As friend or as enemy he had been thrown intimately and on equal terms with the greatest political leaders of the day.

He had supplied almost the only feeling which Jefferson, the chief of the Democratic party, and Hamilton, the greatest Federalist, ever possessed in common; for bitterly though Hamilton and Jefferson had hated each other, there was one man whom each of them had hated more, and that was Aaron Burr.

There was not a man in the country who did not know about the brilliant and unscrupulous party leader who had killed Hamilton in the most famous duel that ever took place on American soil, and who by a nearly successful intrigue had come within one vote of supplanting Jefferson in the presidency.
Burr's Previous Career in New York.
In New York Aaron Burr had led a political career as stormy and chequered as the careers of New York politicians have generally been.

He had shown himself as adroit as he was unscrupulous in the use of all the arts of the machine manager.

The fitful and gusty breath of popular favor made him at one time the most prominent and successful politician in the State, and one of the two or three most prominent and successful in the nation.