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Weehawken, New Jersey

Recollections of America's most famous duel of honor may weakly rattle around in the hindbrain of anyone who stayed awake during grade school history classes. But who were those guys again?

It was Burr vs. Hamilton -- and someone got killed.

Near a picturesque cliff along the Hudson River, overlooking the island of Manhattan, Aaron Burr did battle with Alexander Hamilton. The date was July 12, 1804.

It all started when the Presidential election of 1800 got gummed up, Bush vs. Gore-style, and Burr eventually landed in the VP seat. Like a whiny public radio commentator, Hamilton sought to undermine Burr with rumors and alleged slander. The two politicians, after a long skirmish of words, finally met on the riverbank below the cliffs and worked it out with pistols.

The actual rock "on which rested the head of Alexander Hamilton" after he was mortally wounded is the base of the monument. Turned out that while Hamilton was (as noted on the stone) a "Patriot, Soldier, Statesman, and Jurist," Burr was a guy from Newark with more pistol practice. Perched atop the Rock of Death is, appropriately, a bronze head of Alexander Hamilton.

Years ago the rock was moved to its current lofty perch on Hamilton Ave. (a dead end street) to make way for the Weehawken yacht basin.

Your understanding of the events of 1800 are a little askew particularly wrt Hamilton's role. He did discuss Burr's character and unfittness for the office of the presidency but spread no rumors merely facts. Burr was well known as a scoundrel and is the prototype Big City Machine Politician just with a little more style. Tammaney Hall produced his big political victories and once launched plagued the nation for another 100+ yrs.

Hamilton knew Burr very well having worked with him for 15 yrs in various court cases. Burr was an excellent politician and lawyer but had no core beliefs worth praising. An earlier poster compared him accurately to Bill Clinton.

Nor did he challenge Hamilton to a duel because of the election manuvering in 1800. That was only one of the matters in which Hamilton thwarted him. It was the role Hamilton played in the governor's election in 1804 in New York which was the straw that....

Hamilton's life was spent in service to the United States of America and his death destroyed the political life of his killer.