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Who is Aaron Burr?

On the national level he is something of an unknown. He served as an officer in the Continental Army but unlike Hamilton he did not serve in a high profile role directly under Washington. He was not involved in the Constitutional Convention or the previous government, only getting into politics in the last decade.

He was Senator for a single term when the Democratic Republicans held the governorship of New York (remember Senators were appointed by the governor at this time, they were not directly elected). He is seen as a rising star within the Democratic-Republican party. He is the chief political strategist for the Party as well as one of its key financiers after founding the Bank of Manhattan. The strategy of purchasing newspapers all over the country to run their propaganda openly was his idea and was seen as controversial (openly campaigning for office was seen as uncouth) until it became clear that it was working at which point all hell broke loose.

The Bank of Manhattan (which persists to this day in the form of Chase) is actually the main source of his rivalry with Hamilton in these later years as his bank was willing to lend to Democratic-Republican interests in New York City, as previously all banks were held by the Federalists. His willingness to lend to anyone made him fabulously wealthy and a bit of a hero to the Party faithful. His bank allowed people to acquire enough property to gain the vote so he was literally tripling or quadrupling the eligible voterbase in New York City since he was willing to lend to people who belonged to the Democratic-Republican Party, something Hamilton's Bank of New York doggedly refused to do. Burr's maneuver turned New York from a Federalist stronghold to a fairly disputed state. However in order to do so, he tricked Hamilton and the Federalists by claiming he was chartering a badly needed Water Company. Burr argues this trickery was necessary as Hamilton was suppressing the franchise while Hamilton and the Federalists maintain that his reneging on his promise to build a safe water system caused deaths by malaria.

So Burr is a pro-Business, moderate and urban Democratic-Republican who has a bit of a reputation for chicanery and underhanded tactics. He doesn't appear to have particularly strong views on France and England but instead appears mainly concerned with rolling back the Land Use tax.

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Board 8's Voice of Reason
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