Alexander Hamilton (140 page)

The secession campaign had matured to the point that its instigators planned a Boston meeting late that fall, after Jefferson’s presumed reelection. Hamilton agreed to attend, undoubtedly to dissuade participants from this self-destructive act. Some detractors tried to cast Hamilton as a confederate in the plot, when it flew in the face of his life’s overwhelming passion: the strength and stability of the union. Even Jefferson later referred to “the known principle of General Hamilton never, under any views, to break the Union.”
⁷⁵
Hamilton’s dismay about the secessionist threat preoccupied him during the weeks leading up to the duel. His son John Church Hamilton told of one dinner party at the Grange just a week before the fatal encounter. “After dinner, when they were alone, Hamilton turned to [John] Trumbull, and looking at him with deep meaning, said: ‘You are going to Boston. You will see the principal men there. Tell them from ME, at MY request, for God’s sake, to cease these conversations and threatenings about a separation of the Union. It must hang together as long as it can be made to.”
⁷⁶
Since 1787, Hamilton had never wavered in his belief that the Constitution must be preserved as long as possible, nor in his commitment to do everything in his power to make it work. He was not about to change that view now.

FORTY-ONE

A DESPICABLE OPINION

S
ometime 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. Both Judge Tayler and Hamilton expressed their dread at having Aaron Burr as governor. “You can have no conception of the exertions that are [being made] for Burr,” Tayler had told De Witt Clinton. “Every artifice that can be devised is used to promote his cause.”
¹

This private dinner on State Street triggered a chain of events that led inexorably to Hamilton’s duel with Burr. Present at Tayler’s table was Dr. Charles D. Cooper, a physician who had married Tayler’s adopted daughter. Contemptuous of 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. This may have been a cover story, though people often pored over private letters at local inns that served as post offices; it was not uncommon for letters to be intercepted and then turn up unexpectedly in print.

Before Cooper knew it, excerpts from his letter had appeared in the
New-York Evening Post.
Editor William Coleman evidently thought Cooper’s words had been published in a handbill and needed to be refuted. He reminded readers that Hamilton had “repeatedly declared” his neutrality in the race between Burr and Lewis.
³
To drive home the point, Coleman ran a letter from Philip Schuyler repeating Hamilton’s pledge to stay aloof from the race and saying that he could never have made the statement attributed to him about Burr. By writing this letter, Schuyler, unwittingly, became the agent of his cherished son-in-law’s death.

Cooper took umbrage at Schuyler’s insinuation that he had invented the story and on April 23 wrote a second letter, this time to Schuyler, substantiating his claim that Hamilton had traduced Burr: “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.”
⁴
Cooper noted that in February Hamilton had said as much publicly when Federalists met at the City Tavern in Albany to choose a gubernatorial candidate. 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.”
⁵
This letter, which changed so many lives, appeared in the
Albany Register
on April 24, 1804.

On June 18, seven weeks after his election defeat, Burr received a copy of the upstate paper with Cooper’s letter. Whether it was sent by an irate friend or a malicious enemy, we do not know. In his cool, disdainful style, Burr had prided himself on sloughing off allegations and not dignifying them with responses. But now, banished to the political wilderness, Burr was no longer immune to criticism, and he flew into a rage. Like many people who hide hostility behind charming facades, Burr was, at bottom, a captive of his temper. With his insatiable appetite for political gossip, he knew that Hamilton had been maligning him for years. On two previous occasions, they had nearly entered into affairs of honor over Hamilton’s statements. 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.
⁶
Burr later told a friend:

It is too well known that Genl. H[amilton] had long indulged himself in illiberal freedoms with my character. He had a peculiar talent of saying things improper and offensive in such a manner as could not well be taken hold of. On two different occasions, however, having reason to apprehend that he had gone so far as to afford me fair occasion for calling on him, he anticipated me by coming forward voluntarily and making apologies and concessions. From delicacy to him and from a sincere desire for peace, I have never mentioned these circumstances, always hoping that the generosity of my conduct would have some influence on his.
⁷

Some Burr admirers have noted that while Hamilton made scathing comments about Burr, he never responded in kind. This may say less about Burr’s ethics than his style. Where Hamilton was outspoken in denunciations of people, the wily Burr tended to cultivate a wary silence, a studied ambiguity, in his comments about political figures.

When Burr set eyes on Cooper’s letter, he was still smarting from his election defeat and the apparent collapse of his career. Before 1800, he could not have acted against Hamilton because of the latter’s immense influence in the Washington and Adams administrations. Then as vice president under Jefferson, Burr knew that his political fate might rest with the Federalists and that he could not antagonize Hamilton. Now, Hamilton was fair game. He still bore the famous name but without the power that once made it so fearsome. Joanne Freeman has written, “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.”
⁸
Sometime that spring, Burr told Charles Biddle that “he was determined to call out the first man of any respectability concerned in the infamous publications concerning him,” recalled Biddle. “He had no idea then of having to call on
General Hamilton.
”
⁹
Burr was, however, laboring under the misimpression that Hamilton had drafted anonymous broadsides against him. Perhaps Cooper’s letter confirmed his hunch that Hamilton had been making mischief behind the scenes.

