Duel

Dates Covered: 1780 - 1810
ISBN: 0465017363
HH Rating:

Our Take

Alexander Hamilton graces the United States ten dollar bill, yet most folks don't know why or that he was never President. He was Secretary of Treasury, and certain reforms he implemented saved the fledgling country's economic behind. He was also a political force in a time when the United States was an entity teetering on the brink of reformation. And, at times, he was a cantankerous old coot who had numerous political enemies. One of them, Vice President Aaron Burr, hated Hamilton so much that the two men aired their disagreements with pistols one morning. In this altercation, Hamilton was killed.

This is the premise in Thomas Fleming's Duel, and it is one of the most well-known duels in American history. For perspective, consider what it would be like if Al Gore, at odds with Alan Greenspan's economic policies, shot the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to death. At the time of Hamilton's troubles, the country had just weathered a minor constitutional crisis wherein Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were virtually both elected President. Dissatisfied with his political career, Burr intimated darkly to Jefferson that he might bolt from the vice presidency and run for governor in New York instead.

These problems are but the tip of the iceberg of political and personal tumult in this work. Fleming paints an enormously complex picture of all the personalities in Hamilton's life, and the political ramifications of his alliances and disputes. He had recently divulged the existence of an affair, with great candor, to clear himself of misappropriations charges. Such indiscretions and an obstinate nature earned him various sobriquets, among them "the evil genius of this country" and "radically deficient in discretion". Burr fared no better, having been branded as a womanizer and one who enjoyed "abandoned profligacy". His relationship with his own daughter, Theodesia, was sufficiently intense for later historians to speculate that they might be lovers. On top of these personal issues with its elder statesmen, America at the beginning of the nineteenth century had plenty to worry about. France, which had declared itself sovereign-free in what might be termed a particularly violent social experiment, required Napoleon as an emperor to right itself into civility. Political theorists were beginning to wonder if a similar fate was in store for the United States. And Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was a risky deal, because the United States didn't have the military resources to properly defend it. Who could tell if Napoleon was really going to sell all that land, or just take the money? Would the land ever be effectively used? These controversies raged at all levels of political discourse, and influenced Burr, who was Jefferson's ne'er-do-well veep.

Fleming manages to take these diverse elements and develop fully how they influenced Hamilton and his companions. Each separate event, however seemingly disconnected, is carefully layered on to Fleming's portrayal of Hamilton and the atmosphere that surrounded him. The author's collection of these elements is far and away the book's strength, and its sweeping view of nineteenth-century America's vista amazes, and, for the inattentive, occasionally baffling. Fleming, for example, offers the complete lyrics of a song written by a contemporary newspaper suggesting that Jefferson was having an affair with Sally Hemmings (a prospect recently proved by DNA analysis of their offspring), and swiftly follows this revelation with details about the level of competition over the mayoralty of New York. Gearshifts of this magnitude abound, but the material presented is all integral to the story, and to fit it all into a single-volume work must have given Fleming conniptions.

Burr, recklessly ambitious and much more of a constitutional troublemaker than Hamilton, is often portrayed in this story as the villain. It's easy enough: the man tried to essentially unseat Jefferson, and pulled all manner of shenanigans politic. The animosity between Burr and Hamilton began when Hamilton stymied the Vice-President's efforts to knock Jefferson aside. With such circumstances, it's quite easy to view Burr as an instigator of all this trouble. However, Fleming makes it comparatively clear that this particular duel came about at Hamilton's behest. In some ways this adds a little vindication to the injustice that Burr was responsible for the duel. This is not to say Burr is without sin: he was arraigned on charges of treason when he allegedly planned to take New Orleans by force, but was let off because treason required "an overt act" rather than plans and a large collection of troops and boats; nowadays the efforts to imprison Burr are seen as orchestrated somewhat by Thomas Jefferson and his supreme dislike for his vice president.

Add this to the fact that Burr basically invented New York's infamous Tammany Hall, and that a lot of Burr and Hamilton's animosity stems from New York politics, and you'll begin to get a sense of exactly how big this story is. And it's a fascinating one. The amount of strife going on in political life at the turn of the nineteenth century makes the mind reel, and Fleming is fantastic at bringing it all together. In so doing he takes us through a twisted journey that's as fascinating and as politically complex as anything we've read since I, Claudius. Duel is a fascinating exploration of a turbulent time in America's past, and you might well gain a new level of appreciation to how rickety this country's beginnings were.

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