Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

The personal recriminations of the 1800 election can obscure the huge ideological shift that reshaped American politics and made the Republicans the majority party. In races for the House of Representatives, where Hamilton’s Letter played no part, the Republicans took control by a more lopsided margin—sixty-five Republicans to forty-one Federalists—than in their presidential victory. The people had registered their dismay with a long litany of unpopular Federalist actions: the Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the truculent policy toward France, the vast army being formed under Hamilton and the taxes levied to support it. The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics—the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme.

regularly violated what became the first commandment of American politics: thou shalt always be optimistic when addressing the electorate. He shrank from the campaign rhetoric that flattered Americans as the most wonderful, enlightened people on earth and denied that they had anything to learn from European societies. He was incapable of the resolutely uplifting themes that were to become mandatory in American politics. The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.

To Jefferson we owe the self-congratulatory language of Fourth of July oratory, the evangelical conviction that America serves as a beacon to all humanity. Jefferson told John Dickinson, “Our revolution and its consequences will ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe.”

Under the tutelage of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, the Federalists had bequeathed to American history a sound federal government with a central bank, a funded debt, a high credit rating, a tax system, a customs service, a coast guard, a navy, and many other institutions that would guarantee the strength to preserve liberty.

It was no coincidence that the allegedly aristocratic and reactionary Federalists contained the overwhelming majority of active abolitionists of the period.

The 1800 triumph of Republicanism also meant the ascendancy of the slaveholding south. Three Virginia slaveholders—Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—were to control the White House for the next twenty-four years.

Slaveholding presidents from the south occupied the presidency for approximately fifty of the seventy-two years following Washington’s first inauguration. Many of these slaveholding populists were celebrated by posterity as tribunes of the common people. Meanwhile, the self-made Hamilton, a fervent abolitionist and a staunch believer in meritocracy, was villainized in American history textbooks as an apologist of privilege and wealth.

If forced to choose, Hamilton preferred a man with wrong principles to one devoid of any.

From his legal practice, Hamilton knew that Burr had exorbitant debts and might be susceptible to bribes from foreign governments. He briefed Federalists about the scandals involving Burr and the Holland Company and the gross trickery behind the Manhattan Company.

It was not until February 11, 1801, that votes cast by presidential electors in the various states were actually opened in the Senate chamber, confirming what was already common knowledge: that Jefferson and Burr had tied with seventy-three votes apiece.

Burr lacked any fixed principles, Hamilton argued, and played instead on “the floating passions of the multitude.”34

On March 4, 1801, the day of Jefferson’s inauguration, Adams—now a balding, toothless, cantankerous old man—climbed into a stagecoach at four o’clock in the morning and left for Massachusetts eight hours before Thomas Jefferson was sworn into office. He thus became the first of only three presidents in American history who chose to boycott their successors’ inaugurations.

Once Jefferson entered the White House, Burr was no longer just expendable to the president: he was an outright hindrance. After betraying Jefferson’s trust during the electoral tie, Burr knew he would probably be dropped as vice president when Jefferson sought reelection, and in the meantime he was pointedly excluded from the president’s counsels.

“‘Well Gallatin, what have you found?’ [Jefferson asked]. I answered: ‘I have found the most perfect system ever formed. Any change that should be made in it would injure it. Hamilton made no blunders, committed no frauds. He did nothing wrong.’ I think Mr. Jefferson was disappointed.”

As president, James Madison allowed the bank’s charter to expire, and American finances suffered as a result during the War of 1812.

Philip’s partisans told of his noble but ultimately suicidal resolution not to fire first, and they cursed the rival who had failed to respond in kind.

Thus, a situation arose in which Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, two desperate politicians with fading careers, regarded each other as insuperable obstacles to their respective political revivals.

He was besieged by clients and preferred cases that enabled him to harry President Jefferson. The two men now clashed in an unexpected arena: freedom of the press.

By the time the circuit court convened in the small brick courthouse at Claverack, New York, in July, Hamilton had agreed to join the defense team. Because the case touched on two momentous constitutional issues, freedom of the press and trial by jury, he waived any fee.

The gist of Hamilton’s argument was that the truth of the claims made by an author should be admissible evidence for the defense in a libel case. The standard heretofore had been that plaintiffs in libel cases needed to prove only that statements made against them were defamatory, not that they were false.

“The liberty of the press consists, in my idea, in publishing the truth from good motives and for justifiable ends, [even] though it reflect on the government, on magistrates, or individuals.”

Hamilton added that “men the most zealous reverers of the people’s rights have, when placed on the highest seat of power, become their most deadly oppressors. It becomes therefore necessary to observe the actual conduct of those who are thus raised up.”

In April 1803, President Jefferson reached the zenith of his popularity with the Louisiana Purchase. For a mere pittance of fifteen million dollars, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, doubling American territory.

As John Quincy Adams remarked, the Louisiana Purchase was “an assumption of implied power greater in itself, and more comprehensive in its consequences, than all the assumptions of implied powers in the years of the Washington and Adams administrations.”31 When it suited his convenience, Jefferson set aside his small-government credo with compunction.

Yet on March 1, 1804, the American Citizen reported that Hamilton had criticized Burr for both his public and his private character: “General Hamilton did not oppose Mr. Burr because he was a democrat . . . but because HE HAD NO PRINCIPLE, either in morals or in politics. The sum and substance of his language was that no party could trust him. He drew an odious, but yet I think a very just picture of the little Colonel.”

