Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts

22 December 2019

Jefferson's Love Letter


Apologies up front: This isn’t a Hallmark Christmassy article. Begun last week, it happened to occur where the schedule fell. Think of it as a Christmas love story, one involving a founding father— author of the Declaration of Independence, future Secretary of State for George Washington, Vice President, and our third President. In Paris, Thomas Jefferson fell in love with a European beauty: English, raised in Tuscany, brilliant, talented, artistic, musical, and a great motivator. And, uh, married.

Not sure about friction, as the French say, but emotional sparks had definitely ignited.

The letter is strong but circumspect. It bears meaning to those who understand. Jefferson even managed to slip in a not-quite-subliminal “I love you,” en français near the end.

Speaking of… the sources I found contained transliteration anomalies of one sort or another. These included transcription errors, a misunderstanding of French, and differences between original and modern spelling. For example, the word ‘shewed’ (meaning showed) was transcribed as ‘skewed’. Mine isn’t a perfect rendering, merely an effort to reduce copy errors.

Settle in with hot chocolate and enjoy a long read. Happy Christmas!

— Leigh

To Maria Cosway, Paris, 12 October 1786


Maria Cosway, 1760-1838
Maria Cosway, 1760-1838
My Dear Madam,

Having performed the last sad office of handing you into your carriage at the pavilion de St. Denis, and seen the wheels get actually into motion, I turned on my heel & walked, more dead than alive, to the opposite door, where my own was awaiting me. Mr. Danquerville was missing. He was sought for, found, & dragged down stairs. WE were crammed into the carriage, like recruits for the Bastille, & not having soul enough to give orders to the coachman, he presumed Paris our destination, & drove off. After a considerable interval, silence was broke with a “Je suis vraiment affligé du depart de ces bons gens.” This was a signal for a mutual confession of distress. We began immediately to talk of Mr. & Mrs. Cosway, of their goodness, their talents, their amiability; & tho we spoke of nothing else, we seemed hardly to have entered into matter when the coachman announced the rue St. Denis, & that we were opposite Mr. Danquerville’s. He insisted on descending there & traversing a short passage to his lodgings. I was carried home. Seated by my fireside, solitary & sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head & my Heart:

Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.

Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear.

Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth & precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You confess your follies indeed; but still you hug & cherish them; & no reformation can be hoped, where there is no repentance.

Heart. Oh, my friend! This is no moment to upbraid my foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If you have any balm, pour it into my wounds; if none, do not harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this awful moment! At any other I will attend with patience to your admonitions.

Head. On the contrary I never found that the moment of triumph with you was the moment of attention to my admonitions. While suffering under your follies, you may perhaps be made sensible of them, but, the paroxysms over, you fancy it can never return. Harsh therefore as the medicine may be, it is my office to administer it. You will be pleased to remember that when our friend Trumbull used to be telling us of the merits & talents of these good people, I never ceased whispering to you that we had no occasion for new acquaintance; that the greater their merits & talents, the more dangerous their friendship to our tranquillity, because the regret at parting would be greater.

Heart. Accordingly, Sir, this acquaintance was not the consequence of my doings. It was one of your projects which threw us in the way of it. It was you, remember, & not I, who desired the meeting at Legrand & Molinos. I never trouble myself with domes nor arches. The Halle aux blés might have rotted down before I should have gone to see it. But you, forsooth, who are eternally getting us to sleep with your diagrams & crotchets, must go & examine this wonderful piece of architecture. And when you had seen it, oh! It was the most superb thing on earth. What you had seen there was worth all you had yet seen in Paris! I thought so too. But I meant it of the lady & gentleman to whom we had been presented; & not of a parcel of sticks & chips put together in pens. You then, Sir, & not I, have been the cause of the present distress.

Head. It would have been happy for you if my diagrams & crotchets had gotten you to sleep on that day, as you are pleased to say they eternally do. My visit to Legrand & Molinos had publick utility for its object. A market is to be built in Richmond. What a commodious plan is that of Legrand & Molinos; especially if we put on it the noble dome of the Halle aux blés. If such a bridge as they shewed us can be thrown across the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, the floating bridges taken up & the navigation of that river opened, what a copious resource will be added, of wood & provisions, to warm & feed the poor of that city? While I was occupied with these objects, you were dilating with your new acquaintances, & contriving how to prevent a separation from them. Every soul of you had an engagement for the day. Yet all these were to be sacrificed, that you might dine together. Lying messengers were to be despatched into every quarter of the city, with apologies for your breach of engagement. You particularly had the effrontery to send word to the Duchess Danville that, on the moment we were setting out to dine with her, despatches came to hand which required immediate attention. You wanted me to invent a more ingenious excuse; but I knew you were getting into a scrape, & I would have nothing to do with it. Well, after dinner to St. Cloud, from St. Cloud to Ruggieris, from Ruggieri to Krumfoltz, & if the day had been as long as a Lapland summer day, you would still have contrived means among you to have filled it.

Heart. Oh! My dear friend, how you have revived me by recalling to my mind the transactions of that day! How well I remember them all, & that when I came home at night & looked back to the morning, it seemed to have been a month agone. Go on then, like a kind comforter & paint to me the day we went to St. Germains. How beautiful was every object! The Port de Reuilly, the hills along the Seine, the rainbows of the machine of Marly, the terrace of St. Germains, the chateaux, the gardens, the statues of Marly, the pavilion of Lucienne. Recollect too Madrid, Bagatelle, the Kings garden, the Dessert. How grand the idea excited by the remains of such a column! The spiral staircase too was beautiful. Every moment was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time moved on with a rapidity of which those of our carriage gave but a faint idea. And yet in the evening when one took a retrospect of the day, what a mass of happiness had we travelled over! Retrace all those scenes to me, my good companion, & I will forgive the unkindness with which you were chiding me. The day we went to St. Germains was a little too warm, I think; was it not?

Head. Thou art the most incorrigible of all the beings that ever sinned! I reminded you of the follies of the first day, intending to deduce from thence some useful lessons for you, but instead of listening to these, you kindle at the recollection, you retrace the whole series with a fondness which shews you want nothing but the opportunity to act it over again. I often told you during its course that you were imprudently engaging your affections under circumstances that must have cost you a great deal of pain: that the persons indeed were of the greatest merit, possessing good sense, good humour, honest hearts, honest manners, & eminence in a lovely art; that the lady had moreover qualities & accomplishments, belonging to her sex, which might form a chapter apart for her: such as music, modesty, beauty, & that softness of disposition which is the ornament of her sex & charm of ours, but that all these considerations would increase the pang of separation: that their stay here was to be short: that you wrack our whole system when you are parted from those you love, complaining that such a separation is worse than death, inasmuch as this ends our sufferings, whereas that only begins them: & that the separation would in this instance be the more severe as you would probably never see them again.

Heart. But they told me they would come back again the next year.

Head. But in the meantime see what you suffer: & their return too depends on so many circumstances that if you had a grain of prudence you would not count upon it. Upon the whole it is improbable & therefore you should abandon the idea of ever seeing them again.

Heart. May heaven abandon me if I do!

Head. Very well. Suppose then they come back. They are to stay two months, & when these are expired, what is to follow? Perhaps you flatter yourself they may come to America?

Heart. God only knows what is to happen. I see nothing impossible in that supposition. And I see things wonderfully contrived sometimes to make us happy. Where could they find such objects as in America for the exercise of their enchanting art? especially the lady, who paints landscapes so inimitably. She wants only subjects worthy of immortality to render her pencil immortal. The Failing Spring, the Cascade of Niagara, the Passage of the Potomac through the Blue Mountains, the Natural Bridge. It is worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see these objects; much more to paint, and make them, & thereby ourselves, known to all ages. And our own dear Monticello, where has nature spread so rich a mantle under the eye? Mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet! And the glorious sun when rising as if out of a distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountains, & giving life to all nature? I hope in God no circumstance may ever make either seek an asylum from grief! With what sincere sympathy I would open every cell of my composition to receive the effusion of their woes! I would pour my tears into their wounds: & if a drop of balm could be found on the top of the Cordilleras, or at the remotest sources of the Missouri, I would go thither myself to seek & to bring it. Deeply practised in the school of affliction, the human heart knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have not drunk! Fortune can present no grief of unknown form to me! Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself? But Heaven forbid they should ever know a sorrow! Let us turn over another leaf, for this has distracted me.

Head. Well. Let us put this possibility to trial then on another point. When you consider the character which is given of our country by the lying newspapers of London, & their credulous copyers in other countries; when you reflect that all Europe is made to believe we are a lawless banditti, in a state of absolute anarchy, cutting one another’s throats, & plundering without distinction, how can you expect that any reasonable creature would venture among us?

Heart. But you & I know that all this is false: that there is not a country on earth where there is greater tranquillity, where the laws are milder, or better obeyed: where every one is more attentive to his own business, or meddles less with that of others: where strangers are better received, more hospitably treated, & with a more sacred respect.

Head. True, you & I know this, but your friends do not know it.

Heart. But they are sensible people who think for themselves. They will ask of impartial foreigners who have been among us, whether they saw or heard on the spot any instances of anarchy. They will judge too that a people occupied as we are in opening rivers, digging navigable canals, making roads, building public schools, establishing academies, erecting busts & statues to our great men, protecting religious freedom, abolishing sanguinary punishments, reforming & improving our laws in general, they will judge I say for themselves whether these are not the occupations of a people at their ease, whether this is not better evidence of our true state than a London newspaper, hired to lie, & from which no truth can ever be extracted but by reversing everything it says.

Jefferson ☞ Cosway letter, page 1
Jefferson ☞ Cosway letter, page 1
Head. I did not begin this lecture my friend with a view to learn from you what America is doing. Let us return then to our point. I wished to make you sensible how imprudent it is to place your affections, without reserve, on objects you must so soon lose, & whose loss when it comes must cost you such severe pangs. Remember that last night. You knew your friends were to leave Paris to-day. This was enough to throw you into agonies. All night you tossed us from one side of the bed to the other. No sleep, no rest. The poor crippled wrist too, never left one moment in the same position, now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at if its pains returned? The Surgeon then was to be called, & to be rated as an ignoramus because he could not divine the cause of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your manners. This is not a world to live at random in as you do. To avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are forever exposing us, you must learn to look forward before you take a step which may interest our peace. Everything in this world is a matter of calculation. Advance then with caution, the balance in your hand. Put into one scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put fairly into the other the pains which are to follow, & see which preponderates. The making an acquaintance is not a matter of indifference. When a new one is proposed to you, view it all round. Consider what advantages it presents, & to what inconveniences it may expose you. Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it. The art of life is the art of avoiding pain: & he is the best pilot who steers clearest of the rocks & shoals with which he is beset. Pleasure is always before us; but misfortune is at our side: while running after that, this arrests us. The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves, & to suffice for our own happiness. Those, which depend on ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man will count on: for nothing is ours which another may deprive us of. Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Even in our power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride serene & sublime above the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth & nature, matter & motion, the laws which bind up their existence, & that eternal being who made & bound them up by those laws. Let this be our employ. Leave the bustle & tumult of society to those who have not talents to occupy themselves without them. Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies & the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another? Is there so little gall poured into our cup that we must needs help to drink that of our neighbor? A friend dies or leaves us: we feel as if a limb was cut off. He is sick: we must watch over him, & participate of his pains. His fortune is shipwrecked; ours must be laid under contribution. He loses a child, a parent, or a partner: we must mourn the loss as if it were our own.

