He also told Eliza that he could not bear to kill another human being and that the “scruples of a Christian” had convinced him to expose his life to Burr: “This must increase my hazards and redoubles my pangs for you. But you had rather I should die innocent than live guilty. Heaven can preserve me and [I humbly] hope will, but in the contrary event, I charge you to remember that you are a Christian.”17 In contemplating the duel, Hamilton may have miscalculated, may have been egregiously foolish, may have talked himself into the mad and elliptical logic of dueling, but he definitely was not in
...more
