Duel
Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, And The Future Of America
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
All school children know the story of the fatal duel between Hamilton and Burr - but do they really? In this remarkable retelling, Thomas Fleming takes the reader into the post-revolutionary world of 1804, a chaotic and fragile time in the young country as well as a time of tremendous global instability. The success of the French Revolution and the proclamation of Napoleon as First Consul for Life had enormous impact on men like Hamilton and Burr, feeding their own political fantasies at a time of perceived Federal government weakness and corrosion. Their hunger for fame spawned antagonisms that wreaked havoc on themselves and their families and threatened to destabilize the fragile young American republic. From that poisonous brew came the tangle of regret and anger and ambition that drove the two to their murderous confrontation in Weehawken, New Jersey. Readers will find this is popular narrative history at its most authoritative, and authoritative history at its most readable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A hero of the Revolution, Aaron Burr served as vice-president under Jefferson and is rumored to have been the biological father of Martin Van Buren. Nevertheless, Burr remains best known as the slayer of Alexander Hamilton in 1804, and for afterwards conspiring to create his own empire in the Southern United States and Mexico. He is by far the darkest character in the generation of American founders and has been the object of complex portraits in such novels as Gore Vidal's Burr and Anya Seton's My Theodosia. Fleming (Liberty! The American Revolution) dives deep into the causes and aftermath of Burr's duel with Hamilton on the banks of the Hudson at Weehawken, showing that, while not an innocent, Burr was no more guilty than Hamilton in provoking the exchange. Fleming's account is most useful when he scrutinizes the correspondence that passed between the two as their quarrel came to a head, an argument that erupted when dinner-table criticisms of Burr, which Hamilton thought private, wound up being published. Where Hamilton could on several occasions have easily extricated himself from the disagreement, he instead chose to escalate the rhetoric and thereby sealed his fate. Burr remains guilty of being the quicker shot. Fleming adds no new material to the conflict but does a good job of telling a good story. The subtitle, however, is misleading, for Fleming never clarifies how the duel affected the future of America, other than expressing the obvious: that it ensured that neither man would ever be president.