Heart. And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom the hand of heaven hath smitten! To watch over the bed of sickness, & to beguile its tedious & its painful moments! To share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten its burthen we must divide it with one another. But let us now try the virtues of your mathematical balance, & as you have put into one scale the burthen of friendship, let me put its comforts into the other. When languishing then under disease, how grateful is the solace of our friends! How are we penetrated with their assiduities & attentions! How much are we supported by their encouragements & kind offices! When heaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, & into which we may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort, is almost a luxury! In a life where we are perpetually exposed to want & accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, & to wrap ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency! For assuredly nobody will care for him who care for nobody. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly. How gay did the face of nature appear! Hills, valleys, chateaux, gardens, rivers, every object wore its liveliest hue! Whence did they borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion. They were pleasing, because she seemed pleased. Alone, the scene would have been dull & insipid: the participation of it with her gave it relish. Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me then my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which, could estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for you has induced me to enter into this discussion, & to hear principles uttered which I detest & abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognisance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their control. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the incertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation therefore in sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all, as necessary to all: this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know indeed that you pretend authority to the sovereign control of our conduct in all its parts: & a respect for your grave saws & maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced me to conform to your counsels. A few facts however which I can readily recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you that nature has not organised you for our moral direction. When the poor wearied soldier whom we overtook at Chickahomony with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get up behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was full of soldiers, & that if all should be taken up our horses would fail in their journey. We drove on therefore. But soon becoming sensible you had made me do wrong, that tho we cannot relieve all the distressed we should relieve as many as we can, I turned about to take up the soldier; but he had entered a by-path, & was no more to be found; & from that moment to this I could never find him out to ask his forgiveness. Again, when the poor woman came to ask a charity in Philadelphia, you whispered that she looked like a drunkard, & that half a dollar was enough to give her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily find reasons why they ought not to give. When I sought her out afterwards, & did what I should have done at first, you know that she employed the money immediately towards placing her child at school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Hamans. You began to calculate & to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of our warmest blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the hazard when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying at the same time the ways of Providence, whose precept is to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do forever then disclaim your interference in my province. Fill papers as you please with triangles & squares: try how many ways you can hang & combine them together. I shall never envy nor control your sublime delights. But leave me to decide when & where friendships are to be contracted. You say I contract them at random. So you said the woman at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive no one into my esteem till I know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title, office, are no recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary, great good qualities are requisite to make amends for their having wealth, title, & office. You confess that in the present case I could not have made a worthier choice. You only object that I was so soon to lose them. We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; & we must acquiesce. It is the condition annexed to all our pleasures, not by us who receive, but by him who gives them. True, this condition is pressing cruelly on me at this moment. I feel more fit for death than life. But when I look back on the pleasures of which it is the consequence, I am conscious they were worth the price I am paying. Notwithstanding your endeavours too to damp my hopes, I comfort myself with expectations of their promised return. Hope is sweeter than despair, & they were too good to mean to deceive me. In the summer, said the gentleman; but in the spring, said the lady: & I should love her forever, were it only for that! Know then, my friend, that I have taken these good people into my bosom; that I have lodged them in the warmest cell I could find: that I love them, & will continue to love them through life: that if fortune should dispose them on one side the globe, & me on the other, my affections shall pervade its whole mass to reach them. Knowing then my determination, attempt not to disturb it. If you can at any time furnish matter for their amusement, it will be the office of a good neighbor to do it. I will in like manner seize any occasion which may offer to do the like good turn for you with Condorcet, Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of those worthy sons of science whom you so justly prize.



I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my night-cap. Methinks I hear you wish to heaven I had called a little sooner, & so spared you the ennui of such a sermon. I did not interrupt them sooner because I was in a mood for hearing sermons. You too were the subject; & on such a thesis I never think the theme long; not even if I am to write it, and that slowly & awkwardly, as now, with the left hand. But that you may not be discouraged from a correspondence which begins so formidably, I will promise you on my honour that my future letters shall be of a reasonable length. I will even agree to express but half my esteem for you, for fear of cloying you with too full a dose. But, on your part, no curtailing. If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brimful of affection. I shall read them with the dispositions with which Arlequin, in Les deux billets spelt the words “je taime,” and wished that the whole alphabet had entered into their composition.

