American Minute with Bill Federer
Most Infamous DUEL in American History: Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton
|
|
He intentionally fired into the air, but his political rival,
the sitting Vice-President Aaron Burr,
took deadly aim and fatally shot
Alexander Hamilton
in a duel JULY 11, 1804.
|
|
Alexander Hamilton
was born in the
British West Indies
on the
Island of Nevis,
either in the year 1755 or 1757, and grew up on the
Island of St. Croix.
|
|
Just a few years earlier, in 1751, 19-year-old
George Washington
had accompanied his
older half-brother Lawrence
on a trip to the not too distant
Island of Barbados.
|
|
Since
Alexander Hamilton's
parents were not legally married, he was not permitted to attend the Anglican academy, resulting in him being tutored at a private school by a Jewish headmistress.
|
|
Hamilton
worked for merchants till, at the age of 17, he sailed to Massachusetts in 1772 to attend
Elizabethtown Academy.
He was studying at Columbia College in New York when the Revolutionary War started.
|
|
Alexander Hamilton
fought in the
Battle of White Plains
and the
Battle of Trenton.
He served four years as
aide-de-camp to General George Washington.
|
|
Promoted to
Lieutenant Colonel, Alexander Hamilton
led a bayonet attack at night capturing Redoubt No. 10 which helped the Continental Army win the
Battle of Yorktown,
October 19, 1781.
|
|
During the Revolution,
Alexander Hamilton
wrote
"The Farmer Refuted,"
February 23, 1775, stating:
"The
Supreme Being
gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beautifying that existence ...
and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety ..."
|
|
Hamilton
continued:
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.
They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the
Hand of the Divinity
itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power ..."
|
|
Hamilton
concluded:
"Good and wise men, in all ages ... have supposed that the
Deity,
from the relations we stand in to
Himself,
and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind ...
This is what is called the law of nature ... dictated by
God
himself."
|
|
In 1781,
Hamilton
helped
Robert Morris
start the
Bank of North America,
the
first private commercial bank in the United States.
This brought stability to the nation's finances after the
fiat Continental currency
became worthless, as the saying went,
"not worth a continental."
Hamilton, Jefferson
and
Franklin
were among its founding shareholders, and it functioned as the
nation's central bank.
Meanwhile, in 1784,
John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and
Henry Knox, helped found
The Massachusetts Bank.
In 1784,
Hamilton
founded
The Bank of New York
(Mellon), which provided the
Federal government
with its
first loan
and
paid salaries
of the
U.S. Congress.
In 1792, it was the
first company
to have its
stock
traded on the
New York Stock Exchange
, and in 1796, it moved to
Wall Street.
|
|
Alexander Hamilton
helped write the
U.S. Constitution,
stating at the
Constitutional Convention,
June 22, 1787:
"Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by?
Their passions.
There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives.
One great error is that we suppose mankind is more honest that they are."
|
|
After the Constitution was written,
Hamilton
helped convinced the States to ratify it by writing
The Federalist Papers
with
James Madison
and
John Jay.
Of the 85
Federalist Papers,
Hamilton
wrote 51.
|
|
Alexander Hamilton
wrote of the Constitution in his
Letters of Caesar,
1787:
"Whether the
New Constitution,
if adopted, will prove adequate to such desirable ends, time, the mother of events, will show.
For my own part, I sincerely esteem it a system, which, without the
finger of God,
never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests."
(Ford, Paul L.,
Essays on the Constitution of the United States,
Historical Printing Club, Brooklyn, 1892, pg 245).
|
|
In 1789,
Alexander Hamilton
became the first
Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
-- his statue is at the south entrance of the Treasury building in Washington, DC.
In 1790,
Hamilton
proposed
The First Bank of the United States
to assumed the role as the
nation's central bank.
It covered the
Revolutionary War debt of the states,
established a
mint,
and imposed a
federal excise tax.
|
|
In 1790,
Hamilton
pushed Congress to have ships, called
Revenue Cutters,
to
collect revenue,
confiscate contraband, and guard the coasts from piracy.
This was the beginning of the
U.S. Coast Guard,
which freed almost 500 Africans from slavery.
|
|
Being opposed to slavery,
Hamilton
and
John Jay
founded the
New York Manumission Society
which successfully helped pass legislation in 1799 to end New York's involvement in the slave trade.
|
|
In 1799, after the death of
George Washington, Alexander Hamilton
served as
Senior Officer of the United States Army
during a threatened war with France.
|
|
Hamilton
condemned the
French Revolution's
attempt to overthrow Christianity, as it was:
"... (depriving) mankind of its best consolations and most animating hopes, and to make a gloomy desert of the universe ...
The praise of a
civilized world
is justly due to
Christianity;
-- war, by the influence of the humane principles of that religion, has been stripped of half its horrors.
The French renounce Christianity,
and they
relapse into barbarism;
- war resumes the same hideous and savage form which it wore in the ages of Gothic and Roman violence."
|
|
Hamilton
wrote:
"Facts, numerous and unequivocal, demonstrate that the present era is among the most extraordinary which have occurred in the history of human affairs.
Opinions, for a long time, have been gradually gaining ground, which threaten the
foundations of religion, morality, and society.
An attack
was first made upon the
Christian revelation,
for which natural religion was offered as the substitute.
The
Gospel
was to be discarded as a gross imposture, but the being and attributes of god, the obligations of piety, even the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments, were to be retained and cherished."
(Lodge, Henry Cabot,
The Works of Alexander Hamilton,
vol. 8, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1904, pg 425-426.)
|
|
Hamilton
began organizing
The Christian Constitutional Society,
writing to James Bayard, April 16, 1802:
"Let an association be formed to be denominated
'The Christian Constitutional Society,'
its object to be first: The support of
Christian religion;
second: The support of the
United States."
|
|
Hamilton,
back in 1775, had quoted
Sir William Blackstone
that the Law of Nature was "dictated by
God
himself," and in 1798, he had written:
"Americans rouse -- be unanimous, be virtuous, be firm, exert your courage,
trust in Heaven,
and nobly defy the enemies both of
God
and man!"
(Hamilton, John C.,
The Works of Alexander Hamilton,
vol. 7, John F. Trow, New York, 1851, pg 676.)
|
|
In 1780,
Alexander Hamilton
married
Elizabeth Schuyler,
the daughter of
Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler
who had served in the Continental Congress.
Elizabeth Hamilton
co-founded New York City's first private orphanage.
General Philip Schuyler
became the
first U.S. Senator from New York.
|
|
Aaron Burr
had fought in the Revolution, was elected to the New York State Assembly, 1784-1785, and was appointed New York State Attorney General.
In 1791,
Burr
ran to unseat
Senator General Philip Schuyler,
Hamilton's father-in-law.
When
Burr
won, it created a political rift with
Hamilton.
|
|
In 1796,
Burr
lost in his bid to become the President of the United States, running against both
John Adams
and
Thomas Jefferson.
|
|
Originally, in Presidential elections, the candidate receiving the
most electoral votes
was elected
President,
and the candidate receiving the
second most votes
was elected
Vice-President.
|
|
George Washington,
in his Farewell Address, 1796, warned of the divisive "danger of Parties":
"And of fatal tendency ... to put, in the place of the delegated will of the Nation,
the will of a party;
-often a small but artful and enterprising minority ... by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to
subvert the Power of the People
and to usurp for the themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion ...
I have already intimated to you
the danger of Parties
in the State ... Let me .now ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of
the spirit of Party,
generally.
This spirit,
unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its roots in the strongest passions of the human Mind ...
Domination of
one faction over another,
sharpened by
the spirit of revenge
natural to
party dissension
... has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism."
|
|
Hamilton
organized the
first political party,
the
"Federalists."
