Postcard Thursday: Depicting the Hamilton-Burr Duel

On July 12, 1804, Alexander Hamilton died at his friend William Bayard's home on Jane Street, having been shot the day before by Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey.

Over the years, numerous illustrations have shown the dramatic moment of the duel when Burr shot Hamilton:

What all of these illustrations have in common is that all of them are wrong. While there were other people present at the duel, there were no witnesses. As we write in Footprints in New York, Hamilton and Burr

arrived in Weehawken about a half an hour apart. Burr and his party got there first and began clearing the dueling grounds. Hamilton, Nathaniel Pendleton, and David Hosack, a physician, arrived around seven in the morning. By prearrangement, the seconds were to keep their backs turned away from Hamilton and Burr. Since dueling was illegal, this would give them the chance, if questioned, to say they hadn’t seen anything. 

Hamilton, as the challenged, had brought the pistols, and he was given the choice of his weapon. Hamilton took his time getting into position. He cleaned his glasses. He repeatedly tested his aim. Was this a show of nerves—or was he trying to provoke Burr? The pistols belonged to Hamilton’s brother-in-law, and he may have had the opportunity to practice with them. Did that give him an unfair advantage? Even if it did, it turned out not to matter.

Hamilton fired first. His bullet flew above Burr’s head, lodging in a cedar tree. 

Then Burr fired. His aim was true, and his shot lodged in Hamilton’s spine, having first lacerated his liver.

Notice that in every picture of the duel, the seconds are looking on helplessly. If the custom of the day was followed, their backs would have been turned.

* * *

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Postcard Thursday: Hamilton on Wall Street

courtesy of the New York Public Library

Yesterday, January 11, marked Alexander Hamilton's birthday. He was born either in 1755 or 1757, the "bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar" (in President John Adams's low estimation) on Nevis in the Caribbean. As a child, he moved to St. Croix and then, as a teenager, to New York, where he enrolled in King's College (later Columbia University) in downtown Manhattan.

Of course, you can read all about Hamilton's extensive life in New York in Footprints in New York (or see that impossible-to-get-tickets-to musical on Broadway).

For decades after Hamilton was killed in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804, he was memorialized around the city, perhaps no place more famously than in the Merchants Exchange on Wall Street. In the spring of 1835, a group of traders erected a fifteen-foot marble statue (shown above) of Hamilton that had been sculpted by Robert Ball Hughes. The former Treasury Secretary's republican values are symbolized by the toga he wears over his suit. The scroll in his hand may be one of the many laws Hamilton helped pass that created the American financial industry.

This statue was destroyed just eight months after it was unveiled in the Great Fire of 1835. As we write in Inside the Apple:

On the night of December 16, 1835, a gas line broke in a dry goods store near Hanover Square in the Financial District; the gas, ignited by a coal stove, caused the store to explode and the ensuing fire quickly fanned southward along Stone Street and northeast toward Wall Street. Not only was it the worst fire in New York’s history, it wiped away almost all of the remaining traces of the old Dutch and British colonial city.... 

The blaze raged for over a day, destroying over 600 buildings in about 50 acres of the old city, including the home of the New York Stock Exchange, the old city post office, and many warehouses and counting houses on which the city depended. Though the neighborhood was still a mix of commercial and residential structures, fortunately only two people died.

Alexander Hamilton in Central Park

Despite a valiant attempt to save the marble Hamilton statue, it was destroyed along with the Merchants Exchange. Forty-five years later, a new statue was paid for

by Hamilton’s youngest son, John C. Hamilton, and it stands in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This statue...is remarkable in that it is made entirely of granite—not the easiest stone to carve—and it has long been thought that John C. Hamilton commissioned the work out of this durable stone so that no matter what calamities might befall Central Park, his father’s statue would endure.

* * * *

Read more about NYC history in

 

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

New York and the Presidency

While most polls seem to indicate that Donald Trump isn't going to win the election today, if he were to win, he'd be only the second president born and bred in New York City. (The first was Teddy Roosevelt.)

[UPDATE: Well, the polls and pundits were wrong. Mr. Trump did win the election, becoming the second New Yorker to hold the nation's highest office.]

However, many presidents and vice presidents have had connections to the city over the years:

GEORGE WASHINGTON
Though it didn't last very long, New York was the first capital of the United States, and on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, George Washington was sworn in as America's first president on April 30, 1789. (The building no longer stands, but a statue of Washington by J.Q.A. Ward graces the front of the building now known as Federal Hall National Memorial). After the inauguration, Washington went to St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway at Fulton Street, where his pew is still preserved. During the 15 months that New York remained the capital after the inauguration, Washington lived in a house on Cherry Street (at roughly the spot where the Brooklyn Bridge anchorage now stands) and then in a home on lower Broadway near Bowling Green. His vice president, John Adams, lived in isolated splendor in a mansion in Greenwich Village called Richmond Hill, later home to Vice President Aaron Burr.

