"Sir, I send for your perusal a letter signed Ch. D. Cooper. . ." So begins a famous and fatal correspondence. This deceptive courtesy masked a lethal antagonism that changed the lives of the participants forever. In less than a month, one of the correspondents would be dead and the other forced to go into hiding, his political future in doubt. In the summer of 1804, Vice-President Aaron Burr watched with increasing frustration as hope for his political future dwindled. President Jefferson informed him that he was not welcome as a running mate in the upcoming Presidential election. A few months before, Burr had been trounced in the New York gubernatorial race. Burr’s attention turned to his long-term rival and sometime ally Alexander Hamilton, a man who had once dominated the landscape of American politics but was finding that his own political influence had lost its power. The Democratic-Republicans were in control, while the Federalist party had fractured, with one branch talking more and more of secession, a possibility Hamilton dreaded. Never one to hold back when it came to expressing his opinion, Hamilton felt it was his duty to speak out against Burr and his attempts to woo both parties while keeping his true beliefs in the shadows. Out of patience with the repeated efforts to thwart him, Burr demanded that Hamilton either acknowledge his slanders or renounce them. A toxic mix of political rivalry, personal animosity, and the desperate need to regain political relevance drove the two adversaries from the desk to the dueling ground. The documents relating to the duel are presented here—the correspondence of the principals and their seconds, the first-hand accounts of the witnesses, last letters to loved ones, eulogies and aftermath. In the words of those who were there, this is the story of the most famous duel in American history.
Authors
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. American politician Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury of United States from 1789 to 1795, established the national bank and public credit system; a duel with Aaron Burr, his rival, mortally wounded him. One of the Founding Fathers, this economist and philosopher led calls for the convention at Philadelphia and as first Constitutional lawyer co-wrote the Federalist Papers , a primary source for Constitutional interpretation. During the Revolutionary War, he, born in the West Indies but educated in the north, joined the militia, which chose him artillery captain. Hamilton, senior aide-de-camp and confidant to George Washington, general, led three battalions at the siege of Yorktown. People elected him to the Continental congress, but he resigned to practice law and to found in New York. He served in the legislature of New York and later returned to Congress; at the convention in Philadelphia, only he signed the Constitution for New York. Under Washington, then president, he influenced formative government policy widely. Hamilton, an admirer of British, emphasized strong central government and implied powers, under which the new Congress funded and assumed the debts and created an import tariff and whiskey tax. A coalition, the formative Federalist Party, arose around Hamilton, and another coalition, the formative Democratic-Republican Party, arose around Thomas Jefferson and James Madison before 1792; these coalitions differed strongly over domestic fiscal goals and Hamiltonian foreign policy of extensive trade and friendly relations with Britain. Exposed in an affair with Maria Reynolds, Hamilton resigned to return to Constitutional law and advocacy of strong federalism. In 1798, the quasi-war with France led him to argue for an army, which he organized and commanded de facto. Opposition of Hamilton to John Adams, fellow Federalist, contributed to the success of Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, in the uniquely deadlocked election of 1800. With defeat of his party, his industrializing ideas lost their former prominence. In 1801, Hamilton founded the Federalist broadsheet New-York Evening Post, now known as the New York Post. His intensity with the vice-president eventually resulted in his death. After the war of 1812, Madison, Albert Gallatin, and other former opponents of the late Hamilton revived some of his federalizing programs, such as infrastructure, tariffs, and a standing Army and Navy. His Federalist and business-oriented economic visions for the country continue to influence party platforms to this day.
