685. Hamilton: Duel to the Death (Part 3)

this episode is brought to you by the lloyd's 5k house deposit and this is something that was last seen in 1996 yeah so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity doesn't it think of the sort of the advent of the blair administration in 1997 all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that the economic growth of the time the technological developments the sort of sense of a an endless golden summer where everybody's listening to blair and oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses and that of course takes us to mortgages now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s lloyd's are offering 5k deposit mortgages to first-time buyers so search 5k first-time buyer 1996 average first-time buyer deposits are based on ons data subject to status your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply the king is the lord from focus features and the acclaimed director of jason bourne the king says work harder you work harder starring andrew garfield in a land of kings one man will defy an empire there will be no peace until we are free and ignite a revolution 10 000 rebels converge on london based on the true story behind the legend of robin hood this episode is supported by anthropic the team behind claude now history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked yeah there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century and the hard question in particular was what is out there beyond the book the answer to that question was the explorer christopher columbus and he realizes or rather everybody else realizes that there is a vast continent out there and it is of course the americas so you're anthropic knows the importance of questions and it's why anthropic is founded on one hard question above all how can we ensure that the ai revolution really goes well for ordinary people so they asked over a hundred thousand people and what came back wasn't just fear there was hope as well people wanted to know will cancer ever come back and what came back was ever be cured can kids have a better future it turns out that there is hope in hard questions ask yours at claude.ai slash rest is history and keep thinking this letter my very dear eliza will not be delivered to you unless i shall first have terminated my earthly career to begin as i humbly hope from redeeming grace and divine mercy a happy immortality if it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive but it was not possible without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem i need not tell you of the pangs i feel from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which i know you would feel fly to the bosom of your god and be comforted with my last idea i shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world adieu best of wives and best of women embrace all my darling children for me ever yours alexander hamilton so that was the farewell letter written by alexander hamilton to his wife eliza and he wrote it exactly a week before his fatal duel with aaron burr on the 11th of july 1804 and i think that for anyone today who may be inspired to challenge someone to a duel it's an excellent model and i think that should one day i similarly find myself writing to my own beloved wife sadie announcing my intention to fight a duel i shall sign myself off thomas holland in capital letters which is what alexander hamilton did there and dominic we haven't really done many duels on the rest of history in fact i don't think we've done any have we and this is an absolute banger with which to kick off the history of duels on the rest is history undoubtedly the most celebrated duel in american history perhaps in in all of history um and henry adams called it the most dramatic moment in the early politics of the union and it's i guess kind of reached a new audience over the past few years because it's featured very prominently in a celebrated musical hasn't it it has lin-manuel miranda's hip-hop musical so that opened off broadway in 2015 and lin-manuel miranda he's had a lot of praise so we should introduce a tiny note of criticism so he doesn't get too big-headed the one mistake he made was not to um emulate your tremendous accent work there with the portrayal of hamilton because of course hamilton would have spoken with a slightly comical semi-scottish semi-caribbean but ultimately west country voice wouldn't he like all americans yes which is what i was evoking there i think it's fair to say that an emphasis on strict realism isn't a keynote of the musical is it no it's true in some ways it was an unexpected triumph because alexander hamilton is not the most celebrated of the founding fathers but of course the jewel is a really great moment and the jewel is a good story the jewels a brilliant window into the factionalism of the 1790s the factionalism that follows american independence in 1776. so you've got the rivalry between hamilton's federalists and top villain thomas jefferson's democratic republicans well you say top villain we're going to be looking at him in our next episode you know my views i know your views but people can find out mine in the next episode so um this rivalry between hamilton and jefferson gives rise to what historians call the first party system so it's the beginnings really of american party politics um but what the musical does that's so clever this its story is not just a political one it's a personal one so you have hamilton the forgotten star of uh american independence the forgotten tax rebel and he's this sort of noble tragic he loves fiscal policy doesn't he i mean he's all about banks and money and that kind of thing yeah should have loved the bank of england that's the bank he should have been anyway well he's sort of othello and um and then you have burr aaron burr the man who kills him at the jewel spoiler alert and he's the antagonist to the musical he's jealous he's scheming and he's cast very much as iago isn't he to hamilton's hero and actually that draws on a long tradition in american writing so burr has always been seen you know the bloke who pulls the trigger has always been seen as one of american history's great villains although there have always been iconic lasts who have said actually we've got this the wrong way around hamilton is the bad guy and burr has been smeared by history so i don't know if you've read any of gore vidal's um historical novels about 19th century american politics they're impenetrable oh god he wrote a book about zarasta oh yes yeah which was like wading through very thick treacle i quite enjoyed that but he wrote one called burr where he told the whole story from burr's perspective and basically in gore vidal's book burr is the man of honor and hamilton is this sort of duplicitous cheating opportunist i've heard everything about gore vidal annoying do you incredibly pleased with himself do you know why you're like oh he's so witty he's so witty ha ha ha you're like william f buckley who uh punished him i think in um yeah in an interview or something i am the william buckley of gore vidal criticism exactly and then there are other historians to be fair who followed the sort of gore vidal line so there's a very recent book on burr by nancy eisenberg and she argues that basically burr our view of burr is completely wrong can i just say i mean so obviously in this period all the insults derived from roman history which i approve of yeah and hamilton calls burr catiline catiline is this kind of seedy gangster figure who emerges in the late republic and goes off to lead an uprising yeah this is very burr and basically as we will see this is accurate and it happens after hamilton has been killed so you know he's i i'm i'm team hamilton on this i think burr's a terrible man we'll get a bit deeper into the hamilton burr issue and you can see if you change your view of burr frankly i don't think you will but i'll give it my best shot so let's start actually with hamilton so hamilton is the man on the ten dollar bill and in the opening scene of the musical the opening number the song is called alexander hamilton and the lines go like this how does a bastard orphan son of a whore and a scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the caribbean by providence impoverished and squashed squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar nice rapping dominic in the musical that is sung by burr isn't it and it's the conceit of the musical that burr and hamilton are kind of great mates when they're young that is not true is it no no not true at all anyway the answer to the question is hamilton got ahead through ambition through talent through hard work and through good luck so he's born we don't know exactly when he was born because the circumstances in which he was born he died in 1855 on the island of nevis which is one of the very lucrative sugar islands of the caribbean american holdings his father came from ayrshire who was called james hamilton and his mother rachel forsett hence the name that americans give their taps so she was a huguenot james and rachel were not married and james ran off when alexander was very small so that was the end of james alexander grows up he's a very bookish boy he's a big fan of plutarch and machiavelli i