by
Oil on canvas. The White House Collection, Washington, DC.
This is the official White House portrait of Madison commissioned by President James Monroe.
James Madison, 1816
But the peculiar character of [Aaron] Burr’s correspondence goes beyond his preoccupation with haste and secrecy. Burr never developed any ideas about constitutionalism or governmental policy in the way the other Revolutionary statesmen did, because, in truth, he was not much concerned about such matters. If he had any idea about the new federal Constitution of 1787, he left no record of it.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)