The Duel from 'Duel'

That same night, July 10th, in his New York City house, Nathaniel
Pendleton was writing the regulations for tomorrow’s duel. He
dated the paper ]uly 11th—perhaps a sign of his inner agitation or of the
way that date loomed in his mind. The parties were to leave New York for
the dueling ground at 5 :00 A.M. The distance was to be ten paces--about
thirty feet. The pistols were not to exceed eleven inches in the barrel. The
choice of positions would be determined by a coin toss.
The previous day, William P. Van Ness had written his own set of regu-
lations, which agreed with Pendleton’s almost verbatim. Oarsmen had
been hired by the seconds to row the three miles across the Hudson to
Weehawken. For a doctor, both sides had agreed to call on Hamilton’s
family physician, David Hosackf There was nothing more for anyone to
do but try to get some sleep.
 The night was hot and muggy-—typical New York weather for July.
How or if Hamilton slept in his Cedar Street house has gone unrecorded.
We know Burr threw himself down on a couch in the Richmond Hill li-
brmy. William P. Van Ness, ]ohn Swartout, and Matthew Davis found
him there in the predawn darkness, sleeping soundly. He dressed quickly
in black pantaloons, half boots, and a coat of dark bombazine. They hur-
ried down to the shore of the Hudson, where a boat was waiting for the
colonel and Van Ness. Duelists generally did not breakfast. It was widely
believed that food in the stomach would lead to rapid infection if a bullet
penetrated that organ.
Van Ness and Burr reached the dueling ground first, and began clearing
away tree limbs and underbrush. No one had exchanged shots on this
grassy ledge below the cliffs known as the Palisades for some time. The
outcropping was about six feet wide and eleven yards long. At one corner
was a granite boulder. Nearby stood a large cedar tree. The site had be-
come a dueling ground because of its inaccessibility. There was no path
leading down the cliff face from the village of Weehawken. Walkers along
the Hudson shore could only reach it at low tide. The future town of
Hoboken, two and a half miles to the south, was unborn. The isolation
was a virtual guarantee against an interruption of the deadly business
transacted there.
Hamilton set out from another dock in what is now Greenwich Vil-
lage, not far from the country house of New York merchant William Ba-
yard, a client and friend. The General and Nathaniel Pendleton may have
been delayed by the necessity to collect Dr. Hosack. They seem to have
arrived on the Weehawken shore considerably after Burr and Van Ness.
The physician stayed down on the water’s edge with the boatmen while
the General and his second clambered up a narrow path to find Burr and
Van Ness in their shirt sleeves, clearing away nature’s debris. The two par-
ties greeted each other in gentlemanly fashion. The seconds conferred on
the regulations and found they were in agreement. They had already de-
cided to use the Church pistols.
Burr put on his coat and waited at a distance. Hamilton stayed at a
roughly equal distance on the other side of the seconds while they tossed
a coin to see who would have the choice of positions and who would give
the order to fire. Pendleton won both tosses. By now it was approaching
seven o’clock. The July sun had begun beating down on the river, creating
an intense glare. The sun itself was still low enough in the sky to strike the
dueling ground at an angle. Pendleton chose to position Hamilton with
his back to the cliff, facing the light. Some people have criticized him for
this move, but Pendleton probably thought Burr was a better target, out-
lined against the glistening river. Hamilton had said he was going to
throw away his first fire, but he had not decided on his second round, if
Bun‘ insisted on one.
II
The two seconds now loaded the pistols with powder and a “smooth ball,”
as the regulations required. The inside of the guns’ barrels was also
smooth. This made a handgun, with its short barrel, though precision
made, even more inaccurate than a musket. Inside and outside the barrel,
the spinning bullet was subject to forces over which the gun wielder had
no control. A rifled barrel, prohibited by the dueling code, would give a
marksman far more accuracy. Beyond thirty yards, a smoothbore pistol
was almost a useless weapon, and even at that range it was extremely un-
predictable. These ballistics were part of the reason why the duel was not
always a fatal encounter.
With the pistols loaded, the duelists took their positions, and their sec-
onds walked over to hand each his weapon. As Pendleton gave General
Hamilton his gun, he asked: “Do you want the hair spring set?”
“Not this time,” Hamilton replied.
Pendleton stepped back and walked out of the line of fire. He briefly
explained the rules they were following. First he would ask them if they
were ready. If they answered in the affirmative, he would say “Present!”
Thereafter, each could fire whenever he pleased.
Both men nodded. At this point, according to Burr and William P. Van
Ness, General Hamilton raised his pistol “as if to try the light,” and asked
them to pardon him. He said the “direction of the light” made it hard for
him to adjust his eyes. With his left hand, he drew spectacles from his
pocket and put them on.
Pendleton asked if they were ready. “Yes,” both said.
“Present!” Pendleton said.
By this time, both men had assumed the duelist’s stance, the right foot
about twenty—six inches in front of the left foot, the face positioned over
the right shoulder, the stomach sucked in, the right thigh and leg cover
ing the left leg. The goal was to present as little body surface as possible.
Even the pistol was wielded with protection in mind; it was held some-
what to the left, where it could deflect a bullet?
Both men leveled their pistols and the guns boomed within seconds of
each other. Van Ness thought Hamilton fired first. He spun his head to see
if Burr was hit. At that instant the colonel fired and almost simultaneously
his body seemed to jerk as if Hamilton’s bullet had struck him. Later, Van
Ness would discover Burr had stepped on a stone as he assumed the oblique
position and as he fired he must have pressed his foot on it.
Pendleton thought Burr fired first. His eyes remained on Hamilton and
the Virginian saw his arm jerk upward as he pulled the trigger. To his hor-
ror he realized the General was hit. A swirl of gunsmoke enveloped both
duelists. For a moment, time, perception, understanding froze. Still
clutching his pistol, Hamilton pitched forward on his face, The oversize
lead ball had penetrated his right side a little above the hip, torn through
his liver and diaphragm, and lodged in his vertebrae.
The vice president uttered a small sound of dismay and started toward
him. Pendleton shouted: “Dr. Hosack!” Van Ness rushed forward and led
Burr down the path toward the water. One account has him shielding Burr
with an umbrella so that the boatmen and Dr. Hosack, who were rushing
up the same path, could not testify that they had seen him there. When
Burr and Van Ness reached their boat, the vice president hesitated. “I must
go and speak to him,” he reportedly said. Van Ness persuaded him this was
out of the question and the boatmen soon had them out on the river?
Dr. Hosack found Hamilton half sitting on the ground in Nathaniel
Pendleton’s arms. “This is a mortal wound, Doctor,” he gasped. A second
later he lost consciousness and Hosack thought he was going to die on
the spot. The doctor pulled up his bloody shirt and saw at a glance that
Hamilton was probably right. Hosack could find no pulse, nor was
Hamilton breathing. He put his hand on the Generals heart and found
“no motion there.” Hosack thought Hamilton was “irretrievably gone.”
Against the cliff the air was dense with heat and humidity. Hosack de-
cided the only hope was to get the General on the water as soon as possi-
ble. Together he and Pendleton carried him down the path to the point
where the land fell steeply to the water’s edge. As they labored, an an-
guished Pendleton told Hosack about Hamilton’s refusal to fire at Burr.
With the help of the oarsmen they got the wounded man into the boat
and pulled off. Hosack began rubbing Hamilton’s face with spirits of
hartshorne. He applied this invigorating potion to his neck and chest and
wrists and palms, and even tried to get some into his mouth.
About fifty yards from shore, Hamilton gave a great sigh and began
breathing again. The hartshorne, along with the cooler air on the river,
had restored him to life. His eyes wandered across the water and around
the boat and he muttered: “my vision is indistinct.” Gradually, his pulse
returned to near normal, his breathing became regular. Hosack tried to
examine the wound but even a slight touch caused Hamilton such pain,
he “desisted.”
III
As Hamilton’s sight returned, he saw John Barker Church’s pistol case
open in the bottom of the boat, with the gun he had used lying outside it.
“Take care of that pistol,” he said. “It is undischarged and still cocked——it
may go off and do harm.” Attempting to turn his head to Pendleton, who
was sitting behind him in the stern, Hamilton added: “Pendleton knows I
did not intend to fire at him.”
“Yes,” Pendleton said. “I have already told Dr. Hosack that.”
Hamilton fell silent. After a few minutes with the only sound the
grunts of the sweating oarsmen, Dr. Hosack began asking the Wounded
man how he felt—-nauseous, dizzy? He was trying to get some idea what
organs the bullet had struck. Hamilton told him he had lost all feeling in
his body from the waist down. He could not move his legs. Hosack tried
to rearrange his legs hoping circulation would be restored, but Hamilton
reported no improvement. Once or twice he asked Hosack to take his
pulse, which the doctor reported was still fairly normal.
As they approached the shore, Hamilton told Pendleton and Hosack to
send for his wife. He asked them to break the news to her gradually. “Give
her hopes,” he said.
A moment later they were alongside the dock from which they had set
out. Looking up, Hamilton found his friend William Bayard gazing down
at him. A servant had seen Hamilton and Pendleton and Hosack setting
out in the dawn and told Bayard, who immediately knew where they were
going. Bayard already feared the worst. As the boat approached he saw
only Hosack and Pendleton sitting up. When the merchant saw Hamil-
ton lying in the bottom of the boat he burst into tears.
Hosack told Bayard to prepare a bed for his wounded friend. Bayard
was so overwhelmed by grief, he was almost useless. His whole family was
soon weeping and wailing. Pendleton and Dr. Hosack almost joined
them. In his account of this part of the return from Weehawken, the doc-
tor noted that only Hamilton kept his composure.
IV
When they finally got the General to a bed on the second floor of Ba-
yard’s lamentation-filled house, Hamilton seemed almost comatose. But
Dr. Hosack revived him with some wine and water. With help from oth-
ers, the doctor undressed him and administered a strong “anodyne”-—-a
painkiller. He rubbed it on the parts of Hamilton’s body where he com-
plained of pain, particularly his back. The drug did little to assuage the
wounded man’s agony.
Dr. Hosack sent for Dr. Wright Post, professor of anatomy at Columbia
College and one of the New York’s leading physicians. Dr. Post soon arrived
but he only confirmed Dr. Hosack’s opinion that the wound was mortal.
Several hours later, the French consul sent surgeons from two men of
war in New York harbor in the hope that their experience with gunshot
wounds might help. But they too concluded that General Hamilton was a
dying man.
The General had no doubts about this diagnosis. His thoughts were al-
ready focused on the next world. He asked the Bayards to send a servant
to Benjamin Moore, Episcopal bishop of New York and president of Co-
lumbia College. The bishop came as requested, but was unhappy to learn
that Hamilton had been wounded in a duel, an activity Moore considered
sinful. Worse, the dying man had never joined the Episcopal church.
When Moore learned that Hamilton wanted to receive holy communion,
the Bishop demurred. This reception of the body and blood of ]esus, in a
consecrated wafer of bread, was for Christians a central act of faith, and
could not be administered casually. The bishop departed, declaring he
wanted to give the dying man “time for reflection.”
Hamilton asked Bayard to summon another clergyman, the Reverend
]ohn M. Mason, pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church. This was the
faith that had stirred Hamilton in his youth, when a Presbyterian minister
had befriended the orphaned boy on St. Croix. Mason hurried to Bayard’s
house. But the minister sadly informed Hamilton that his church forbade
him to give communion privately. It could only be done at the altar, in the
course of a Sunday ceremony. He tried to assure Hamilton that commu-
nion was only a “pledge” of the forgiveness of sin that ]esus had purchased
by his death on the cross. The same forgiveness was available to Hamilton
by faith.
The dying man did not find this idea satisfactory and pleaded for
someone to persuade Bishop Moore to return as soon as possible. Mean-
while, around noon, Elizabeth Hamilton arrived. In obedience to the
General’s wishes, no one had told her the truth about his condition. She
believed Hamilton was suffering from stomach spasms. But a few min-
utes with her husband must have revealed everything. When Betsy grew
frantic with grief, Hamilton reminded her in a strong firm voice: “Re-
member, Eliza, you are a Christian."
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Gouverneur Morris said: If we were truly brave we would not accept a challenge but we are all cowards.