AARON BURR
In 1800, the incumbent president, John Adams, was faced by his own vice president, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's running mate was New Yorker Aaron Burr; however, due to a flaw in the electoral system (which made no adequate provision for distinguishing between votes cast for president versus vice president), both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes and the election was thrown to the House of Representatives. The Federalists, who still controlled congress, tried to elect Burr as president, thus denying the seat to Jefferson, who many considered the nation's leading opponent of Federalism. Notably, it was only though the intervention of Burr's nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, that Jefferson was finally elected president on the 36th ballot. Burr's home in Greenwich Village, Richmond Hill, is no longer standing, but one of the property's stables is now the restaurant One if By Land, Two if By Sea.

GEORGE CLINTON
Aaron Burr was left off the Democratic-Republican ticket in 1804 in favor of New York governor George Clinton, who also went on to be James Madison's vice president (thus making him one of only two vice presidents to serve under different presidents; the other was the well-coiffed John C. Calhoun).

DEWITT CLINTON
In 1812, New York City fielded its first candidate for president, Mayor DeWitt Clinton. Despite mounting frustration with incumbent James Madison over the War of 1812, Clinton lost the election (had he won Pennsylvania, he would have reached the White House). Clinton went on to serve as New York's governor and presided over the building of the Erie Canal. (DeWitt Clinton is the person who is honored in the neighborhood Clinton—known to most people as Hell's Kitchen.)

DANIEL TOMPKINS
The man Clinton replaced as governor, Daniel Tompkins, was vice president under James Monroe. Tompkins, who gave the land to the city that became Tompkins Square Park, is buried in the churchyard at St. Marks in the Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue.

MARTIN VAN BUREN
In 1836, New York governor Martin Van Buren (who had been Andrew Jackson's secretary of state and vice president) was elected to the presidency. It would be the last time until George H.W. Bush that a sitting vice president would succeed to the presidency without the president dying in office. Another fun fact about Van Buren: not only was he a descendant of one of the early Dutch settlers of New York, he grew up speaking Dutch.

MILLARD FILLMORE
Generally forgotten in the lists of American presidents is Millard Fillmore, who hailed from the Finger Lakes region upstate. A congressman for over a decade in the 1830s and '40s, Fillmore returned to New York to run an unsuccessful campaign for governor. In 1848, he became the state's comptroller. In that capacity, he oversaw the start of construction on the state militia's arsenal in Central Park. Today, his name is still clearly visible in the plaque over the building's front door. In 1848, Fillmore was also tapped to be General Zachary Taylor's running mate. When Taylor died after only a year in office, Fillmore became president. However, like John Tyler before him (who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of William Henry Harrison), Fillmore was not picked by his own party to run for a second term.

HORATIO SEYMOUR / HORACE GREELEY

In 1868, Governor Horatio Seymour (left) was tapped by the Democrats to face war hero Ulysses S. Grant. Seymour had long been involved in New York State politics—the factionalism of this period is sometimes hard to fathom. Seymour was a "soft-shell hunker," opposed to those in the party who were "hard-shell hunkers" or "barnburners." The hirsute Seymour sported an impressive neck-beard, which was quite the fashion of the time.

Newspaper editor Horace Greeley faced Grant in the election of 1872. Greeley, a staunch Republican, had become disillusioned by the party and Grant's mediocre first term and decided to face him as a "Liberal Republican." (The Democrats backed Greeley, as well.) Grant handily won a second term and Greeley died before the Electoral College could convene, meaning that his electoral votes were split between four other Democratic candidates.

A handsome statue of Greeley (who, like Seymour, sported a neck-beard—whatever happened to those?) sits in City Hall Park near the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge.

