In the Shadow of History, Burr and Hamilton Duel Once Again

In 1826, my great-great-grandfather, Robert Dimsdall Burr of Philadelphia, left the United States and traveled to Chile, where he settled on a remote southern island to make his fortune.

But even though I was born and grew up in South America, I knew from a very young age that I was part of an extremely old North American family and that I was associated with a very grand, very dashing character who had been a founding father, a hero of the American Revolution, a senator from New York and Thomas Jefferson’s first vice president -- but whose career had come to an ignominious end because he fought a duel with, and killed, Alexander Hamilton.

As a child in Chile, I didn’t think very much about this story or about my fabled ancestor, Aaron Burr. I wasn’t in touch with my North American family. It was all very distant, and besides, I was preoccupied with events in Chile.

But it turns out that I am one of Burr’s closest living relatives, as I learned when I moved back to this country and reconnected with my relatives. That’s why I was chosen to reenact the duel between Burr and Hamilton in Weehawken, N.J., today on its 200th anniversary.

At first, there were some questions about whether members of the Burr family should participate in the reenactment. What advantage is to be gained, some asked, by re-creating the very event that helped blacken Burr’s memory? But I disagree.

I believe we should take every opportunity to promote the idea of Burr as a complex, three-dimensional person.

Burr was a hero of the battle of Quebec. He fought in Paramus, N.J., behind the British lines. He was at Valley Forge and he served on Gen. Washington’s staff. He served in high positions in government and was involved in the great issues of his day. Yes, he could be strong-willed and opinionated, but this independent man’s contributions to the founding of this country were considerable.

What happened between Burr and Hamilton has always been hard to understand; there’s a lot of ambiguity in the story. They’d known each other, of course. Among other things, they practiced law in New York at the same time, had worked together on some cases, opposed one another in others. But for reasons that historians have not yet explained satisfactorily, Hamilton developed a deep animosity toward Burr and missed no opportunity to cast aspersions on his character and -- for as long as 15 years before the duel -- to place obstacles in the way of Burr’s political career.

Burr withstood Hamilton’s attacks and insults for years. When he came back to New York (after realizing Jefferson wasn’t going to put him on the ticket for a second term) and ran for governor, Hamilton vigorously and nastily opposed him. The final insult came when Hamilton expressed publicly, at a dinner party, a “despicable opinion” about Burr -- a slur, we believe, regarding his private life. In the code of honor by which gentlemen lived in those days, that was unacceptable. You could attack a man’s politics but never his honor.

Burr challenged Hamilton to the duel. Hamilton had every opportunity to avoid it. He understood that Burr could not allow the insult to pass. Burr asked for an explanation or a retraction or an apology, but Hamilton refused. Why? I don’t know. There was something in the relationship between these men that cannot be explained by political conflict or by what we know of their disagreement. Something more psychological, more emotional. Burr had become Hamilton’s nemesis.

Perhaps it was that Burr came from an illustrious background -- Jonathan Edwards, the great American theologian, was his grandfather, and his father was the president of what is now Princeton University. The Burrs were pillars of the community -- smart, wealthy, entitled.

Hamilton, by contrast, came from humble origins; he was the illegitimate son of a Scottish adventurer in the British West Indies who always aspired to be part of the American aristocracy.

Today, we live under the shadow of these larger-than-life historical figures. But it’s important to remember that this is not a story of heroes and villains, but of real people with real passions and real lives and real flaws who built this country. Burr was a complex figure, and it would be naive and simplistic to write him off simply as a villain.

We can choose to view history in a narrow, shortsighted, black-and-white manner, or we can try to understand it in a more complex and nuanced way, a way that will ultimately help explain the birth of our country and for me, the life of my ancestor.