mean machiavelli so plutarch is boilerplate founding father classicism machiavelli slightly more interesting isn't it do you know what i think hamilton is slightly more interesting than a lot of the founding fathers john adams was a big fan of machiavelli as well just yeah oh was he yeah paul giamatti we haven't done john adams on this we should do john because you love that series i do love that series yeah in which your wife fell asleep and my wife refused to watch it um anyway it might be it might be a slightly boy oriented series so um hamilton his mother died when rachel when he was in his early teens which is a bad blow but he was basically adopted by a local merchant and the people of nevis recognized that hamilton was very bright and they sent him to the mainland to north america for his education he ended up in new york this point it was the mid-1770s and as might be expected with a kind of idealistic clever young man trying to make something of himself he sides with his anointed king no sadly oh he makes a poor choice he becomes intoxicated with this tax dodging with rebellion and treason a rebellion and treason he writes a lot of pamphlets uh attacking his mother country and then he joined the continental army and he was basically talent spotted to become the chief staff aide to uh george washington of teeth fame and hamilton sees action at some of these i think americans like to call them battles but we called them basically brawls in fields trenton and princeton and yorktown but he has this quite complicated relationship with washington because hamilton is very much his protege and they're very good friends they're very good friends they're very good friends especially as the war you know in the later years of the war the hamilton is always kind of itching for more basically hamilton wants to see his own name in lights as well as washington's sets of oedipal i think a little bit both hamilton and burr one of the defining characteristics is this burning ambition probably fueled by reading too much plutarch you know they want to have they want to be in a book of great lives of their own and so basically being washington's you know bag carrier is not enough for him and i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that gives you a sense of his personality he's very clever he's very energetic he's a brilliant writer you know there's lots of admirable things about him the one thing everyone says though is that he's very sharp-tongued hamilton he's very arrogant and he's very acerbic he has a knack throughout his career of alienating people and of turning potential allies into enemies and the yale historian joanne freeman says of him he was too extreme in his politics too impulsive unwilling to suffer fools too convinced he was always right and too wary of the workings of democracy and the politics of the street to really get on in the politics of the 1790s so although he does very well and of course he becomes treasury secretary would he ever have become president probably not because there were too many people who just don't like him and he's just rubbed them up the wrong way anyway i'm jumping ahead it's really after the war that he writes his name into the history books because he's a big figure in the debates that leads the adoption of the constitution he writes the majority of the essays in the federalist papers that explain the thinking behind the constitution and i think all americans are forced to read some of these papers when they're at school and find them incredibly boring do americans generally hate hamilton surely you would wouldn't you i mean it's the way that these things work that you you grow up it's like people who do a level english end up hating milton so autumn 1789 washington is the first president and he gets his old age to be his first treasury secretary and this is where hamilton really kind of his name is seared into the american political consciousness basically in the 1790s they've got this new country and they can't decide what kind of country it's going to be 13 states and they've all got debts haven't they yeah they've all got debts and and the 13 states are quite different they don't all necessarily agree with each other and whether they will actually stay in their new country forever is very unclear now there are some people who say the new united states should basically be a very loose federation we should have a very limited central government i mean the central government basically shouldn't really exist at all we are a rural country we are an agrarian country of kind of farmers and plantations and these are the people who are saying this often live in southern states like virginia and the carolinas and jefferson is their great spokesman and then you have people especially from the northeast so people from the cities of boston and new york and they say no that's not the sort of country you want at all we should have a much more cohesive country we need a strong government that unites us well let's have a dynamic federal government let us think about trade and manufacturing and commerce with great britain and all these things and this makes them seem to their southern critics both overly pro-british and overly monarchist that's the criticism yes exactly and what's interesting they say that they're too british they're too um they basically want to bring the monarchy back under another name and all they care about is the balance sheet now hamilton is very much of the northeastern persuasion he wants a strong central government a strong executive he wants aid to manufacturing he wants a national bank so this bank would assume the debts of the uh of the states it would lend money to the federal government it would improve america's credit abroad he says let's be pals with the british they're our natural allies after all and the worst people actually are the french because they've had the revolution and that's disorder and it's chaos and all of this and obviously the other people are the british people as you said that this bloke is just basically you know he's a what was the point of having the revolution at all he just wants to bring the british back and the champion of these people hamilton's critics is as you say thomas jefferson and we'll talk about him more on thursday so during washington's first term this argument begins to turn into something recognizable as party politics so in 1792 you have the first congressional elections that fall under kind of party lines jefferson's party called themselves the democratic republicans which is slightly confusing for people who don't know what they're talking about but they're talking about the people who think about politics today and hamilton's party are called the federalists george washington he stays above it he sees his role as being that of a constitutional monarch but also he can't talk can he because he'd show his teeth he just sits there who knows who knows silently who knows what he thinks if he thinks anything at all um so so he says nothing and because of this this is very useful for the new republic it works very well he is re-elected in 1792 but in 1796 so four years later washington steps down you know establishes the two-term precedent and there's a proper contest to replace him and john adams moderate federalist he runs against i verged on the west country voice they were john adams just john adams he uh runs against thomas jefferson and he beats him so john adams is in and he's a kind of moderate federalist as i said and he has a terrible time he has an awful time as president well he keeps america out of the war doesn't he between britain and france which is his great achievement but it comes at massive cost to his reputation he's one of these people who basically you know you see it so often in politics he tries to hold the middle ground it's a bit of a lib dem and everyone says ah he's useless he's a wishy-washy he doesn't stand for anything i mean part of the criticism of him is precisely that he has aspirations to be a monarchist i mean this is why he he and jefferson were great pals they'd been in france together and they completely break up over it they do but the tragedy for adams is the federalists don't despise him as well so hamilton and federalists say oh he's weak he's not enough of a federalist so you get to 1800 and jefferson's going to run again and this really is jefferson's election to win everyone thinks jefferson's going to win now we'll say more about this next time so i don't want to tread on your toes tom for the jefferson episode but basically what happens is the democratic republicans do win the presidential election as expected but for very complicated reasons which we don't need to go into very complicated there is a tie in the electoral college so basically the democratic republican electors the members of this electoral college have to choose the president from the joint ticket on which they've kind of voted and when they people count all the votes jefferson and his running mate are tied for the presidency on 73 votes each and one of them is clearly going to be president and one of them is going to be vice president and one of them is going to be vice president and one of them is going to be vice president and one of them is going to be vice president