Burr and Hamilton Meet at Weehawken

On the morning of July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton were rowed across the Hudson to a rocky ledge at Weehawken, New Jersey, the customary dueling ground for New Yorkers because dueling was a crime back home. The two had circled each other in New York politics for years, and a newspaper account of Hamilton's cutting remarks at an Albany dinner finally pushed Burr to demand satisfaction. Hamilton had written beforehand that he meant to hold his fire. Burr did not. Hamilton fell with a shot through his abdomen, was rowed back across the river, and died the next afternoon at a friend's house in Greenwich Village.