PREFACE.

The story of Aaron Burr's strange, eventful life, which
must possess interest for the American people always, I
attempt to tell, because no one else has told it.

Few men have been more written about than he ; but,
generally, by partisans, opponents, or enemies. The life
of Burr, by the late Mr. M. L. Davis, as it contains a great
number of Colonel Burr's letters, and many documents
respecting him and his doings in the world, has a value
of its own, which publications like the present can not
diminish. But the story of the man's life is not to be
extracted from those volumes, for the simple reason that
it is not contained in them. One may read Mr. Davis's
work, and Burr's European Diary, and the Report of his
Trial for Treason, making in all more than three thousand
octavo pages, and still be utterly unable to decide what
manner of man he was, and what, in the great crises of
his life, he either did or meant to do. I can confidently
appeal to any one who has gone through those six pond¬
erous volumes, to confirm the assertion, that they leave
Aaron Burr, at last, to the consideration of the reader, a
baffling enigma f

To have condensed the information contained in those