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Arnold A. Rogow has taught at Stanford University, the University of Iowa, and the City University of New York. He is the author of many books, including James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics, and Policy. He lives in New York City.

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A Fatal Friendship

Hill & Wang

Chapter One

THE DUEL

    Early on the morning of Wednesday, July 11, 1804, as the sun rosein the sky over Long Island, promising a day that would be brightand warm after the haze burned off, two men holding pistols confrontedeach other on a narrow ledge overlooking the Hudson Riverat Weehawken, New Jersey. They were about to fight a duel, a notuncommon event in those days, but this was no ordinary duel andthese were not ordinary men. Aaron Burr, who by prearrangementarrived first, had been a senator from New York, and was Vice Presidentof the United States in the administration of Thomas Jefferson.Alexander Hamilton, who faced Burr across the clearing, had been theprincipal author of The Federalist Papers and in 1789 was appointedthe first Secretary of the Treasury by George Washington.

    Following the command "Present!" given by one of the seconds,there were two shots, one of which penetrated Hamilton's lower rightside, inflicting a mortal wound. Thirty-six hours later he was dead, andnot long after reports of his death reached the public, Burr, indictedfor murder in both New York and New Jersey, was a fugitive fromjustice. Neither man had yet reached the age of fifty, and while Burrwas to live another thirty-two years, his political career had also suffereda wound from which it would never recover.

    The immediate cause of the duel were remarks hostile to Burr whichHamilton was said to have made the preceding February at a gatheringin Albany, New York. But as the following chapters seek to demonstrate,they had begun their travels to Weehawken far from Albany invery different parts of the world, and long before they were to meetfor the last time on the dueling ground.

one

BASTARDY AND LEGITIMACY

    Alexander Hamilton's beginnings were as inauspicious as AaronBurr's were promising. The dissimilarity between them could nothave been put more succinctly, if somewhat crudely in respect to Hamilton,than by John Adams, who referred to Hamilton as "a bastardbrat of a Scotch pedlar," whereas, in the case of Burr, he had "neverknown in any country, the prejudice in favor of birth, parentage, anddescent more conspicuous." So far as we know, Burr never alludedto Hamilton's illegitimacy, but others, as Adams's remark testifies, werenot so kind, Jefferson on one occasion venting his anger at Hamiltonby declaring, "It's monstrous that this country should be ruled by aforeign bastard!" For Hamilton, however, who was too shamed byhis illegitimacy to reveal it, and who must have been painfully awareof the extreme contrast between their backgrounds, Burr's being borninto a family of distinguished clergy and college presidents may havebeen the first of many reminders that certain differences between them,despite accomplishments on Hamilton's part that far surpassed thoseof Burr, had been unalterably resolved in Burr's favor.

    Hamilton's beginnings were also, in important particulars, obscure,and to this day much about his origin is more a matter of speculationthan fact. The date of his birth on the island of Nevis in the BritishWest Indies is reported both as January 11, 1755, and as January 11,1757, some of his many biographers alleging one date and some theother. There is near-unanimous agreement on the identity of his father,James Hamilton, but still some uncertainty, and significant disagreementregarding the circumstances and events of his childhood andadolescence. More is known about Burr's origins--although, somewhatparadoxically, Burr became less, and Hamilton more, revealingof himself as their life histories unfolded--but Burr's early years, too,do not yield a complete record or one that has gone unchallenged.

    Biographers also disagree, in Hamilton's case, on the age and birthorder of his brother James, a disagreement that owes a great deal toconfused or careless statements by his son and biographer, JohnChurch Hamilton. In J. C. Hamilton's first book about his father,Hamilton is referred to as the youngest of several sons of his mother,Rachel, who died in 1768, but in a later book about his father, Hamiltonis described as Rachel's only surviving child. These contradictoryassertions have led some biographers to conclude that Hamilton'sbrother James was a half brother, the issue, before or after Hamilton'sbirth, of an unrecorded marriage of James Hamilton, Sr., who died in1799 at the age of eighty-one. An inevitable by-product of these uncertaintiesis that certain biographers assert that Hamilton was threeto five years older than his brother James, while others insist thatHamilton was the younger brother.

    Since there is no birth certificate or other reliable documentationestablishing Hamilton's birth date as 1757, his own family and manybiographers have regarded as authoritative Hamilton's indirect indicationthat he was born that year. Hamilton told family members that,as he put it in a 1797 letter to a kinsman of his father in Scotland, hewas "about sixteen" when he arrived in New York toward the finalmonths of 1772, and "nineteen" when he qualified for the degree ofbachelor of arts at the "College of New York" and in March 1776became a captain of artillery in the American Army. These statements,if true, support the 1757 date.

    But not all evidence points to 1757. In the probate record of hismother's will in February 1768, Hamilton's age is given as thirteen,which, if correct, would indicate that he was born in 1755; his brotherJames, according to probate, was two years older, or, in other words,born in 1753. Other evidence, admittedly circumstantial, is a publishedpoem of October 17, 1772, attributed to Hamilton by J. C. Hamiltonand said to have been written by him "when 18 years old." At thattime, Hamilton was less than three months short of his eighteenthbirthday. Certain verses of this poem, to which we shall return, couldsuggest that the writer certainly was no younger than almost eighteen,although given Hamilton's precocity in a variety of areas, the possibilitythat he was sexually experienced at sixteen or earlier cannot beruled out.

    A further circumstance lending support to the 1755 date is a legaldocument of 1766 from the island of St. Croix which lists Hamiltonas a witness. This document, which was first discovered by the historianGeorge Bancroft, suggests that Hamilton was nine years old whenhe signed it if, in fact, he was born in 1757; if 1755 is the correct date,he would have been eleven at the time. In the West Indies in thosedays, as Henry Cabot Lodge observed, serving as a legal witness ateither age was not impossible, but we may reasonably assume that thelikelihood of such an appearance increased as one grew closer to adulthood.

    Hamilton may well have believed that he was born in 1757, but hemay also have had compelling reasons to favor that date, as opposedto the earlier one. For, in addition to the understandable pride he feltin having achieved so much when he was very young--in the letter tohis Scots relative he calls attention to his age "sixteen" once and "nineteen"twice--the later date raises fewer questions about his paternity.Certainly, Hamilton was aware of the rumors, at least one of whichwas believed to be fact by his close friend and associate Timothy Pickering,that his father...