Written in response to William Hogeland’s article published in Naked Capitalism

Created Equal? Founding Era Tensions on Economic Fairness

link below

No one is perfect, certainly not Aaron Burr but he was Enlightened. He believed and acted upon Economic Equality as well as the Equality of the Races and Gender Equality. [1]  Jefferson hypocritically stated that he was against the spread of slavery into the Western Territories. But everyone knew that Jefferson wouldn’t keep his word but that Burr was unequivocally anti slavery and he would stop the expansion of slavery. [2] To make matters worse Burr threatened Hamilton’s banking system. Those were the reasons way he is the most hated man in American history.

In 1799 Burr created the Manhattan Company to bring clean water to New York City and to give loans to the working “middling” classes. Burr was a radical in the French Jacobin tradition, but without the Jeffersonian hypocrisy toward slavery and the working classes. In addition to a Clean Environment, Micro Financing and Social Enterprise, Burr allowed the working classes to own shares in the Manhattan Company, giving them input into how the company conducted business. This threatened not only Alexander Hamilton’s banking monopoly in New York but also the National Bank (think Corporate Capitalism).

And if that weren’t enough, Burr was a proto-socialist. He created land co-ops so that more people could become property owners and thus vote. This was a direct threat to Madison’s Constitution, which created minority rule by disenfranchised over half of the American population.

These actions made Burr the champion of the Daughters and Sons of Liberty and the working class patriots and veterans of the Revolutionary army, many of whom were disenfranchised by the Constitution.[3] It is also why Hamilton’s Bankers along with Jefferson & Madison’s Slave-owners attacked him ruthlessly. Hamilton & Jefferson hired scoundrels like James Callender and James Cheetham to destroy Burr’s reputation by creating outrageous lies, yes even before Fox News.

Before the 1800 election, Jefferson & Madison went to New York to persuade Burr to run as Jefferson’s vice president. They knew that Jefferson could not win the election without northern support and that the Burr was one of the nations most popular politicians, finishing fourth in the 1796 presidential election. Based on his reputation as a champion of the people and the great success of the Manhattan Company, Burr tied Jefferson for the presidency and after a divisive series of votes in the Electoral College, served as Jefferson’s vice president. Immediately after the election Jefferson & Madison began plotting to undermine Burr’s reputation and political base because Burr was against slavery and stood in the way of Madison & Monroe’s succession to the presidency.

Burr represented a different choice for a young nation founded on the revolutionary ideals of the Enlightenment: a philosophy that was originally based on the principles of the consent of the governed and the greatest good for the greatest number. After the Revolution, there were at least five armed Rebellions against War Bond speculation and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s two-tiered economic and tax polices. During the 1790s, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson said that Hamilton’s policies were creating a Wall Street Aristocracy. Jefferson eventually resigned because of his conflicts with Hamilton and Senator Burr went back to New York and started the Manhattan Company, which, as we’ve previously stated, combined environmental concerns with social and economic justice.

The Aaron Burr Society believes that the principles of the Manhattan Company are as relevant today as they were in 1800. Ron Paul and Conservative Libertarians want to close the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed). Progressive Libertarians want to Nationalize the Fed and put a branch in every state in order to give direct loans to the people, not Wall Street. Instead of Hamilton’s government subsidies to large corporations, the Society wants to give subsidies to local communities in order to clean the environment and create local commerce.

At first this might seem Absurd, but think about it. All societies are based on fictional constructs. [4] History, mythology, religion represent our vision for the future, not just our view of the past. This is how societies build a consensus. Today the vast majority of Americans and people from around the world understands that something is seriously wrong when Wall Street and the International Monetary Fund insist on cutting government programs and changing our way of life. The former Soviet Union and China rejected antiquated economic systems but instead of looking to the future, they chose an equally antiquated and bankrupt system of fraudulent Free Markets and Free Trade. And now this parasitic system has also imploded, leaving America and the World with the Tyranny of Wall Street which is worse than the Kings our Founders rebelled against.

[1] Aaron Burr was Enlightened in the 18th Century context of Universal Human Rights. Like Franklin, he briefly owned slaves as servants. But he never earned a living from his slaves because he was one of the greatest attorneys of the era. He was a land speculator. And he was a lady’s man. However, he did not cheated on his wife and earned that reputation as a widower. How does one compare Burr’s acts of consensual sex with Jefferson’s raping slave girls and other Southern deviance?

[2] During 1804 NY gubernatorial election, candidate Burr invited 20 freed African Americans to dinner even though they could not vote. The New York and national press protested in the most ugly manor as the date arrived. Even Hamilton, who like Burr was anti-slavery, did not believe slaves were equal to whites. It was reported that at the dinner Burr offered a toast to all honest men.

[3] Burr was one of the most charitable of the Founders, always helping widows and orphans, some of whom were suspected of being his own illegitimate children. Though on occasion his relationship to orphan might be true, he was praised for these and other charitable acts. Consider that Jefferson kept his illegitimate children as slaves.

[4] Inventing the People: the Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England

      Edmund S. Morgan (c) 1988, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York & London, 500 Fifth Ave. NY NY 10110

Above written in response to William Hogeland’s article

Created Equal? Founding Era Tensions on Economic Fairness

By William Hogeland, the author of the narrative histories Declaration and The Whiskey Rebellion and a collection of essays, Inventing American History who blogs at

http://www.williamhogeland.com. Cross posted from New Deal 2.0

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com