As his presidential campaign slides toward the back pages of the history he loves to quote, Newt Gingrich may want to reflect on one lesson of history that he never mentions:  what a weak platform the House Speakership has proved to be for presidential candidates. Although House Speakers are national figures, they have faded from…

The Smithsonian’s Museum of American History has a current exhibition on Slavery at Monticello, which is well worth checking out.  I toured it yesterday.  Anyone who has slogged through Annette Gordon-Reed’s immense work, The Hemingses of Monticello, will not find much that is terribly new.  But I did learn something that brought home — one…

I’ll be working my way up the East Coast this week, spreading the Gospel of Burr in book talks.  Do come out and say hello! Monday, 7:30 p.m.:  Princeton NJ Public Library Tuesday, noon:  92Y/Tribeca (NYC) Wednesday, 5:30 p.m.:  John Carter Brown Library, Providence Thursday, Boston [private event] Friday, noon:  Federal Bar Ass’n meeting, DC.…

I seem to have stirred up a partisan hornet’s nest with a piece on Politico.com this morning, wondering whether Aaron Burr and Dick Cheney should be deemed our “most notorious VP.”  (Hint:  Cheney wins.) American Emperor got a sweet review as a “gripping new book” from Jeff Ayers of the Associated Press.  So far, the…

Just back from the first week of intense promotion of American Emperor, and the feeling out there was great: Started this week in Louisville at the Filson Historical Society, where the crowd topped a hundred and they were deep into the Burr story. Then on to the Atlanta History Center where 170 Georgians filed in…

No, it’s not the day we crawl from bar to bar, drinking heavily.  It’s publication day, when American Emperor officially hits the bookstores and Amazon starts shipping.  It’s one of those exciting days when the author passes people on the street and thinks, with a flitting sense of dismay, “They don’t even know that my…

Over at Huffington Post, I argue that Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and all the rest need to back off on the treason-slinging.  Treason is an emotionally overpowering accusation that the Constitution limits to very specific circumstances.  In Aaron Burr’s treason trial in Richmond in 1807, Chief Justice John Marshall aggressively enforced the limits on treason. …

Most of Cincinnati’s thousand citizens lined the banks of the Ohio River on April 27, 1801, to watch one of the wonders of the age.  A great new sailing ship, St. Clair, was passing downriver from Marietta for its maiden voyage in the Gulf of Mexico.  Its journey would fire the imaginations of many men,…