During a duel, each participant has a second. This person is there to assist and also try to resolve the conflict without gunshots. Aaron Burr’s second was a lawyer named William P. Van Ness. You can see Van Ness helping Burr on Rhonda’s post, the letter is in his handwriting. To fully understand Van Ness’ loyalty to Burr, we need to go back a bit from the duel.

Van Ness came to the rescue of Burr by writing a pamphlet entitled: An Examination of the Various Charges Exhibited Against Aaron Burr...And A Development of the Character and Views of His Political Opponents. This pamphlet was in response to numerous newspaper articles demeaning Burr, even charging that he tried to steal the presidential election. Back then, newspapers were openly for one party or the other. So these slurs were printed in pro Democratic-Republican papers. Remember that the Democratic-Republicans were opposite of the Federalist party. Burr ignored most of these articles, letting his supporters write articles of their own, until he had enough and got Van Ness to write his pamphlet. The pamphlet was a tremendous success for Burr. The pamphlet even attacked President Jefferson.

On a side note, Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, wrote articles backing Burr. He wrote them under the fake name Jonathon Oldstyle and they were published in his brother’s paper The Morning Chronicle.