Aaron Burr

DESCRIPTION: "Oh, Aaron Burr, what have you done? You've shot great General Hamilton! You hid behind a Canada thistle And shot him with your old hoss-pistol!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1848 (several magazines)
KEYWORDS: homicide political
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 11, 1804 - Duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, resulting in the wounding of the latter; he died the next day
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, p. 257, (no title) (1 short text)
ADDITIONAL: (no editor listed), _The Knickerbocker_, Vol. 31, No. 4, April, 1848 (available at Google Books), p. 375, "(no title)" (1 short text, part of a rambling column called "Editor's Table")
(no editor listed), _Holden's Dollar Magazine_, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1848 (available at Google Books), p. 508-9, "(no title)" (1 short text, part of a rambling column called "Topics of the Month")
NOTES [318 words]: The duel between Vice President Aaron Burr (1756-1836) and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (c. 1756-1804) is the subject of so much folklore that I am not even going to try to cover it. The duel itself arose out of Burr's resentment at Hamilton's (successful) efforts to prevent his election as governor of New York.
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads claims that this is a "quatrain which was popular for more than half a century," Burt does not document this claim, but the fact that the verse was quoted twice in 1848 seems to support the conclusion that it was remembered. Whether it was actually traditional is another question.
[The two 1848 newspapers seem to have some sort of literary dependence, as witness the contexts as found by Jim Dixon:]
[From The Knickerbocker:]
"The death of eminent men used formerly to give rise to more 'tributes' in verse than are common now-a-days. Among the objurgatory poetry elicited by the wilful murder of General Alexander Hamilton by Colonel Aaron Burr, was the following:
'Oh! Aaron Burr, what have you done?
You've shot great General Hamilton;
You got behind a bunch of thistles,
And shot him dead with two hoss-pistils!'"
[From Holden's Dollar Magazine:]
The death of eminent men used once to give rise to more "tributes" in verse, than are common now-a-days. Among the poetry elicited by the death in a duel, of Gen. Alexander Hamilton by Col. Aaron Burr was the following:
"Oh! Aaron Burr, what have you done?
You've shot great General Hamilton;
You got behind a bunch of thistles,
And shot him dead with two hoss-pistils."
Other than the quoted part, the two columns don't have much in common. - JD, (RBW)
There is another songster text about Burr and Hamilton, "The Death of Hamilton," which begins "Oh! woe betide ye, Aaron Burr" (Roud #V65664), which can be traced back to the 1810s, but I have no evidence that it is traditional, either. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: Burt257

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography