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Thus, almost unwillingly, Burr embarked on his political career. The Assembly then met in New York, so that his legislative labors did not interfere very much with the continuance of his law practice. It was as a lawyer that Burr was determined to make his mark, not as a politician. He was in constant need of money, and the pay of a legislator was pitifully small. Furthermore, he still held aloof with that formidable reserve of his from the heat and squabblings of office holding. It is small wonder, then, that he did not take his new duties at first with the proper seriousness.

The first session of the Legislature opened October 12, 1784. The Assembly Journal discloses that he did not appear in his seat until November 5th, over three weeks later, and that his attendance for the balance of the session was exceedingly perfunctory. The record is blank of any measure proposed by him, or of any participation in debate.^[151]

Certainly not an enviable record. But the leaven was stirring. For, when the Assembly convened for its second session on January 27, 1785, Burr was promptly on hand, and this time took a considerably more active part in the public discussions and voting.

On February 14th, he was placed on a joint committee to revise the laws of the State—an important assignment. The following day, a bill entitled “An Act incorporating the several tradesmen and mechanics of the city and county of New-York” came up for a vote. On the face of it an innocuous, routine bill. But Burr’s motion to reject it met with an instant storm of abuse. In spite of the tumult, however, and in spite of the fact that he was the only member of the Assembly from the city who dared fight the proposal, he persisted in his opposition. His motion was nevertheless defeated, and the bill passed.

The Council of Revision—a peculiar constitutional body, composed of the governor, the chancellor, and the judges of the Supreme Court, before whom all bills must be laid for approval—vetoed the measure in the very terms and with almost the very phrases that Burr had used. It was, they stated, a scheme whereby the price of labor might be artificially increased; its charter made its bylaws dependent largely on the will of the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of New York, which must necessarily lead to political power and control; it set up a privileged aristocracy in trade, inasmuch as its limited numbers would prove a hindrance to immigrant mechanics and non-members; and, most cogent argument of all, the charter set up forty-three designated persons as the governing body, possessing almost absolute powers, including the right of self-perpetuation in the continuance of their regime and the exercise of full discretion in the choice of the commonalty of mechanics.^[152]

It is obvious that many of these provisions were inherently dangerous, and that Burr was right in vigorously opposing such an incorporation. It was not a labor union, nor even a guild on Old World lines. It was an instrument to be used by certain politicians lurking in the background. But Burr had displayed an immense courage in breasting the popular clamor. The disgruntled partisans tried to instigate riots and threatened an assault on his house. He refused, however, all offers of aid from his friends, going about his business alone and unprotected as coolly as ever he had led his troops in action. He had brought himself forward at one bound from the general anonymity of the Legislature.

More important, however, was his determined fight to force the Legislature into the prompt and unequivocal abolition of slavery in the State of New York. A bill had been introduced in the Assembly purporting to free all those thereafter born from bondage. Burr moved to amend it to the effect that freedom should apply universally and at once. His motion met with defeat, and the unamended bill was finally passed, Burr voting stubbornly in the negative. It was, he felt, a weak compromise.

The Senate did not concur in certain provisions, and the bill came back for further consideration. Steadily and consistently, on every point, Burr’s vote was for the greater enlargement of the negro’s freedom and the immediacy of his release, even on such controversial questions as the right to vote, to hold positions of trust, to be admitted as witness or juror, and to intermarry without penalties. The bill was finally defeated, not to emerge again until 1799, when Burr was again in the Legislature.^[153]

When the Legislature adjourned on April 27, 1785, Burr had the consciousness of having performed his duties actively and well. His name had been brought into the public view, he had achieved a reputation for courage, he had made many friends—and some enemies.

But he refused to continue in politics. His ambitions still moved in a narrower, more personal circle. The law fascinated him; its sense of achievement and financial rewards were glittering. And his expenses were steadily growing heavier. So that, for a period of years, he devoted himself exclusively to his practice and his family, touching politics merely at its periphery and but lightly.

He took no part in the heat and uproar that attended the making of the Constitution, or in the greater uproar that attended its ratification in New York and elsewhere. One does not even know how he stood on these burning and all-important questions. Alexander Hamilton was afterward to refer to his attitude as “equivocal,” but Hamilton’s comments on Burr must always be taken with caution.^[154] There was nothing equivocal about his attitude. He simply took no public stand on the matter, equally with thousands of other private citizens.

New York ratified the Constitution, but only after battle had raged, more intense even than the physical conflicts of the Revolution. Perhaps the issue involved was more fundamental than the earlier struggle. It was a fight between the haves and the have-nots; between the proponents of a strong central government and those who believed in the essential sovereignty of the states; between those who favored resumption of specie payment and those who thought inflation a better course. There were innumerable cross-currents and strange bedfellows. Returned Tories found themselves fighting for the Constitution, and Revolutionary radicals for local control. Two parties emerged, Federalist and anti-Federalist—those who favored ratification and those who did not.

In New York Governor George Clinton, John Lansing, New York’s delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and Melancton Smith violently opposed ratification. Alexander Hamilton, his father-in-law, General Philip Schuyler, the Livingstons, William Duer, the war profiteer, and John Jay were as violently in favor.

So inflamed were the discussions, so fundamental the dissensions, that even after adoption and the final victory of the Federalist forces, the parties continued, and steadily widened the breach. But Burr continued to hold himself aloof, his politics generally unclassifiable. He was generally considered an old Whig, in that he had favored a policy of proscription against the Tories, but he had taken no part in the fray when Hamilton had actively campaigned against such a policy. He leaned, no doubt, toward the anti-Federalists, but he was an independent then as later. He cared nothing for tags or party labels, and voted with equal indifference for measures proposed by either party. Such independence from party lines and tags is the clue to much that puzzled and enraged his contemporaries in later political affrays. Then, as today, the man who transcended his party’s edicts was a traitor, a double-dealer, a trimmer, a Mugwump, a son of the wild jackass!