[The following is in relation to the death of Alexander Hamilton’s eldest son, Philip.]
Two and a half years before, his eldest son, Philip, who was just twenty and recently graduated from Columbia, got into a scrape at the theater. In the adjoining box sat a rising young lawyer and politician named Eacker. Eacker had made a speech saying that Alexander Hamilton wouldn’t mind overthrowing President Jefferson by force. During intermission, Philip and a friend of his crowded into Eacker’s box and made rude comments about the speech. (Kindly historians say he was defending his father’s honor, but it sounds as if the boys might have been rather drunk.) Eacker moved away toward the lobby, saying, “It is too abominable to be publicly insulted by a pair of damned rascals.”
Philip and friend followed him, determined to quarrel, and cried out, “Whom do you call ‘damned rascals’?”
[…]
The three wound up in a nearby tavern, where the boys kept up their clamor until Eacker said, “Gentlemen, you had better make less noise. I shall expect to hear from you.”
”That you shall!” they cried.
Eacker met Philip’s friend first, at Weehawken, and after four shots apiece and no damage, they shook hands and parted. Then it was Philip’s turn. He refused to apologize for his rowdiness. Eacker refused to retract the “rascals.” At Weehawken, his first shot hit home while Philip’s hair trigger went off too soon, firing into the air.
A college classmate of Philip’s recounted the rest for the New York Historical Magazine. When the news flashed through town, he hurried from the theater to the Hamilton’s house, where he was admitted to Philip’s room. “On a bed without curtains lay poor Phil, pale and languid, his rolling, distorted eyeballs darting forth flashes of delirium. On one side of him, on the same bed, lay his agonized father; on the other, his distracted mother; around him were numerous relatives and friends, weeping and fixed in sorrow. Blanched with astonishment and affright was the countenance which, a few minutes before, was illuminated by the smile of merriment.”
Philip Hamilton died painfully the next morning.
Source:
Holland, Barbara. “VI. Birth of a Nation.” Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk. Bloomsbury, 2004. 113-15. Print.
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