Portraits Of Our Presidents : ASIDE: A Saturday Interview

A benefit to living in the New York City area is that; like Philadelphia, Boston, and Virginia; there are a lot of field trips to go on when learning about the founders. Last Saturday, my wife and I went on a three mile walk from our apartment to one of those sites.

Atop the Palisades in Weehawken, New Jersey, not far from where General Washington watched his troops get routed by the British at Fort Washington, is the location where Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr’s rivalry came to a head.

While my presidential biographies will examine the prelude to Burr and Hamilton’s disastrous encounter several times, the story, as I currently understand it, goes as such…

The election of 1800 pitted Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr against Federalists John Adams and Charles Pinckney. This was prior to the 12^th Amendment so each member of the Electoral College cast two votes for president with the top two candidates becoming President and Vice President. In the event of a tie, the House of Representatives decided the election.

Alexander Hamilton despised Jefferson. They were at opposite ends of the political spectrum. However, Hamilton also hated fellow Federalist John Adams for his opposition to the New Army in which Hamilton would serve in leadership. Hamilton, a man with many enemies, also had a history with Burr who had won a US Senate seat from Hamilton’s father-in-law.

In the election of 1800, Jefferson and Burr tied. Instead of acknowledging that Jefferson was president, Burr engaged with Federalists in the House attempting to outline a deal by which they could swing the election in his favor. It took 36 ballots, but eventually Jefferson prevailed. Not only had Burr lose the presidency, but he lost the trust of his president.

Due to his intrigue with the Federalists, Jefferson informed Burr that he would not be his running-mate in 1804. Burr sought the New York governorship as a consolation prize, a notion that spooked Hamilton who believed Burr could use the governorship to galvanize or fracture New York Federalists, either way marginalizing Hamilton. While not directly involving himself, Hamilton orchestrated an all-out smear campaign ensuring Burr’s defeat. The following June, Burr came across a newspaper article claiming that Hamilton had called Burr a “dangerous” and “untrustworthy” man. Now that Burr had something substantial to implicate Hamilton in the mudslinging, he wrote to Hamilton demanding to know the truth. Instead of denying the charge, and likely ending the ordeal, Hamilton quibbled about Burr’s choice of words prompting a second letter from Burr specifying that he wanted to know whether Hamilton had called his honor into question. To this Hamilton replied, “I have no other answer to give than that which has already been given.” A few additional letters changed hands, but at this point their fates were sealed.

As dueling was punishable by death in New York, it was spoken about cryptically. The “interview”, therefore, was scheduled for July 11, 1804. It was to be held in New Jersey where duelers were treated less harshly. Burr arrived first with his friend William Van Ness, Hamilton came with Nathanial Pendleton as his “second”. A doctor and the oarsmen waited out of sight, to limit the number of witnesses, as the duel commenced. No one knows exactly what followed. Van Ness and Pendleton initially issued a joint statement, however they never fully agreed on the events that took place. Both Hamilton and Burr had devotees who sought to shape the sequence of events that day in order to best defend their man’s reputation.

What is known is that, while neither man likely expected to die, Hamilton suffered a mortal “gut shot”. He would live for another 31 hours, but never fully regain consciousness. Burr was charged with murder, charges that were eventually dropped. While he was able to serve out his term as Vice President, his political career was effectively over. Following the vice presidency he traveled out West, then to Europe, then back to New York where he would die 32 years after the duel.

A great succinct account of the duel and the political atmosphere surrounding it can be found in Joseph Ellis’s book Founding Brothers. Below are some pictures I took from the location around the dueling site. To my disappointment, the ledge on which the duel occurred no longer exists.