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In the same year 1782, Burr, married Theodosia Bartow Prevost, the widow of a British army officer who had died in the West Indies during the American Revolutionary War. They had one child, a daughter, Theodosia , born in 1783, who became widely known for her beauty and accomplishments. She married Joseph Alston of South Carolina in 1801, and died in a shipwreck off the Carolinas in the winter of 1812 or early 1813. Aaron Burr and his wife were married for twelve years, when she passed away. In 1833, he married again, this time to the widow of Stephen Jumel. When she realized her fortune was dwindling from her husband's land speculation, they separated after only four months. During the month of their first anniversary, she sued for divorce which was granted the day he died: September 14, 1836.
Burr's main rival for dominance of the New York bar was Alexander Hamilton. He served in the New York Assembly from 1784 to 1785, but Burr became seriously involved in politics in 1789, when George Clinton appointed him Attorney General of New York. He was commissioner of Revolutionary claims in 1791, and that same year he defeated a favored candidate for a seat in the United States Senate and served in the upper house of the U.S. Congress until 1797. He was not reelected and instead went into the New York state legislature, serving from 1798 through 1801. As national parties became clearly defined, he associated himself with the Democratic-Republicans. Burr quickly became a key player in New York politics, more powerful than Hamilton, largely because of the Tammany Society, later to become the infamous Tammany Hall, which Burr converted from a social club into a political machine.
Because of his control of the crucial New York legislature, Burr was placed on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket in the 1800 election with Thomas Jefferson. The state legislatures elected the electors to the U.S. Electoral College at that time, and New York would be a needed win for Jefferson. Jefferson did win New York and the election, but so did Burr; they tied with 73 electoral votes each.
It was well understood that the party intended that Jefferson should be president and Burr vice-president, but owing to a defect (later remedied) in the U.S. Constitution the responsibility for the final choice was thrown upon the House of Representatives. The attempts of a powerful faction among the Federalists to secure the election of Burr failed, partly because of the opposition of Alexander Hamilton and partly, it would seem, because Burr himself would make no efforts to obtain votes in his own favor.
The election devolved to the point where it took three days and 36 ballots for the moderate Federalists supporting Burr to finally accept that he could not win.
On Jefferson's election, Burr of course became vice-president. His fair and judicial manner as president of the Senate, recognized even by his bitterest enemies, helped to foster traditions in regard to that position quite different from those which have become associated with the speakership of the House of Representatives. However, Burr's refusal to give the victory to Jefferson as he had promised cost him the trust of his own party and of Jefferson: for the rest of the administration, Burr was an outsider.
Burr did not run with Jefferson in the 1804 election. Instead he ran for the governorship of New York. Alexander Hamilton had opposed Burr's aspirations for the vice-presidency in 1792, and had exerted influence through Washington to prevent his appointment as brigadier-general in 1798, at the time of the threatened war between the United States and France. Alexander Hamilton, his old rival, made insulting comments about him in advance of the governor's race, which led, in large part, to Burr's lack of success in his run for the state house; moreover the two had long been rivals at the bar.
Burr responded with a challenge to a duel. On July 11, 1804, Aaron Burr shot and fatally wounded Hamilton in their duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. The bullet entered Hamilton below the chest, and he died the following day. Burr was later charged with murder in two states but never tried in either jurisdiction. He escaped to South Carolina, then returned to Washington D.C. and completed his term of service as Vice President.
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