Time Surfing: Experience History.
Historical Backdrop
By the summer of 1804, Alexander Hamilton was a man out of power. Born poor in the Caribbean, orphaned, he had clawed his way up to become George Washington’s aide, a Revolutionary War hero at Yorktown, the author of most of the Federalist Papers, and the first Secretary of the Treasury — the man who built America’s banking system, its credit, its Coast Guard, and its Mint. But his Federalist Party was collapsing. Thomas Jefferson had beaten John Adams in 1800, and Hamilton’s own pamphlet attacking Adams had helped wreck his party. Worse, Hamilton had spent fifteen years publicly and privately calling Vice President Aaron Burr a dangerous, unprincipled man — first by throwing his influence behind Jefferson to break the deadlocked 1800 election, then by helping sink Burr’s 1804 run for governor of New York.
In April, a newspaper printed a letter claiming Hamilton had expressed a “despicable opinion” of Burr at a dinner. Burr demanded a retraction. Under the honor code of the day, that meant an “interview” — a duel. Hamilton had already lost his eldest son, Philip, to a duel on the same Weehawken ground in 1801, and his daughter Angelica had lost her mind from the grief. He opposed dueling on principle and had written that he would “throw away” his first shot. He went anyway, because in his world a man who refused could never lead again.
Date/time and location: Tuesday, July 10, 1804, about 6:15 p.m. — The Grange, Hamilton’s country house on Harlem Heights, nine miles north of New York City
You take your last supper at home and no one at the table knows it. The dining room is warm, the windows open, mirrored doors folded back so the river light comes in. Cold ham, fresh peas from your own garden, claret cut with water. Flies work the edge of the butter dish. Your wife Eliza talks about the flower beds. Your youngest, Philip, not two years old, bangs a spoon. You have been careful and cheerful for eleven days. Outside, the thirteen sweet gum saplings you planted stand in their circle, and beyond them the Hudson runs flat and silver toward the Palisades — the same cliffs where your son Philip died three years ago. You excuse yourself early. You say you have business in town. Eliza asks nothing. You kiss her, and the smell of her lavender water stays with you down the stairs.
Date/time and location: Tuesday, July 10, 1804, about 8:30 p.m. — Bloomingdale Road, southbound toward the city
You ride south alone in the last light. The road is dust and ruts, cut through farmland and stony pasture, and every low place breeds mosquitoes that whine at your ears and neck. The horse’s hooves make a soft, steady thud. You pass a farm cart hauling manure to the market gardens, and the stink hangs in the still air for a quarter mile. Fireflies come up out of the tall grass. Somewhere behind a stone wall, a dog runs the fence line barking at you. Nine miles of this. The city smell reaches you before the city does — coal smoke, tanneries, low tide, horse dung baked all day in July heat. Lamps are being lit on Broadway. You have letters to write tonight and you know exactly what they must say.
Date/time and location: Tuesday, July 10, 1804, about 11:30 p.m. — Hamilton’s town lodgings, lower Manhattan
You write by two candles because a third would be extravagant and you owe more money than anyone knows. The room is close and hot. Moths hit the glass chimney. You have already written the long paper explaining yourself — your religious and moral objections to dueling, your debts, your five children, your intention to reserve and throw away your first fire — and you have already signed your will. Now you write to Eliza. The pen scratches. You tell her the scruples of a Christian have decided you to expose your own life rather than take another’s. You tell her to fly to the bosom of your God. Your hand does not shake. You sand the sheet, fold it, drop the wax, press your seal. You add it to the packet for Pendleton. Downstairs, the night watchman calls the hour and the weather. You blow out one candle and sit a while in the dark with the other.
Date/time and location: Wednesday, July 11, 1804, about 4:15 a.m. — the same room, before dawn
You are awake before anyone calls you. The window is grey. It is already warm and it will be brutal by noon. You use the chamber pot, wash your face and hands from a basin of yesterday’s water, and shave yourself at a small looking glass by the light of a single candle, drawing the razor carefully along the jaw. You dress with care because a gentleman does: white shirt, cravat wound twice and knotted, buff waistcoat, dark green coat despite the heat. You settle the small steel spectacles in your pocket. You take nothing to eat. Your body feels light and very awake. On the desk sits the packet — the letters, the will, the statement. You put on your hat, take up the packet, and go quietly down the stairs and out into a street where the only sounds are roosters and a cart somewhere east of you.
Date/time and location: Wednesday, July 11, 1804, about 5:00 a.m. — a wharf at the northern edge of the city, in Greenwich, on the Hudson
The sun is already up over the East River side, low and orange, and the Hudson is like a sheet of glass. The tide smell is strong here — mud, rotting piles, fish. Your second, Nathaniel Pendleton, waits at the head of the wharf with the mahogany pistol case under his arm. Dr. David Hosack stands beside him with his leather medical bag, saying nothing, plainly unhappy. Four hired oarsmen sit in the barge, brown-armed, in checked shirts and straw hats, and they are told nothing at all. You shake hands. You step down into the boat and it rocks and settles. Someone coils a line. Gulls work over the water. Bayard’s house stands on the bluff behind you with the shutters still closed. The oars go into the locks with a wooden knock and you push off into the river.
Date/time and location: Wednesday, July 11, 1804, about 6:00 a.m. — mid-Hudson, two miles of open water
Nobody talks much. The oars creak and dip and the water runs off the blades in strings. The city slides away behind you: masts and spires and rooftops, and low smoke starting up from kitchen fires. Ahead the Palisades stand up out of the river, two hundred feet of black rock with cedars clinging to the ledges. Pendleton holds the pistol case flat on his knees. You know those pistols. They belong to your brother-in-law John Church. Your son Philip carried one of them to this same shore three years ago and came home to die on a mattress on the floor. You watch the cliff get bigger. Sweat runs under your cravat. You have told Pendleton twice, in writing and out loud, what you intend to do with your first fire.
Date/time and location: Wednesday, July 11, 1804, about 6:50 a.m. — the beach below the Weehawken dueling ground, New Jersey
