The musings of a physician who served the community for over six decades
367 Topics
Downtown A discussion about downtown area in Philadelphia and connections from today with its historical past.
West of Broad A collection of articles about the area west of Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Delaware (State of) Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Religious Philadelphia William Penn wanted a colony with religious freedom. A considerable number, if not the majority, of American religious denominations were founded in this city. The main misconception about religious Philadelphia is that it is Quaker-dominated. But the broader misconception is that it is not Quaker-dominated.
Particular Sights to See:Center City Taxi drivers tell tourists that Center City is a "shining city on a hill". During the Industrial Era, the city almost urbanized out to the county line, and then retreated. Right now, the urban center is surrounded by a semi-deserted ring of former factories.
Philadelphia's Middle Urban Ring Philadelphia grew rapidly for seventy years after the Civil War, then gradually lost population. Skyscrapers drain population upwards, suburbs beckon outwards. The result: a ring around center city, mixed prosperous and dilapidated. Future in doubt.
Historical Motor Excursion North of Philadelphia The narrow waist of New Jersey was the upper border of William Penn's vast land holdings, and the outer edge of Quaker influence. In 1776-77, Lord Howe made this strip the main highway of his attempt to subjugate the Colonies.
Land Tour Around Delaware Bay Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Tourist Trips Around Philadelphia and the Quaker Colonies The states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey all belonged to William Penn the Quaker. He was the largest private landholder in American history. Using explicit directions, comprehensive touring of the Quaker Colonies takes seven full days. Local residents would need a couple dozen one-day trips to get up to speed.
Touring Philadelphia's Western Regions Philadelpia County had two hundred farms in 1950, but is now thickly settled in all directions. Western regions along the Schuylkill are still spread out somewhat; with many historic estates.
Up the King's High Way New Jersey has a narrow waistline, with New York harbor at one end, and Delaware Bay on the other. Traffic and history travelled the Kings Highway along this path between New York and Philadelphia.
Arch Street: from Sixth to Second When the large meeting house at Fourth and Arch was built, many Quakers moved their houses to the area. At that time, "North of Market" implied the Quaker region of town.
Up Market Street to Sixth and Walnut Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
Sixth and Walnut over to Broad and Sansom In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Montgomery and Bucks Counties The Philadelphia metropolitan region has five Pennsylvania counties, four New Jersey counties, one northern county in the state of Delaware. Here are the four Pennsylvania suburban ones.
Northern Overland Escape Path of the Philadelphia Tories 1 of 1 (16) Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.
City Hall to Chestnut Hill There are lots of ways to go from City Hall to Chestnut Hill, including the train from Suburban Station, or from 11th and Market. This tour imagines your driving your car out the Ben Franklin Parkway to Kelly Drive, and then up the Wissahickon.
Philadelphia Reflections is a history of the area around Philadelphia, PA
... William Penn's Quaker Colonies
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Philadelphia Revelations
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George R. Fisher, III, M.D.
Obituary
George R. Fisher, III, M.D.
Age: 97 of Philadelphia, formerly of Haddonfield
Dr. George Ross Fisher of Philadelphia died on March 9, 2023, surrounded by his loving family.
Born in 1925 in Erie, Pennsylvania, to two teachers, George and Margaret Fisher, he grew up in Pittsburgh, later attending The Lawrenceville School and Yale University (graduating early because of the war). He was very proud of the fact that he was the only person who ever graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Science in English Literature. He attended Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons where he met the love of his life, fellow medical student, and future renowned Philadelphia radiologist Mary Stuart Blakely. While dating, they entertained themselves by dressing up in evening attire and crashing fancy Manhattan weddings. They married in 1950 and were each other’s true loves, mutual admirers, and life partners until Mary Stuart passed away in 2006. A Columbia faculty member wrote of him, “This young man’s personality is way off the beaten track, and cannot be evaluated by the customary methods.”
After training at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia where he was Chief Resident in Medicine, and spending a year at the NIH, he opened a practice in Endocrinology on Spruce Street where he practiced for sixty years. He also consulted regularly for the employees of Strawbridge and Clothier as well as the Hospital for the Mentally Retarded at Stockley, Delaware. He was beloved by his patients, his guiding philosophy being the adage, “Listen to your patient – he’s telling you his diagnosis.” His patients also told him their stories which gave him an education in all things Philadelphia, the city he passionately loved and which he went on to chronicle in this online blog. Many of these blogs were adapted into a history-oriented tour book, Philadelphia Revelations: Twenty Tours of the Delaware Valley.
He was a true Renaissance Man, interested in everything and everyone, remembering everything he read or heard in complete detail, and endowed with a penetrating intellect which cut to the heart of whatever was being discussed, whether it be medicine, history, literature, economics, investments, politics, science or even lawn care for his home in Haddonfield, NJ where he and his wife raised their four children. He was an “early adopter.” Memories of his children from the 1960s include being taken to visit his colleagues working on the UNIVAC computer at Penn; the air-mail version of the London Economist on the dining room table; and his work on developing a proprietary medical office software using Fortran. His dedication to patients and to his profession extended to his many years representing Pennsylvania to the American Medical Association.
After retiring from his practice in 2003, he started his pioneering “just-in-time” Ross & Perry publishing company, which printed more than 300 new and reprint titles, ranging from Flight Manual for the SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane (his best seller!) to Terse Verse, a collection of a hundred mostly humorous haikus. He authored four books. In 2013 at age 88, he ran as a Republican for New Jersey Assemblyman for the 6th district (he lost).
A gregarious extrovert, he loved meeting his fellow Philadelphians well into his nineties at the Shakespeare Society, the Global Interdependence Center, the College of Physicians, the Right Angle Club, the Union League, the Haddonfield 65 Club, and the Franklin Inn. He faithfully attended Quaker Meeting in Haddonfield NJ for over 60 years. Later in life he was fortunate to be joined in his life, travels, and adventures by his dear friend Dr. Janice Gordon.
He passed away peacefully, held in the Light and surrounded by his family as they sang to him and read aloud the love letters that he and his wife penned throughout their courtship. In addition to his children – George, Miriam, Margaret, and Stuart – he leaves his three children-in-law, eight grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and his younger brother, John.
A memorial service, followed by a reception, will be held at the Friends Meeting in Haddonfield New Jersey on April 1 at one in the afternoon. Memorial contributions may be sent to Haddonfield Friends Meeting, 47 Friends Avenue, Haddonfield, NJ 08033.
When confronted with any complicated and contentious issue like medical malpractice, the instinct of Congress is to ask for an impartial survey of the available literature on the topic from GAO. The Government Accountability Office has produced several well-balanced analysis of the situation, readily available to the public on its website. These cautiously worded reports complain that much information on this topic was collected for other purposes. For example, interstate malpractice insurance companies commonly collect information about classes of injury and types of subscribers, but often do not subdivide the information by the state of origin. Therefore, it is sometimes not possible to be confident of what effect varying state policies or laws may have had. Some of this data deficiency is being corrected but has not had time to accumulate into useful patterns. And divulging some data, like each company's investment performance on its reserves, is resisted as proprietary. After forty years of heated accusations between the medical and legal professions, this is disappointing.
Insurance Lawyers
The chief example of this sad situation is judging managed Care's effect on patient-doctor relations. Since reports like the Harvard study of medical negligence in New York demonstrate that disputes which result in lawsuits are less than ten percent of comparable male occurrences, patient animosity may be as important a stimulus to suit as the severity of an injury or the degree of negligence. Until hard data is produced, the issue is open to adversary rhetoric. The uncomfortable thing about Managed Careis its tendency to transfer doctor selection to a remote third party. The consequence, at least to some degree, is throwing doctors and patients together who do not like each other very much. Carried to the extreme, it would then be plausible for the degree of negligence to have less to do with triggering later lawsuits than does personal friction between patient and doctor. If you like him, you forgive; if you dislike him, you sue.
During the most recent period when malpractice suits, awards, and premiums rose to a level probably causing some physicians to abandon the practice, managed care simultaneously rose to become a dominant factor. It is safe to say many patients and many physicians hated being in this arrangement because it was essentially imposed on them both by employer group purchasers. There is some hope that some malpractice insurers have maintained records of their experiences, categorized by the type of health insurance of the plaintiff. These databases might establish whether managed care is responsible for increasing the number and cost of suits; it might assist other policy decisions as well. Those who scoff at the cost of tort litigation do not adequately acknowledge these far-reaching implications of many aspects of the issue.
Until 1939, there was a legal doctrine of Charitable Immunity, which universally shielded hospitals and other charitable institutions from negligence lawsuits. No doubt the underlying reasoning was that charities possess limited funds for unlimited demands, and must be forgiven for imperfect compromises in the face of scarcity. To threaten them in court for falling short of perfection might drive charitable efforts away entirely. Since many professionals donated their services to the common effort, there was some spill-over protection for individual professionals, but this centuries-old doctrine applied to institutions more than individuals. There can be little doubt that improved financing of hospitals by health insurance and government programs resulted in both higher standards and lessened public tolerance for imperfection. One might say that twentieth century America decided it could afford better care, supplied the money for it, and expected to see results. It might also be commented that Medicare and Medicaid were significantly overfunded at first, but with time have become painfully underfunded, particularly by Medicaid.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court, against all prevailing doctrine of the time, held in 1939 that hospitals in that state should no longer be broadly shielded from liability by the doctrine of charitable immunity. By 1991, this new legal view had extended to the point where the Pennsylvania Supreme Court felt a need to define Corporate Negligence, emphasizing a hospital's duty to ensure a patient's safety while in the hospital. The court specified the duty to provide safe facilities, to select and retain only competent physicians, to oversee all persons who practice medicine within the walls, and to formulate and enforce adequate rules of behavior. Looking back, legal scholars point to two particularly significant intervening court decisions. In 1957, eight years before Medicare, the New York Court of Appeals declared that to say the doctor is the captain of the ship, acting on his own responsibility, no longer fits the facts. The court bore down hard on the existence of salaried physicians, and the illuminating fact that hospitals were openly sending out bills for medical services. In 1973, the Superior Court of Delaware deliberately and consciously extended the New York doctrine from salaried physicians to independent contractors working within the hospital. But independent contractors are still working for pay; the courts have been more hesitant to extend the idea of corporate control to volunteers who work without payment of any sort. But the movement is in that direction, so it is increasingly difficult to find anyone to volunteer. The American instinct to volunteer is still very great, as the response in 2005 to the South Asian tidal wave demonstrated, with relief agencies forced to send out appeals for the flood of volunteers please to stay home. But the central fact remains that the original premise was limited resources for unlimited needs; Medicare and Medicaid temporarily made it seem resources would be infinite, so why should an injured patient forgive a volunteer. As it becomes increasingly evident that the 1965 federal promises of infinite support are unsustainable, the invalidation of charitable immunity deserves to be re-examined.
The 1973 date of the Delaware decision is probably significant because that was a time of abandonment of malpractice coverage by insurance companies. If you couldn't sue doctors, and you feel you must sue somebody, plaintiffs were in effect told to sue the hospitals. With charitable immunity, hospitals didn't carry insurance, but they immediately searched for it. And thus, a bigger, far juicier deep pocket was created. Physician malpractice premiums, outside of California, were approximately $100 a year. Those rates proved to be far too low. The temporary collapse and disappearance of malpractice insurance companies took place in 1975. It is very hard to blame the actuaries of a malpractice company in say, California, for failing to take fully into account a decision by the Superior Court of Delaware in their premium-setting.
Before this revolutionary upheaval, a volunteer chief of medical staff was (nominally) in charge of every mistake made by any employee, and that was pretty unfair if he got sued. The captain of the ship idea devolved to department heads, or perhaps just the responsible surgeon in the operating room. If the scrub nurse counted sponges wrong and left one behind in the patient, the responsibility passed upward to one of these captains or sub captains. The manifest unfairness of demanding damages from someone six or more steps removed from the incident, particularly one who had a largely honorary title and no real control, exercised a restraint of sorts on lawsuits. Once the blame was shifted to a nebulous legal entity known as the corporation, blameless blame transformed into a corporate financial liability. The average size of awards against institutions escalated upward, raising the size of claims for similar injuries against individual physicians. Add to that the growing fact that hospital revenues are almost exclusively derived from insurance third parties, and thus the premiums for hospital insurance could only come from insurance as an automatic pass-through. Disaster looms if the intermediate parties have nothing to lose, and the public pays all the cost through health insurance or taxes. None of this adversary system, including the whole tort system and the whole malpractice insurance system, was designed to cope with a financially pain-free defense posture. One paradox of the situation is that the admirers of the plaintiff viewpoint are typically also sympathizers with universal health insurance. The two are utterly incompatible under any set of proposals, so far offered.
If matters had stopped at that point, well, it's only money. But obviously, the counter pressure on health insurers to hold down these costs was inevitable. Hospitals were practically under court order to make rules (the hospital associations would be happy to construct a model set of rules) and enforce them on their attending physicians, to pay professionals salaries wherever possible as a time-tested means of encouraging obedience, and to reorganize themselves as corporations practicing medicine rather than hotels providing space and services. (There are legal barriers, of course. Numerous state constitutions awkwardly state "No person may practice medicine in this state without a license so to do.") Needless to say, physicians resisted this trend toward the corporate practice of medicine, even though its early forms only took the shape of placing the hospital lawyer in charge of conferences about "risk" prevention. Since the lawyer knew very little about the topic, the discussion tends to focus on horror stories of suits that were lost or are in litigation.
This struggle between physicians and administrators for control of the hospital, using malpractice as a debating point, is bad enough. Far worse is the slanting of the system of actual medical organization of the staff. Hospitals now often have thousands of nurses and hundreds of doctors, each reporting upward within two guild structures. You would think the chief of surgery would have a lot to say about the selection of the nursing supervisor in the operating room, but heaven forbid. Nurses are hired and fired through the nursing hierarchy, not the department hierarchy which would cross guild lines. It's sometimes hard to say who is on which side of this issue, and probably everybody is on both sides, sufficient to paralyze rational discussion. Everybody involved wants to diffuse blame for an error through the whole organization, and so resists having responsibility conferred in any consistent way. The chief of surgery, for example, is ambivalent about whether he wants nursing errors legally passed back to him, and thus tends to retreat from asserting himself. It can sometimes be hard to specify the ways this chaos expresses itself in poor quality or higher costs, but it would certainly be remarkable if it didn't.
On March 16, 2016, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, held a hearing on Much-Needed Medicare Reforms. The Chairman of the Subcommittee, Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH) chaired the hearing, which included invited guests Robert Moffit, Senior Fellow of the Heritage Foundation, and Katherine Baicker, Harvard Professor of Health Economics. According to the Committee report, there was general agreement with Moffit's assessment that, "Of federal entitlements, Medicare presents the greatest challenge." Not the worst care, just the hardest to pay for, is what we presume he meant.
Essentially, Medicare is a modification of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans prior to 1965, anchoring the old employer-based systems into a cluster which was originally administered by Blue Cross; and to a great extent still is. The secondary insurance plans, to cover deductibles, copayments and uncovered charges became a central part of Blue Cross profitability in 1965. The sudden implementation of Lyndon Johnson's Medicare package caused so much administrative commotion at the time, that the final working product originally assembled by Ross Perot's group has approached subsequent changes with trepidation. The 2011 near-collapse of the Obamacare Insurance Exchanges stands as a repeat warning to bureaucrats to tinker with health insurance design -- with great caution, if not reluctance. Medicare has rightly been accused of providing too little advanced planning since its inception fifty years ago. But one of the important reasons was it was so stretched to administer what it had.
Although the passage of time has created a need for many changes, reform has been slow in appearing. Medicare has become the largest non-military source of deficits, has seen its prices soar, contains a poorly-recognized 50% subsidy which is often financed by foreign bond sales, incorporates bewildering complexity into its patient reports, discourages outsiders from suggesting or even acknowledging design flaws, is physically located (Baltimore) at some distance from Washington oversight. In spite of all this, the program is wildly popular with the voters, primarily because of the subsidy -- because it provides a dollar of care for fifty cents. In fact, the collection of payroll taxes from younger people is scarcely noticed, leaving only the premiums visible to its beneficiaries. It appears to them to be a dollar of care for fifteen cents. Among politicians, Medicare is the "Third Rail of Politics; just touch it, and you're dead."
Neither the Heritage Foundation nor Harvard is famous for restraining its criticism of other people, but at this hearing, their proposals were only hesitant and dubious. Although gigantic, stability-threatening deficits were the big elephant in the room, these institutions confined themselves to hesitant and relatively insignificant changes to a program which has had fifty-one years to think of something. The book you are reading is primarily about Health (and Retirement) Savings Accounts, but several of the technical tweaks proposed at this hearing about Medicare would cripple HSA approaches, so I must comment.
Simplifying Parts A and B into a single plan has an efficient sound to it but undermines a central concept of the Health Savings Account, the use of outpatient cash payments as a way of re-establishing market pricing. Part B isolates outpatient medical costs and could be the basis for a market-based system of pricing. Part A, on the other hand, concerns inpatients in a hospital bed, who have neither an interest in costs compared with the illness which threatens them nor the ability to shop around. If rationing is ever praise-worthy, this DRG arrangement is an excellent rationing tool. However, a great many of the services provided to inpatients, are also provided to outpatients. The main cost difference between inpatients and outpatients sometimes is whether the patient needs to be fed with a spoon. Those services which are unique to inpatients could easily be linked, by a relative value scale, with non-unique services. And thus secondarily linked to the market-based prices of outpatients. We are so close to a solution to the dichotomy, it's a pity to hear proposals which would make it more difficult.
Whether to use such market prices or to envelop them within a Diagnosis-Related Group for a hybrid price, is a technical issue. It depends on revising the diagnosis coding system to be more detailed and relevant to the problem; the ICDA system now in use was mainly a response to complaints from record librarians that no one was retrieving charts that way. That's true but irrelevant. What's needed is a code for physicians to describe the medical issue in the patient at hand, not one which describes the occurrence frequency of groupings. In spite of repeated revisions, ICDA still provokes disdain from physicians as aimed at diagnosis frequency, and not sufficiently concerned with diagnosis detail. The physician-developed code, SNODO, has been in use for a century, more recently brought up to date as SNOMed. Until the coding systems are reconciled, ignoring any consideration of frequency, there can be no relative value system for cost without years of effort; reimbursement assignments are a relatively trivial addition to a diagnosis. This whole process sounds complicated and it is, but most of the work has already been done. To combine Parts A and B may serve some administrative purposes, but the tail of insurance claim administration must stop wagging the dog of medical care because it exerts a powerful but unjustified control. Without medical care at its core, cost-neutral Medicare might be strangled more cheaply by just abolishing it.
Re-targeting Medicare Benefits to lower-income enrollees. I'm afraid you will find almost everyone on Medicare-- not just low-income people -- is on a fixed income, has no idea how long his retirement money will last, and has all day available to explain his difficulties to anyone who will listen.
Updating Medicare's eligibility to 67. I'm afraid you will find the uninsured time gap (between retirement and Medicare eligibility) will then widen. With that problem recognized, this last idea does merit some consideration, but it conflicts with proposals to permit a Medicare buyout at age 55. It is important to know what price is envisioned for the buyout. If it's the present Medicare premium, it's about fifteen cents on the dollar. If it includes the Medicare wage-withholding tax, there is reason to suppose that has already been spent. And if it includes the subsidy by the general fund, the Chinese are under the impression you already owe that, to them.
But we are surely a long way from being able to predict the current cost of care, to say nothing of future care. Whatever it is, it is large and would be less if we switched from pay-go to Health Savings Accounts, cleaning up our books in the process.
Others may improve on them, but that states the goal. As the saying goes, "every ship on its own bottom". Even if the package fails to cover all costs, it is obvious that saving money at interest will result in more money than spending it immediately and gathering no interest. You will notice it makes a 3% inflation assumption. Shifting the money with interest promises more money for healthcare, than not shifting the money. The dynamic scoring has been found by experience to be at least 20%, and possibly as much as 30%. How long it will take to work off this burden is unpredictable. What is predictable is that with enough time it will do so, and the surplus can then be applied to the second mistake we have made.
Proponents of a single-payer system have focused their attention on the fact that every person attaining 66 years of age is eligible for Medicare, regardless of income level. So a start toward that goal was made by giving Medicare to disabled persons. Unfortunately, disabled persons under the age of 66 are usually disabled for life, and thus have a considerably higher cost to the program than the "normal" recipients. There are five million of these disabled persons, as against fourteen million regular members. The consequence is the addition of younger disabled persons greatly increases the average cost of all recipients. As a consequence, lifetime Medicare costs are overstated, and the pay-go problem is a little easier to solve. Unfortunately, shifting the cost of the young disabled to another program will not reduce their cost, but foreshadows the financial disaster which could befall us if we adopted a single-payer approach. The true cost of the program is further confounded by the tendency of people to store up a backlog of medical expense, in anticipation of free care in the future.
Proponents of a single-payer system have focused their attention on the fact that every person attaining 66 years of age is eligible for Medicare, regardless of income level. So a start toward that goal was made by giving Medicare to disabled persons. Unfortunately, disabled persons under the age of 66 are usually disabled for life, and thus have a considerably higher cost to the program than the "normal" recipients. There are five million of these disabled persons, as against fourteen million regular members. The consequence is the addition of younger disabled persons greatly increases the average cost of all recipients. As a consequence, lifetime Medicare costs are overstated, and the pay-go problem is a little easier to solve. Unfortunately, shifting the cost of the young disabled to another program will not reduce their cost, but foreshadows the financial disaster which could befall us if we adopted a single-payer approach. The true cost of the program is further confounded by the tendency of people to store up a backlog of medical expense, in anticipation of free care in the future.
Others may improve on them, but that states the goal. As the saying goes, "every ship on its own bottom". Even if the package fails to cover all costs, it is obvious that saving money at interest will result in more money than spending it immediately and gathering no interest. You will notice it makes a 3% inflation assumption. Shifting the money with interest promises more money for healthcare, than not shifting the money. The dynamic scoring has been found by experience to be at least 20%, and possibly as much as 30%. How long it will take to work off this burden is unpredictable. What is predictable is that with enough time it will do so, and the surplus can then be applied to the second mistake we have made.
The young disabled are part of the thirty million people who are unable to pay for their own care, regardless of whether the disability to earn was or was not self-inflicted. We must forget that aspect since no insurance changes will lessen it. Nor is cost-shifting within the hospital a sustainable approach, as innumerable examples demonstrate.
Ross Kershey, a faculty member and coach at Immaculata University, recently visited the Right Angle Club and related the story of Aaron Burr, who prompted the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution by being elected Vice President in a sort of backhanded way. He and Thomas Jefferson ran for President and Vice President in the Electoral College, but the ballots failed to distinguish between the two offices. So officially, he and Jefferson had an equal number of votes when the Constitution provided that the person with the most votes was President, and the second highest number of votes elected the Vice President. The Constitution failed to provide for a tie, and so Burr was within his rights to assert he was tied for the Presidency since repeated voting failed to induce anyone to switch. Needless to say, there was a great deal of bitter comment about ungentlemanly behavior, and ultimately Jefferson was elected by a private deal, which provoked bitterness from the other voters. There were other grievances, and ultimately a duel resulted, with the well-known consequence of the death of Hamilton. A good many false claims were invented by various interested persons, not the least of whom was Gore Vidal, a Burr descendant writing "historical novels". As if the various true claims were not enough, there was a strong division between upper and lower classes on the question, with the Jefferson supporters sneering at the upper-class supporters of Burr, who were disdainful of the low-life supporting Jefferson as not being worthy of the job of President. The background of the Sally Hennings affair may have influenced the electors, but was largely unknown by the voters, but which spilled over to the slavery issue in subsequent elections and formed an unspoken link to the emerging party system of voting.
Professor Kershey supplied the Right Angle meeting with a time-line summary of Burr's life, which is here repeated with his permission:
1. Aaron Burr: 1756-1836, Newark N.J. - His father was president of Princeton University. One sister, Sally.
2. Both parents died when Aaron was 2. He and sister Sally lived with the Shippen family, in Philadelphia, briefly. Then with a 21 yr-old uncle.
3. Burr graduated from Princeton at age 16, as a theology major, justifying the description of bright Princeton students as "having the highest grades since Aaron Burr." He changed to law -- after graduation.
4. Revolutionary War--part of Benedict Arnold's ill-fated invasion of Canada. Joined Washington' staff in N.Y., (as did Alexander Hamilton).
5. During the N.Y. campaign, Burr saved a brigade from capture at the battle of Manhattan, including Captain Alex. Hamilton.
6. Burr spent the winter at Valley Forge (see Sonoma Tavern, below). Commanded a regiment at the battle of Monmouth. Heat Stroke--never fully recovered.
