Opposed in so many things, Hamilton and Burr were united in the recognition that by 1804 their honor was about all they had left. As public figures, they had reason to be preoccupied with it; their careers largely rested on their reputation, and for each of them, that reputation lay in tatters—making it, paradoxically, all the more important that it be salvaged. For both of them, tales of sexual transgressions were the fundamental indignities; the fact that the charges were mostly true only added to the sting. Their financial affairs were in ruin. And they had both been largely discarded by the party they had either created or transformed. Once serene or haughty in the face of attack, both men had grown twitchy, hypersensitive to slights that they might once have brushed off. To an extent, each had the other to thank for that. As the world tightened around them, it left them less room to maneuver and exposed them to the irritations of a closed-in life in which each had only the other for company, or so it may have felt. They were a pair of wolves in a tight cage; eventually they became all fangs. As the aggravations mounted—political, social, moral, personal—they bred still greater hostility and dealt injuries that scarred over but never healed.
Yet if they agreed on the value of honor, the two disagreed about the necessity of killing to defend it. Having sacrificed a son to the practice, Hamilton was bound to consider the ritual “abhorrent,” even though he had participated in it countless times. “We do not live in the days of chivalry,” he reminded his friend, a certain Dr. Gordon. “The good sense of the present times has happily found out, that to prove your own innocence, or the malice of an accuser, the worst method you can take is to run him through the body or shoot him through the head.” But Hamilton also recognized that, after the Reynolds affair, the Adams pamphlet, and other follies, what was left of his reputation needed to be protected at all costs. Hamilton would be involved in eleven duels, most of them toward the end of his life, but only the last involved potentially lethal gunfire. Burr was involved in only two, both against members of the Hamilton family, and both required pistols to resolve.
But, of course, in a freighted matter like a duel, no decision is ever purely rational, a careful weighing of pros and cons. For all of Hamilton’s cool reasoning, his most fateful decisions were made impulsively, seemingly without any consideration at all, whether it be to give up on Princeton, to abandon Washington, to fight at Yorktown, to pursue Maria Reynolds, or to defy Burr in 1800. But there was another side to him beside the quicksilver one, and that one was prone to a leaden despondency that was evident after sharp reverses, such as in Jefferson’s famous description of him morose and disheveled as he lurked by Washington’s door when he was afraid his bill of assumption would never pass. Facing the prospect of a duel, he seemed caught between the two sides of his nature, one impetuous, the other sluggish.
Burr had his periods of lethargy, especially when he recovered from bursts of action during the war, but for the most part his rarely deviated from a full-on posture. A duel was no time for cowardice. If anything, a duel appealed to his war-faring side, first expressed in Quebec and repeatedly throughout the revolution, which seemed as genuine for him as it was artificial for Hamilton. Ever since his days on the Elizabeth River, straight through to the Manhattan election campaign of 1800, Burr relished adventure. For Hamilton, soldiering was military uniforms and histrionic displays of valor. His greatest contributions to the war came seated at his writing desk in Washington’s headquarters. Burr found glory in the field.
It is remarkable that the two men came to this shared conviction about affairs of honor from such different places as the island of Nevis in the West Indies and Elizabethtown, New Jersey. That one was a solitary immigrant of unknown ancestry, the other a scion of a nearly divine American lineage. That one burned with the fire of the dispossessed, the other displayed the coolness of an aristocrat. That one was determined to attain the highest rank in his adopted country, and the other, confident of his place in society, cared merely to follow his whim. That one created the first American political party, and the other nearly served as president in the second American political party. And on it went, the bright contrasts between these two, extending from their schooldays in the Elizabethtown of 1775 to a fatal disagreement in New York City in 1804. They were two men of nearly the same age, physique, talent, and magnetism. It seemed, ultimately, as if the country had room for only one of them.
