennedy, Roger. 2000. Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character, 42-368. New York: Oxford University Press. Kirsch, Adam. 2012. “Gore Vidal’s ‘Burr’ Is Antidote to Tea Party Myths.” Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-14/gore-vidal-s-burr-is-antidote-to-tea-party-myths.html (accessed 20 September 2013) Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. 1973. “Back to the First Principals.” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-burr.html? (accessed 19 September 2013) “Narratives of Empire.” n.d. Gore Vidal Pages. http://www.gorevidalpages.com/historical-novel-world-history/? (accessed 20 September 2013) Pease, Donald. 1992. “America and the Vidal Chronicles” In Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain, edited by Jay Parini, 269. New York: Columbia University Press. Riggenbach, Jeff. 2009. “An Introduction to Revisionism: The Historical Fiction of Gore Vidal: The ‘American Chronicle’ Novels.” In Why American History is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, 50-70. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Vidal, Gore. 1973. Burr, 14-219. New York: Random House. Wood, Gordon. 1984. “The Revenge of Aaron Burr.” New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1984/feb/02/the-revenge-of-aaron-burr/?pagination=false (accessed 20 September 2013) Read More