attracted an amount of attention, both at home and in the pages of
history, altogether disproportioned to its real consequence. His career
had been striking. He had been Vice-President of the United States. He
had lacked but one vote of being made President, when the election of
1800 was thrown into the House of Representatives. As friend or as enemy
he had been thrown intimately and on equal terms with the greatest
political leaders of the day. He had supplied almost the only feeling
which Jefferson, the chief of the Democratic party, and Hamilton, the
greatest Federalist, ever possessed in common; for bitterly though
Hamilton and Jefferson had hated each other, there was one man whom each
of them had hated more, and that was Aaron Burr. There was not a man in
the country who did not know about the brilliant and unscrupulous party
leader who had killed Hamilton in the most famous duel that ever took
place on American soil, and who by a nearly successful intrigue had come
within one vote of supplanting Jefferson in the presidency.

Burr's Previous Career in New York.

In New York Aaron Burr had led a political career as stormy and
chequered as the careers of New York politicians have generally been. He
had shown himself as adroit as he was unscrupulous in the use of all the
arts of the machine manager. The fitful and gusty breath of popular
favor made him at one time the most prominent and successful politician
in the State, and one of the two or three most prominent and successful
in the nation. In the State he was the leader of the Democratic party,
which under his lead crushed the Federalists; and as a reward he was
given the second highest office in the nation. Then his open enemies and
secret rivals all combined against him. The other Democratic leaders in
New York, and in the nation as well, turned upon the man whose brilliant
abilities made them afraid, and whose utter untrustworthiness forbade
their entering into alliance with him. Shifty and fertile in expedients,
Burr made an obstinate fight to hold his own. Without hesitation, he
turned for support to his old enemies, the Federalists; but he was
hopelessly beaten. Both his fortune and his local political prestige
were ruined; he realized that his chance for a career in New York was
over.

When Beaten in New York he Turned to the West.

He was no mere New York politician, however. He was a statesman of
national reputation; and he turned his restles