Founding Brothers (4 page)

Meanwhile,
Burr seemed surprised and regretful at the outcome of his shot. He started
toward the fallen Hamilton, but Van Ness stopped him and ushered him away from
the scene and toward his boat, all the while shielding Burr behind an umbrella
so that—the deniability motive again—the members of
Hamilton’s party could claim in some prospective court that they had
never seen him. Halfway down the path toward the river, Burr stopped and
insisted on going back. “I must go & speak to him,” he pleaded.
But Van Ness refused to comply and headed Burr into his barge and back across
the river to New York.
¹⁰

Hosack
half-expected Hamilton to die on the spot. After a few minutes of
ministrations, however, it was clear that the unconscious Hamilton was
breathing regularly, so they carried him down to the river. On the trip back,
Hamilton recovered consciousness for a time and muttered to Hosack,
“Pendleton knows I did not mean to fire at Colonel Burr the first
time.” When one of the oarsmen tried to move Hamilton’s pistol,
which lay on the seat, Hamilton warned him, “Take care of that pistol; it
is undischarged and still cocked; it may go off and do harm,” clearly
indicating that Hamilton himself did not seem to realize the weapon had been
fired. Upon arrival on the New York side, he was carried to the nearby home of
James Bayard, a longtime friend and political disciple, where Hosack
administered liberal doses of laudanum and waited for the end. Hamilton died at
two o’clock on the afternoon of July 12, 1804, surrounded by the
Episcopal bishop of New York, Benjamin Moore, as well as by David Hosack,
Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth, and their seven surviving children.
¹¹

The funeral
two days later was an extravaganza of mourning. The mahogany coffin was trailed
by Hamilton’s gray horse, with his boots and spurs reversed astride the
empty saddle. Behind it marched his widow and children, the political and legal
leaders of the city, the students and faculty of Columbia College, bank
presidents, army and navy officers, local clergy and foreign dignitaries,
followed by several hundred ordinary citizens. Gouverneur Morris, an old family
friend and Federalist colleague, delivered the funeral oration in an
overflowing Trinity Church.
¹²

The
overwhelming popular consensus was that Burr had murdered Hamilton in cold
blood. The anti-Burr character of the newspaper stories fed the popular frenzy
with concocted claims (for example, Burr had worn a suit, specially prepared
for the duel, made of material that could deflect bullets) and melodramatic
fabrications (for example, while Hamilton’s widow and children shed tears
over his dead body, Burr and his followers drank toasts to Hamilton’s
death in the local tavern, Burr only expressing regret that he had not shot him
in the heart). A wax replication of the duel depicted Hamilton being shot by
Burr and several hidden accomplices from ambush. The sign beneath the wax
version read:

O Burr, O Burr, what has thou
done?
Thou has shooted dead great Hamilton.
You hid
behind a bunch of thistle,
And shooted him dead with a great hoss
pistol.

With indictments pending against him for both dueling
and murder, with newspaper editors comparing him to Benedict Arnold as the new
exemplar of treachery, with ministers making his behavior the centerpiece for
sermons against dueling as a barbaric throwback to medieval notions of justice,
Burr fled the city in disgrace, not stopping until he reached Georgia.
¹³

So there
you have it: Hamilton safely buried and assuming legendary proportions as a
martyr; Burr slipping out of town, eventually headed toward bizarre adventures
in the American West, but already consigned to political oblivion. This seems
the most appropriate closing scene in our attempted recovery of “The
Duel” as a famous and eminently visual story.

T
HE MISSING
ingredient in the story, of course, is the
four- or five-second interval when the shots were actually fired. Postponing
the recovery of this most crucial moment was not only unavoidable—there
is no agreed-upon version to recover—but also matches the historical
timing of the debate that generated the only evidence on which any narrative
must be based. Which is to say that, in the wake of the actual duel, there was
another duel of words between witnesses to the event, chiefly Pendleton and Van
Ness, and then the inevitable collection of pro-Hamilton and pro-Burr advocates
who filled up the newspapers and pamphlets of the day with corroborating
testimony for their own conflicting versions.