THE FATAL DUEL found its most immediate origins in that dinner hosted by the grim Judge Tayler in Albany in February 1804, when his son-in-law, the interloper, Dr. Charles Cooper, jotted down his recollections of Hamilton’s table talk. For a man like Hamilton, that was a hazard, for comments he would make only to friends would be repeated to those who were not his friends. And on the subject of Burr, Hamilton had not been able to say a civil word since at least 1792. When the word “dangerous” emerged, it meant even more than Cooper imagined, for it drew on everything that had come before—the schemes to gain entrance to the presidential contests of 1792 and 1796, not to mention the brazen efforts to win the Manhattan vote, and with it the presidential vote, in 1800, and, most dastardly of all, his flirtation with the High Federalists to create a northern confederacy that would crack the fabled Union in two. All of these acts, audacious on their own because of what Hamilton viewed as Burr’s singular lack of accomplishments, were made, to Hamilton, even more reprehensible by the fact that Burr’s great cause was only Burr. He had done nothing for the country, in Hamilton’s view, other than get himself elected. He stood for no principles of governance beyond his own self-aggrandizement, as Hamilton had said any number of times and would freely say again, and thus made a mockery of those who, like Hamilton, had convictions and stuck by them. Because of its menacing implications, “dangerous” went well beyond the standard critique of Burr being aloof and ambitious. In Hamilton’s usage, it evoked someone far more wicked, someone capable of crimes more threatening for being unspecified. It was code for everything evil about Burr.*
If the word as commonly understood didn’t actually fit Burr—who was no more “dangerous” than, say, Governor Clinton and probably a good deal less—it fit Hamilton’s understanding of him, which was the whole point. At least since 1792, when Hamilton first started to single out Burr as a threat to the new nation, Hamilton had become hyperreactive where Burr was concerned, amplifying any hazard to an inordinate degree. Hamilton’s very impreciseness—one that Burr would be desperate to pin down—created its power and helps to account for why Burr, who could ignore so much, could not ignore this. It didn’t help that Cooper, in defending himself from Schuyler’s charge that he had fabricated Hamilton’s comments, had chipped in with a yet more inflammatory—and tantalizing—notion that he could relate a “still more despicable opinion” that Hamilton held of Burr.
Hamilton had called Burr a “dangerous” man in February, during the election campaign that was filled with such insults. Shortly afterward, in one of the strange twists that were forever conjoining the two men, Burr had ridden through the snowdrifts for several hours by moonlight from Richmond Hill up to the Grange, Hamilton’s country seat high above the Hudson. The sun had still not risen when he arrived at his rival’s lovely two-story house, a soft yellow that would have been a ghostly pale before sunrise.
Hamilton’s son John recalled being awakened by a “violent” ringing of the bell. A servant roused his master from his bed. In the front hall, Hamilton was not entirely surprised to see a somewhat haggard Burr before him, a man “agitated,” recorded John, in his need for “immediate pecuniary assistance.” Ten thousand dollars, it appeared, if Burr was to save his house. It was a sum twice Burr’s salary as vice president, and the inevitable result of his ruinous spending, but Hamilton did not snicker, as he might have. Indeed, he seems not to have taken any pleasure in his rival’s predicament. Instead, he made some notes and told Burr he would see what he could do. Burr returned the way he had come. Ultimately, Hamilton would turn to his brother-in-law,
who—despite his own nearly lethal run-in with Burr—agreed to float Burr a loan that tided him over, but only temporarily.
On returning to his bed, Hamilton wryly asked his wife, “So who do you think that was?”
She couldn’t guess.
But that was then. The Cooper account didn’t get into Burr’s hands until four months later, well after Burr was struck by his sweeping defeat, which must have made Hamilton’s adjective read all the harsher. By then, Hamilton’s kindness was long forgotten. It was to reverse that fresh defeat, or at least obtain some shred of satisfaction, that Burr was determined to assault Hamilton now. He’d been the victim of Hamilton’s slurs long enough.