but it's going to fall to the house of representatives to choose which is which and the house of representatives is controlled at this point by hamilton's federalist party and they have to decide they want to have thomas jefferson as president or his running mate who is a man called aaron burr and this brings us to burr who is i think one of the most fascinating and ambiguous characters in american history there's something slightly nixonian about burr i think a sort of brooding sort of um sardonic intellect he's born in um new jersey 1756 he too was orphaned he was orphaned at the age of two he went to live with an abusive uncle he went to princeton i just said dominic he's um for fans of 18th century american theology which i know there are lots out there he's the grandson of jonathan edwards as in the great awakening yeah but he studied theology he was he was interested in it yeah well jonathan edwards make of his subsequent jeweling career is that he's a man i wonder i did not i don't think you'd approve at all no i don't think you would no that's a definite black mark yeah definitely so burr enlisted in the continental army in 1775 he fought with great courage he was at valley forge um from our first episode i've said kneeling in the snow kneeling in the snow he commanded a company there playing cricket surely and also wearing like rags on his feet and stuff and eating those fire cakes or whatever they were called and he was a strict disciplinarian he's he faced down a mutiny at valley forge everyone said he had a good war after the war he became a very successful lawyer and politician in new york new york in 1780s and 1790s got very very fierce factional politics and burr takes jefferson's side and not hamilton's he basically delivers new york to jefferson exactly so and burr and hamilton really their feud i think began in 1791 and this is when hamilton's father-in-law philip schuyler was running for re-election a senator from new york and burr beat him and so from that point on there's a bit of bad blood but this is more than it's far more than the bad blood between hamilton and jefferson and i think part of this is because if hamilton i'm going to uh irritate our american listeners by using a british idiom now if um hamilton is marmite burr is very much bovril what does that mean it means that basically you know people love or loathe marmite yeah and people love or hate marmite but bovril is even more divisive no no everyone loves bovril no wrong i've never met anyone who doesn't love bovril i'll tell you who's cancelling their subscriptions now vegetarians and vegans they still love it they don't they might like the idea of it but not the reality it's like you know you love bacon but you don't eat it i don't think that's how veganism works right okay burr burr is like his fellow orphan hamilton he's very clever he's very ambitious he's hard working he's very acerbic he's generous to his friends in some ways he's quite progressive by modern standards so he's very critical of slavery he is opposed to nativism he's very critical of slavery he's very critical of women so he's very ahead of his time he also has very groovily named wife and daughter doesn't he theodosia theodosia they're both called theodosia yes although he's not the most loyal husband in the world so i think burr was such a philanderer he's basically a sex addict so he was said he was said to have frequented all 20 of the finest prostitutes in new york and these women apparently were of the view that burr was their finest customer anyway burr is he's very wily he's self-interested and he's very interested in women and he's very interested in women and he's very and i think the thing about him is he doesn't really stand for anything other than aaron burr so no wonder you like him yeah exactly hamilton is very stubborn and um you know he's a man of fixed principles burr is changeable burr will do whatever it takes to get ahead so in an age when people are basically cosplaying as cato the younger burr stands out he is catiline yeah well there you go very changeable so let's get back to the year 1800 burr as you said is jefferson's number two so the electoral college is deadlocked now some people might say well i was obviously always going to be the running mate so i should just say to everybody we'll vote for jefferson you know i'll be the number two burr thinks no this is my chance to be the number one if i suck up now to the federalists they will pick me as the lesser of two evils and i will be president the problem for burr though hamilton has taken a deep dislike to him and through the 1801 hamilton tells all his friends look i know we're not jefferson fans but we have to stop this bloke burr at all costs so this is a letter from december 1800 jefferson is not so dangerous a man but as to burr there is nothing in his favor he is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country his public principles have no other spring than his own aggrandizement and then another letter january 1801 a few weeks later hamilton says to a friend burr is a profligate a bankrupt a no mortal can tell what his political principles are he's talked all around the compass at times he's dealt in all the jargon of jacobinism at other times he's proclaimed decidedly the total insufficiency of the federal government and the necessity of changes to one far more energetic the truth seems to be that he meaning burr has no plan but that of getting power by any means and keeping it by all means he will court and employ able and daring scoundrels of every party and by himself with their assistance and of all the bad passions of society he will in all likelihood attempt a usurpation so he is the andy burnham of post-revolutionary america that is such a good comparison andy burnham has no fixed principles does he he just kind of makes up whatever say whatever he thinks people want here to say any stuff and like flutter his eyelashes right and put on an anorak so this is very much burr's vibe anyway hamilton's campaigned against him after 36 ballots the house of representatives chooses jefferson and burr is gutted and he blames hamilton for this he says hamilton intrigued against me i mean he's not wrong and much later he said to a friend he said i was tempted to challenge hamilton to a but he anticipated me by voluntarily coming forward and making apologies from delicacy to him and from a sincere desire for peace i've never mentioned these circumstances always hoping that the generosity of my conduct would have some influence on his isn't that nice whether actually this is true it's impossible to say i mean did hamilton really come and apologize to him i think it's highly unlikely does burr have a track record as telling fibs yes tall stories i think maybe let's move on to 1804 burr has become vice president jefferson of course doesn't trust him now because he knows that burr basically tried to snatch the top job so he has sidelined burr and when he runs for re-election in 1804 he's planning to drop burr from the ticket so burr needs a new job and he decides to get one back in new york and that spring 1804 he makes a bid for the new york governorship now although technically he's still a democratic republican because of his changeable nature and because he's blotted his copybook with the democratic republicans he decides he will run as the champion of the federalists there's a very bitter campaign and even though burr has now changed his coat hamilton is still opposed to him and part of this is personal but also hamilton is still opposed to him and part of this is personal but also hamilton is still opposed to him and part of this is personal but also hamilton is still opposed to hamilton is actually worried that burr he genuinely thinks burr is a threat to the survival of the union it's easy for us to forget that in the early 1800s the republic still feels very fragile the division between jeffersonians and hamiltonians runs very deep and there's a lot of hamiltonians federalists in new england who kind of like the idea of breaking away attempted to break away why are we in a country with all these people from virginia who are just wittering on about farming all the time let's get rid of them go off on our own and there's actually in early 1804 a very very tentative sort of separatist plot that is focused on washington's old secretary of state man called timothy pickering and hamilton finds out about this and he says oh this is terrible don't do this that keep the union together at all costs burr on the other hand seems to have sent signals i could be open to this you know there could be a little mileage in this if i become governor of new york if you help me become governor of new york i would very much be interested in talking to you more about this excellent project should the ball come loose at the back of the scrub exactly and hamilton says to these people burr is a snake don't trust burr don't vote for burr all of this well he's not wrong is he he's a bit of a snake or is he just a very adept modern politician no he's a snake well the result is a landslide victory for um the democratic republican opponent to uh burr who's a bloke called morgan lewis who you know quite obscure burr has been humiliated yet again and of course he blames hamilton