But before the
after-action accounts of the duel degenerated into a duel of its own, the only
two eyewitnesses, Pendleton and Van Ness, published a “Joint
Statement.” Its chief purpose was to claim that both principals had
conducted themselves in accord with the
code duello,
so that even
though the practice of dueling was illegal, Burr and Hamilton had behaved
according to the higher law of honor appropriate for proper gentlemen. Along
the way to that principled point, however, Pendleton and Van Ness agreed on
several significant particulars worthy of notice because of the light they shed
on the looming disagreement over what, in fact, had happened.

First,
Pendleton and Van Ness agreed that both principals fired their weapons. There
were two shots, not one. This was an important fact to establish, because
several published accounts of the duel by friends of Hamilton, undoubtedly
influenced by various versions of his preduel pledge not to fire at Burr, had
preemptively concluded that Hamilton had withheld his fire; that is, had not
fired at all. Since the sound of the gunfire was audible to Hosack and the
oarsmen, even though they did not see the exchange, no misrepresentation or
falsification of this elemental point was feasible anyway, unless the two shots
occurred simultaneously. And Pendleton and Van Ness agreed that they did
not.

This led to the second and most intriguing agreement—namely,
that an interval lasting “a few seconds” occurred between shots.
Just how many seconds they could not agree on. They did concur, however, that a
discernible gap of time separated the two shots. One of the two principals had
fired first; the other had paused for a discreet and noticeable interval, and
then he had fired. The two shots had not gone off simultaneously.
¹⁴

It is not
easy to square what was to become the Hamiltonian version of the duel with this
agreed-upon point. The crucial ingredient in the Hamiltonian account was that
Burr fired first. If one began with the assumption, as Pendleton’s and
Hamilton’s disciples insisted one should, that Hamilton arrived at
Weehawken with a firm resolve not to fire at Burr, then it followed logically
that Hamilton could not have fired first. Instead, Burr fired while
Hamilton’s pistol was still raised in the air. The impact of Burr’s
round then allegedly produced an involuntary jerk on Hamilton’s trigger
finger, which sent a round sailing harmlessly above Burr and into the trees.
Van Ness claimed to have revisited the ledge the following day and found the
severed branch of a cedar tree about twelve feet high and four feet to the side
of where Burr had stood. This rendition of the story was also compatible with
Hamilton’s remark in the boat afterward, when he seemed to think his
pistol was still loaded. He obviously had not realized that Burr’s shot
had caused an accidental firing of his own weapon. On the other hand, if one
accepted the Hamiltonian version of the exchange, how could one explain the
interval between the shots? In the Hamiltonian account, the exchange would have
been nearly simultaneous.

Although the Burr version of what occurred
presents some problems of its own, it is more compatible with the agreed-upon
timing of the shots. According to Van Ness, Hamilton took aim at Burr and fired
first, but missed. Burr then delayed his shot for “four or five
seconds,” waiting for the smoke to clear from around Hamilton and also
waiting for Pendleton to begin the count—“One, two, three,
fire.” But Pendleton’s attention had been fixed on his own chief
and he apparently had lacked the wherewithal to say anything in this drawn-out
moment of the drama. Burr then took it upon himself to fire rather than lose
his shot. Hamilton fell instantly. Van Ness was adamant about the sequence of
events: “It is agree’d I believe, by all who were within hearing,
but particularly attested by Doctr. Hossack [
sic
], that several
seconds intervened between the two discharges; and it is also agree’d
that Gen. H. fell
instantly
on Mr. B’s firing, which contradicts
the idea that Mr. B. fired first.” Van Ness went on to provide additional
detail about Burr’s behavior during the dramatic interval.

On
the point of the first firing … I was never more confident of any matter
subject to the examination of my senses. If any doubt had ever existed it would
have been removed by the following circumstances: 1st When Genl. H fired I
observed a jar or slight motion in Mr. B’s body, from which I supposed he
was struck; but seeing him immediately afterwards standing firm at his
station—I concluded the wound could not be serious. Under the impression
still, however, that he was wounded, as soon as I had the opportunity I
enquired where he was struck?—and after explaining to him the reason of
my impression, he informed me that his foot had got upon a stone or piece of
wood which gave him pain and had sprained his Ancle.

