Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

The duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton occurs on July 11, 1804, when the two men are rowed in separate boats across the Hudson River to a secluded spot near Weehawken, New Jersey. There, in compliance with duel laws, they exchange pistol shots at ten paces. Hamilton is hit on his right side and dies the following day, and the survivor, Burr, finds “that his reputation suffered an equally fatal wound” (20).

Ellis feels that a fuller narrative of events is needed in order to do justice to this “most famous encounter of its kind in American history” (20).

Though both duelers come to the event elegantly attired, they are very different men, with contrasting genealogies. Intense, power-hungry Burr hails from a distinguished New England bloodline, while Hamilton is, in party rival and former president of the United States John Adams’ libelous terms, ‘“the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar [sic]’”(22). As a result of his origins, Hamilton is constantly compelled to prove himself, needing “to impress his superiors with his own superiority” (22). He therefore feels unable to refuse Burr’s challenge to a duel, even though his last will and testament shows that he hoped to avoid the encounter.

On the day of the event, two shots are fired, and Hamilton is hit just above the hip, with the projectile going through his liver and diaphragm. Everyone knows it will be a fatality, and Hamilton lapses into unconsciousness. On the boat back, wounded Hamilton believes that his pistol is still fully loaded and that he has not fired it. 

However, there is no agreed version of what happened in the firing of the shots, and the after-action reports by the duelists’ seconds—William Peter Van Ness (federal judge and close friend of Burr) and Nathaniel Pendleton (a lawyer and judge who served as Hamilton’s second)—degenerates into a battle of words. Pendleton and Van Ness agree that the two duelists abided by the code of duelists and that two shots had been fired. They also agree that there had been “a discernible” gap between the two shots (28). However Pendleton and Van Ness disagree about which duelist fired first—in Pendleton’s report, Hamilton does not fire at all; in Van Ness’s report, Hamilton fires first and misses. The purpose behind these conflicting accounts is to either paint Hamilton as a martyr or to portray Burr as an honorable man who had followed the dueling code and after exposing “his own life to Hamilton’s pistol, had responded in kind but with better aim” (30). 

In all likelihood, Hamilton fires first but aims to miss Burr, sending his ball into the tree above. He thus wastes his shot, honoring the pledge not to fire that is written in his will. Burr, who does not know about this pledge, feels justified in responding to the first shot, even if it missed him. Burr’s initial aim at Hamilton’s hip—the bullet only scores the vital organs because it bumps off Hamilton’s rib—is significant, as this is a place duelers fire when they only wish to wound their opponents superficially rather than kill them. The few seconds between what is probably Hamilton’s original shot and Burr’s responding one hold the key to Burr’s intentions, which will forever remain a mystery.

Burr and Hamilton’s physical duel is preceded by a verbal duel. Prior to the duel, there had been a fifteen-year-period of animosity between the two men because Hamilton was critical of Burr’s capacity for shifting his political allegiances in order to maximize his power, rather than merely out of conviction. When Burr is running for governor of New York, Hamilton is reported to have libeled Burr as ‘“despicable”’ in Dr. Charles Cooper’s letter in The Albany Register (32). On June 25, 1804, Van Ness (Burr’s representative) requires that Hamilton deny his degrading statements. When Pendleton enters proceedings as Hamilton’s representative, he issues a statement saying that Hamilton denies he made the charges reported in Dr. Charles Cooper’s proceedings. He emphasizes that in any event his statements related to Burr’s political dealings rather than his personal ones. 

Duels are supposed to involve only personal charges, so “[s]trictly speaking Hamilton’s concession should have been the end of it” (34). However, Burr digs in his heels and demands “a wholesale and unqualified apology” from Hamilton (35). Several more letters are exchanged between the two men’s representatives, as Pendleton looks for an honorable exit route for Hamilton. By June 27, Burr’s patience runs out, and he comes to the conclusion that the only solution is a duel, scheduled for July 11. 

The duel ends badly for Burr. Hamilton’s funeral is “an extravaganza of mourning,” and the common consensus is that “Burr had murdered Hamilton in cold blood” (26). Wild rumors about Burr wearing a suit made from bullet-deflecting material and meaning to shoot Hamilton in the heart emerge. Therefore Hamilton becomes a martyr, and Burr recedes into “political oblivion” (27).

The duel, an outmoded model of dispute resolution, shows that “the newborn American republic” is a place “where real and not just imagined conspiracies were prevalent, where the endurance of the political entity called the United States was still very much up in the air” (46). Both Hamilton and Burr attend the duel because they feel that the future of the United States depends on strong characters to mold it and are willing to fight to ensure that those with influence in the new republic are not libelous or corrupt.