We have had incessant rains since your departure. These make me fear for your health, as well as that you had an uncomfortable journey. The same cause has prevented me from being able to give you any account of your friends here. This voyage to Fontainebleau will probably send the Count de Moustier & the Marquise de Brehan to America. Danquerville promised to visit me, but has not done it as yet. De la Tude comes sometimes to take family soup with me, & entertains me with anecdotes of his five & thirty years imprisonment. How fertile is the mind of man which can make the Bastile & Dungeon of Vincennes yield interesting anecdotes! You know this was for making four verses on Mme de Pompadour. But I think you told me you did not know the verses. They were these: “Sans esprit, sans sentiment, Sans etre belle, ni neuve, En France on peut avoir ie premier amant: Pontpadour en es l epreuve.” I have read the memoir of his three escapes.

Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
As to myself my health is good, except my wrist which mends slowly, & my mind which mends not at all, but broods constantly over your departure. The lateness of the season obliges me to decline my journey into the south of France. Present me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, & receive me into your own recollection with a partiality & a warmth, proportioned, not to my own poor merit, but to the sentiments of sincere affection & esteem with which I have the honour to be, my dear Madam, your most obedient humble servant.
Thomas Jefferson signature
[Th÷Jefferson]

15 December 2019

Jefferson in Love


Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
Benjamin Franklin may have been a young America’s philosophical sensualist, the ladies’s man of our founding fathers, but Thomas Jefferson had his moments. One of them occurred– where else– but France. In 1784, Franklin tugged Jefferson to Europe as a newly minted diplomat of a fledgling nation reaching out to skeptical countries with hundreds of years of history behind them.

Jefferson was suffering trying times. He recently lost his wife Martha and another daughter and would soon lose yet another. In all, Jefferson fathered eight daughters and two sons, but death took its toll upon his children. Throwing himself into duties of state brought a welcome respite from personal woes.

In France, Jefferson fell in love with its people, the arts, the architecture, and the land. And then he fell in love.

Less than two years into his stay, Jefferson met 27-year-old Maria Cosway. English although Italian born, she was smart, witty, pretty, an accomplished musician and artist, multilingual with a Tuscan accent, supremely talented… and… married. A marriage of convenience, as it turned out, but still married.

Richard Cosway, 1742-1821
Richard Cosway, 1742-1821
She’d wedded English portrait artist Richard Cosway, quite the roué, reputedly a libertine in his younger days and a lecher in elder years. In an artistic sideline, he painted erotic miniatures. Their marriage was not one of romantic delight; far from it.

On an extended holiday in Paris, she was ripe, as the gossips declaim, as was he. Jefferson fell for her hard, and she tumbled for him. How physically far the relationship went that season remains a private mystery of history.

The feelings certainly ran emotionally deep. Even as Jefferson succumbed to his duties as envoy, then Secretary of State, Vice President, President, and numerous post-political accomplishments, Cosway never let the flame she carried flicker out.

After they parted in October 1786, Jefferson wrote a lengthy letter of love. Next time we’ll publish this four-thousand word tome of emotion, his now famous ‘Dialogue Between his Head and his Heart’.

Maria Cosway, 1760-1838
Maria Cosway, 1760-1838
Maria, already smitten, wrote she spent “an hour to consider every word, to every sentence [she] could write a volume.”

In 1789, Jefferson returned to the struggling United States to serve as Washington’s Secretary of State, before being elected to office. Cosway continued gathering renown for her accomplishments. They continued writing one another across the miles and years.

