The entry begins:I've been telling friends, jokingly of course, not to buy my book on the treason trial of Aaron Burr until they see the movie. But now the moment of truth has come. The action takes place in the House of Delegates in Richmond, which during the trial looked every bit like a makeshift Elizabethan theater where the lawyers and the parties in the case were almost indistinguishable from the spectators. Former Vice-president Burr is in the dock, accused of treason (without benefit of even a grand jury indictment) by President Jefferson, who undertook to micro-manage the prosecution from the White House--a fact that brought him face-to-face with his old enemy Chief Justice John Marshall who sat as trial judge. The character of the main players figured largely in the trial, so casting is crucial.Learn more about The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr at the Cambridge University Press website.
Aaron Burr: short, handsome, piercing dark eyes that captivated the women in (and out of) the courtroom. A Revolutionary war veteran: a gifted New York politician in hostile territory in Jeffersonian Virginia; a brilliant lawyer who directed his own defense; a good play actor, as he confessed, who found it easy to play the innocent victim of a vengeful president (which was easy to do since it was largely true). Burr finds it hard to contain his contempt for Jefferson, the government's lawyers, and their witnesses--and occasionally even John Marshall. Since Richard Burton is no longer with us, nor Paul Newman, and Richard...[read on]
Kent Newmyer is Professor of Law and History at the University of Connecticut School of Law. His books include The Supreme Court Under Marshall and Taney, John Marshall & the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court, and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic.
The Page 99 Test: The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr.
My Book, The Movie: The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr.
--Marshal Zeringue
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