America’s Greatest Duel

An artist’s imagining of the moment Burr shot Hamilton.

(Library of Congress)

Two hundred and two years ago today, on July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot the brilliant lawyer, politician, and statesman Alexander Hamilton, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Why?

The disagreements that led to the most famous duel in American history began with politics. Burr was a Republican, as was President Thomas Jefferson; their party generally favored the will of the individual states over that of the national government. Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, was a leader of the Federalists, who desired a powerful, centralized federal government. In less than two decades the debates between the two parties had become heated and rancorous. The Federalists, in particular, had taken matters to a new level by funding newspapers—the equivalent of today’s tabloids—whose primary mission was to tear down Republicans.

Aaron Burr, a Federalist-leaning Republican, had enemies on both sides of the political divide. Jefferson didn’t trust Burr to carry out his administration’s wishes and his party’s policies. Hamilton, meanwhile, feared that Burr might eventually switch parties and challenge his own Federalist leadership. Despite their disagreements, though, Hamilton and Burr “always behaved with courtesy to each other,” according to Hamilton. They traveled in the same New York City social circles; they even occasionally worked together as lawyers on court cases. It took a series of unfortunate events for their antagonism to turn deadly.

In 1804 Burr realized he would not be on Jefferson’s reelection ticket, and he decided to run for governor of New York. He had previously been the state’s attorney general, as well as a U.S. Senator—defeating Hamilton’s father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, for the job—and had served in the state legislature as well. But Burr lost the governor’s election by a wide margin, and he suddenly found himself at the end of his political career.

At this vulnerable point in his life, somebody showed him an old copy of the Albany Register, a Republican newspaper, that contained a letter by a Dr. Charles D. Cooper about how Hamilton had railed against Burr at a dinner. Cooper claimed that Hamilton had called Burr “a dangerous man” who “ought not to be trusted.” Already buffeted by events, Burr felt compelled to defend his honor against this attack. He wrote to Hamilton and asked for “a prompt and unqualified acknowledgement or denial of the use of any expressions which could warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper.”

Hamilton initially brushed off the letter, but that just made Burr angrier. Soon Burr demanded that Hamilton not only disavow the remarks but also deny that he had ever questioned Burr’s honor in speech or writing in the past 15 years.

But Hamilton had said many derogatory things about Burr, at least in private. “As to Burr, there is nothing in his favor,” he once wrote to a colleague. “His private character is not defended among his most partial friends.” Hamilton saw such talk as part of the political game. Burr, he felt, was overreacting. Apologizing for such remarks would be dishonorable, and Hamilton worried about his own reputation. He had weathered a number of scandalous accusations himself over the years, and he was not one to back down. After a few more irate exchanges of letters, Burr sent Hamilton a challenge to duel.

The European ritual of the duel, in which two men faced off with pistols on open ground, was still considered by many an honorable form of settling disputes in the early 1800s, particularly among military men. (Hamilton had risen to the rank of major general while serving in the U.S. Army, and Burr had been a lieutenant colonel.) Its popularity may have been enhanced by the fact that fatalities in duels occurred relatively rarely—only about 20 percent of the time—partly because of the inaccuracy of the pistols used.

Burr had been in a duel five years earlier, when a New York assemblyman accused him of corruption, but both he and the man he had challenged—who later apologized—emerged unscathed. Hamilton personally disapproved of duels—his son Philip had been killed in one in 1801—but as a former soldier he felt he couldn’t ignore Burr’s challenge. He told several friends he would fire his shot in the air.

The meeting took place before dawn on July 11, 1804, across the river in Weehawken, New Jersey—the practice of dueling having been outlawed in the state of New York. After all the preliminaries had been disposed of, both men fired almost simultaneously. Hamilton’s shot went wild—whether by design or not—but Burr’s went into Hamilton’s right side above the hip, through his diaphragm and liver, and into his spine. As the code of the duel stipulated, Burr and his second quickly departed; Hamilton was attended to by his second, a physician, and said, “This is a mortal wound, doctor.” He was paralyzed from the waist down. After hours of agony, he died the next day, in New York City. He was 47 years old.

There was uproar nationwide over the murder. Hamilton’s popularity, already considerable, soared after his death. Ordinarily, law enforcement turned a blind eye to duels; this time warrants for Burr’s arrest were issued in New York and New Jersey. He fled to Philadelphia, then to the South. Eventually he wound up in Washington, D.C., where he would be immune to state charges. He was never prosecuted for Hamilton’s murder.

A few years later Burr was involved in a bizarre plot to create an empire of western states in North America. He stood trial for treason for that crime but was acquitted because of lack of evidence. In later years he expressed little regret for killing Hamilton; in fact, he would often offhandedly refer to the Founding Father as “my friend, Hamilton, whom I shot.” He died in 1836 at the age of 80.

Hamilton’s reputation, however, has only grown, as Burr’s has not. Hamilton is seen by many as a visionary American thinker and economic genius. He is one of only two non-Presidents whose images appear on American paper money (the other is Benjamin Franklin). Burr is not remembered for his achievements as a U.S. senator or Vice President. He is known first to history as the man who murdered Alexander Hamilton.

—David Rapp has written about history for American Heritage, Technology Review, and Out.