Founding Feuds by Paul Aron

Author:Paul Aron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2016-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

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Hamilton’s death made him a martyr for Federalists and led to an outcry against dueling. Many had already seen it as an aristocratic anachronism; after Weehawken, it was increasingly seen as a glorified form of murder.

Burr was indicted for dueling and murder, and further disgraced by reports—still disputed—that Hamilton had intentionally aimed to miss. The vice president fled west, where gunfighting was more common and Hamilton was a symbol of the hated eastern establishment of bankers and land speculators.

Burr continues to be remembered mostly as his enemies, Hamilton and Jefferson, saw him, and there was much truth in their portrait of an opportunist whose loyalties were primarily to his own ambitions. But he deserves at least some appreciation for having managed, in an age whose ideological divisions were even greater than our own, to find ways to appeal to partisans of both sides.

Today, when tolerance for opposing views is again hard to come by, it’s worth remembering words Burr supposedly spoke as he neared death. According to a nineteenth-century biographer, James Parton, Burr spent his last days reading books, among them The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Lawrence Sterne. In the novel, a character is tormented by a fly buzzing around his nose during dinner. He catches the fly, then tosses it out the window, saying: “This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.” As Parton tells the story, Burr, after reading Tristram Shandy, said: “I should have known that the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.”

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