by Jake Smith
For my historical annotation project, I am annotating the Hamilton-Burr duel correspondence letters. These are a series of argumentative letters between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr responding to a prior letter by Dr. Charles D. Cooper that was published in the Albany Register saying, “General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not be trusted with the reins of government.” Burr took exception to this and the letters he wrote in response as well as Hamilton’s responses are the letters I am annotating. Hamilton and Burr corresponded by writing each other in New York.
I was initially drawn to these documents because I wanted to learn what exactly caused Hamilton and Burr to duel and what events led up to it. Upon reading the letters, you can sense the uneasiness and frustration the two have with each other as they go back and forth. I was also drawn to the letters because being able to read two life long rivals’ personal correspondences is fascinating- you get a glimpse into their mind and what they are actually thinking. This kind of personal writing was more interesting to me than an actual publication. The importance of these letters is to establish the events that caused Hamilton and Burr to duel. It is still not fully known what specific event led to their duel, but these letters tell part of the story.
In order to fully understand the letters, I need to look at what was going on at the time they were written, more specifically the Dr. Cooper letter. I plan to use as many primary sources like the letter by Dr. Cooper in my research as they provide the best information. I have been approaching this by using the national archives website which has many letters by Hamilton and Burr and reading secondary sources explaining the tension between the two at the time. The main challenges I’ve faced so far is finding sources that reference the correspondence letters because there are not many. I plan to work around this by piecing together the events before and after these letters to get a greater understanding of the whole situation.
