Burr and Hamilton both concealed the escalating conflict from their loved ones. On June 24, Burr wrote a cheerful letter to Theo, who now lived in South Carolina with her husband, Joseph Alston, and their young son, Aaron Burr Alston. Burr missed Theo so much that the previous evening he had brought her portrait into the dining room at Richmond Hill and celebrated her birthday with a dinner and dancing party. He thanked her for a recent letter full of news about his grandson. “You can’t think how much these little details amuse and interest me.” But he also chided her affectionately for neglecting both her own education and her son’s. “If you were quite mistress of natural philosophy, he would now be hourly acquiring a knowledge of various branches, particularly natural history, botany, and chymistry.” By this point, Burr had already drafted words of challenge to Hamilton. Even in this moment of extreme political crisis, his other great loves—his daughter and the study of the natural world—were not eclipsed.
IN PHILADELPHIA THAT SAME DAY, June 24, Charles Willson Peale began work on a portrait of Alexander von Humboldt. He would have to paint it quickly. Humboldt had just learned that an American ship was setting sail for Bordeaux on June 28, and he would be seizing the opportunity to return to Paris, where he planned to compile and publish the voluminous records of his explorations. Peale packaged up a preserved “alegator” to send with Humboldt to a professor of zoology at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Peale wrote a note to go with the alligator saying he would be happy to send more specimens in the future but at the moment was too “fearful of the Rapacious paws of the War Hawks.” At any moment on the open Atlantic, naval or pirate ships could swoop in with sails flapping and abscond with precious scientific cargo.
Between portrait sittings for Peale, Humboldt drafted letters of regret and thanks to his American contacts. On Monday, June 25, he wrote to Hosack. He said he had read some of Hosack’s essays and found them “so interesting.” “It was one of my most pleasant plans to visit the beautiful city in which you reside and to present my respects to you,” Humboldt wrote Hosack. Now that he had to leave so suddenly, he could only hope to be “honored with your correspondence.” If Hosack would send seeds to him, Humboldt promised that he and his French botanist friends, among them Jussieu, would take perfect care of them. Humboldt also invited Hosack to let him know whether he could help by sending anything from France to New York. How disappointing—Hosack would not get to lead the world’s most famous explorer on an expedition through the Elgin Botanic Garden. A visit from Humboldt would have drawn national attention to Hosack’s work there, and a foreigner who felt comfortable urging the president of the United States to fund Peale’s natural history museum surely would have urged public support for this pioneering American garden.
On June 27, Peale finished his portrait. He had depicted Humboldt gazing at the viewer with a blue-eyed intensity that is softened by full, rosy cheeks. Peale was elated. He had proved to himself “that at the age of 63 I could paint as good a portrait as I could at 50 years of age.”
That same day, Humboldt composed more letters in preparation for his departure. In one, he thanked Secretary of State Madison for helping secure the proper passport for him and his luggage, which contained some sixty thousand plant specimens, as well as for information Madison had shared about a particular species of wheat. “I love seeing a Secretary of State so interested in the agriculture of the land he inhabits,” he wrote. Humboldt also penned an appreciative letter to Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin, and another to Jefferson thanking him for his hospitality at the President’s House. “I had the pleasure of seeing the first Magistrate of this great Republic living with the simplicity of a philosopher.”
Alexander von Humboldt in 1804, by Charles Willson Peale
The fourth and fifth letters Humboldt drafted on June 27 conveyed his regrets to Hamilton and Burr, two other Americans he had particularly hoped to meet. He was very pained, Humboldt assured each man, at having to return to Paris “without enjoying the pleasure of meeting You in person and seeing the interesting Circle in which you live.” Humboldt missed his chance with one of them forever. That same day in New York, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel.
Hamilton now began to organize his affairs. He drew up a report on his finances and drafted a statement explaining why he had allowed himself to get into debt. The Grange had drained him financially, just as his friend Richard Peters had warned him it would, but Hamilton took comfort in the “progressive rise of property on this Island.” His estate surely would appreciate over the coming years, and Eliza would be the beneficiary. On July 3, Hamilton paid Hosack for some accumulated medical bills.
