:Charles Chauncey Burr

Burr had a varied career (he had been the publicity agent for Lola Montez, the former mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria) and is credited with having written her autobiography. At some point he acquired the title "Reverend", though scholars do not know how. Jay Hubbell, writing in Publications of the Modern Language Association, remarks that even his birth and death dates are uncertain. The authors of A general history of the Burr family note that their questionnaire was not returned; they did know, apparently, that he was a well-known lecturer and had published a newspaper in Hoboken, New Jersey, called the Hudson Co. Register.{{cite book|last=Todd|first=Charles Burr|title=A general history of the Burr family: with a genealogical record from 1193 to 1902|year=1902|publisher=Printed for the author by the Knickerbocker press|pages=503|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Aj47AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA503 |via=Google Books}}

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Burr founded a number of magazines including the Philadelphia-based periodical Nineteenth Century (first issue published January 1847), the Bergen County, New Jersey Democrat and the New York-based The Old Guard. In his youth, he appears to have been a "militant reformer" — he praised the Quaker abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "The Reformer" in the first issue of Nineteenth Century and called Whittier "one of the best the purest of all poets". In later issues of the Nineteenth Century, "he published materials indicating a strong anti-slavery bias". Later in life, though, he changed sides completely - during the American Civil War he was a Copperhead.{{cite journal|last=Hubbell|first=Jay B.|title=Charles Chauncey Burr: Friend of Poe|journal=PMLA|year=1954|volume=69|issue=4|pages=833–40|doi=10.2307/459933 |jstor=459933}} The first issue of The Old Guard contains a lengthy invective by Burr against abolitionist preachers such as Henry Ward Beecher, saying that their "savage war-cries" indicate they have sided with the devil.{{cite journal|last=Burr|first=C. Chauncey|title=Abolition Preachers versus Christ and the Apostles |journal=The Old Guard|year=1863|volume=1|issue=1|pages=7–13|url=http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=oldg;cc=oldg;rgn=full%20text;idno=oldg0001-1;didno=oldg0001-1;view=image;seq=13;node=oldg0001-1%3A1;page=root;size=s;frm=frameset;|accessdate=6 November 2010}}

After the war, Burr remained active in politics. In an 1866 speech to the Anti-Abolition State Rights Society, he castigated Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, and criticized some fellow Democrats, for attempting to steal "Black Republican thunder", saying such Democrats were to Republicans as mulattoes (he also called them mongrels) were to Negroes.{{cite news|title=Political Speech of C. Chauncey Burr, Esq|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9149AAAAIBAJ&pg=6365,1533655&dq=chauncey-burr&hl=en|accessdate=6 November 2010|newspaper=The Western Mirror|date=3 May 1866|via=Google News}} He also participated in the 1872 Democratic National Convention.{{cite news|title=The Louisville Convention: Second Day's Proceedings of the National Democrats|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1872/09/05/82403603.pdf|accessdate=6 November 2010|newspaper=The New York Times|date=5 September 1872}}

Burr had become good friends with Edgar Allan Poe, whose poetry he admired and imitated (in anonymous poems published in The Old Guard) and had assisted Poe physically and financially during the latter's visit to Philadelphia, one of his last jaunts before his death. Poe wrote to his mother-in-law on 14 July 1849, thanking Burr for his help, "I am indebted for more than life itself to B[urr]{{nbsp}}... When all failed me, he stood my friend, got me money, and saw me off in the cars for Richmond."

Burr repaid Poe posthumously by publishing a number of pro-Poe articles in The Old Guard, even poems clearly based on Poe's. Of special value to Poe scholars is an article published in the June 1866 issue, "Poe and his Biographer, Griswold",{{cite journal|last=Burr|first=Charles Chauncey|title=Poe and His Biographer, Griswold |journal=The Old Guard|date=June 1866|volume=4|issue=6|pages=353–58|url=http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=oldg;cc=oldg;rgn=full%20text;idno=oldg0004-6;didno=oldg0004-6;view=image;seq=0371;node=oldg0004-6%3A11|accessdate=7 November 2010}} in which Burr presents documentary evidence that countered some of the criticism leveled against Poe by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, including letters by those who knew Poe. Burr also officiated at the marriage of another famous writer of the era, George Lippard, held on a rock at sunset above the Wissahickon.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/o/oldg/index.html Full-text access to The Old Guard] at Cornell University Library

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Category:1810s births

Category:1883 deaths

Category:Journalists from Maine

Category:American magazine editors

Category:19th-century American journalists

Category:Maine Democrats

Category:American male journalists

Category:19th-century American male writers

Category:Copperheads (politics)