Burr fires at Weehawken; Hamilton is rowed back across the Hudson, shot through the liver
At dawn on July 11, 1804, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton rowed across the Hudson to a dueling ground in Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton likely fired first (though the exact sequence remains disputed), his shot clipping a branch above Burr's head. Burr fired back and hit Hamilton in the abdomen, the bullet tearing through his liver and lodging in his spine. Hamilton died the next day in Manhattan, and Burr, the sitting Vice President, was never tried.
Hamilton's death gutted the Federalist Party he had founded, turning its architect of the Treasury into a martyr and hastening the party's collapse within a decade. Burr, meanwhile, survived the charges but not his career, exiting the vice presidency in disgrace. Few single mornings did more to reshape who governed the young republic.
QWhy did Hamilton stop to put on his glasses before the duel began?
Witnesses at Weehawken noted that Hamilton took noticeably longer than expected to prepare, adjusting his grip on the unfamiliar pistol and putting on his glasses so he could see Burr clearly across the dueling ground. It was an oddly deliberate pause given what came next: Hamilton had already decided, by his own letter, to fire wide and throw away his shot. The extra care suggests a man going through the motions of a fight he had already resolved not to win, right down to seeing his opponent clearly before missing him on purpose.
QWhat did Hamilton say about his own pistol as he lay dying?
Even mortally wounded, Hamilton's mind went to safety. He warned Bishop Benjamin Moore that his weapon was "undischarged, and still cocked; it may go off and do harm," and insisted that his second, Nathaniel Pendleton, could confirm he never intended to fire at Burr. It is a strange, almost domestic detail to surface in the final hours of a man who had just been shot through the liver: a warning about a gun, delivered by someone who had already decided not to use his.
QHow did Burr later explain, in his own words, why he didn't avoid the fight?
Years afterward, Burr offered a rueful, almost literary excuse for the duel: "If I had read Sterne more, and Voltaire less, I should have known that the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me." It is a striking line from the man who killed Hamilton, blaming his reading habits rather than his temper or his politics. Sterne's novels favored sentiment and reconciliation; Voltaire's wit ran sharper and less forgiving. Burr, apparently, had chosen the wrong shelf.
