Pop History Moment: The Burr-Hamilton Duel

On this day in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot and mortally wounded former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey. Burr made the challenge to Hamilton in order to defend his honour against some scurrilous rumours Hamilton was said to be spreading. The precise nature of this rumor has never been substantiated, but it may have contained an allusion to incest committed by Vice President Burr with his sister. Rumour or not, Burr and Hamilton had been far from friendly for years...

Though charged with murder in both New York and New Jersey, Burr never faced trial in either instance. His career in shambles, he ended his life in 'exile', first in South Carolina, then Philadelphia, Missouri, and finally New York City, where he died in 1836.

Following the duel Hamilton was carried to the home of William Bayard, where the next day he died; he was later interred in Lower Manhattan's Trinity Churchyard Cemetery.
*
share on: facebook

Adams vs. Jefferson: The 1800 Election Gets Personal

I found this bit of whimsy while researching the previous piece; it concerns the 1800 election and some of the claims made by the Federalists (looking to reelect President John Adams) against the Democratic-Republican Party candidate Thomas Jefferson.

You know, just to show you that nothing really changes except clothes and hairstyles.

SPOILER ALERT: Owing to a glitch in the Constitution, regarding the Electoral College, there was a tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr over which should be President and which should be Vice-President. Most of the Federalist Congress favoured Burr; after a week of squabbling the tie was broken by Alexander Hamilton, in Jefferson's favour. This vote was one of the factors involved in the July 1804 duel between Burr and Hamilton which cost the former his career and the latter his life. The Twelfth Amendment was later passed to clear up this conundrum.
*
share on: facebook