It was the moment Aaron Burr had been working toward for two years.  In late December, 1806, he stood on the Illinois shore of the Ohio River, just below the mouth of the Cumberland River.   Gathered around him were the men who had volunteered to join his expedition to liberate the Spanish lands of Florida,…

In late December 1806, Aaron Burr was desperately trying breathe life into the Western expedition he had spent the previous twenty months organizing.  For several weeks, everything had been turning sour. In October, the U.S. Attorney in Kentucky tried to prosecute him for organizing an illegal private invasion of Mexico.  A grand jury in Frankfort…

He was a young fellow, with the mandatory four-days-growth beard.  I don’t get that many younger folks to my readings, so I was happy to seem him in the book-signing line after my talk about American Emperor at the National Archives earlier this month. Then he presented his soft-covered volume, which turned out to be…

When she began taping our interview at noon today, Mimi Geerges, who has a radio show on XM-Sirius and a bunch of local public radio stations (see below), described Aaron Burr as a “scoundrel.” Wait, I said.  He wasn’t really a scoundrel. Really?  She answered.  He was a traitor, wasn’t he? And we were off. …

This weekend marks the anniversary of the 1806 launch of Aaron Burr’s ill-fated Western expedition.  The former vice president had arranged for the construction of riverboats that could carry 1500 men down to New Orleans, Florida, Mexico, and beyond. The recruits mustered at Blennerhassett Island, on the Ohio River beyond Marietta, Ohio (across from the…

Like you, I was appalled to read about the congressional representatives — Republicans and Democrats alike — who have traded on the stock market on inside information gained through their public duties.  Peter Schweizer’s new book, Throw Them All Out, has stirred up this tempest.  The episode that disgusted me the most was when key…

After sailing into the marketplace on Tuesday, American Emperor picked up a terrific review from David Holahan at the Christian Science Monitor, which featured a great opening line:   “If you feel that our contemporary politics are off the rails, you should read David O. Stewart’s vivid account of 19th-century American machinations.”  The review goes…

Bloomberg.com has just posted a podcast of the interview I did with Lewis Lapham about American Emperor.  Mr. Lapham (it wasn’t long enough to get on a first-name basis) no longer edits Harper’s, which he did for many years, but does put out Lapham’s Quarterly, in addition to doing this series of podcast interviews for…

The current financial crisis surrounding Greece has the European Union (EU) reliving an American nightmare of the 1780s.  Then, the Articles of Confederation bound the thirteen states together with ties that were both loose and clumsy, and that failed.  The parallels are plain: A group of states join together for mutual advantage. History and pride…