Peale left Philadelphia for New York that same day. He had hoped to be accompanying Humboldt but decided to go alone—he wanted to drum up sales for his polygraph by giving demonstrations at the Tontine Coffee House. He drafted an advertisement for the New York papers. “The advantages of multiplying writings in the same moment that the original is made, are so manifest to every thinking man, that it is unnecessary to mention them.” Peale was also eager to visit Delacoste’s natural history collection. He welcomed the competition to his own museum, later observing, “Whilst we witness with horror, the deplorable and desolating effects of European wars, we cannot but dwell with emotions of gratification and delight, upon the effects of a rivalry in the sciences and arts.”
Peale spent the first night of his trip in New Jersey, waking up on the morning of the Fourth of July to spectacular weather. Nature was in “full bloom,” he wrote in his diary. The trees were “cloathed in their deep coloured Green & thickest foliage and the fields loaded with a bountious store of either grass or grain.” He saw fruit ripening along the lanes and in the orchards. Splendidly dressed soldiers, their weapons glinting in the sun, paraded past to the sounds of fifes and drums. The stagecoach horses took fright at the din, but Peale enjoyed the whole scene immensely. He took a ferryboat across the Hudson to lower Manhattan and found the city in a state of festive chaos. He hired a porter to wheel the bulky polygraph to the City Hotel, but they were forced to wait for a gap in the marching troops before they could dash across Broad Street. He deposited his luggage at the hotel and walked to William Street to see the Cabinet of Natural History.
As soon as he entered Delacoste’s rooms, Peale felt the stress seeping out of him. “Subjects of a well arranged Museum,” he wrote to his children in Philadelphia, “are the best means to restore tranquility to a troubled mind.” He moved contentedly among the exhibits, observing with approval how scrupulous Delacoste had been in arranging his specimens in the glass cases. The birds had not yet been mounted, but Delacoste had placed them on cloth-covered shelves, arranging them in “the linian System” with “Ribons put between each Genus.” The collection contained birds and beasts Peale had never seen. Over the previous two months, Delacoste had managed to secure dozens of subscribers to the museum at $2 each. Hosack and Clinton had signed up, as had Burr and Hamilton. Preparing the specimens was slow and costly, however, and as Delacoste showed Peale around, he hinted that a “society of Gentlemen” was on the verge of buying the collection outright. Delacoste himself would stay on as curator. Privately, Peale was skeptical that Delacoste’s scheme would succeed. He knew how hard it was to get Americans to support museums.
HAMILTON CONTINUED TO SHUFFLE his papers into order. On July 4, he wrote a note to Pendleton thanking him for “his friendly offices in this last critical scene” and said he had taken the liberty of naming him as his executor. As New Yorkers caroused in the streets outside, Hamilton composed a loving note to Eliza and then tucked it away among his papers. “This letter, my very dear Eliza, will not be delivered to you, unless I shall first have terminated my earthly career. . . .”
Three days later, Delacoste announced that he had gathered commitments from a small number of New Yorkers who agreed to purchase shares in the museum for $50 each (about $1,000 today). Hamilton, perhaps because he was immersed in the details of his d
ebts, chose not to subscribe at this steep rate, but Burr, Hosack, and Clinton were among those who signed up.
Now it was time for Burr and Hamilton to settle the matter of the doctors. At least one attending physician was customary, and Hamilton chose Hosack. Despite Hosack’s distaste for duels, he was moved by Hamilton’s trust in his medical skills and his discretion. On July 9, Burr scrawled a note to Van Ness saying he was tired of waiting for the duel to be scheduled. “I should with regret pass over another Day . . . anything so we but get on.” Burr felt a doctor’s presence was unwarranted, but he agreed to Hosack, while trying not to implicate him by name in the affair: “H——k is enough, & even that unnecessary.”
The duel was fixed for Wednesday, July 11. Hamilton spent the night of the tenth at his townhouse. Before dawn he arose, waking one of his sons to say that because four-year-old Eliza was sick—this was a subterfuge—he would be going to the Grange immediately with Dr. Hosack. A few blocks away, Hosack and Nathaniel Pendleton climbed into a carriage and rode together through the darkened streets. It may have been during this ride that Pendleton informed Hosack that Hamilton was planning to spare Burr by throwing away his shot. This strategy was meant to safeguard Hamilton’s honor but leave no one dead.
