The Hamilton-Burr duel has become one of the most infamous altercations in U.S. history. Officers in the Revolutionary War and original members of the Society of the Cincinnati—Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr squared off in Weehawken, New Jersey, in the hours of the early morning on July 11, 1804. Although Hamilton led the Society as its president general at the time of his death, Cordell Lee Bragg argues that Society members gave first voice to an evolving negative public judgment of the propriety of this “pernicious custom.”
Video courtesy of C-SPAN’s American History TV
About the Speaker
Cordell Lee Bragg is an independent historian and author of Distinction in Every Service: Brigadier General Marcellus A. Stovall, C.S.A. (2002), Never for Want of Powder: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia (2007), of which he is coauthor, and Crescent Moon over Carolina: William Moultrie and American Liberty (2013).