Hamilton Threw Away His Shot

I finished Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton the other day. It was one of those lengthy biographies that I feel like should count for six books on my annual reading list. I want a gold star for finishing. Someone give me a damn gold star!

Anyway, one thing I was not expecting at the end of the book was the utterly pathetic nature of Hamilton's demise. Years collapse pretty easily when looking back 200 years and I assumed, given Aaron Burr's status as vice president of the United States and Hamilton's own political prowess, that this would be the modern equivalent of Mike Pence squaring off with Harry Reid (which would be kinda cool). In truth, Burr was a lame duck VP from the get go, a burr (get it?) in Thomas Jefferson's saddle that had no chance at another term and whose future political prospects at any level were increasingly dim.

Likewise, Hamilton had worked himself out of power with his war of words with John Adams, his well- and self-publicized affair with Maria Reynolds, and his general unwillingness to ever just, like, chill for a minute. Hamilton had no national presence and had retreated back into a lucrative but trivial New York City law practice. 

In other words, this was not a clash of Titans but a clash of has-been Uncle Ricos (Napoleon Dynamite reference FTW) thumping their chests in a pathetic bout of "honor." Burr was an opportunist who people figured out was an opportunist. Hamilton was a vital member of the founding and initial solvency of the union but his own worst enemy. They fought each other over a word: despicable. Hamilton supposedly used that word to describe Burr. Burr said, "Hey, wtf, bro?" Hamilton was, like, "Yeah, I don't remember saying that, but I'm not going to take it back if I did." It took them weeks to work through this. Both were near 50 years old and never once did one of them go: "Hey, this is crazy. Maybe we shouldn't point guns at each other in New Jersey because we're both arrogant, has-been d-bags." But, being arrogant, has-been d-bags, no one made that move.

So, on that fateful morning in July of 1804 that I mostly had heard about before the musical came out from this commercial, these two men lined up across from each other, pointed dueling pistols at each other, and Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in between the ribs. Hamilton, with an eye to posterity, went around in the weeks before the duel (again, this lingered for weeks; it is hard for me to stay mad for more than an hour about something) telling everyone to whom he revealed his plan that he planned to "throw away his shot." In dueling parlance, this meant that he was not going to shoot at Burr. He would aim his gun at the sky and trust Burr to do the gentlemanly thing and aim his gun at the sky. Then they would hug and go get ice cream or something.

Instead, Burr shot him and he died a few days later, leaving behind his wife and seven children. I struggle to see this a noble end. His death certainly exudes pathos, but the pointlessness of it all is overwhelming. 

It would make a weird ending to the book, which is why Chernow comes back to the story of Eliza Hamilton and her efforts to prolong Alexander's renown. Eliza lived into the 1850s, an inveterate abolitionist and orphanage philanthropist, dying before the war that tested the union her husband fought for so vigorously to a degree that her husband largely intuited. Therefore, the book gets to end on a noble note. But these last 10 pages could not undo for me the previous chapters, where we see a once great man brought down by his own pettiness and vain ambition.

One of the best songs from the musical is "I'm Not Throwing Away My Shot." It comes early in the play and focuses on young Alexander's ambition to make his mark in the world. In the end he didn't so much throw away his shot--though he literally did that in the duel--as squander it. He died pathetically and needlessly, and try as we might to hang posthumous laurels upon him, the miserable circumstances of his death have stuck in my craw.