Both made large sums, and both spent them all as fast as made.

In point of classic education, Burr had the advantage.  He was the grandson of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards.  In his strong, personal magnetism, and keen, many-sided intellect, Aaron Burr strongly resembled the gifted Presbyterian divine who wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  His father was the Reverend Aaron Burr, President of Princeton College.  He was a graduate of Princeton, and, like Hamilton, always had the ability to focus his mind on the subject in hand, and wring from it its very core.  Burr’s reputation as to his susceptibility to women’s charms is the world’s common—­very common—­property.  He was unhappily married; his wife died before he was thirty; he was a man of ardent nature and stalked through the world a conquering Don Juan.  A historian, however, records that “his alliances were only with women who were deemed by society to be respectable.  Married women, unhappily mated, knowing his reputation, very often placed themselves in his way, going to him for advice, as moths court the flame.  Young, tender and innocent girls had no charm for him.”

Hamilton was happily married to a woman of aristocratic family; rich, educated, intellectual, gentle, and worthy of him at his best.  They had a family of eight children.  Hamilton was a favorite of women everywhere and was mixed up in various scandalous intrigues.  He was an easy mark for a designing woman.  In one instance, the affair was seized upon by his political foes, and made capital of to his sore disadvantage.  Hamilton met the issue by writing a pamphlet, laying bare the entire shameless affair, to the horror of his family and friends.  Copies of this pamphlet may be seen in the rooms of the American Historical Society at New York.  Burr had been Attorney-General of New York State and also United States Senator.  Each man had served on Washington’s staff; each had a brilliant military record; each had acted as second in a duel; each recognized the honor of the code.

Stern political differences arose, not so much through matters of opinion and conscience, as through ambitious rivalry.  Neither was willing the other should rise, yet both thirsted for place and power.  Burr ran for the Presidency, and was sternly, strongly, bitterly opposed as “a dangerous man” by Hamilton.

At the election one more electoral vote would have given the highest office of the people to Aaron Burr; as it was he tied with Jefferson.  The matter was thrown into the House of Representatives, and Jefferson was given the office, with Burr as Vice-President.  Burr considered, and perhaps rightly, that were it not for Hamilton’s assertive influence he would have been President of the United States.

While still Vice-President, Burr sought to become Governor of New York, thinking this the surest road to receiving the nomination for the Presidency at the next election.