War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel that Stunned the Nation by John Sedgwick

Author:John Sedgwick [Sedgwick, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE

Root Out the Distempered and Noisome Weed

EXHAUSTED BY POLITICS and intrigue, much of it of his own making, Hamilton told President Washington in December of 1794 that he planned to leave the government by the end of January. For someone so reserved, Washington’s response overflowed with fatherly appreciation and pride. “In every relationship which you have borne to me, I have found that my confidence in your talents, exertions and integrity has been well placed.” And more than anyone, he spoke from experience. “I the more freely render this testimony of my approbation, because I speak from opportunities of information wch cannot deceive me, and which furnish satisfactory proof of your title to public regard.” He concluded with the wish that “your happiness will attend you in your retirement,” and, unusually for him, closed by offering his “sincere esteem, regard and friendship.”

It had been a remarkable run. Just forty, Hamilton had taken an insolvent confederacy and turned it into a dynamic union that would dominate the world. But it was time for him to go. When he’d accompanied Washington to put down the Whiskey Rebellion—a mob of five hundred, infuriated by taxes Hamilton had imposed on hard liquor—Hamilton himself had become the target of the rebels’ wrath as much as his tax. It didn’t help that the protests had been stoked by the Genet-inspired political societies that were a cauldron of Hamilton-hating Republicanism. Betsey had miscarried during the fighting, reminding him of the stresses of his activities on her and of the call of home. In January, he would lay out a final refinement on his epic Report on the Public Credit that would forever extinguish the national debt in thirty years. Although the Giles investigation was behind him, he knew the Republicans would continue to impugn his service. And he doubted the explosive Reynolds secrets would hold.

His final report offering a refinement to the bill of assumption was like everything else of his. It was designed not just to seize the objective, but to overwhelm it. It won congressional approval swiftly, delayed only by an objection from an unexpected quarter, as Aaron Burr roused himself to offer an amendment challenging one small aspect of the finance package. His motion didn’t pass, but it irritated Hamilton to have Burr, of all people, crowd into view. Hamilton was the one true hero, not Burr. As he wrote to his ally Rufus King:

To see the character of the Government and the country so sported with, exposed to so indelible a blot puts my heart to the Torture. Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American Ground? Or What is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost every body else? Am I a fool—a Romantic quixot—Or is there a constitutional defect in the American Mind? Were it not for yourself and a few others, I . . . would say . . . there is something in our climate which belittles every Animal human or brute.

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