In other words,
Burr’s instinctive reaction to Hamilton’s shot was a discernible
flinch and an impulsive physical jerk that Burr, seeking afterward to emphasize
his composure, blamed on a stone or piece of wood at his feet.
¹⁵

While the
palpable detail of this version has the ring of truth, and while the contours
of the Burr story align themselves more comfortably with the timing of the
shots, two pieces of evidence do not fit. First, how does one explain
Hamilton’s obviously sincere conviction, delivered to Hosack and
Pendleton in the boat afterward, that he had never fired his pistol? And
second, if Hamilton did fire at Burr, how does one account for the severed
branch so high above and off to the side of Burr’s position?

There is a plausible and quite persuasive answer to the second question,
which will then lead us to a plausible but more speculative answer to the
first. The key insight, possessing the potential to unlock the mystery produced
by the contradictory versions of what happened during the duel, is that both
sides constructed their explanations around self-serving and misguided
assumptions. The Hamilton side needed to claim that their fallen chief was a
martyr who had arrived at Weehawken fully intending to expose himself to
Burr’s fire without shooting back. The Burr side needed to claim that
their hero had behaved honorably, in accord with the principles of the
code
duello,
and, after exposing his own life to Hamilton’s pistol, had
responded in kind but with better aim. The Hamiltonian story required a
distortion in the sequence of the exchange in order to preserve
Hamilton’s posthumous reputation. The Burr story required a distortion of
Hamilton’s honorable intentions in order to justify Burr’s fatal
response. Both versions misrepresent what, in all likelihood, really
happened.

Hamilton did fire his weapon intentionally, and he fired
first. But he aimed to miss Burr, sending his ball into the tree above and
behind Burr’s location. In so doing, he did not withhold his shot, but he
did waste it, thereby honoring his preduel pledge. Meanwhile, Burr, who did not
know about the pledge, did know that a projectile from Hamilton’s gun had
whizzed past him and crashed into the tree to his rear. According to the
principles of the
code duello,
Burr was perfectly justified in taking
deadly aim at Hamilton and firing to kill.
¹⁶

But did he?
This is not a question we can resolve beyond a reasonable doubt. In that sense
the secret is locked forever in the vast recesses of Burr’s famously
enigmatic mind at that most pregnant moment. But consider the following pieces
of circumstantial evidence: By killing Hamilton, Burr had nothing to gain and
everything to lose, as he almost certainly knew at the time and as subsequent
events confirmed quite conclusively; Burr’s initial reaction to
Hamilton’s collapse, as described by both Pendleton and Van Ness, was
apparent surprise and regret, followed soon thereafter by an urge to speak with
the wounded Hamilton; moreover, in the latter stages of the preduel
negotiations, when Hamilton’s side proposed that David Hosack serve as
physician for both parties, Burr had concurred that one doctor was sufficient,
then added, “even that unnecessary”; finally, when duelists wished
to graze or wound their antagonist superficially, the most popular targets were
the hips and legs; Burr’s ball missed being a mere flesh wound on the hip
by only two or three inches, the damage to vital organs resulting from the
ricochet off Hamilton’s rib.
¹⁷

In the end,
we can never know for sure. And it is perfectly possible that Burr’s
smoldering hatred for Hamilton had reached such intensity that, once he had his
tormentor standing helplessly in his sights, no rational calculation of his own
best interests was operative at all. What is virtually certain, and most
compatible with all the available evidence, is that Hamilton fired first and
purposely missed. The only plausible explanation for his remark in the boat
about the pistol still being loaded is that he was semiconscious, in shock, and
did not know what he was saying. Or, less likely, that Pendleton and Hosack
made it up to support their version of the story. What is possible, but beyond
the reach of the available evidence, is that Burr really missed his target,
too, that his own fatal shot, in fact, was accidental. Indeed, one of the most
disarming features of the Burr version—a feature that enhances its
overall credibility—is that it made Burr’s shot a more deliberate
and premeditated act. (Why emphasize the interval if one’s intention was
to diminish Burr’s culpability?) In those few but fateful seconds, the
thoughts racing through Burr’s head would provide the ultimate answer to
all questions about his character. But they are, like most of Burr’s
deepest thoughts, lost forever.