Through his own legal minion, the twenty-eight-year-old William Peter Van Ness, Burr demanded to know from Hamilton what that “more despicable” opinion might be. Caught out, Hamilton was in the same bind he’d experienced in the Reynolds affair. He had the choice of admitting it or engaging in a lot of legalistic hairsplitting that was not likely to convince anyone of anything except Hamilton’s cleverness. In Letter II he opted for the latter, with predictable results:
The language of Dr. Cooper plainly implies, that he considered this opinion of you, which he attributes to me as a despicable one; but he affirms that I have expressed some other, more despicable, without, however, mentioning to whom, when, or where. ’Tis evident that the phrase, “still more despicable,” admits of infinite shades, from very light to very dark. How am I to judge of the degree intended? Or how shall I annex any precise idea to language so indefinite?
The casuistry is stunning here—the parsing, the redefinitions, the logical shifts—and all of it completely beside the point, and worse. It is remarkable that Hamilton should attempt these pirouettes before a firing squad anyway, but it shows a startling tone deafness that he could possibly imagine that Burr wouldn’t regard this legal lecture of his as a monstrous insult. In that respect, it might as well have been a suicide note. But Hamilton was in a bind from which there was no escape. He could not deny these slurs against Burr, for too many people had heard him say them, and he had therefore based his reputation on them. But if he admitted them, then Burr had due cause for a duel.
Burr’s reply was alarmingly brief: He found in it “nothing of that sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value.” Then he gets right down to it. “The question,” Burr writes icily, “is not whether [Dr. Cooper] has understood the meaning of the word, or has used it according to syntax, and with grammatical accuracy; but whether you have authorized this application, either directly or by uttering expressions derogatory to my honor.” Honor. Both men knew what that meant.
Hamilton had to feel the gravity of the situation. Not only was Burr raising the prospect of a duel, but he was acting like a man who intended to kill.
Burr closed by demanding “a definite reply.”
Here in Letter III, the roles are set: Burr is predator, Hamilton his prey.
Burr had Van Ness deliver that one to Hamilton’s office, too, and he waited while Hamilton read it. Stunned by its ferocity, Hamilton immediately told Van Ness that he found it “rude and offensive,” but he knew better than to commit that thought to writing. He said instead that he needed time to consider his reply. Van Ness told him he’d return in the evening, and he set a time.
Hamilton alerted his own “friend,” a lawyer named Nathaniel Pendleton, to the developments; he urged Hamilton to hold firm. Outraged, Hamilton fired off an angry letter for Pendleton to take to Van Ness, rather than receive him again, and for Van Ness to convey to Burr. In this one, Hamilton took the tone of a man who was sick of being bullied, and so became a bully himself. “Your first letter, in a style too peremptory, made a demand, in my opinion, unprecedented and unwarrantable,” he began, and he charged on from there to conclude that he had nothing further to say. “I have no other answer to give, than that which has already been given.”
Alarmed at the direction, and the speed, that things were going, Pendleton did not deliver that letter as Hamilton asked, but held on to it for several days while he got in touch with Van Ness, hoping the principals would cool down while their seconds figured out a way to avoid catastrophe. In the company of each other, Pendleton and Van Ness were reasonable men; they knew the stakes. Pendleton thought it might help if Burr could let Hamilton know what bothered him so much about the Albany conversation. Perhaps Hamilton could recall the conversation for him, to let him know that, despite Dr. Cooper’s account, nobody said anything disrespectful of Burr? To that end, Pendleton prepared a “memorandum” of Hamilton’s recollections for Van Ness to give Burr. Unfortunately, this account of the dinner was so anodyne as to amount to an affront of its own, as Hamilton claimed that the guests confined themselves only to Burr’s “political principles” and said nothing about his “conduct” or “character.” Not too likely. Seeing that, Van Ness urged Pendleton to press Hamilton further to be more specific, and more credible, by assuring Burr that no one accused him of any “dishonorable conduct,” and thinking this a way out, Hamilton did just that.
On June 26, eight days after the first letter from him, word came back from Burr. Not good enough. If Hamilton could so clearly say he’d said nothing disrespectful at the Albany dinner, then why not clear the air and make similar assurances about other times? About all other times, in fact. If he couldn’t do that, or wouldn’t, Burr could only conclude that Hamilton had indeed been spreading “injurious opinions” of him. And Burr wanted details. Exactly what horrible things had Hamilton said about Burr, when, and to whom?
