The dying faith of Alexander Hamilton

In the early morning hours of July 11, 1804, two boats made their way across the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey. One boat carried Aaron Burr, then the sitting vice president of the United States. In the other rode Alexander Hamilton, former secretary of the treasury. Their separate travel took them to the same location: the Heights of Weehawken, N.J. These famous men met that morning for a duel (the location was a popular one for such activities).

The hit musical Hamilton has brought the episode into the popular consciousness. Burr had defeated Hamilton’s father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, for a Senate seat in 1791. But the real impetus for that fateful morning came in Hamilton’s response to the election of 1800. At that point, electors cast two votes for president with the top person winning that office and the second place person becoming VP. Burr was supposed to be the vice presidential candidate to Thomas Jefferson. However, a slip-up resulted in the two tying which threw determining the result into Congress.

After much deadlock, Hamilton intervened to side with Jefferson, his longtime political foe. He did so, he said, because Jefferson’s wrong political principles were preferable to Burr’s lack of any conviction. This included various critiques of Burr’s character. Hamilton also lent support to opposing Burr’s 1804 candidacy for governor of New York. Angry letters between them eventually resulted in Burr’s challenge to a duel.

We know what happened. Hamilton seems to have pointed his gun in the air while Burr shot Hamilton just above the right hip. Hamilton would die from this wound the next day, July 12.

What is less known about this episode are the manifestations of Hamilton’s Christian faith. In our time of religious debate and confusion, the story is a useful tale of genuine faith lost and found again.

Hamilton had a period of religious fervor as a young man but one that seems to have subsided in adulthood. The uncovering of his affair with Maria Reynolds and the death of his son Philip in a duel seems to have been an impetus back toward a genuine religious belief, though not one that seems to have resulted in regular church attendance. His wife, Eliza, held a sincere and fervent faith throughout, one she modeled to Alexander and that she dutifully taught to their children.

This faith proved a durable and solid support that fame and political achievement were not. Hamilton took solace in his son Philip’s eternal destiny, saying, “I firmly trust also that he has safely reached the haven of eternal repose and felicity.”

Prior to the duel, Hamilton wrote a letter about the coming encounter with Burr, saying, “My religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to the practice of Duelling, and it would even give me pain to be obliged to shed the blood of a fellow creature in a private combat forbidden by the laws.”

The night before the duel, Hamilton wrote a letter to Eliza. In that letter, he said, “I humbly hope from redeeming grace and divine mercy, a happy immortality.” Moreover, he sought to comfort her, if he had been killed, by saying, “The consolations of Religion, my beloved, can alone support you; and these you have a right to enjoy. Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted. With my last idea; I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world.”

Moreover, on his death bed, Hamilton met with more than one minister asking to be given the Lord’s Supper. It was refused him by an Episcopal and Presbyterian minister on ecclesiastical and moral grounds. Finally, the Episcopal minister, Bishop Benjamin Moore, changed his mind, agreeing to administer the sacrament. In those conversations, Hamilton is recorded to have admitted his status as a sinner, repented of participating in the duel, and thrown himself on God’s mercy. These moments included the statement, ““I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Hamilton’s death took from this country a shining star, a Founder who had proven indispensable in achieving independence from Great Britain and in forcing the new Constitution and new form of government. His death was a tragedy. But as we remember that death, we should give more attention than does popular culture to the hope displayed in those closing years and even moments. Hamilton may not have achieved all of his ambitions on this earth. He never ascended to the presidency and watched the political party he created, the Federalists, fall apart. But he seems, by grace, to have gained something much better—“a happy immortality.”