Joseph J. Ellis Read Online Free PDF Page B

the vanguard members of the revolutionary generation developed a keen sense of their historical significance even while they were still making the history on which their reputations would rest. They began posing for posterity, writing letters to us as much as to one another, especially toward the end of their respective careers. If they sometimes look like marble statues, that is how they wanted to look. (John Adams is one of my favorite characters, as you will see, because he was congenitally incapable of holding the pose. His refreshing and often irreverent candor provides the clearest window into the deeper ambitions and clashing vanities that propelled them all.) If they sometimes behave like actors in a historical drama, that is often how they regarded themselves. In a very real sense, we are complicitous in their achievement, since we are the audience for which they were performing; knowing we would be watching helped to keep them on their best behavior. 15
    Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feebleminded and only resort for historians. My narrative, while willfully episodic in character—no comprehensive coverage of all events is claimed—follows a chronological line, with one significant exception. The first story, about the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, is out of sequence. In addition to being a fascinating tale designed to catch your attention, it introduces themes that reverberate throughout all the stories that follow by serving as the exception that proves the rule. Here is the only occasion within the revolutionary generation when political differences ended in violence and death rather than in ongoing argument. And Burr, if I have him right, is the odd man out within the elite of the early republic, a colorful and intriguingcharacter, to be sure, but a man whose definition of character does not measure up to the standard.
    Enough justifying and generalizing. If the following stories converge to make some larger point, the surest way to reach it is through the stories themselves. It is a hot summer morning in 1804. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton are being rowed in separate boats across the Hudson River for an appointment on the plains of Weehawken. The water is eerily calm and the air thick with a heavy mist …

CHAPTER ONE

The Duel
    T HE MOST succinct version of the story might go like this:
    On the morning of July 11, 1804, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were rowed across the Hudson River in separate boats to a secluded spot near Weehawken, New Jersey. There, in accord with the customs of the
code duello
, they exchanged pistol shots at ten paces. Hamilton was struck on his right side and died the following day. Though unhurt, Burr found that his reputation suffered an equally fatal wound. In this, the most famous duel in American history, both participants were casualties.
    While all the information in this version of the story is accurate, its admirable brevity creates some unfortunate historical casualties of its own. After all, if the duel between Burr and Hamilton was the most famous encounter of its kind in American history, we should be able to conjure up a mental image of this dramatic moment, a more richly textured picture of “The Duel.” Only a fuller rendering will allow what was called “the interview at Weehawken” to assume its rightful place of primacy among such touted competitors as
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
or the film classic
High Noon
. In matters of this sort, succinct summaries will simply not do. And so, in an effort to give this episode its requisite density of detail, to recover the scene in its full coloration,here is a more comprehensive version, which attempts to include all the available and indisputable evidence that survives. 1
    A ARON B URR left his home on Richmond Hill near the southern end of Manhattan at first light on Wednesday, July 11, 1804. Although he slept that night on his couch and in his clothes, the vice