SAMUEL J. TILDEN
Lawyer Samuel J. Tilden rose to prominence as the man who prosecuted William "Boss" Tweed. His success led to him winning the governor's race in 1874 and then being nominated for president by the Democratic Party in 1876 to face Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The Tilden/Hayes election continues to be the most disputed in American history. It took four months from Election Day for a special commission to name the winner. Ultimately, they picked Hayes though modern research indicates that Tilden almost certainly would have won the election had there not been electoral shenanigans in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Tilden lived in a wonderful double townhouse on Gramercy Park that is now home to The National Arts Club.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

Though a native of Vermont (or, as his opponents tried to prove in 1880, of Canada), Chester A. Arthur moved to New York in 1854 to practice law. He was appointed collector of the Port of New York in 1871 and was nominated to run as James A. Garfield's vice president in 1880. Garfield was shot in July 1881, only a few months after taking office. He lingered for eighty days before succumbing to his wounds. At the time of the president's death, Arthur was at his home on Lexington Avenue (which still stands) and was sworn in as president there by a justice of the New York Supreme Court. He ran in 1885 to become president in his own right, but lost to New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

GROVER CLEVELAND
New York Governor Grover Cleveland was elected president in 1888 and again in 1892, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. (And the first Democrat to be nominated for president three consecutive times.) Cleveland's vice president during his second term was Adlai Stevenson, grandfather of the 20th-century presidential candidate who ran twice against Dwight D. Eisenhower.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
New York City has only produced one born-and-raised president, Teddy Roosevelt, who grew up in a house on East 20th Street near Gramercy Park. (Today, the National Park Service runs the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace in a replica house on the site.) Teddy became president in 1901 after President William

McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo while attending the Pan-American Exposition. Roosevelt ran for election in his own right in 1904 and won, becoming the first vice president who had been elevated to the presidency who went on to win the office in his own right.

Teddy ran again in 1912 on the Progressive or "Bull Moose" ticket, siphoning enough votes away from incumbent Republican William Howard Taft to give the election to Woodrow Wilson.

AL SMITH
Lower East Sider Al Smith ("the Happy Warrior") rose to prominence in the state legislature in the early years of the 20th century. He was elected governor in 1918; though he lost the 1920 election, he was governor from 1922 to 1928 when he secured the Democratic nomination for president. The plainspoken Smith lost the election that year to Herbert Hoover, done in by a combination of prejudice (no Roman Catholic had ever sought the nation's highest office) and opposition to his "wet" candidacy during the height of Prohibition. Smith went on to be the head of the Empire State Corporation that erected the Empire State Building. His boyhood home, on Oliver Street, still stands and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
FDR served longer than any other president, from 1937 to his death in 1945, thus ushering in the era of presidential term limits. (He faced New Yorker Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election and New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.)

Born in Hyde Park, New York, in 1882, Roosevelt was the descendant of two of the oldest New York families. His Delano ancestor, Philippe de La Noye, arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Fortune, the second ship to bring the Pilgrims to the New World. His Roosevelt ancestors had been in New York since the city had been New Amsterdam. Though he was only a distant cousin of Teddy Roosevelt, his wife, Eleanor, was Teddy's niece.

THOMAS E. DEWEY

Thomas Dewey was known as the "Gangbuster" for his crusades against bootlegging and organized crime as a New York City prosecutor and District Attorney. In 1942, he became governor and was nominated by the Republicans to face FDR in 1944 and then to face Harry Truman in 1948. Almost all pundits and pollsters considered Dewey's election a lock—so much so that the Chicago Daily Tribune went to bed on election night with "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" running across the page. In the end, though Truman only squeaked out a narrow popular victory, the margin in the Electoral College was overwhelming.

BARACK OBAMA

The current president transferred to Columbia College in 1981 and graduated as a member of the class of 1983. You can read reminiscences of his college roommate at https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/archive/jan_feb09/alumni_corner.

* * * * Read more about NYC history in   Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: The DUEL! (And more about Alexander Hamilton)

This Monday, July 11, marks the anniversary of the fateful duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (pictured above) at the so-called "dueling grounds" at Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804.

As we write in Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers:

According to the Code Duello, gentlemen only needed to meet on the field of honor and delope, or discharge their weapons. They could shoot into the ground and the debt would be satisfied. 

Hamilton had resolved before the duel that he would not shoot Burr. In a letter discovered with his will after his death, Hamilton had written: “if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, [I will] reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire.” 

The two men arrived in Weehawken about half an hour apart. Burr and his party, including his second William P. Van Ness, got there first and began clearing the dueling grounds. Hamilton, Nathaniel Pendleton, and David Hosack, a physician, arrived around seven in the morning. By prearrangement, the seconds were to keep their backs turned away from Hamilton and Burr. Since dueling was illegal, this would give them the chance, if questioned, to say they hadn’t seen anything. 

Hamilton, as the challenged, had brought the pistols, and he was given the choice of his weapon. Hamilton took his time getting into position. He cleaned his glasses. He repeatedly tested his aim. Was this a show of nerves—or was he trying to provoke Burr? The pistols belonged to Hamilton’s brother-in-law, and he may have had the opportunity to practice with them. Did that give him an unfair advantage? Even if it did, it turned out not to matter. 

Hamilton fired first. His bullet flew above Burr’s head, lodging in a cedar tree. 

Then Burr fired. His aim was true, and his shot lodged in Hamilton’s spine, having first lacerated his liver. Doctor Hosack, waiting nearby, recalled later: "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…."

Hamilton wasn’t dead—not yet. He was ferried across the river to the home of his friend William Bayard on Jane Street. Bayard was from one of the oldest and richest families in the city—he was the great-great-great nephew of Judith Bayard, wife of Peter Stuyvesant—and owned vast property in what is now Greenwich Village. Hamilton was carried to a second-floor bedroom where Dr. Hosack attended to him. A rider was dispatched to the Grange to fetch Eliza—but only to tell her that Hamilton was suffering from “spasms.” He had hidden the duel from her in advance, but he could hide it no longer.

If you want to see the duel reenacted, they will be hosting a program at The New-York Historical Society on Sunday, July 10, at 1pm and 3pm. Details: http://www.nyhistory.org/programs/my-first-friend-my-enemy-hamilton-and-burr-duel-0

...... and last but not least.....

We will be speaking at the New-York Historical Society on Friday, July 29, at 6:30pm. The talk is free with museum admission (which is pay-what-you-wish on Friday nights) but the museum would like you to make a reservation. Click this link for all the details: http://www.nyhistory.org/programs/exploring-hamilton%E2%80%99s-new-york

* * * * Read more about NYC history in   Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: In the Footsteps of Hamilton

Join us on Friday, July 29, at 6:30pm at the New-York Historical Society as we take you on a virtual walking tour of Alexander Hamilton's New York. As a part of the society's "Summer of Hamilton," we've been asked to present an illustrated lecture on what New York would have been like from the era just before the American Revolution through Hamilton's untimely death in 1804.

From the N-YHS website:

New York is overflowing with stories of Alexander Hamilton’s life—but where can we find them? Using the Hamilton chapter in their book Footprints in New York as a starting point, authors James and Michelle Nevius search out the remnants of Hamilton’s New York—from King’s College (now Columbia University), where he enrolled as a teenager; to Wall Street, where he lived and worked; to Thomas Jefferson’s “Room Where It Happened,” where he gave up Manhattan as the American seat of government in exchange for advancing his economic program. Follow in Hamilton’s footsteps during the last weeks of his life, from Fraunces Tavern to Hamilton Grange to the fateful Weehawken dueling grounds! Contemporary photos, historic maps, and images of objects from the New-York Historical Society’s collections will illustrate the journey.

To learn more and reserve a spot at this free lecture, visit http://www.nyhistory.org/programs/exploring-hamilton%E2%80%99s-new-york

See you then!

* * * * Read more about NYC history in   Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: The Morris-Jumel Mansion and Aaron Burr

Today's card shows the so-called "Council Chamber" -- really the parlor -- of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights. The country house, built in 1765 by Roger Morris, served briefly as George Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War. Later, after the British re-took New York, it was used by British general Henry Clinton. The postcard was issued when the site was run by the Washington Headquarters Association, which placed great emphasis on the home's limited role in the Revolution.

The Morrises, staunch loyalists, had the house taken from them by the fledgling American government after the war. It served as a tavern before being purchased by Stephen and Eliza Jumel in 1806.

After Stephen's death, Eliza Jumel married the former vice president, Aaron Burr. Ironically, there are only two great country homes left in this part of Manhattan: Burr's and that of his rival, Alexander Hamilton, whose home "The Grange" is now run by the National Park Service.

Hamilton is, of course, the subject of a blockbuster Broadway musical.

This month in New Jersey Monthly magazine, James ponders what an Aaron Burr musical might look like. You can read the story at: http://njmonthly.com/articles/jersey-living/people/burr-fect-together-no-musical-for-historys-villain/

* * * *

Read more about NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Available from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or from independent bookstores across the country. 

Shootout in Weehawken

On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were rowed across the Hudson River so that they could shoot at each other. This, in 1804, seemed like a fine way to settle one's differences.

In our new book, Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers (Lyons Press), one chapter concerns the duel:

According to the Code Duello, gentlemen only needed to meet on the field of honor and delope, or discharge their weapons. They could shoot into the ground and the debt would be satisfied. 

Hamilton had resolved before the duel that he would not shoot Burr. In a letter discovered with his will after his death, Hamilton had written: “if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, [I will] reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire.” 

The two men arrived in Weehawken about half an hour apart. Burr and his party, including his second William P. Van Ness, got there first and began clearing the dueling grounds. Hamilton, Nathaniel Pendleton, and David Hosack, a physician, arrived around seven in the morning. By prearrangement, the seconds were to keep their backs turned away from Hamilton and Burr. Since dueling was illegal, this would give them the chance, if questioned, to say they hadn’t seen anything. 

Hamilton, as the challenged, had brought the pistols, and he was given the choice of his weapon. Hamilton took his time getting into position. He cleaned his glasses. He repeatedly tested his aim. Was this a show of nerves—or was he trying to provoke Burr? The pistols belonged to Hamilton’s brother-in-law, and he may have had the opportunity to practice with them. Did that give him an unfair advantage? Even if it did, it turned out not to matter. 

Hamilton fired first. His bullet flew above Burr’s head, lodging in a cedar tree. 

Then Burr fired. His aim was true, and his shot lodged in Hamilton’s spine, having first lacerated his liver. Doctor Hosack, waiting nearby, recalled later: "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…."

Hamilton wasn’t dead—not yet. He was ferried across the river to the home of his friend William Bayard on Jane Street. Bayard was from one of the oldest and richest families in the city—he was the great-great-great nephew of Judith Bayard, wife of Peter Stuyvesant—and owned vast property in what is now Greenwich Village. Hamilton was carried to a second-floor bedroom where Dr. Hosack attended to him. A rider was dispatched to the Grange to fetch Eliza—but only to tell her that Hamilton was suffering from “spasms.” He had hidden the duel from her in advance, but he could hide it no longer.

If you want to know more about our new book's release, please sign up for our not-at-all-spam-like newsletter by sending "SUBSCRIBE" to info@insidetheapple.net. We'll be doing lectures, special walking tours, and more in the spring to celebrate.

* * * *

Read more about the American Revolution and Alexander Hamilton in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Happy Birthday, Alexander Hamilton

Today marks the birthday of Alexander Hamilton, America's first Treasury Secretary, and the man who hoped that his adopted hometown, New York, would be the capital of the United States.

Hamilton was born on January 11, 1757 (though some sources argue for 1755), on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean. In 1773, Hamilton began attending classes at King's College in New York (which would change its name after the American Revolution to Columbia College). When the Revolution began two years later, Hamilton joined the New York militia and soon rose to become one of George Washington's most trusted aides.

During the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, Hamilton saw the value of moving the fledgling country's seat of government to New York, which was fast becoming its largest city and biggest port. As we write in Inside the Apple:

In May 1787, the Constitutional Convention began in Philadelphia, which...had long served as America’s political center. But congress itself had not been meeting in Philadelphia since June 20, 1783, when the State House had been surrounded by mutinous Pennsylvania soldiers looking for their Revolutionary War back pay. Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government lacked the power to disburse the mob—and Pennsylvania’s executive committee refused to do so—forcing congress to flee to Princeton, New Jersey. Over the next two years, the seat of congress moved a few times until finding a home in New York City. 

As part of the new Constitution, the states agreed to have a capital city that was not governed by a state, thus heading off another Pennsylvania debacle, and Alexander Hamilton’s preference was for that city to be his own. Pierre L’Enfant, who would achieve great fame as the master planner of Washington, D.C., remodeled the old British City Hall on Wall Street to serve not only as the meeting place for congress and the new chief executive but also continue to house New York City’s government office....

Washington initially made only three cabinet appointments: General Henry Knox became Secretary of War, Thomas Jefferson—still serving in France as America’s foreign minister—became Secretary of State, and Hamilton was appointed Secretary of the Treasury and de facto Prime Minister. When Jefferson returned to America in 1790, he hurried to New York to assume his post—and to see what damage of Hamilton’s he could undo. He vehemently opposed Hamilton’s ideas regarding a central United States bank and a federal assumption of the debts the states had incurred during the war. But, it seems, he opposed locating the nation’s capital in New York even more. 

On June 20, 1790—exactly seven years after the Pennsylvania militia had forced the Continental Congress to flee Philadelphia—the capital was forced to move again, this time at a dinner party. At the dinner, which was hosted by Jefferson and James Madison at Jefferson’s home on Maiden Lane, the two Virginians told Hamilton that they wielded such sway in Congress that they could block Hamilton’s controversial banking measures. Conversely, they promised to ensure Hamilton’s bills went through as long as he didn’t oppose their quest to move the federal capital to the South. Hamilton, realizing that the needs of the Treasury Department outweighed his New York City pride, acquiesced. In August 1790, congress met for the last time on Wall Street.

What most people remember about Hamilton today is not how he lived but rather how he died, slain in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr. If you want to pay your respects to this New York founding father, you can head downtown to Trinity Church, Wall Street, where he is buried, or head uptown to Harlem, where his home, Hamilton Grange, is open for visitation.

* * * *

Read more about Alexander Hamilton in
Inside the Apple

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July 11, 1804: Burr Shoots Hamilton

Today marks the 207th anniversary of the famous duel between then-Vice President Aaron Burr and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. We blogged about the duel last year (and dedicated a chapter to it in Inside the Apple), but there have been a couple of new developments in the past year, most excitingly the imminent reopening of Hamilton's Harlem home, the Grange.

As the National Park Service notes:

The Grange has been closed to the public for nearly five years, going through a move and an "extreme makeover" designed to make Alexander Hamilton's "sweet project" look and feel as welcoming to us as it did to Hamilton and his family when they moved in in 1802.

The house was built by John McComb, Jr., the architect responsible for Castle Clinton in Battery Park and, along with Francis Magnin, New York's City Hall. Hamilton wanted to move his family to the heights of Harlem to get them away from the hustle and bustle--and disease--of the city. However, Hamilton only got to occupy his home, originally set in a vast, 32-acre property, for less than two years before being killed by Burr. In 1899, the house was moved about four blocks from its original location in Hamilton Heights to a lot owned by St. Luke's Church near the corner of Convent Avenue and 140th Street. Over the years, the house was surrounded by a church on one side and an apartment block on the other. As early as 1962, the National Park Service began thinking about relocating the home again.

That move finally took place in June 2008, when the house was jacked up off its foundations and rolled to a new site in St. Nicholas Park off 140th Street. The Grange's new location is more reminiscent of what Hamilton would have experienced when he lived in the house.

The house is set to reopen on September 17. It is worth noting that the other famous colonial house in Harlem, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, was the place where Aaron Burr got remarried in 1833 (to the home's owner, Eliza Jumel) and where he lived toward the very end of his life.

Read more about the history of Hamilton, Burr, and Colonial Harlem

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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RIP Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804)

Two-hundred-and-six years ago today, at approximately two o'clock in the afternoon, Alexander Hamilton died in Greenwich Village, the victim of a bullet fired by Vice President Aaron Burr.


Hamilton, originally from Nevis in the British West Indies, had come to New York to study at King's College (today's Columbia University). He joined the Continental Army in 1776 and within a year was Washington's aide-de-camp, a role that in many ways he never relinquished. Part of a trio that formed Washington's first cabinet, Hamilton had disproportionate sway as Treasury Secretary--biographer Ron Chernow has called him Washington's de facto Prime Minister.


After leaving Washington's cabinet, Hamilton worked as an attorney in New York; founded the city's oldest paper, the New York Evening Post (as a mouthpiece for his Federalist agenda); and made life difficult for people like Aaron Burr. Burr served as Thomas Jefferson's first Vice President, but in 1804 he discovered he was being left off the ticket in favor of New York Governor George Clinton.


As we write in Inside the Apple:

[When this happened,] Burr chose to run for Governor [of New York] himself. When he lost, he blamed it, in part, on the conniving of people like Alexander Hamilton. While politicians often attacked each other in print, it was done using pseudonyms or by attacking the party rather than the person. However, at a dinner party in Albany in March 1804, Hamilton and other anti-Burr Federalists had a grand time describing why Burr was incapable of being “trusted with the reins of government.” One guest at the dinner, Dr. Charles Cooper, wrote a letter to a friend recounting the event; the letter was leaked, and before long Hamilton’s Evening Post was refuting its contents publicly. This caused Cooper to write a follow-up, published in the Albany Register, in which he declared that everything he’d said was true—and there was more. Had he wished to, Cooper could have recounted Hamilton’s “still more despicable opinion…of Mr. Burr.” It was these words—“despicable opinion,” which were not even Hamilton’s—that would eventually get him killed.

When Hamilton refused to apologize to Burr, the Vice President challenged him to a duel. Since New York City had sensibly banned dueling, they headed across the Hudson to Weehawken, New Jersey, on the morning of July 11, 1804. Much has been written about each man's intentions that morning, but the facts are these: Hamilton missed and Burr shot Hamilton straight through the stomach and liver. Hamilton was rushed back to New York and the next day, July 12, died, soon after his wife Eliza had reached him from their home in Harlem.

Hamilton is buried in the south yard at Trinity Church, Wall Street. If you work in that neighborhood or are visiting today, stop by and you'll see lots of coins on the grave--a memorial to America's first financial wizard.

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Read more about Hamilton, Burr, and Revolutionary New York in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Happy Presidents Day

In honor of the holiday formerly known as Washington's Birthday, we thought we'd re-run a post we wrote last November about the presidency and New York City. Now, of course, we have one more New York president: Barack Obama, Columbia College class of 1983.

Wherever you are, hope you have a good holiday!

Michelle & James Nevius

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NEW YORK AND THE PRESIDENCY

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Though it didn't last very long, New York was the first capital of the United States, and on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, George Washington was sworn in as America's first president on April 30, 1789. (The building no longer stands, but a statue of Washington by J.Q.A. Ward graces the front of the building now known as Federal Hall National Memorial). After the inauguration, Washington went to St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway at Fulton Street, where his pew is still preserved. During the 15 months that New York remained the capital after the inauguration, Washington lived in a house on Cherry Street (at roughly the spot where the Brooklyn Bridge anchorage now stands) and then in a home on lower Broadway near Bowling Green. His vice president, John Adams, lived in isolated splendor in a mansion in Greenwich Village called Richmond Hill, later home to Vice President Aaron Burr.

 

AARON BURR

In 1800, the incumbent president, John Adams, was faced by his own vice president, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's running mate was New Yorker Aaron Burr; however, due to a flaw in the electoral system (which made no adequate provision for distinguishing between votes cast for president versus vice president), both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes and the election was thrown to the House of Representatives. The Federalists, who still controlled congress, tried to elect Burr as president, thus denying the seat to Jefferson, who many considered the nation's leading opponent of Federalism. Notably, it was only though the intervention of Burr's nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, that Jefferson was finally elected president on the 36th ballot. Burr's home in Greenwich Village, Richmond Hill, is no longer standing, but one of the property's stables is now the restaurant One if By Land, Two if By Sea.

 

GEORGE CLINTON

Burr was left off  the Democratic-Republican ticket in 1804 in favor of New York governor George Clinton, who also went on to be James Madison's vice president (thus making him one of only two vice presidents to serve under different presidents; the other was the well-coiffed John C. Calhoun).

 

DEWITT CLINTON

In 1812, New York City fielded its first candidate for president, Mayor DeWitt Clinton. Despite mounting frustration with incumbent James Madison over the War of 1812, Clinton lost the election. Clinton went on to serve as New York's governor and presided over the building of the Erie Canal. (DeWitt Clinton is the person who is honored in the neighborhood Clinton—known to 

most people as Hell's Kitchen.)

 

DANIEL TOMPKINS

The man Clinton replaced as governor, Daniel Tompkins, was vice president  under James Monroe. Tompkins, who gave the land to the city that became Tompkins Square Park, is buried in the churchyard at St. Marks in the Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue.

 

MARTIN VAN BUREN

In 1836, New York governor Martin Van Buren (who had been Andrew Jackson's secretary of state and vice president) was elected to the presidency. It would be the last time until George H.W. Bush that a sitting vice president would succeed to the presidency without the president dying in office. Another fun fact about Van Buren: not only was he a descendant of one of the early Dutch settlers of New York, he grew up speaking Dutch.

 

MILLARD FILLMORE

Generally forgotten in the lists of American presidents is Millard Fillmore, who hailed from the Finger Lakes region upstate. A congressman for over a decade in the 1830s and '40s, Fillmore returned to New York to run an unsuccessful campaign for governor. In 1848, he became the state's comptroller. In that capacity, he oversaw the start of construction on the state militia's arsenal in Central Park. Today, his name is still clearly visible in the plaque over the building's front door. In 1848, Fillmore was also tapped to be General Zachary Taylor's running mate. When Taylor died after only a year in office, Fillmore became president. However, like John Tyler before him (who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of William Henry Harrison), Fillmore was not picked by his own party to run for a second term.

 

HORATIO SEYMOUR / HORACE GREELEY

In 1868, Governor Horatio Seymour was tapped by the Democrats to face war hero Ulysses S. Grant. Seymour had long been involved in New York State politics—the factionalism of this period is sometimes hard to fathom. Seymour was a "soft-shell hunker," opposed to those in the party who were "hard-shell hunkers" or "barnburners." The hirsute Seymour sported an impressive neck-beard, which was quite the fashion of the time.

 

Newspaper editor Horace Greeley faced Grant in the election of 1872. Greeley, a staunch Republican, had become disillusioned by the party and Grant's mediocre first term and decided to face him as a "Liberal Republican." (The Democrats backed Greeley, as well.) Grant handily won a second term and Greeley died before the Electoral College could convene, meaning that his electoral votes were split between four other Democratic candidates.