Still corresponding thirty-five years later, Maria was 62 and Jefferson 78. She wrote of their unfulfilled love for one another. “In your Dialogue, your head would tell me, ‘That is enough,’ [but] your heart perhaps will understand, I might wish for more.”

Next week, Jefferson’s famous letter– it’s dense to modern ADD readers, but worth learning the most personal thoughts of the man who would become our third President of the United States.

10 November 2016

The Worst Thing on the Worst Day


I had an interesting weekend back in October.  My friends and I went to see Don Giovanni.
(Live in HD at our local theater, thanks to the Metropolitan Opera!, AND a great shout-out to Simon Keenlyside, who did the best Don Giovanni I've ever seen.  Wow!)
Then the next night, we watched the PBS Documentary on the making of Hamilton, the Musical. Another excellent choice, and I really hope to see the musical itself some day.
HINT:  There is a connection between these two...
Jonathan Edwards,
Puritan Divine and
Aaron  Burr's grandfather
During the special on "Hamilton", Leslie Odom, Jr. spoke about playing Aaron Burr, and how he could relate to him, offering that you can't "judge a man by the worst thing he does on the worst day of his life..."  At which point I turned to my husband and said, "Yes, but shooting Hamilton wasn't the worst thing Burr did on the worst day of his life."

I can say that, because dueling was common back then:  Burr fought other duels besides the one with Hamilton; Hamilton's son died fighting a duel (not with Burr); future President Andrew Jackson fought in 103 duels.  So, no, the duel is not the worst thing that Burr ever did.

Aaron Burr (1756-1836) was an interesting man of true New England aristocracy.  Not because of wealth, but because of his bloodline.  He was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan Divine who wrote "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" (a good read for Halloween, and I should have thought of it earlier).  His extreme defense of the most extreme form of Calvinist Predestination terrified people.  They trembled, wept, sobbed, and screamed for mercy in the pews, and this turned into The Great Awakening of 1733-35, the first and perhaps greatest revival in American history. Mr. Edwards eventually became the first president of what would become Princeton University; Burr's father, also a Calvinist minister, was the second.

But both of these men were dead by the time he was 2 years old.  Burr and his sister Sally were taken in by their 21 year-old maternal uncle Timothy Edwards in 1759.  Burr was well educated, and got his BA at 16, and studied theology for 3 years with the noted hard-core Calvinist of his day, Joseph Bellamy. By all accounts, it didn't take. (See below.)  He quit and went to study law with his brother-in-law. He got to Connecticut as Lexington and Concord, and Burr joined the Continental Army.

Burr served well:  he saved an entire brigade from capture after the British landing on Manhattan - but George Washington did not commend him. Nor would he promote Burr to brigadier general, writing, "By all that I have known and heard, Colonel Burr is a brave and able officer, but the question is whether he has not equal talents at intrigue." Ouch.  (No, Washington did not give his reasons.)

After the war, Burr (now married to Theodosia, a widow, by whom he had a daughter, his beloved Theodosia) became a lawyer and went into New York politics. Tammany Hall was already up and running and put him on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket of 1800 with Thomas Jefferson. The two running mates didn't like each other, but Jefferson needed Burr to get the New York/urban electoral vote. (Electors were chosen by the states' legislatures back then.) But Jefferson neither liked nor trusted Burr to begin with, and it only got worse.

Burr.jpg Jefferson won the popular vote over John Adams, about 41,000 to 26,000 votes.

But the electors told a different story. Back then, every elector could vote for two people as long as they didn't come from the same state as the elector (thereby supposedly cutting down on corruption). Whoever got the most votes became president. Now it was understood, in the 1800 election, that Jefferson was to be President, Burr Vice President. But in the Electoral College vote, Jefferson and Burr came out tied, 73 electoral votes each. This threw the election into the House of Representatives, where it deadlocked for 11 days and 35 ballots, as the Federalist party (who hated Jefferson) tried to make Aaron Burr President.  Read more HERE.)

And Aaron Burr just sat there. He didn't say, "Oh, but Jefferson was the one running for Presdient,"; he didn't decline the honor; he didn't urge everyone to do what they knew was the right thing to do; he sat there and smiled and waited. This might have been the worst thing that Burr did on the worst day(s), because it was cold-blooded betrayal based on monumental ambition, and BTW, shook everyone's faith in the workings of this newborn democracy.

He lost, but only because Hamilton - no friend AT ALL to Jefferson - told his Federalist friends to support Jefferson because he was "by far not so dangerous a man" as Burr. Better someone with the wrong principles than none at all.
NOTE: Yes, this added to the Hamilton-Burr feud, which went back to their days working for Washington.  But part of Hamilton's opposition to Burr was the little matter that Aaron Burr had lied to Hamilton and other Federalists about founding a bank. He said he was going to set up a badly needed water supply company for Manhattan. As soon as he got the backing, he secretly changed the charter to include banking; as soon as it was approved, there was no water company, only a bank. What made this really hurt was that the lousy water led to a malaria epidemic.
NOTE: The 1800 election is what led to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which calls for each elector to vote for a President AND a Vice President on their ballot; no more "guess which one wins what spot" politicking.
The Burr-Hamilton duel came in 1804, and 1805 was the end of Burr's Vice Presidency. It was a good time to get out of town, and he went to the Ohio River Valley (which was the Western frontier back then), and started acquiring land and raising a private militia. Later, Burr claimed that he was making preparations for war with Spain. When word got back to Jefferson, he ordered Burr arrested, and he was, twice, and acquitted, twice. But then a whole bunch of correspondence came out which showed that Burr was trying to get a lot of money, help Mexico overthrow Spanish power in the Southwest, and set up his own dynasty.

Burr stood trial for treason in 1807, under Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall. He was acquitted because treason requires direct witnesses, and there weren't any. He immediately fled to Europe and lived there until 1812. He spent his time soliciting funding for a conquest of Mexico (didn't get it), and pursuing women. Lots of women.  He described his pursuits and encounters in great detail, both in his journals and in his letters home to Theodosia, with dozens of women (now do you understand the Don Juan connection?).
Theodosia Burr Alston,
Aaron Burr's daughter
BTW, I can understand the journals, but writing his daughter about his sexual prowess seems... inappropriate? to say the least...
NOTE:   Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote far more about New England life and history than about slavery, made Aaron Burr a major character in her 1859 novel "The Minister's Wooing," portraying him as a Don Juan type, but also as being damaged by an extreme Calvinist upbringing.  She also continued the legend that Theodosia - who at 29 was lost at sea in 1813 - was actually "taken by pirates and [died] amid untold horrors" and said that in all of Burr's post-1800 years "one seems to see in a doom so much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins beyond those of ordinary humanity."
To be fair, Burr believed women to be intellectually equal to men:  he educated Theodosia extremely well, and he submitted a bill to the New York legislature to give women the vote.  He also fought to abolish slavery immediately after the Revolutionary War.  He was generous financially, often to complete strangers, especially women and children. Still, almost all of his contemporaries, and most historians, have agreed that Aaron Burr was ruled by massive self-interest, and ambition.

Image result for simon keenlyside don giovanni
Simon Keenlyside as
Don Giovanni,
(thanks to the Met);
but with the pistol...
Aaron Burr?
Alexander Hamilton:  "Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government – Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself – thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement – and will be content with nothing short of permanent power [struck: and] in his own hands – No compact, that he should make with any [struck: other] passion in his [struck:own] breast except [struck: his] Ambition, could be relied upon by himself – How then should we be able to rely upon any agreement with him? Mr. Jefferson, I suspect will not dare much Mr. Burr will dare every thing in the sanguine hope of effecting every thing –"   Quoted from HERE

John Quincy Adams:   "Burr's life, take it all together, was such as in any country of sound morals his friends would be desirous of burying in quiet oblivion."

Aaron Burr:  "The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business."