and then seven weeks after the election burr has shown an old newspaper the albany register from the 24th of april 1804 and this was the day that voting opened in the election and the paper had printed a letter from a man called dr charles d cooper opposing burr's candidacy and cooper said in the letter he said i've heard hamilton's talking about burr i heard hamilton say that he and i quote he looked upon mr burr to be a dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government and cooper goes on to say if you pushed me and i quote i could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which general hamilton has expressed of mr burr burr reads this and he's absolutely furious and a few days after on the 18th of june his great pal a man called william van ness delivers a letter to hamilton burr says i'm absolutely outraged by this word in particular despicable i want a prompt and unqualified acknowledgement or denial that you ever use this word despicable about me see i find this quite odd because surely in the rough and tumble of politics people are allowed to insult their opponents aren't they yeah you would think so was he just looking for a reason to get into a punch-up with him i think possibly although the idea of honor is enormously to american politicians in this period so jewellery is not uncommon at all and the the punch-ups of this kind are not uncommon but i think ultimately you're right that burr is looking for a pretext to challenge hamilton um for reasons that maybe we'll get into i think it's a way for him to he sees it as a way to rebuild his credibility anyway hamilton sent his answer two days later and hamilton's answer is extremely long and convoluted it's hard to tell whether he's a over massively overthinking it or b he's basically just making fun of burr so he starts by saying he says well the word despicable admits of infinite shades from the very light to the very dark how am i to judge of the degree intended and then he goes on to say i don't remember using that word to this bloke dr cooper and i refuse on principle to consent to be interrogated as to the justness of inferences which may be drawn from others from whatever i have said of a political opponent in the course of a 15-year competition now people like you tom you see hamilton very much as the hero of the story it's a bit of a martyr i think that's a great letter i think it's important to say this is not at all a conciliatory letter there's something perhaps a little bit pedantic a little bit smug about hamilton's letter no it's not smug at all he's been you know he's been sent a ludicrous letter by a ludicrous buffoon and he's pricking the pomposity of burr in a very delicate and engaging way i think burr is a bit pompous but i think hamilton is goading him and hamilton ends this last bit is definitely goading him i trust on more reflection you will see the matter in the same light with me if not i can only regret the circumstance and must abide the consequences well the next uh day burr writes back again he says i've read your letter and i regret to find none of the sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum your letter has furnished me with new reasons for acquiring a definite reply i mean to be fair to them they wrote good letters but then those days they did i mean it would have been wonderful if um the people criticized by trump had responded to him in similar term if ted cruz had written trump a letter like this ronda santis yeah low energy jeb bush uh brilliant i'd love to see a duel in which all these men were fighting frankly maybe in that large cage yeah in the cage in the white house in the white house they kind of run at each other on motorbikes though the final boss is joe biden that would be an unexpected twist that would be a twist right the 22nd the next day hamilton replies and it's a much shorter letter and hamilton says look if you want it by a definite reply you want either the direct avowal or disavowal required in your first letter i have no other answer to give than that which has already been given and that's basically that there's a bit of back and forth now between uh burr's mate uh burr's mate van ness and hamilton's friend nathaniel pendleton but in essence this is the story burr has asked for an apology hamilton has said no and so this is now a matter of honor which means a jewel so we should say a little bit about jewels jewels are part of the they're an essential part really of the culture of honor among gentlemen in north america in the late 18th early 19th century they weren't universally popular some of the founding fathers hated dueling so franklin who you love he was very anti-jeweling he said it was a murderous practice well he's a figure of the enlightenment he's not going to put up this nonsense no jefferson doesn't like dueling john adams doesn't like dueling but if you've been in the army you tend to like dueling if you're from the south you're much more likely to like i mean it's very hard to get precise figures for jewels because jewels were in many states technically illegal but there's an estimate that of the men who served in the senate from southern states in the years before the american civil war one in five of them had taken part in jewels i suppose this is all part of the south being the home of chivalry isn't it that's exactly yeah i mean that's certainly their self-image isn't it the kind of the the lost cause the confederacy kind of vibe people in gigantic hats with feathers are fighting jewels or something and talking about walter scott retiring for a mint tulip after exactly exactly while in the background like they've got thousands of people like being treated abominably we'll be coming to that in the next episode as well so this is how it works basically it's very very formalized it's a very ritualized business for jewel there'll be the insult there will be the exchange of letters um as bird did the offended party will say i want you to avow or disavow your insult to me if the offender refuses to disavow then the victim of the insults can challenge and he and his antagonist will appoint seconds and the seconds will agree a time and place for the jewel can i just ask i mean hamilton is um he is representative of the the kind of the north really which isn't a big place for dueling and he's aligned with figures who would despise it would it not have been politically possible for him just to say you know go screw yourself i don't care it would but i think he as we'll discuss he doesn't really like dueling but i think there would have been a cost to his reputation as we shall see his one of his rationales for doing the jewel is he thinks public opinion would require us of him he will look like less of a man if he had turned down the jewel anyway the seconds fix the time and the place we'll talk after the break about how the jewel itself actually works and one reason for postponing that till after the break is that most jewels actually don't get to that point so most so-called affairs of honor never get to the point where somebody actually fires a gun it is very typical for the two men to find a solution before then so that will allow them a compromise that will allow them both to preserve their honor and hamilton who is of course we've said a very acerbic very disputatious man he has been involved in at least six affairs of honor before but none of them have got to the point where he actually had to pull the trigger so in other words they were settled in a compromise the equivalent in today's america would be threatening to take someone to court and that is so financially ruinous that by and large it gets settled before it comes to court yeah that's a good comparison actually there's a sort of ritual there's a there's a there's a ritualistic element of taking somebody to court isn't there and as you say to push it to the extreme of a confrontation you know it's so risky generally right exactly yeah now hamilton knows he knows more than most people how risky this is because in november 1801 his son philip had gone into a public row with a bloke called george eka who criticized alexander hamilton and philip had challenged eka to a duel hamilton said to him well if you're going to go and fight this jewel i advise you to miss on purpose because then you'll miss and you're the challenger and that will allow the jewel to be settled peacefully but actually for some peculiar reason this didn't really work out because basically when the jewel started both philip hamilton and this bloke eka just stood there for a full minute or so not firing none of them really knowing what to do and then they both sort of leveled their pistols eka fired philip was wounded and philip died and hamilton was absolutely grief stricken and i suppose eliza as well yeah it must have been i mean she's not going to want to lose more people from her family is she no so given that hamilton knows the costs well this you this comes to your point your question why did he do it so we can understand why burr did it burr did it because he's been introduced in the new york papers he's been humiliated by the election results in new york burr is very thin-skinned burr is very arrogant and he wants to rebuild his reputation but for hamilton this is massively high risk he's got his wife eliza he's got seven kids he's got massive debts so he's just built this country house in upper manhattan called the grange and it's got orchards and it's got a 35 acre woodland it's very nice and he has taken out a massive mortgage to pay for it which his wife would be unable to repay if he died so he really has very little to gain and what is more he doesn't even agree with dueling and we know this because a few days before the jewel he wrote a statement on impending jewel with aaron burr and he said in this statement my religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to the practice of dueling it would even give me pay for my money and i'm in pain to be obliged to shed the blood of a fellow creature in a private combat forbidden by the laws but maybe he just hates it so much that he's prepared to make an exception he basically says i can't apologize to bear burr because i meant what i said he is despicable he's terrible he's a threat to the republic but also he says i have to conform to public prejudice because one day i want to be useful whether in resisting mischief or affecting good in those crises of public affairs which seem to be the most important to me and i want to be useful in those crises of public affairs likely to happen basically hamilton's looking ahead he's saying there are going to be a lot of political ructions in the next few years the survival of the republic itself is at stake i need to be popular so that i can have an effect so i have to fight this jewel so i can fight i have to fight not just for personal honor but so that i can have a role in shaping the future of the country so he he agrees to the jewel very high stakes the mad thing though is they don't immediately get on with it they just hang around and the reason is that hamilton is still representing clients in court and the new york courts are going to sit until the 6th of july so they agree that they'll have the jewel five days later on the 11th of july so that he can finish up with his all his clients and what this means is in the meantime the two of them have to go around new york which of course is not an enormous place in those days they have to hang around new york as though nothing is happening so on independence day there's a dinner organized by the society of the cincinnati for the tax refuse NICs, and they actually sit at the same table at this dinner. Another guest who was there said Burr, contrary to his want, was silent, gloomy, sour, while Hamilton entered with glee into the gaiety of a convivial party and even sang an old military song. And this is typical of how they spend their last days before the duel. Burr keeps a low profile. He writes to his daughter Theodosia, who's got married, and he says, let me give you some advice on how to build a library. And he also writes to Theodosia's husband, new husband. He says, I would very much appreciate it if you would allow Theodosia to carry on her studies of Latin and Greek. You should be warming to burn out, Tom. Does he change his will? Yeah, he does, to allow Theodosia to inherit his slaves. See, he's immediately blotted his copybook again, hasn't he? He has done, yeah. Now, Hamilton, by contrast, he's quite gregarious. He doesn't hang out. He doesn't sort of keep himself to himself. He goes to dinner parties. He visits his friends. He writes a couple of letters to him. Two letters. Two letters to Eliza, farewell letters. And he writes that statement about the duel that I mentioned, about how he doesn't like dueling. And in the statement, he says, I've already decided on my tactics. I have resolved to reserve and throw away my first fire. And I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire, and thus giving a double opportunity to Colonel Burr to pause and reflect. So this is an interesting thing, because some people say, well, this was obviously Hamilton's intention. This is what he was going to do. He was going to do this. So just to be clear what that means, to reserve and throw away my first fire, so he's not going to shoot at Burr. That's what that means. Well, he'll throw away his fire. He will shoot, but he will deliberately miss. He'll fire well wide at Burr. And what this would mean, this is not uncommon. This would give Burr the initiative, but it would also give Burr a chance to say, fair enough, let's shake hands and settle this. On the other hand, Hamilton did give his son some advice in 1801, and his son came back dead, has Hamilton not learned his lesson? Clearly he hasn't. But he's done this six times, has he? He has had six affairs of honour, but they have not come to the point of shooting at all. So this is his first actual duel. Yeah. And I think some historians say that the thing with this letter is, this statement is designed to be read only in the event of Hamilton's death. So you could argue, it's basically a press release. It would be used after his death to blacken Burr's name, that Hamilton is preparing for the worst. He will be making himself look good and making Burr look bad. That would be a very cynical way of looking at it. But anyway, let's get towards the duel. 7th of July, four days to go. Hamilton and Eliza throw a big garden party. They have 70 guests dining outside. They have musicians hidden in the woods, very like succession or something. They have all the sort of local federalist bigwigs, and nobody suspects that there's a duel coming because Hamilton seems in great form. Two days later, the 9th of July, he leaves the Grange for the last time. He kisses Eliza goodbye. He rides into the city. He goes to his townhouse at 54 Cedar Street, Lower Manhattan. And he spends the next two nights there. And early the following morning, Wednesday, the 11th of July, 1804, he wakes for the moment that will define his life and legacy, the climactic duel with Aaron Burr. Unbelievable drama. And we will find out what happens after the break. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. Go to mintmobile.com slash history. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only, greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabytes of hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. This episode is brought to you by the cultural phenomenon, Hamilton the Musical. We know, of course, that history is about much more than dates and titles and constitutional acts It's also built on, and often driven by, intense human emotion. Fear, pride, ambition, tragedy, a determination not to pay taxes. And you know, that is exactly what Lin-Manuel Miranda captures so superbly in his musical Hamilton. It lifts the curtain on the turbulent life of founding father Alexander Hamilton, from impoverished orphan and immigrant to brilliant revolutionary. 250 years on, from what America's persist in calling their quest for freedom, the world has absolutely fallen in love with the story of Hamilton. So it's playing in London in the Victoria Palace Theatre in New York at the Richard Rogers Theatre, and it is on tour across North America. So book tickets today at hamiltonmusical.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History, where it is 3 in the morning of the 11th of July, 1804. And in their respective Manhattan townhouses, both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, unsurprisingly, are already up. Yeah, so Burr spent the night at his country house in Richmond Hill, Manhattan. So that's between a modern Greenwich village and Soho. So that was then about a mile and a half from the city of New York. And Burr got up very early. He put on this black shirt, and he said, black silk coat. And he had himself driven to the quayside on the River Hudson with his friend, William Van Ness, who's going to be his second. And with a couple of other mates, Van Ness and Burr erode across the river towards Weehawken, New Jersey. Great name. And Weehawken is the chosen dueling ground. And the reason for this is that although dueling is forbidden in both New York and New Jersey, the New Jersey authorities are much more relaxed about prosecuting duels. So you won't get into so much trouble. The men rowing the boat, the oarsmen, they obviously know why these blokes are there. But the way this works, the oarsmen have their backs to the duelists throughout, so that if they're asked afterwards, they can deny any knowledge. They won't be implicated in it at all. So Burr and his team arrive at about 6.30am. And they've chosen this spot. It's a kind of ledge of land, about 20 feet above the river. And if you look at New York on a map, it's rowing roughly level with West 42nd Street today. And it was a very popular spot for duelists. It was only a few minutes walk from the similar spot on the river where Hamilton's son, Philip, had been killed three years earlier. That must have concentrated his mind. Well, as we'll see, there are a couple of other interesting parallels. So Van Ness and another of Burr's mates start clearing the ledge. They clear the bushes away, so they'll give Burr and Hamilton some space. About half an hour later, just around 7 o'clock, a second boat approaches the New Jersey side of the river. And on this boat is Hamilton, his second, who is a judge called Nathaniel Pendleton, and a doctor called David Hosack, who taught medicine at Columbia. Now, usually you would have two doctors at a duel. But when the seconds discussed it with their principals, Burr said, we don't really need two doctors. Let's just get one. Another bad omen, Hosack had been on hand at the duel on the New Jersey side of the river where Philip Hamilton had been killed. That's mad. Yeah, of course it's mad. It's insane. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll have the duel in the same place where my son was killed. I'll have the same doctor. What could possibly go wrong? And I'll row over the Hudson. It's kind of like crossing the river Styx. Exactly. The whole thing is demented. So the seconds draw lots to pick sides, and they decide who's going to run the duel. And then they hand out the pistols. And the pistols, again, were chosen by Hamilton. The pistols were made in London by an excellent London gunsmith called Wogden and Barton. And they belonged to Hamilton's brother-in-law, a man called John Barker Church. He was British. He was the MP for Wendover. And he was married to Hamilton's sister-in-law, Angelica. So Church, now this is a bizarre detail. Church, the bloke who gave him the pistols, had actually fought a duel with Burr himself in 1799. And nobody had been injured. These probably weren't the same pistols that Church had used. But madly, they may well be the same pistols that Hamilton's son had used in his duel. No. Yeah. Why would you use the same pistols? Just absolutely insane. They're very blingy, these dueling pistols, as dueling pistols often are. They're covered with sort of brass and gold. They fire these balls, which were designed, dueling pistols were designed not to be very accurate. Because basically, the ideal is that you'll just shoot. Nobody will be hit. Nobody will be killed. And you'll both escape with your honor intact and your lives intact. The pistols also, though, have hair triggers. So a hair trigger, you have to set it beforehand. And what it means is that you don't have to put as much pressure on as you normally do to pull the trigger. And that means you can keep your hands steadier, and you'll be more accurate. Pendleton, Hamilton's second, said to Hamilton beforehand, to set the hair trigger on your pistol but not burn it. because that would give you a big advantage and hamilton said no not this time and historians have often wondered why hamilton said this i think the answer is obvious hamilton is very anxious he doesn't want to be accused of cheating because that would be very bad for his reputation because the jewel is covered by very strict rules we talked about the sort of ritual of it before the break there's a thing called the code duello and the code duello runs like this basically what you'll do is imagine you're fighting a jewel who would you fight a jewel with a fight with you okay fine we'd walk away from each other for 10 paces and then we would turn and then our seconds alia and tabby or whatever callum and dom they would say they would say are you ready the what the second who is running it alia is running it she says are you ready then she calls out present and present is your signal to fire you're into it quite quickly one of you fires first it doesn't really matter who whoever's quickest imagine you fire first you fire you missed shambles you're shaking like a leaf you haven't set your hair trigger no or maybe i'm just kind of i'm i'm very cool-handed yeah but i'm compassionate and kind right and i don't actually want to shoot you dead okay so you've missed so i aim at a kind of angle that's a tree or something exactly and i accidentally shoot callum at this point right my second let's say dom johnson dom johnson counts uh one two three fire and then you can shoot me and now it's my turn to fire are you going to shoot me i shoot you in the through the heart of course you would but but maybe i wouldn't if i chose not to right then i would lose my turn now at this point everybody would kind of reconvene and the seconds would say have the obligations of honor being denied and we'd probably agree that they had been and that would be the end of the affair so the vast majority of jewels probably nine out of ten jewels really worth stressing do not end in anybody dying because even if you fire the shots because the pistols are designed to be quite inaccurate you're likely to miss generally the jewelists will agree a deal before a single shot is fired who has the choice of weapons the person who has been challenged i think hamilton literally has chosen the pistols with which they're going to be shot and they're going to be shot and they're his son was shot hamilton says in the pistols i mean it would be pretty punchy for burr to say i'm choosing the pistols i wouldn't put it past him the pistol that killed your son i mean that's really arse so hamilton and burr take their positions and at this point it is highly likely that both of them will survive the jewel now here's a funny detail hamilton aims his pistol and then he says stop not to apologize to burr and settle the jewel he says in certain states of the light one requires and he puts on these glasses and he makes a great show of squinting through them aiming his pistol aiming at aiming at burr aiming at different things you know like he's getting his eye in kind of thing and the puzzle with this is as we know hamilton wrote beforehand he said i'm going to throw away my shot so why is he making such a fuss about getting his eye in i think some historians say well he had a death wish he was trying to provoke burr to kill him i think that's highly i think he's basically just trolling burr he's taunting him he's winding him up hamilton can't stop himself doing this finally he's finished and pendleton the earlier of the story pendleton says ready present now if you've seen the musical well you have seen the musical because you saw it about a week ago you will remember all through the musical hamilton has been singing i'm not throwing away my shot but he does throw away his shots at the crucial moment hamilton i'm not throwing away in the musical he fires into the sky a millisecond later burr fires straight at him he shoots and hamilton falls that's what happens in the musical but in reality what happened is much more ambiguous so the two seconds pendleton and van ness and the doctor hosak have all turned away from the action and the reason they turn away is that if they're caught they can deny having seen anybody firing jewel really i was just out for a walk i didn't live but watching yeah but all the witnesses agreed that when pendleton shouted present there were two shots fired within a couple of seconds of each other and when they looked round burr was unscathed and hamilton had been hit just above his right hip and the the ball entered him just above his hip in his lower abdomen it ricocheted off his rib it ripped through his diaphragm and his liver and it lodged in his spine and hamilton immediately slumped to the ground and he dropped his pistol so this is the point at which they see what's happened burr moved towards him straight away pendleton said later that burr had an expression of regret and burr seems it looks like he's going to talk to hamilton but at this point burr's second van ness rushed towards him the reason he rushed towards them is that the oarsmen have heard the shots and they're coming up the slope to see what's going on and van ness wants to preserve the deniability of the whole thing so rather bizarrely he at this point opens an umbrella which he's carrying and he hides burr behind the umbrella and sort of hustles him towards the boats so that people can't see him when they get to the boats burr says to van ness i must go and speak to him meaning hamilton but van ness says no no no we just have to get out of here as quickly as possible like you've hit him you've won the duel let's go now meanwhile back on the ledge the doctor david hosack has rushed to hamilton's side and hosack described the scene a month later and it's at length he said i found him half sitting on the ground supported in the arms of mr pendleton his countenance of death i shall never forget he had at that instant just strength to say this is a mortal wound doctor when he sunk away and became to all appearance lifeless his pulses were not to be felt his respiration was entirely suspended and upon laying my hand on his heart and perceiving no motion there i considered him as irrecoverably gone i observed to mr pendleton that the only chance for his reviving was immediately to get him to the water we therefore lifted him up and carried him out of the wood to the margin of the bank where the bargemen aided us in conveying him into the boat so they're into the boat and hosack gets spirits and he rubs hamilton's face with the spirits to revive him and this does the trick hamilton opens his eyes he's conscious and then he says something very interesting he sees that his pistol is lying in the boat and he says to the doctor take care of that pistol it is undischarged and still cocked it may go off and do harm and he says to the doctor take care of him pendleton knows that i did not intend to fire at him meaning burr now we'll come back to this pistol because this is part of you know there's a mystery about this and then hamilton closes his eyes he looks very calm very peaceful he says to hosack how's my pulse he says i i have lost all feeling in my legs and he says hosack said he manifested to me that he entertained no hopes that he should long survive but actually hamilton is wrong they make it back across the river they make it back to manhattan and hamilton is still breathing and we'll come back to hamilton in manhattan in a second but let's just pause the story to ask what actually happened in those crucial moments in the duel so the most popular version of events is based on pendleton's accounts this is hamilton's second and he says that hamilton aimed his pistol above burr's head but he did not fire it burr fired first burr hit hamilton and in the shock of being hit hamilton accidentally shot him in the head triggered his own gun and the bull shot into a cedar tree above burr's head pendleton went back the next day and he found a branch that had been shattered by a bullet that was 12 feet above burr's head and that is why pendleton says on the boat hamilton said take care of my pistol it's still loaded it might go off he didn't actually realize that it had fired he didn't mean to fire it but burr's second van ness told a different story he said hamilton fired his pistol above burr's head fired first he did fire and he missed and had he deliberately missed well this is the question we don't know van ness actually thought hamilton hit burr at first because he noticed that burr was limping and he said to burr afterwards did hamilton hit you and burr said actually no i twisted my ankle when i was getting out of the boat or something this is what van ness said hamilton fired and missed and burr then waited but did not shoot straight away burr waited for hamilton's uh for the sorry for the man running the jewel pendleton to count to three as per the rules but the bloke running the jewel for whatever reason didn't say anything maybe he was you know caught up in the moment or whatever burr was worried that he was going to lose his turn and so only after this sort of one two three four maybe five second delay did he then shoot hamilton because he thought if i don't do this i'm going to lose my turn and he might shoot me or who knows what happens you now different historians take different views on this joseph ellis in his book on the sort of founding father's generation he thinks this is actually plausible he thinks that the account by hamilton's second was deliberately twisted to make hamilton look like a martyr what's slightly confusing though is if that's if that's true if hamilton did fire first if he knew he fired first why did he think the gun on the boat was still you know loaded again joseph ellis says well maybe he was just in shock or something he didn't realize i'm not so sure about that maybe a way of going through this is to go back to that letter that hamilton wrote before beforehand where he said i have resolved to throw away my first fire and then my second fire and then giving an opportunity to burr to pause and reflect i think this is pretty unambiguous and i think it's very plausible that hamilton did fire first and he ostentatiously missed that seems most likely to me because that's what he basically said he was going to do yeah so then the question is why does burr does burr realize this and does burr just deliberately kill him anyway and the answer hangs on what you think of burr's character i know what your answer is going to be straight away yeah he guns him down like a dog so so joseph ellis says there is no way that burr could have known that hamilton was deliberately missing remember he gave hamilton a chance to apologize and hamilton said no remember that he's also seen hamilton do all that business with the glasses you wouldn't do that if you were trying to deliberately miss maybe so hamilton's done all that stuff with his glasses you know uh practicing his aim and stuff so ellis says burr was completely within his rights according to the principles of the code duello burr was perfectly justified in taking deadly aim at hamilton and firing to kill but ron chernow in his book on hamilton says this is just rubbish chernow says hamilton missed by so much by 12 feet that it was obvious that he did it deliberately and burr just shot him dead like a dog because burr was a terrible man chernow says is telling that burr said only bring one doctor no need for two doctors some people might think burr said this because burr thought no one's going to get hurt anyway so we don't need any doctor chernow thinks that burr wanted to minimize the number of doctors because he wanted to maximize the chances of hamilton dying so you're obviously team chernow and actually there is one other clue that backs this up so many years later burr lived in exile in london and he became great friends bizarrely with the utilitarian philosophy jeremy bentham oh that is unexpected it is unexpected so there's a side to burr tom that you might have enjoyed i think jeremy bentham is incredibly boring well anyway bentham said of burr gave me an account of his duel with hamilton he was sure of being able to kill him so i thought it little better than murder in other words burr planned the whole thing now my take on this do you want to hear my take on this yeah give us your take dominic i think it's going to be a profound take i think it's the unknowability of history of course however such a lib dem response no because i'm now going to say i think it hinges on your understanding of the characters the two men the one issue with burr is his image is so clearly defined by his enemies that we can never really be sure we're seeing him clearly but isn't it telling that he has a lot of enemies who want to paint him yeah and i did compare him with richard nixon before and i think uh what burr and nixon have in common is they will you know they will just do anything they will do what it takes i mean if nixon was in a duel he'd kill you i mean nixon would have shot kennedy but actually kennedy would have shot nixon i think as well i think nixon and jimmy carter jewel that's a jewel worth seeing jimmy carter would accidentally shoot himself in the foot i don't get attacked by a rabbit he wouldn't even make it across the river he'd be devoured by by rabbits as he was trying to reach the dueling ground nixon would have shot reagan in a duel no question reagan will be telling a focusing anecdote and then nixon would just shoot him in the head i mean trump would shoot someone in the duel he undoubtedly would trump would behave disgracefully he'd machine gun him trump would behave absolutely abominably in the duel and then he'd be unrepentant afterwards right let's go back to the story what happened to hamilton they got back across the hudson as i said hamilton still alive they went to a friend's house at greenwich village it's dying they get elisa to come from the grange with all seven kids and her sister angelica who's staying with her and this has come as a complete surprise to her i guess when hamilton left the house did he say i'm off to fight a duel he left her notes and stuff so maybe should read them i don't know we just don't know to be honest they also got the bishop of new york there's a man called benjamin moore and he wrote an account of afterwards what happened hamilton greeted him i mean hamilton is dying he's been shot in the chest and he's in agony and yet he still manages to say to this bishop and people they he was impressive he said my dear sir you perceive my unfortunate situation and no doubt have been made acquainted with the circumstances which led to it it is my desire to receive the communion at your hands i hope you will not conceive there is any impropriety in my request i mean there is a reason presumably why he is being so formal with the bishop which is that he wants communion because he's he's an episcopalian i think isn't he yes and the bishop might say well i can't give it to you because you've been fighting duels yeah he also surely knows the bishop's going to write this down about two days later and tell everybody about it so he wants to look good and uh moore said to him should it please god to restore you the health sir will you never again be engaged in a similar transaction and will you employ all your influence to discountenance this barbarous custom and hamilton said that sir is my deliberate intention and so um this bloke gave him communion hamilton later on again with very much i think an eye to posterity said i have no ill will against colonel burr i met him with a fixed resolution to do him no harm i forgive all that happened that's an excellent way to stamp on her marker on him so the following day the 12th of july he died at two o'clock in the afternoon moore said he expired without a struggle and almost without a groan and he was buried in the trinity churchyard lower manhattan you can see his grave today now ironically you mentioned how he loves the national bank his management of his own finances was poor and he was buried in the trinity churchyard lower manhattan you can see poor he left his family in massive debt so they owed about fifty thousand dollars and if you type that into the measuring worth calculator i mean that is millions and millions of dollars today i mean it's a feature isn't it of not all the founding fathers so franklin died very rich john adams was incredibly frugal but washington died with massive debts jefferson as we will see also has massive debts i mean no wonder they didn't want to pay tax yeah exactly they didn't have any money so the mortgage as i said on the grange was impossible for eliza to pay however hamilton's friends set up a private fund they bought the grange and then they sold it to her half price so she was able to live there with her children till 1833 she devoted herself to her husband's memory she co-founded the orphan asylum society of new york and she died age 97 having outlived hamilton by just over 50 years she didn't marry again she didn't she was devoted to his memory now burr what does he get up to even before um hamilton died hamilton's allies in new york were busy spinning the story and blackening burr's name they said that basically while eliza was crying over her dying husband burr was celebrating in the taverns of new york and they claimed that burr was standing there at the bar of all these different pubs you know flagon of ale in hand laughing and saying i only wish i'd shot him in the heart the drinks are on me yeah i mean this is actually just totally untrue because actually what happened is that burr fled new york straight away and he went all the way south to georgia now of course one thing we haven't really mentioned he's actually still the vice president of the united states so the only parallel i can think of remember dick cheney shot that man in the face yeah we're on a duck shoot don't go don't go hunting with dick face anyway uh burr is vice president he goes back to washington he's charged with murder in both new york and new jersey but the case never came to trial the reason is they couldn't actually prove it oh because all these guys the boatmen facing the wrong way and things and the umbrellas and stuff genius brilliant god bless him no one literally no witnesses so his term as vice president ended in 1805 but obviously his political career is now totally tainted and then in the two years after he left office burr becomes involved in this absolutely insane conspiracy literally catalinarian conspiracy so depending on which version you read he plotted with southern planters and u.s army officers to create his own country on the u.s's southern border but the mad thing about this story is that no one could agree where his country was going to be what would you call it burrier that's a terrible name call it berry burristan burristan burristan burristan so some people said it was going to be florida some people said it was going to be northern mexico some people said it was going to be malton mississippi alabama louisiana it's just not clear at all burr when he was asked said i just want to buy myself a nice farm that's all i've been trying to do the case actually went to court and he was tried for treason but it was not proven basically there were no witnesses at all and there's no evidence maybe they'd all had it was the umbrellas again come in handy so after this burr went into exile in england and then he was kicked out of the country and he was thrown out of the country and he was thrown out of the country and he was thrown out of england because there were rumors that he was planning the conquest of mexico and set himself up as king of mexico he wanted to go to france and napoleon refused to allow him like if you're too bad a man for napoleon napoleon said what this bloke's marauding around taking other people's countries we can't have that there's only room for one of these in my country so he wasn't allowed into france he ended up drifting back to new york he lived there under a false name to escape his creditors and he died in 1836 and there's one little hint that burr regretted what happened so at the very end of his life he had loads of of strokes he was bedridden and he was reading a lot of tristram shandy which is commendable behavior and he said i think this really is to his credit if i had read lawrence stern more and voltaire less i should have known that the world was wide enough for hamilton and me and that's a lesson to our listeners that if you have the choice of lawrence stern or voltaire you should always read lawrence stern and if you want to challenge something to a deal think again right exactly so i mean burr was a very clever man and he was very brave in the war but he's very rarely ranked among the founding fathers he's seen as one of american history's great villains but of course that's not the case for hamilton hamilton becomes a martyr there are all sorts of cities and counties named after him there's hamilton heights in new york and he's been on the 10 bill since 1929 however hamilton's not really as famous because he wasn't president as jefferson adams washington and so on and so in 2028 he was the first to be elected to the house of the president of the united states and he was the first to be elected to the house of the president of the United States and he was the first to be elected to the house of the United States and he was the first to be elected to the house of the United States and he was the first to be elected in 2015 the department of the treasury wanted to have a woman on the currency who are they going to have abigail adams no but it's got to be a founding mother isn't abigail adams the founding mother she is people it should the people do talk about founding mother but harry bolden uh uh digital guru correctly says harriet tubman oh so harriet tubman was going to go onto the currency possibly it could have been rosa parks or someone i suppose anyway they were going to put a woman on and they said well obviously the person to make way is hamilton he's not as famous as he wasn't president but then just two months after that hamilton the musical transferred to broadway and it became a big cultural phenomenon and the treasury department of the treasury changed their mind and said actually we'll keep hamilton after all i mean the thing is they would there wouldn't be a federal bank if it wasn't for hamilton so right what i would have done is this first of all i'd keep hamilton on the currency but i think to be true to the spirit if you want to be slavish to the musical and to the story be true to the spirit of it put burr on as well and have them on either side leveling pistols at each other right the other thing is people may say what sam rock not want a woman on the currency you are wrong i do want a woman on the currency and i know exactly who i would take off i would take off a man who in his lifetime owned more than 600 human beings a man of the most shameless and repulsive hypocrisy and that man is the man we'll be talking about next time and that is of course thomas jefferson and in that episode we will be exploring the full complexity of the man who i think is the most remarkable the most talented of all the founding fathers but also the most morally compromised i guess and members of the rest of street club um can hear that episode right away it's sitting there waiting for you and if you're not a member of the club and you would like to hear thomas jefferson and also dominic there's a whole range of supplementary benefits incredible benefits we must never forget the supplementary benefits um then go to the rest of history.com and also you'll be able to get the incredible newsletter so thank you dominic thanks everyone for listening bye bye bye dominic since it's the summer i've obviously been thinking a lot about cricket however i am aware that the world cup is on as well and so occasionally football intrudes on my mind as well and so i've been thinking about what my history is about and i've been thinking about what my history is about and i've been thinking historical dream football teams would be and who would be in your historical dream team i've numbered it down to four what i think would be the classics and they are of course the aztecs the royal navy we've got to have the royal navy austro-hungary and of course ancient rome i mean it's an amazing coincidence because the rest is history have just launched football shirts for those very teams so if there are people out there who want to know what kwao tamok would have worn during the siege of tenochtitlan or nelson this is your chance to find out and how would one i'll put it bluntly me how would i get my hands on one two three or perhaps all of these bespoke kits you would want to head as quickly as possible to the rest is history.com and you go to the merch tab then you would be able to pre-order one of these fantastic shirts and you would be able to pre-order one of these fantastic limited edition shirts would there be a way of personalizing these shirts i'm going to make you so happy now because actually there would each shirt can be personalized with a choice of historical figures um the big names from that particular team so for example the royal navy you can go for horatio nelson or emma hamilton you can go for franz ferdinand or sophie for the okay these sound absolutely brilliant um the perfect way for our beloved listeners to celebrate the world cup and i will certainly be heading to the website and clicking on the merch page on rest is history.com i simply cannot wait you hank joined bj's wholesale club the 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