Charles Town, West Virginia The Duel – Hamilton and Burr Submitted to the Department of History December 16, 2011 On July 11, 1804, a duel occurred in Weehawken, New Jersey. Duels were not extremely uncommon in those days but what made this one significant was the individuals involved in the contest. One of the participants was Aaron Burr who happened to be the sitting Vice President of the United States. The other participant was Alexander Hamilton, who was a well-respected statesman…
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carefully skimming through Joseph J. Ellis’s book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, I decided to read the book out of context. Ellis is a well-known author and I have read his book “American Sphinx - The Character of Thomas Jefferson” for a History Fair project. (Ellis, 1997) However, Ellis used a different approach in the Founding Brothers by organizing the book to first catch the attention of the audience with the duel between Burr and Hamilton. Perhaps Ellis was trying to write his first…
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J. Ellis: Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation In the book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, Ellis points out crucial moments that took place during post-revolutionary America and the founding father’s own personal life’s. Joseph J. Ellis examines the influence the disordered time in which they lived on created among the founding fathers .Founding Brothers, is organized into seven sections. Among these seven sections, Ellis helps us understand what our founding fathers went…
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state governor II. 1. “Aaron Burr left… seven surviving children.” (pg. 21- 26) This portion of the chapter is the first time we are introduced to any of the founding ‘brothers’ or to the situation between Burr and Hamilton. Since I had no prior knowledge of the encounter or the people it involved, I thought that this was essential and an excellent introduction to both items. It describes Aaron Burr, the vice president of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury…
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There were many issues that the founding brothers debated about. Some of the topics included honor, land, money, power and slavery. Alexander Hamilton’s and Aaron Burr’s duel was about honor. Hamilton called Burr “despicable”, because Burr had changed his political standpoint. Burr then lost the election for Governor of New York, so he challenged Hamilton to a duel. The duel then caused the death of Hamilton and Burr lost everything politically. The founding brothers debated the place for the capital…
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reasonable, but bound to happen. Joseph Ellis, the author of Founding Brothers, discusses and describes some of the key founders of this country and how they reshaped history. Some Americans take what they have for granted, and they are not always thankful for what this country has given them in life. If the British were to have won the Revolutionary war, life as we know it would be extremely different and the people discussed Founding Brothers would have most likely been killed. No other country had…
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Founding Brothers is about American Revolution political characters, specially Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. The book describes in detail the early days of the American republic and how a series of outstanding events defined what kind of nation America would turn into and how America would survive its unsettled beginning. The men and Abigail Adams the book focuses on were very close. They may not have been the close friends, but…
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Ellis wrote Founding Brothers in 2000 when a lot of our nations history was still being interpreted. Within the first line of this book he sets a precedent that the way you think about history will be changed forever. The most infamous line in history is quoted in the first line of the text, “No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution”(Ellis 3). He takes a new outlook on the lives of America's founding fathers and…
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enough? Will they tell my story?” Phillipa Soo, who originated the role of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton in the hit musical “Hamilton”, sang these words. Ever since the musical took the world by storm, many people have been delving into the rich lives of the historical figures featured in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece. One such figure is the wife of the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Elizabeth Schuyler, Hamilton’s wife, changed the world by establishing one of the first private…
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Different perspectives can offer you a different view at the same events. In the novel Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis, the reader can get a more in depth look to some important events that shaped the history of our country. This book can give you a different perspective to what is presented to you in textbooks because it gets very detailed and personal in multiple events throughout history. This can be very important for young historians because it can give them a different view to what was…
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