War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel that Stunned the Nation - Softcover

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John Sedgwick is the bestselling author of thirteen books, including Blood Moon, War of Two, his acclaimed account of the duel between Hamilton and Burr, two novels, and the family memoir In My Blood. A longtime contributor to GQ, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic, he wrote the first national expose of the exploits of Whitey Bulger in GQ in 1992.

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The case of dueling pistols owned by Hamilton’s good Federalist friend New York senator Rufus King. Similar to the Robert Wogdon flintlock pistols used in the fatal duel between Hamilton and Burr, these were made by H.W. Mortimer. They were never fired but demonstrate that such equipment was de rigueur for a gentleman of the political class and indicate the elaborate machinery involved in defending one’s honor.

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE

One fall afternoon several years ago, I was in the reading room of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a splendid brick bastion in Boston’s leafy Fenway neighborhood. I was prowling through the society’s extensive collection of Sedgwick family papers for a book I was writing about my family’s history when the head librarian, Peter Drummey, came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said he had something to show me.

“We’ve got this one on display up front,” he whispered. “Come, you should see it.” He led me through a series of rooms to an exhibition space showing the society’s prized holdings in long glass cases. Peter stopped beside one of them and pointed toward a wrinkled letter, yellowed with age, its once-black ink long since faded to brown, that was propped up on glass. “There. Take a look.”

I bent over the case. “New York, July 10, 1804,” I read out.

My Dear Sir

I have received two letters from you since we last saw each other—that of the latest date being the 24 of May. I have had in hand for some time a long letter to you, explaining my view of the course and tendency of our Politics, and my intentions as to my own future conduct. But my plan embraced so large a range that owing to much avocation, some indifferent health, and a growing distaste for Politics, the letter is still considerably short of being finished—I write this now to satisfy you, that want of regard for you has not been the cause of my silence—

“Wait, this isn’t—?” I asked.

Peter nodded. “Yes—Alexander Hamilton’s last letter. Written the night before he was shot.” By the sitting vice president Aaron Burr, he need hardly have added, in the famous duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804, an event that Henry Adams called the most dramatic moment in the politics of the early Republic.

“And look, it’s to one of yours.” He beamed. “His good friend and legislative ally Theodore Sedgwick.” Of course—the name was scrawled hastily across the bottom.

I’d known about the letter, but I’d never seen it. Theodore was my great-great-great-grandfather. A career politician, he’d helped push Hamilton’s economic agenda through the House when he was a representative from Massachusetts, and ultimately rose to become Speaker of the House for the fateful election of 1800 that wrested control away from his Federalist Party and turned it over to Thomas Jefferson and the Republican “Jacobins,” as he thought of them, alluding to the bloodthirsty radicals of the French Revolution. Much to Hamilton’s distress, Theodore had tried fruitlessly to steer the election to Burr, a friend from the Berkshires. Still, Theodore had been one of the only politicians who’d remained a trusted friend of both men, which was why Hamilton was writing him then.

We will return to the letter later, in its time. Taken out of context, it may seem tangential and, unusually for Hamilton, wildly overblown. It is likely to defy expectations as to why Hamilton crossed the Hudson at daybreak and faced his doom. In a few choice sentences, Hamilton offered a better explanation about his part in the duel, and a better prediction of what would come from it, than he did anywhere else. Theodore Sedgwick never responded, since by then there was no one to respond to.

When earlier members of the family encountered the letter, they could see its value to history, for several added urgent notations on the back before they passed the letter down to the next generation. All conveyed the same message: This letter must be preserved.



INTRODUCTION

The Fatal Dinner

Searching for the true origins of the fatal hatred between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr is like trying to trace the wind to its source. It is easier to detail how the gusts are knocking tree limbs about. There was never any question that Burr shot Hamilton in anger. As for why, everyone turned to a remarkable series of letters, eleven in all, that Hamilton and Burr, or their surrogates, volleyed back and forth in the run-up to the slaughter and that filled the newspapers afterward. The letters have much of the quality of legal arguments, as befits the work of the two most prominent lawyers in the city, as each tried to pin the blame on the other, and they make up a duel of their own, a war of words.

While each man clearly disdained the moral character of the other, the issue at hand was far more limited, and more precise, as it turned, remarkably, on a single word, spoken in haste at a dinner party in Albany that February, in the midst of an abominable winter that, from November to May, was the coldest and snowiest on record. Only the steep roofs of the city’s Dutch houses were clear of the otherwise endless freezing white. The event was held at the State Street home of a powerful local judge named John Tayler, whose mouth seemed always down turned in displeasure. He ran nearly everything in town from the waterworks to the local New York State Bank, which he’d conveniently located directly across the street, and he was at work on plans for a new granite statehouse a few blocks away. The city had long been so Dutch that, it was said, even the dogs barked in Dutch. The Reformed Protestant Dutch Church still commanded one end of State Street—but a sturdy new Episcopal church had risen at the other, reflecting the developing political tensions of the city.

Tayler had invited in a few gentleman friends who were staying in the city for an ample repast before a roaring fire. The men duly arrived by sleigh on the snow-packed street. Their cheeks must have been raw as they came stamping into the front hall, their top hats and capes dusted with white. Federalists all, they dressed in the Federalist fashion; for clothing, too, was divided by party. Unlike Republicans, these good Federalist men all wore traditional knee-high silk stockings and buckled shoes, eschewing the blowsy shirts and crude trousers affected by the Republicans. Or worse. Even on formal occasions, President Jefferson was known to lounge about the President’s Mansion in a dressing gown and slippers.

The purpose tonight, however, was not mere conviviality. Since this was Albany in an election season, and one that featured the almost lubricious prospect of the disgraced vice president Aaron Burr’s attempt to seize the governor’s chair, the topic would be politics and, for a diversion, more politics. But for its designation as the state capital, after all, Albany would have remained what it once was: a nice piece of land along the Hudson, rich in strawberries. And these men possessed political opinions of value. Among them were the eminent James Kent, chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court, and the Dutch aristocrat Stephen Van Rensselaer, the eighth patroon, or lord of the manor, a onetime candidate for governor himself whose estate, Rensselaerswych, once encompassed all of Albany. But the prize guest of the evening was Alexander Hamilton.

In his younger days, Hamilton had cut a girlish figure, wasp-waisted, slim limbed, with none of the manly chest you’d associate with an orator who could dominate a hall for hours. He’d had a dancer’s grace, too,...