When Hosack and Pendleton arrived at the Cedar Street house, Hamilton joined them in the carriage. They drove to a dock on the Hudson to board a waiting boat. Elsewhere along the shore, Burr and Van Ness settled into another boat. Although the day promised to be fine, Van Ness carried an umbrella.
RAMBLING ALONG THE HEIGHTS of the New Jersey Palisades on a clear summer day in 1804, a wayfarer who turned north to look up the broad river would have encountered a vista of primordial scale and shimmering beauty. Forests of chestnut, hickory, and oak stood on the cliff tops. Osprey sheered out over the water. Within a generation, the Hudson River would ignite the souls of painters—especially Thomas Cole and Asher Brown Durand—who were destined to put American art on the map of the world. It was as magnificent a river as any on earth, according to one awestruck European traveler after another.
On this mid-July morning, the oarsmen aimed the boats for the shore hugging the cliff beneath the town of Weehawken, where the river lapped at beaches trimmed in swaths of green. Hosack’s nephews Caspar and John had collected plants for Elgin nearby, bringing back two kinds of wild grape, Vitis labrusca and Vitis vulpina. Here, saltmarsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) grew in dense colonies along the shoreline, and wild pinks (Silene caroliniana) clung to the face of the cliffs. Deep in the woods above, a vine called Dutchman’s pipe (Aristolochia macrophylla) draped itself languidly over the boughs of trees. Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) and black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) bloomed in sunny spots. The seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) would not bloom until late summer, after Burr had fled New York.
Hamilton’s bargemen guided the boat to a small beach. Hamilton, Hosack, and Pendleton climbed out. The dueling ground itself was on a rocky ledge higher up the hillside, and Hamilton and Pendleton disappeared into the bushes, leaving Hosack behind. He waited. Within minutes, a shot rang out. After several tense seconds, he heard another shot and then a panicked cry. Pendleton was shouting for him. He dashed into the underbrush and up to the ledge. He was shocked by what he saw: Pendleton was crouching on the ground, cradling Hamilton in his arms. The expression on Hamilton’s face instantly burned itself into Hosack’s memory. Until his own dying day, he later said, he would never forget that “countenance of death.” As Hosack rushed past Burr to get to Hamilton, Van Ness threw his open umbrella in front of Burr’s face, and they left the dueling ground. In the event of legal proceedings, Hosack would be unable to provide an eyewitness account of Burr’s presence.
Hamilton was grievously injured. He spoke to Hosack, saying, “This is a mortal wound, Doctor.” Then he went limp. Ripping away the bloody clothes, Hosack saw that the bullet had pierced vital organs. He searched in vain for a pulse, finally pressing his hand to Hamilton’s heart. He couldn’t feel a heartbeat. He directed Pendleton to help him carry Hamilton down to the beach, where they lowered him into the bottom of the boat. As the oars plunged into the Hudson, Hosack hovered over Hamilton, rubbing his lips, face, and chest with spirit of hartshorn in the hope of jolting him awake. In desperation, he tried to pour some of the searing liquid directly into Hamilton’s mouth. Hamilton stirred and opened his eyes, murmuring, “My vision is indistinct.” Hosack now examined the injury more closely, but when he pressed around the bullet’s entry near the right hip, he saw that he was causing intense pain, so he stopped. In the next few minutes, Hosack later reported, Hamilton “asked me once or twice, how I found his pulse; and he informed me that his lower extremities had lost all feeling.” Hamilton requested that Eliza be brought from the Grange, but he also asked that his friends shield her from the seriousness of his injury. To Hosack, he confided that he would soon be dead.
As they landed, Hamilton’s friend William Bayard was waiting on the dock, Bayard’s servant having informed him that Hamilton had crossed the Hudson earlier that morning with Hosack and Pendleton. Bayard had immediately divined the reason and feared the worst. He lost his composure when he realized that Hamilton was still alive, while Hosack marveled at Hamilton’s calm in the face of agonizing pain. As his distraught friends conveyed him to Bayard’s house, the wounded man “alone appeared tranquil and composed.”
Hosack took control. He summoned Dr. Wright Post, his Columbia colleague, to aid him in ministering to Hamilton, who was on the verge of fainting again from the torture of being moved. Hosack undressed Hamilton and darkened the bedroom in which he had been laid. Hosack knew that Hamilton had been suffering from a gastrointestinal ailment in recent months, so he took care to avoid administering any medicines that might increase this discomfort. As it was, Hosack thought Hamilton’s suffering “almost intolerable.” Hamilton endured the pain with dignity, speaking to Hosack repeatedly of his “beloved wife and children.”
Eliza finally arrived, and when she understood the situation, she went wild with grief. It was a harrowing repetition of the black day in 1801 when Hosack had watched Eliza and Hamilton at Philip’s deathbed. Eliza now stood at the brink of ghastly anguish, simultaneously familiar and unfathomable. Hamilton tried to soothe her. “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian,” Hosack heard him say.
AT RICHMOND HILL, Burr waited for news. Accounts of his mood in the twenty-four hours following the duel varied wildly. He was utterly jubilant, or he was so remorseful he had gone home and tried to shoot himself. Sometime later that day, Burr asked Van Ness to come out to Richmond Hill. Showing his own face in town, Burr said, “would you know, not be very pleasant.” By that evening, most New Yorkers knew that Hamilton lay near death. Friends, acquaintances, and admirers were keeping vigil at the Bayard house or gathering on street corners with gloomy faces.
Hosack, meanwhile, was considering whether to try to remove the bullet. It had ripped through Hamilton’s abdomen and lodged in his spine. Hosack’s own opinion was that the situation was hopeless. He conferred with Dr. Post, then with a group of military surgeons who had come in from the French frigates anchored off Manhattan. Hosack met with the surgeons outside the bedchamber, describing to them the angle at which the bullet had entered the torso. Then he brought just one of the surgeons into the bedroom so as not to disturb Hamilton. The surgeon agreed that the wound appeared fatal. Hosack decided to spare his friend the agony of having the wound probed with surgical tools.
Hamilton slept fitfully that night. On the morning of July 12, he told Hosack that his pain had diminished, but he remained concerned for Eliza and the children. When the children had been assembled, Hosack watched as their father “opened his eyes, gave them one look, and closed them again, till they were taken away.”
That same day, Burr sent an anxious note to Hosack. “Mr. Burr’s respectful Compliments. He requests Dr. Hosack to inform him of the present state of Genl H. and of the hopes which are entert
ained of his recovery.” In his distraction, he left out a word: “Mr. Burr begs to know at what hours of the [day] the Dr. may most probably be found at home, that he may repeat his inquiries.” Hamilton died near two o’clock that afternoon.
Church bells began tolling the news across the waiting city. The flood of private and public grief was immediate and intense. “O America! veil thyself in black!” wrote one admirer. “Deep mourns the Eagle, with shattered wing, in some lone spot.” Within hours of Hamilton’s death, stunned New Yorkers had begun to gather in the city’s coffeehouses and meeting halls. The vice president of the United States had killed a Revolutionary War hero, one of the chief architects of the nation. An anonymous open letter to Burr asked incredulously, “What do you think will be the feelings of the United States at large, and of Europe, when they shall learn the cause of his death, and the manner in which he expired?”
Hosack had to hold his grief in check. A day or two after the duel, at the request of some of Hamilton’s friends, he performed an autopsy. Dr. Post and two other witnesses observed closely as Hosack sliced into the corpse to determine the path of Burr’s bullet. He found that “the ball struck the second or third false rib, and fractured it about in the middle; it then passed through the liver and diaphragm.” He encountered a large mass of clotted blood in the stomach. He surmised it had pooled there because the bullet had ripped through Hamilton’s liver before coming to rest in one of the first two lumbar vertebrae. Under his finger, Hosack could feel the little spikes of shattered bone.
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