Jefferson
organized the
second political party
of anti-Federalists, eventually called the
"Democratic-Republicans."
Federalists
wanted a
stronger centralized government
to insure a stable currency and provide better national defense.
The
anti-Federalist Democratic-Republicans
wanted a
weaker centralized government
to prevent a repeat of the abuse of power experienced under King George III.
|
|
New York
badly needed a clean water supply to prevent
malaria
outbreaks.
Under the pretense of establishing a water company,
Aaron Burr
solicited investors, but secretly he changed the company's charter in 1799 to found the
Bank of the Manhattan Company
(JP Morgan Chase)
.
This allowed him to compete with
Hamilton's Bank of New York.
|
|
In September 1799,
John Church,
whose wife was the sister
Hamilton's wife,
accused
Burr
of taking a political bribe from the Holland Company.
Burr
challenged
Church
to a duel where both fired and missed.
|
|
During the Presidential election of 1800,
Thomas Jefferson
and
Aaron Burr
had the exact same number of electoral votes - 73.
Alexander Hamilton
used his influence to cause a vote to switch in favor of
Jefferson
being President, leaving
Burr
to be Vice-President.
|
|
In 1801, a supporter of
Burr
named
George Eacker
spoke at Columbia University, denigrating
Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton's
19-year-old son,
Philip Hamilton,
ran into
George Eacker
outside a play at New York's Park Theater.
Defending his father's honor, their encounter became a screaming, hostile confrontation, with the challenge of a duel.
They met on November 22, 1801, and, using John Church's pistols, they fired at each other, resulting in
George Eacker
killing
Philip Hamilton.
|
|
Burr
was responsible for turning the New York social club
Tammany Hall,
named for the Lanape Indian Chief Tamanend, into
a notorious political machine.
When
Jefferson
was running for reelection in 1804,
Hamilton
threatened to withdraw from the
Federalist Party
if it considered any support of
Burr.
|
|
When it became clear that
Jefferson
was not going to have
Burr
as his running-mate for a second term,
Burr
decided to run for governor of New York.
Alexander Hamilton
again used his influence to have
Burr
defeated.
Hamilton
considered
Burr
a political opportunist, declaring: "I feel it is a religious duty to oppose his career."
Aaron Burr
took offense, and as both had been involved in duels before, he challenged
Hamilton
to a duel.
|
|
Considered the
most infamous duel in American history,
they met on the morning of July 11, 1804, at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey, the same location where Hamilton's son, Philip was killed in a duel 3 years earlier.
Using John Church's pistols,
Hamilton
intentionally fired into the air.
Burr
took deadly aim, then shot and mortally wounding
Hamilton
in the stomach.
|
|
Hamilton
requested Episcopal minister Dr. John Mason give him the Lord's Supper, but Dr. Mason refused as his church principle was to "never to administer the Lord's Supper privately to any person under any circumstances."
Dr. Mason did, though, affirm that the Lord's Supper was not a requirement for salvation, to which
Hamilton
replied his request was a testimony of his faith:
"I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ."
The duel ended
Hamilton's
life and ended
Burr's
career, as he was immediately ostracized from American politics.
|
|
Burr,
now out of politics, contrived of
a plan to take control over part of the Louisiana Territory and Mexico.
When his plan came to light,
Burr
was indicted on charges of
conspiracy and treason
in 1807.
He fled the United States
in 1808 and lived in Europe for several years.
|
|
Burr
was mentioned in a negative light in the popular 1863 novel,
The Man Without a Country,
written by
Edward Everett Hale.
In the novel, the fictitious unpatriotic protagonist, Philip Nolan, had developed a friendship with the traitorous
Aaron Burr.
|
|
Alexander Hamilton
had previously warned:
"Liberty
is a
gift
of the beneficent
Creator
to the whole human race ...
Civil liberty ... cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice."
|
|
Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|