Weehawken is a Phenomal Word

The first three sections of this book are "The Generation," "The Duel," and "The Dinner." I found "The Duel" to be the most interesting. This chapter is an account of the legendary duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, in which Hamilton is fatally wounded. The duel was fought in a place called The Plains of Weehawken. I think that word alone caught my attention while I was reading this. It was a rather dramatic setting for a duel; Weehawken is actually a sort of cliff, measuring 40 x 10 feet, that juts out 20 feet above the Hudson River. Each man took 10 steps and then fired after the command of one of the two witnesses. The duel was executed in accordance with code duello, an accepted gentleman’s code for conducting duels. By state law, dueling was illegal, but it was considered a cowardly stain on one’s reputation to refuse the challenge of a duel. I don’t understand how dueling would ever be considered a practical or humane way of settling a personal problem, especially among “gentlemen.” The fact that there was an accepted code for the practice is intriguing, if not somewhat troubling to me.

I knew the story of this historical duel before reading this selection, however Ellis goes into much more elaborate detail about the causes and effects of the duel. Apparently, there has been controversy among historians as to whether Hamilton or Burr fired the first shot at Weehawken. Thus two vastly different accounts of the duel have been created as a result of circumstantial evidence, based on the testimonies of two witnesses to the event. I thought it interesting that Ellis presented both a Hamiltonian account of the event and an account through the eyes of Burr’s followers, and proceeded to make his own assumptions about what happened.

The preface to the book, a section entitled, “The Generation,” brought up one fascinating point about the founding of our nation. According to Ellis, our nation was founded on an ongoing argument that some of the founders realized would never stop. Both parties now claim that they are holding true to the American principles established by the Founding Fathers. In reality, the men that shaped our nation were quarrelling over the same issues and a few of them were smart enough to realize that American government simply needed to provide a framework for ongoing argument.

“The Dinner” tells the story of how two men compromised the location of our capital as well as the fate of the national banking system over a single meal. Called the Compromise of 1790, Jefferson agreed to Hamilton’s financial plan in return for the Nation’s capital to be moved to the south, along the Potomac River. This was arguably the most important lunch date in the course of United States history.