When the votes were counted in late April, Burr had narrowly won New York City, but he was outvoted so heavily upstate that he lost the race by a one-sided margin of 30,829 to 22,139.

Under this urbanity, however, grew a murderous rage against Hamilton. In his eyes, Hamilton had blocked his path to the presidency by supporting Jefferson in 1801. Now Hamilton had blocked his path to the New York governorship. Alexander Hamilton was a curse, a hypocrite, the author of all his misery. At least that’s how Aaron Burr saw things in the spring of 1804.

In a tremendous visionary leap, Hamilton foresaw a civil war between north and south, a war that the north would ultimately win but at a terrible cost: “The result must be destructive to the present Constitution and eventually the establishment of separate governments framed on principles in their nature hostile to civil liberty.”

Sometime in March 1804, Hamilton dined in Albany at the home of Judge John Tayler, a Republican merchant and former state assemblyman who was working for the election of Morgan Lewis.

This private dinner on State Street triggered a chain of events that led inexorably to Hamilton’s duel with Burr.

Cooper was delighted to sit back and listen to two of New York’s most illustrious Federalists, Hamilton and James Kent, denounce him bluntly at the table. So exhilarated was Cooper by this virulent talk that on April 12 he dashed off an account to his friend Andrew Brown, telling him that Hamilton had spoken of Burr “as a dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted.”2 Cooper asked a friend to deliver the letter; he later claimed it was purloined and opened.

“Gen. Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared, in substance, that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.”

But it was Cooper’s next assertion that pushed relations between Hamilton and Burr past the breaking point. Far from being irresponsible, said Cooper, he had been “unusually cautious” in recounting the dinner at Tayler’s, “for really, sir, I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.”

During his feverish efforts to prevent Burr from becoming president during the 1801 election tie, Hamilton had called him profligate, bankrupt, corrupt, and unprincipled and had accused him of trying to cheat Jefferson out of the presidency. In October 1802, Hamilton had averted a duel over this by admitting that he had “no personal knowledge” of such machinations.

“Burr was a man with a wounded reputation, a leader who had suffered personal abuse and the public humiliation of a lost election. A duel with Hamilton would redeem his honor and possibly dishonor Hamilton.”

Gore Vidal has titillated readers of fiction with his supposition that Hamilton accused Burr of an incestuous liaison with his daughter, Theodosia. But Burr was such a dissipated, libidinous character that Hamilton had a rich field to choose from in assailing his personal reputation. Aaron Burr had been openly accused of every conceivable sin: deflowering virgins, breaking up marriages through adultery, forcing women into prostitution, accepting bribes, fornicating with slaves, looting the estates of legal clients.

Their affair of honor was less about slurs and personal insults than politics and party leadership.

Everything in Alexander Hamilton’s life pointed to the fact that he would not dodge a duel or negotiate a compromise. He was incapable of turning the other cheek.

Duels were also elaborate forms of conflict resolution, which is why duelists did not automatically try to kill their opponents.

The point was not to exhibit deadly marksmanship; it was to demonstrate courage by submitting to the duel.

He stood ready to avow or disavow specific charges, but he would not give Burr a blanket retraction. Then he curtly added lines that committed him to a duel: “I trust, on more reflection, you will see the matter in the same light with me. If not, I can only regret the circumstance and must abide the consequences.”25

In a shockingly brief span, the two men had moved to the brink of a duel and were ready to lay down their lives over an adjective.

On Wednesday, June 27, Van Ness delivered to Pendleton a formal duel request. Henceforth, Burr would entertain no further letters from Hamilton, and all communication would take place between the seconds. Duels tended to occur posthaste to prevent the secret from leaking out. But this duel was scheduled at a relatively distant date, July 11,

Hamilton’s decision has given rise to speculation that he was severely depressed and that the duel was suicidal. Henry Adams phrased it, “Instead of killing Burr, [Hamilton] invited Burr to kill him.”49 Historian Douglas Adair has evoked a guilt-ridden Hamilton who planned to atone for his sins by exposing himself to Burr’s murderous gunfire.

Aaron Burr, a superb marksman who had killed several enemy soldiers during the Revolution.

It is hard to take at face value his contention that he bore “no ill-will to Col Burr distinct from political opposition.”71 He saw that while he had much to lose by refraining from the duel, he had precious little to gain by facing it: “I shall hazard much and can possibly gain nothing by the issue of the interview.”72 Why then did he fight? To maintain his sense of honor and capacity for leadership,

On the eve of the duel, Nathaniel Pendleton stopped by Hamilton’s town house and made a last-ditch effort to dissuade him from his resolution to squander his first shot. Once again, Hamilton insisted he would fire in the air. When Pendleton protested, Hamilton indicated that his mind was made up. “My friend,” he told Pendleton, “it is the effect of a religious scruple and does not admit of reasoning. It is useless to say more on the subject as my purpose is definitely fixed.”

The secession movement would provide no “relief to our real disease, which is democracy”—by which he meant unrestrained, disruptive popular rule.

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 a suicidal state of mind.

The final letters written by Hamilton and Burr provide an instructive comparison. As the two men contemplated eternity, Hamilton feared for America’s future and the salvation of the union, while Burr worried about incriminating letters he had written to his mistresses, urging Theodosia to “burn all such as . . . would injure any person. This is more particularly applicable to the letters of my female correspondents.”