MORE about HAMILTON and BURR
The dawn of the nineteenth century saw 60,000 people in the city of New
York and the town extending a mile up the island. Above the city were
farms and orchards and the country homes of the wealthy. Where Broadway
ended there was a patch of country called Lispenard's Meadow, and about
this time a canal was cut through it from the Collect Pond to the
Hudson River. This was the canal which long years afterward was filled
in and gave its name to Canal Street.
[Illustration: The Collect Pond.]
From time to time there were projects for setting out a handsome park
about the shores of the Collect Pond, but the townspeople thought it was
too far away from the city. But in a few years the city grew up to the
Collect Pond, which was then filled in, and to-day a gloomy prison (The
Tombs) is built upon the spot.
One of the new undertakings was the building of a new City Hall, as the
old one in Wall Street was no longer large enough. So the present City
Hall was begun on what was then the Common, but it was not finished for
a good ten years. The front and sides were of white marble, and the rear
of cheaper red sandstone, as it was thought that it would be many years
before anyone would live far enough uptown to notice the difference.
How odd this seems in these days, when the City Hall is quite at the
beginning of the city.
Aaron Burr had by this time been elected Vice-President of the United
States. But he soon lost the confidence of the people, and when, in the
year 1803, he hoped to be made Governor of the State of New York, he was
defeated.
[Illustration: The Grange, Kingsbridge Road, the Residence of Alexander
Hamilton.]
Now at this time Alexander Hamilton was still a leader in the party
opposed to Aaron Burr, and did everything possible to defeat him. And
Burr, angered because of this, and believing that Hamilton had sought to
bring dishonor upon him, challenged Hamilton to a duel--the popular way
of settling such serious grievances. So Hamilton accepted the challenge
and on a morning in the middle of the summer of 1804, just after
sunrise, the duel took place on the heights of the shore of New Jersey,
just above Weehawken. Hamilton fell at the first fire mortally wounded.
The next day he died.
There was great sorrow throughout the entire country, for he was a brave
and good man, and had been a leader since the War of the Revolution. All
the citizens followed him to his rest in Trinity Churchyard, and in the
churchyard to-day you can see his tomb carefully taken care of and
decorated, year by year.
After the death of Hamilton the feeling against Burr in the city was
bitter indeed, and he soon went away.
A few years later, when a project was formed for establishing a great
empire in the southwest and overthrowing the United States, this same
Aaron Burr was thought to be concerned in the plot. When, after a trial,
he was acquitted, he went to live in Europe. But he returned after a
time, and the last years of his life were passed in New York.