The great mystery behind Burr’s challenge to Hamilton lies in what exactly Charles Cooper meant when he said he could detail a “still more despicable opinion” that Hamilton had spouted against Burr. The question has led to two centuries of speculation. 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. This grandson of theologian Jonathan Edwards had sampled many forbidden fruits. To give but one recent example of scandal: six months before the dinner at Tayler’s, Burr had received a letter from a former lover, Mrs. Hayt, that politely requested hush money. She explained that she was “in a state of pregnancy and in want…. [O]nly think what a small sum you gave me, agentleman of your connections.” She did not wish to expose him, she promised, “but I would thank you if you would be so kind as to send me a little money.”
¹⁰
If Burr did not pay her, Hayt may have made good on her threat to expose him; if so, New York society would have been abuzz with the story. In the last analysis, however, the specific charge that Cooper had in mind was unimportant, for Burr was now poised to exploit any pretext to strike at Hamilton. Their affair of honor was less about slurs and personal insults than politics and party leadership.

On Monday morning, June 18, after digesting the Cooper letter, Burr asked his friend William P. Van Ness to come immediately to Richmond Hill, his home overlooking the Hudson. Burr was suffering from an ague, and his neck was wrapped in scarves. Many people, Burr told Van Ness, had informed him that “General Hamilton had at different times and upon various occasions used language and expressed opinions highly injurious to [my] reputation.”
¹¹
Thus, it was clearly a catalog of
cumulative
insults, rather than the Cooper letter alone, that had provoked Burr to action. By eleven o’clock that morning, Van Ness materialized at Hamilton’s law office with a letter from Burr, sternly demanding an explanation of the “despicable” act alluded to in Cooper’s letter. Both the tone and substance of Burr’s letter telegraphed to Hamilton that Burr was commencing an affair of honor.

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. With his checkered West Indian background, he had predicated his career on fiercely defending his honor. No impulse was more deeply rooted in his nature. This outspoken man was always armed for battle and vigilant in deflecting attacks on his integrity. On six occasions, Hamilton had been involved in the duel preliminaries that formed part of affairs of honor, and three times he had been attached to duels as a second or an adviser. Yet he had never actually been the principal in a duel. His editor, Harold C. Syrett, has observed that, until the summer of 1804, Hamilton “was obsessed with dueling in the abstract, but not with duels in fact.”
¹²

The dueling cult was still widespread, though far from universal. Jefferson and Adams opposed dueling, and Franklin had deplored it as a “murderous practice.”
¹³
Dueling was especially prevalent among military officers, who prided themselves on their romantic sense of honor and found this ritualized violence the perfect way to express it. Both Hamilton and Burr had been schooled in this patrician culture. Military men always feared that if they ducked a duel they might be branded cowards, drastically impairing their future ability to command troops. Since he envisioned a host of bloody possibilities in America’s immediate future—a civil war, anarchy, a secessionist revolt—and thought he might lead an army to deal with them, Hamilton dwelled on the implications for his courage in accepting or declining Burr’s challenge. Courage was inseparable from his conception of leadership. Said one contemporary of Hamilton: “He was a
soldier
and could not bear the imputation of wanting spirit. Least of all could he bear the supercilious vaunting of Aaron Burr that he had been called by him to account and shrunk from the call.”
¹⁴

Dueling was de rigueur among those, like Burr and Hamilton, who identified with America’s social elite—Burr by birth, Hamilton by marriage and accomplishment. If a social inferior insulted you, you thrashed him with your cane. If you traded insults with a social equal, you selected pistols and repaired to the dueling ground. In theory, Burr could have sued Hamilton for libel, but it was thought infra dig for a gentleman to do so. Hamilton said loftily that he had largely refrained from libel suits because he preferred “repaying hatred with contempt.”
¹⁵

Politicians were among the most ardent duelists. Many duels arose from partisan disputes and, as Joanne Freeman has shown in
Affairs of Honor,
they often followed contested elections, as losers sought to recoup their standing. Political parties were still fluid organizations based on personality cults, and no politician could afford to have his honor impugned. Though fought in secrecy and seclusion, duels always turned into highly public events that were covered afterward with rapt attention by the press. They were designed to sway public opinion and shape the images of the adversaries.

Duels were also elaborate forms of conflict resolution, which is why duelists did not automatically try to kill their opponents. The mere threat of gunplay concentrated the minds of antagonists, forcing them and their seconds into extensive negotiations that often ended with apologies instead of bullets. Experience had taught Hamilton that if he was tough and agile in negotiations he could settle disputes without resort to weapons. In the unlikely event that a duel occurred, the antagonists frequently tried only to wound each other, clipping an arm or a leg. If both parties survived the first round of a duel, they still had a chance to pause and settle their dispute before a second round. The point was not to exhibit deadly marks-manship; it was to demonstrate courage by submitting to the duel. Further militating against a mortal ending was that many states had levied harsh penalties for dueling. Although these laws were seldom applied, especially when social luminaries were involved, the possibility of prosecution always existed. Even if no legal action was taken, the culprit might still be ostracized as a bloodthirsty scoundrel, defeating his purpose in having dueled.