Ques­tion: Did Aaron Burr, Jr. take part in a Whig or Clio debate in which he argued against duel­ing? What infor­ma­tion on Aaron Burr, Jr. exists within uni­ver­sity records?

There is noth­ing in the records of either orga­ni­za­tion, in early Uni­ver­sity records, or in Burr’s mem­oirs that would con­firm that such a debate took place. The records of Clio debate top­ics begin in 1792, Whig in 1802; unfor­tu­nately any records of ear­lier debate top­ics would have been destroyed in the 1802 Nas­sau Hall fire. The records of the Uni­ver­sity actu­ally con­tain very lit­tle orig­i­nal mate­r­ial per­tain­ing to Aaron Burr Jr. ‘1772, at least par­tially as a result of the afore­men­tioned Nas­sau Hall fire. Most sig­nif­i­cantly, he is listed sev­eral times in the min­utes of the Trustees among the grad­u­ates of the Class of 1772. From other sources such as the Penn­syl­va­nia Chron­i­cle, we know that he deliv­ered sev­eral ora­tions at com­mence­ments while he was a stu­dent. Other Aaron Burr pri­mary sources held by the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions are gath­ered in two col­lec­tions held by the Man­u­scripts Division:

Aaron Burr (1756–1836) Collection

http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/kw52j8069

Fuller Col­lec­tion of Aaron Burr (1756–1836)

http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/sf268510w

The Uni­ver­sity Archives also holds a siz­able alumni file for Burr which con­tains clip­pings and some early ref­er­ence cor­re­spon­dence between researchers and var­i­ous Uni­ver­sity sec­re­taries about his life, focus­ing mainly on his affairs after leav­ing the Col­lege of New Jer­sey. The file also con­tains repro­duc­tions of sev­eral paint­ings, engrav­ings, and sketches of Burr. James Madison’s alumni file con­tains a sim­i­lar folder of portraits.

Yours sin­cerely,

Daniel Bren­nan