By Edwin Cooney
Just like me, I’m guessing that you were raised to believe that America’s founding fathers were men of super wisdom and morality! Surely no one who founded this nation could be as immoral as Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy. Yet, history records that 207 years ago today (July 11th, 1804 at Weehawken, New Jersey), the sitting Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr, slew former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Wow! What role modeling did those two “founding fathers” provide that day?
A signer and promoter of the new Constitution -- and one of the authors of the Federalist Papers -- Alexander Hamilton was a high achiever. Between 1789 and 1795, Hamilton as our first treasury secretary established American currency, devised an effective plan to settle young America’s war debt (crucial to our international credibility), and created the first Bank of the United States. Following his 1795 departure from government, Hamilton was a high-powered New York lawyer and an accomplished politician. As long as he lived, he would regard himself above any president as the head of the Federalist Party. To that end, he oversaw a network of newspapers and pamphleteers that trashed the personal and political reputations of anyone, whether Federalist or Democratic-Republican, who displeased him.
Aaron Burr was a remarkable politician and perhaps the most progressive thinker of his time. He believed that women were absolutely equal to men and should have equal status. He also promoted the equality of the working man and woman. Burr drew his political power from the laborers, merchants, and businessmen rather than from the aristocracy. The most prominent social club in New York was the Sons of St. Tammany and Aaron Burr helped turn that social club into Tammany Hall, the most formidable political machine in New York for the next century and a half. As a budding politician, Aaron Burr faced three powerful political entities in both New York City and throughout the state. They were the Schuyler/Hamilton family (Hamilton had married Senator Philip Schuyler's daughter Elizabeth in 1780), the Livingston family, and the Clinton family which would remain powerful into the mid-nineteenth century.
Aaron Burr committed two blunders that ultimately led him to Weehawken. In 1791, he defeated Philip Schuyler (Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law) for one of New York’s seats in the United States Senate. Second, he successfully aligned New York’s Democratic-Republican party with the Virginia aristocracy and thus carried New York State for Thomas Jefferson in 1800. That ultimately broke the back of Hamilton’s Federalist Party both in New York State and nationally.
We think these days of Thomas Jefferson mostly as the author of the Declaration of Independence. Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he was thought of as a politician. If Virginia was going to remain the state that produced presidents, New York State’s politicians needed to be controllable. This became increasingly evident when Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s vice presidential running mate, tied Jefferson with 73 votes in the Electoral College in 1800. Unless Vice President Burr was sufficiently weakened in his home state, he could be a threat when Secretary of State James Madison, Jefferson’s friend, decided to run for the presidency. Jefferson knew that Alexander Hamilton, who hated Burr more than he did anyone else, would surely help defang Aaron Burr.
As time moved on, Burr found that his influence in the administration was weakening. By late 1803, Burr knew that President Jefferson was likely to pick George Clinton, New York’s veteran but aging governor, to succeed him as vice president. Burr decided to run in the April 1804 gubernatorial election. With Alexander Hamilton’s help, Burr lost by the biggest margin ever.
The ultimate insult came during that campaign. After a political dinner in Albany, New York, Dr. Charles Cooper in a letter to Philip Schuyler quoted Alexander Hamilton as asserting that Aaron Burr was both a dangerous and personally despicable man. (Cooper had the letter published in an Albany paper to assure voters that Alexander Hamilton would not let Morgan Lewis, the Democratic-Republican gubernatorial candidate, lose to Aaron Burr.) To be described as dangerous was one thing, but to be described as “despicable” had -- in early American culture -- an overtone of private sexual depravity. In other words, Vice President Aaron Burr’s honor was at question. Thus, the Code Duello was the only pathway to restoring one’s honor.
After Burr failed to get Hamilton to modify what he had asserted, Burr issued his challenge to a duel. Under the Code Duello, Hamilton picked the weapons and Aaron Burr arrived on the site of the duel first. The time was shortly before 7 a.m. on that hot and muggy Tuesday morning.
No one who witnessed the duel was sure who fired first. Some say Hamilton did and that Burr had a physical reaction to the shot which struck a cedar branch about 12 feet high and about halfway between the two combatants. Burr’s shot struck Hamilton about two inches above his right hip: the ball passed through Hamilton’s liver and lodged in his spine. It was reported that Vice President Burr did express regrets to the fallen Hamilton as he left the scene and headed back across the Hudson to New York City.
Alexander Hamilton, paralyzed and in great pain, lived until about 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 12th, 1804. Burr’s life was spared, but both his honor and his political career were fatally tarnished. Alexander Hamilton’s life was over, but his fame became greater than his honor.
Yes, indeed, ego and honor live with us yet, legacies of our nature and institutionalized by America’s founding generation. It’s a little strange, isn’t it, that we still believe, despite George Washington’s stern warning, that our ego and honor can be healthfully nourished by politicians? You can speak for yourself, but I’d STILL rather be led by a politician than by a king!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment