Books: Dueling politicians

In the historical mystery of Hamilton and Burr, the real difference was getting right with God | Roy Maynard

The central question addressed by author Arnold Rogow in A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr is the question historians have asked for two centuries now: What terrible thing did Alexander Hamilton say that pushed Aaron Burr into issuing the challenge to a duel? Neither man ever said publicly, but that duel was fought on July 11, 1804, on a Jersey bluff overlooking Manhattan. Hamilton was shot in the abdomen and died 36 hours later.

But there's a more important and more interesting theme running through the affair that Mr. Rogow infrequently touches on: Two men, from vastly different spiritual backgrounds, were in their natures very much alike. They were both deeply flawed, but in the end, it was Alexander Hamilton, the illegitimate son of a Scotch peddler, born in the West Indies, who came to Christ. Aaron Burr, the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, son of a minister who headed the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), died years later, alone and, according to historians such as Mr. Rogow, unrepentant.