Where to begin, Hamilton had to think. Just to consider the question was to answer it, for it raised the specter of countless exchanges, some starting with Hamilton, some with others, but for all of them Hamilton was a hearty contributor. And each one was boundless in its animosity, as each word had a tone, association, history, and implication that, to exacting literary minds like theirs, created a cannonball of meanness, bristling with sharp points.
Burr was enraged, and now nothing would appease him. He had never before loomed quite this large, not even in the presidential campaign of 1800. He was immense, and Hamilton was tiny. The original inquiry related to the Albany dinner had now expanded to cover all of Hamilton’s conversations about Burr ever. It was an impossible request, calculated to antagonize, as Burr surely knew. Could Hamilton swear he’d never, ever said a harsh word? Of course not. Hamilton was always deriding Burr; everyone knew that.
Pendleton told Van Ness that no one would ever oblige such a request, and especially not Hamilton. He prayed that the two men could reach an “honorable accommodation,” but he doubted they could. Burr’s letter, Pendleton could not help noting, smacked of “predetermined hostility.”
Van Ness delivered a reply the next evening. Burr was the injured party, not Hamilton. “He feels,” Van Ness wrote, “as a gentleman should feel when his honor is impeached or assailed, and without sensations of hostility or wishes of revenge he is determined to vindicate that honor at such hazard as the nature of the case demands.”
Honor, again.
Hamilton must have been stunned. Did Burr really want to kill him? To risk being killed? The answer came back swiftly. Yes.
IN THE TWO-WEEK period from the close of the negotiations on June 27 to the duel on July 11, Hamilton and Burr carried on with their lives as though everything was normal. Hamilton continued to live in his law office downtown, venturing to the Grange for only a few days at a time. He never told his wife of the duel, sure that she would forbid it. Just a week before, Hamilton hosted a ball for seventy-five, including the artist John Trumbull, who had done his full-size portrait, and, in the warm weather, Hamilton had encouraged the guests to spill out to the garden and the wood beyond, where musicians hid among the trees. A widower, Burr spent most evenings at Richmond Hill, some of the evenings shivering in front of a fire, even in July. But Hamilton and Burr both passed the evening of July Fourth a
t the Society of the Cincinnati, a club for old soldiers of the Revolutionary War, of which Hamilton was president and Burr a member. Everyone noticed that the two men were not their normal selves, but no one knew the cause. Trumbull was there, and he noticed that “contrary to his wont,” Burr “was silent, gloomy, sour.” Hamilton, by contrast, “entered with glee into the gaiety of a convivial dinner party.” The evening called for drinking songs, and both men obliged, Hamilton actually climbing a table to deliver his in a pleasant tenor, while Burr gazed up at him, rapt.
Why, soldiers, why
Should we be melancholy, boys?
Why, soldiers, why?
Whose business ’tis to die?
What! Sighing? Fie!
Damn fear, drink on, be jolly boys!
’Tis he, you, or I.
It was up to Hamilton to select the pistols, since he was the challenged party, and he chose the very pair his son had used. Made by Wogdon, the London gunsmith, they were owned by Church. Flintlock pistols, they were heavy, each one weighing several pounds, and featured dark-walnut stocks and handsome brass barrels of menacing length. They were not weapons for the unpracticed.
That last night before the duel, Hamilton had been up late at his town house on Cedar Street, completing his will, creating a rather grim financial accounting of his estate, tidying up other affairs, and writing a last round of letters to friends. And he stole some time to write an explanation of his conduct in the run-up to the duel, one that, as he may have known, would shape the campaign to secure his reputation in the case of his death. He insisted he would “throw away” his “first fire” and possibly his second—the same tactic he had recommended to his son—the better to encourage Burr to “pause and reflect.” Before firing, presumably. Since this had led to the death of his son, it is surprising that Hamilton would think of it this time. More, it hints at a fatalism that verges on the suicidal, as Hamilton planned to stand defenseless before Burr, leaving it to his worst enemy to shoot him dead.
War of Two : Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Duel That Stunned the Nation (9780698193901) Page 38
