Duel with the Devil Quotes

“Such madness was strictly prohibited in New York, but not in New Jersey.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“THE YOUNG carpenter miserably regarded his fellow inmates. Some had been confined for so long that nobody even knew why they were there anymore. One wild-looking blind and insane man known as “Paul from New Jersey” snored quietly on the floor, with only a block of wood as his pillow. When awake, he wandered around naked and filthy. An appalled visitor, asking why the man had been left naked, found the staff unconcerned: “The keeper explained that when furnished with a shirt, the rats soon eat it off.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“For more fortunate readers, it reminded them that “the action of the clytoris in women is like that of a penis to man,” and the key to “brifk and vigorous” enjoyments—especially with “cares and thoughts of business drowned in a glafs of rofy wine.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“But this much is known: Hamilton shot into the trees. Burr, leveling his pistol at his foe, did not.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Positive and direct proof of fraud is not to be expected.… The nature of the thing itself, which is generally carried out in a secret and clandestine manner, does not admit of any but circumstantial evidence; and therefore, if no proof of actual fraud were allowed in such cases, much mischief and villainy would ensue, and pass with impunity. Circumstantial evidence is all that can be expected, and indeed all that is necessary to substantiate such a charge.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Napoléon Bonaparte. The new leader had no immediate fight to pick with America; some thought he might actually bring peace to Europe. Hamilton’s endless demands for more funding and troops were beginning to look foolish.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Much of Hamilton’s previous two years had been spent building up an “additional army,” justified by stoking fears of a French invasion of godless radicals. That country’s revolution, Hamilton warned, exposed America to a veritable “volcano of atheism, depravity, and absurdity … an engine of despotism and slavery.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“New York was the swing state in the upcoming presidential election—and Manhattan was the swing district in New York State. Control the city, and you controlled the 1800 presidential race.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“And yet something unsettling remained about the notion of John Pastano as a willful murderer: the recollection, perhaps, that after murdering Mary Castro, he had filled his hat with her blood and wandered out into the street with it. When he was collared over by the Tea-Water Pump, broken English had spilled out from the man. “Why you catch me?” he asked innocently. “Me not do”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“You could expect bread, cheese, preserved apples, eggs, and a solid draft of warm beer. Tea and coffee were only slowly taking hold at breakfast in the finer houses, and the city’s old Dutch families still drank cocoa at breakfast”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“I been brought up a hatter,” he sighed, “people would have come into the world without heads.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Even the few streets with unobstructed brick sidewalks were comically narrow—just wide enough, as one chronicler put it, to accommodate “two lean men to walk abreast or one fat man alone.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“coffee biggins”—the last being the latest fad from France, involving the boiling of coffee rather than merely drinking it as a dissolved”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Back then, Manhattan was the infant country”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery