Learning from the anti-dueling movement
Alexander Hamilton’s 1804 death in a duel galvanized popular opposition. We need a similar campaign around gun violence.
On July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey—just across the Hudson River from Manhattan—two longtime political adversaries faced off in a duel. The result: Vice President Aaron Burr shot and mortally wounded the former secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. (No, Dick Cheney was not the first vice president to shoot someone!)
Dueling, which Benjamin Franklin characterized as a “murderous practice,” was technically illegal in most states. But it had become popular as part of a “culture of honor” among veterans of the Continental Army. Soldiers and politicians sought to mimic the European military elites they had encountered while fighting alongside them against the British. “The rage for dueling here,” a visitor from France noted in 1779, “has reached an incredible and scandalous point.”
Those who wished to engage in a duel found ways to circumvent local laws. Dueling was illegal in the District of Columbia, so politicians simply crossed the Anacostia River to Bladensburg, Maryland. In the early 19th century, more than 50 duels took place in the area that became known as the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds.
