Reform College · intensives
Hamilton pace, Lincoln method
Aaron Burr finished Witherspoon’s Princeton at sixteen. Hamilton wrote for the public while still a student and read law in months. Lincoln never sat a college, and he out-argued men who had. These classes take the first two men’s speed and the third man’s way of learning. Not a cram school. Not a duel.
The duel at Weehawken is not the syllabus. Burr and Hamilton are here for compressed youth and a short, hard canon. Lincoln is here for how to learn so you do not forget.
What they actually did
Burr — Princeton at speed
Aaron Burr, Jr., grandson of Jonathan Edwards, son of a Princeton president, entered the College of New Jersey at thirteen and took the A.B. in 1772, age sixteen, under Witherspoon: Latin, Greek, mathematics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy as the capstone. That is this college’s rival, done young. Acceleration meant starting early and finishing the same BA, not skipping Euclid.
Hamilton — necessity as the term
Hamilton had no father in the room and no spare years. King’s College, then the war, then the law. He read for the bar in a compressed clerkship and was admitted in 1782. He learned by writing in public (The Farmer Refuted at about eighteen) and by having to be right the next morning. The Federalist is an examination taken in newspapers. Pace from hunger, not from a planner app.
Lincoln — the method
No college. New Salem and the circuit. He said he was slow to learn and slow to forget. The canon he actually used was short: King James Bible, Shakespeare, Euclid’s Elements, Blackstone’s Commentaries, Burns, the Declaration and the statutes of the forum he was in. He copied. He read aloud. He worked Euclid’s propositions as a sitting Congressman so the demonstration would stick. He learned law by Blackstone, not by a lecture hall. He learned argument by riding the circuit and by the Lyceum — public speech as study, not as branding. Films do not pass a Lincoln class. Recitation does.
“I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel — very hard to scratch anything on it, and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.”
Lincoln, on his own method — speed of calendar, slowness of the scratch.
The method (non-negotiable)
Every accelerated class in this college runs on six acts. Miss one and you have only watched.
- One book. Not a stack. The book is the course.
- Copy. Hand, not highlight. Euclid: the proposition. Blackstone: the definition. Scripture: the verse. Shakespeare: the speech.
- Read aloud. Lincoln’s voice was the schoolhouse. Silent skimming is not this method.
- Recite. From memory, to a person or to the hall, weekly.
- Demonstrate. Euclid: the proof on a blank page. Law: the analog from the Founding, not a feeling. Politics: the other side argued fairly (Hamilton could; Lincoln did; Burr at least knew the brief).
- Write it shorter. 800 words, then 400, then a page you could read on a stump. Hamilton’s public writing; Lincoln’s cutting.
Daily shape (Lincoln’s day, Hamilton’s necessity):
| Block | Act |
|---|---|
| First light | Copy — one proposition, one Blackstone head, or forty lines of verse |
| Morning | Read the book aloud; no secondary until the primary is cold in the mouth |
| Afternoon | Work — problems, a survey-style exercise, a case, a translation |
| Evening | Recite; then write; then cut |
| Seventh day | Public disputation, 20 minutes, other side first. The Lyceum, not a comment thread |
A term is six weeks, one class, or two if you are actually Burr. You do not start the next book until the demonstration is clean. That is how it is faster than a fifteen-week survey and slower than a podcast.
The classes
Twelve intensives. Taken in order. Together they are the accelerated core — roughly Year I–II of the BA in twenty-four months of real work, or twelve if you live like Hamilton and do not lie about the recitations. Credits match the catalog when the examination is sat.
| No. | Class | The book | Lincoln act | Wk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LYC 01 | The steel | This page; Euclid Book I, defs. and postulates; Lincoln, Lyceum Address (1838) | Copy the postulates. Recite the Lyceum on law against the mob — lesser magistrates, not the crowd | 2 |
| LYC 02 | Euclid I–IV | Elements I–IV | Every proposition copied and proved on a blank sheet. Hillsdale math films may be heard after the proof, not before | 6 |
| LYC 03 | Covenant English | Genesis 1–3, 12, 15, 17; Exodus 19–20; Deuteronomy 5–6, 30; Romans 13 and Acts 5:29 in tension | Read aloud daily. Copy Deuteronomy 6. Recite. This is Lincoln’s Bible as a schoolbook, not a mascot | 4 |
| LYC 04 | Blackstone, rights of persons | Commentaries Book I, selected chapters — rights of persons, the king under law | Copy definitions. Lincoln’s bar exam was this book. Yours is too | 6 |
| LYC 05 | The compact in three columns | Declaration; Articles of Confederation; Constitution + Bill of Rights, side by side | Write the differences until you can do it without notes. Then The Compact Withheld | 4 |
| LYC 06 | Publius and Brutus | Federalist 1, 10, 39, 51, 70, 78, 84; Brutus I, XI; Mason’s Objections | Hamilton pace: write one public essay in their form. Lincoln method: recite 10 and 51. Other side first. Full record | 5 |
| LYC 07 | Shakespeare, office | One history: Richard II or Henry IV, Part 1 — kingship, deposition, the tavern | Lincoln’s Shakespeare. Memorize two speeches. Recite standing | 4 |
| LYC 08 | Lex Rex, compressed | Rutherford, selected questions on law above the king, lesser magistrates, self-defense | Copy the questions. Demonstrate in writing on a live statute. Class II | 4 |
| LYC 09 | Newton’s laws as laws | Principia definitions and Axioms (the three laws); Shankar lecture 1 after the copy | Same as Euclid: blank-page demonstration. STEM · Physics | 4 |
| LYC 10 | The circuit — arms | Heller, McDonald, Bruen (syllabi, not the whole reporter); then Reese, Lara, Cockerham as applications | Write a stump page, then a brief page. Other side first. Cases | 5 |
| LYC 11 | Lincoln in public | Lyceum Address; Temperance Address; Cooper Union (method of the brief: documents, not mood); Second Inaugural as cadence, not a unit on war policy | Copy Cooper Union’s method: what did the founders do. Recite the Lyceum | 4 |
| LYC 12 | The stump | Your 4,000-word memoir of one book from this list, cut to 1,200, then to a 12-minute speech | Hamilton’s newspaper; Lincoln’s circuit. Deposited in HOLD /college/theses/ | 4 |
Fifty-two weeks of class if taken back-to-back with no lie in the recitations. Most students will take two years. Burr’s calendar is allowed. Fake recitation is not.
Examinations
- Closed book. Blank page. Euclid: a proposition you have not been told is coming, from the books you copied.
- Blackstone: define, then apply to a short fact pattern.
- Founding: three columns from memory, then Brutus or Publius in their voice for 400 words.
- Speech: ten minutes standing, then five minutes as the other man (Burr must be able to say Hamilton’s brief; Lincoln always could say the opponent’s).
- No class is passed by a quiz on a film. Hillsdale, MIT, and Yale may be heard as lecturers after the copy, never as a substitute for it.
What this is not
- Not a personality cult of Lincoln, Hamilton, or Burr.
- Not an apology for the duel, the vacant Congress, or any later “legalized as if.” Lincoln’s method of study is the debt. His emergency window is already tried in the founding record and is not this track’s saint.
- Not AP, not a bootcamp, not forty courses in a summer.
- Not passing because you are young. Burr was young and still had to take Witherspoon’s moral philosophy.
Start: BA catalog · Work I · Euclid on the STEM hall · Publius and Brutus. Copy before you click play.
Reform College at PXD2. Accelerated track. Civic record, not legal advice. Not Princeton. Not a duel.