7. Resigned due to health. Continental Army's secret service (intelligence). Suspected Peggy Shippen Arnold (see #2.)
8. 1782 - Married Theodosia Prevost- widow of a British officer and 10 years older. One daughter -also Theodosia.
9. Began the practice of law. Wife died of cancer- 1794.
10. Daughter Theodosia, well educated - one son, who died at age 10.
11. Burr may have fathered 2 illegitimate children with servant.
12. Politics- N.Y. State Assembly, Attorney General of N.Y., U.S. Senator, defeating Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law.
13. Helped form Tammany Hall into political power. Selected by Jefferson as Presidential running mate in 1800.
14. The disputed election of 1800 - tie: Jeff$ Burr - 36 ballots - the influence of Hamilton decided the outcome. 12th Amendment.
15. Burr not really involved in administration. Presided over Senate very competently - in the impeachment of Justice Chase.
16. Ran for governor of N.Y. - lost due to Hamilton's influence and smear campaign - "despicable".
17. Duel 7-11-1804 Weehawken, N.J. -Hamilton's son killed in a duel on the same spot in 1801. Both N.Y. and N.J. accused him of murder.
18. Hamilton's shot missed (on purpose?) Burr's shot pierced Hamilton's liver & spine. Died on 7-12-04, buried in Trinity Churchyard in lower Manhattan.
19. Fled to S. Carolina & Georgia. Charges never pursued, eventually dropped. Burr completes term as V.P.
21. The plot included General James Wilkinson, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Stephen Decatur, Harmon Blennerhasset.
22. The plot never materialized - some troops, some equipment, some funds from Blennerhasset.
23. Gen. Wilkinson realized plot would fail, informed President Jefferson -- Burr arrested.
24. Tried for treason - Circuit Court in Richmond presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall, who was Jefferson's cousin and known to hate him. - 1807
25. Despite great pressure from Jefferson for a guilty verdict, Marshall interpreted the Constitution's definition of treason strictly. The crime of treason (the only crime defined by Constitution) as a conspiracy plus an overt act witnessed by two people.
26. No witnesses came forward, so no overt act witnessed by two people, so no treason. Not guilty.
27. 1808-12 Burr goes to Europe, looking for help from England or France. No chance. Napoleon.
28. Burr returns to U.S. penniless. Theodosia lost at sea, 1812 shipwreck or piracy?
29. Burr practices law in N.Y. 1833, at age 77, marries Eliza Jumel, wealthy widow.
30. Separate, after 4 mos, finally divorced.
31. Burr suffers a debilitating stroke, dies in 1836. Buried at Princeton.
Aaron Burr
In the question period, two interesting facts were brought out. In the first place, there is a large rock projecting into the Schuylkill, causing a big bend in the river on one side, and a narrow defile behind it as an extension of Montgomery Avenue. Roads fanning out behind the gulch are now called Upper Gulph, Lower Gulph, Old Gulph, New Gulph, and several other variations on the name. At the entrance to the gulf on the Southside, is now Sanoma Tavern. But in Revolutionary times it was Aaron Burr's house, with the assignment to guard the narrow entrance to Valley Forge. The department of highways once proposed to blast the rock away for commuters, but the Daughters of the Revolution wouldn't let them.
The second item of some interest is that Immaculata University, where Professor Kershey works, was the scene of the Revolutionary "Battle of the Clouds". Washington was retreating North from the Battle of Brandywine, hotly pursued by the British, when a hurricane struck. Hurricaines were discovered by, who else, Benjamin Franklin, but not widely understood. All the troops knew was it was pouring rain, everybody's powder was soaking wet, and the battle was called off, forever to be known as the Battle of the Clouds.
109 Volumes
Philadephia: America's Capital, 1774-1800 The Continental Congress met in Philadelphia from 1774 to 1788. Next, the new republic had its capital here from 1790 to 1800. Thoroughly Quaker Philadelphia was in the center of the founding twenty-five years when, and where, the enduring political institutions of America emerged.
Philadelphia: Decline and Fall (1900-2060) The world's richest industrial city in 1900, was defeated and dejected by 1950. Why? Digby Baltzell blamed it on the Quakers. Others blame the Erie Canal, and Andrew Jackson, or maybe Martin van Buren. Some say the city-county consolidation of 1858. Others blame the unions. We rather favor the decline of family business and the rise of the modern corporation in its place.
Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.
