On July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel on the cliffs above the Hudson River — over political insults. Hamilton was the architect of America's financial system. Burr was the sitting second-in-command of the United States. He finished his term as a wanted man in two states and never held office again. This episode of Sidequests tells the full story of the Burr-Hamilton rivalry, the political backstabbing that turned fatal, and what the duel actually reveals about American polarization: not that it's worse than ever, but that the Founders were far more willing to kill each other over political disputes than we tend to remember — and that building institutions capable of managing that fury without violence was a genuine achievement.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}