Historian and constitutional lawyer David Stewart discusses his new biography of Aaron Burr – America’s third vice president and one of the most daring, and possibly deluded, figures in our nation’s history.

Though he was vice president to Thomas Jefferson, Burr challenged the president, both openly and privately, and imagined a great empire along the Gulf of Mexico that would swell once America’s western lands seceded from the union. Jefferson eventually ordered Burr prosecuted for treason, and the nation was forced to address the question of whether individual rights should be sacrificed to punish a political apostate who challenged the nation’s very existence.