 

A handsome statue of Greeley (who, like Seymour, sported a neck-beard—whatever happened to those?) sits in City Hall Park near the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge.

SAMUEL J. TILDEN

Lawyer Samuel J. Tilden rose to prominence as the man who prosecuted William "Boss" Tweed. His success led to him winning the governor's race in 1874 and then being nominated for president by the Democratic Party in 1876 to face Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The Tilden/Hayes election continues to be the most disputed in American history. It took four months from Election Day for a special commission to name the winner. Ultimately, they picked Hayes though modern research indicates that Tilden almost certainly would have won the election had there not been electoral shenanigans in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Tilden lived in a wonderful double townhouse on Gramercy Park that is now home to The National Arts Club.

 

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

Though a native of Vermont (or, as his opponents tried to prove in 1880, of Canada), Chester A. Arthur moved to New York in 1854 to practice law. He was appointed collector of the Port of 

New York in 1871 and was nominated to run as James A. Garfield's vice president in 1880. Garfield was shot in July 1881, only a few months after taking office. He lingered for eighty days before succumbing to his wounds. At the time of the president's death, Arthur was at his home on Lexington Avenue (which still stands) and was sworn in as president there by a justice of the New York Supreme Court. He ran in 1885 to become president in his own right, but lost to New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

                                                                      

GROVER CLEVELAND

New York Governor Grover Cleveland was elected president in 1888 and again in 1892, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. (And the first Democrat to be nominated for 

president three consecutive times.) Cleveland's vice president during his second term was Adlai Stevenson, grandfather of the 20th-century presidential candidate who ran twice against Dwight D. Eisenhower.

 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

New York City has only produced one born-and-raised president, Teddy Roosevelt, who grew up in a house on East 20th Street near Gramercy Park. (Today, the National Park Service runs the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace in a replica house on the site.) Teddy became president in 1901 after President William 

McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo while attending the Pan-American Exposition. Roosevelt ran for election in his own right in 1904 and won, becoming the first vice president who had been elevated to the presidency who went on to win the office in his own right.

 

Teddy ran again in 1912 on the Progressive or "Bull Moose" ticket, siphoning enough votes away from incumbent Republican William Howard Taft to give the election to Woodrow Wilson.

 

AL SMITH

Lower East Sider Al Smith ("the Happy Warrior") rose to prominence in the state legislature in the early years of the 20th century. He was elected governor in 1918; though he lost the 1920 election, he was governor from 1922 to 1928 when he secured the Democratic nomination for president. The plainspoken Smith lost the election that year to Herbert Hoover, done in by a combination of prejudice (no Roman Catholic had ever sought the nation's highest office) and opposition to his "wet" candidacy during the height of Prohibition. Smith went on to be the head of the Empire State Corporation that erected the Empire State Building. His boyhood home, on Oliver Street, still stands and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

 

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

FDR served longer than any other president, from 1937 to his death in 1945, thus ushering in the era of presidential term limits. (He faced New Yorker Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election and New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.)

 

Born in Hyde Park, New York, in 1882, Roosevelt was the descendant of two of the oldest New York families. His Delano ancestor, Philippe de La Noye, arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 

the Fortune, the second ship to bring the Pilgrims to the New World. His Roosevelt ancestors had been in New York since the city had been New Amsterdam. Though he was only a distant cousin of Teddy Roosevelt, his wife, Eleanor, was Teddy's niece.

 

THOMAS E. DEWEY

Thomas Dewey was known as the "Gangbuster" for his crusades against bootlegging and 

organized crime as a New York City prosecutor and District Attorney. In 1942, he became governor and was nominated by the Republicans to face FDR in 1944 and then to face 

Harry Truman in 1948. Almost all pundits and pollsters considered Dewey's election a lock—so much so 

that the Chicago Daily Tribune went to bed on election night with "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" running across the page. In the end, though Truman only squeaked out a narrow popular victory, the margin in the Electoral College was overwhelming.

 

Dewey's ignominious defeat marked an end to New York's role in presidential (as opposed to vice presidential) electoral politics. A couple of vice presidential hopefuls in recent years have hailed from New York: William Miller, who was Barry Goldwater's pick in 1964, and Geraldine Ferraro, who ran with Walter Mondale in 1984. Also, in 1974, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was appointed to be Gerald Ford’s Vice President, making the two of them the only combination in history of a president and vice president who were not elected.

 

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Much more about many of these New York politicos—including George Washington, Aaron Burr, DeWitt Clinton, Samuel Tilden, and Al Smith—can be found in our forthcoming book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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