Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 5:13am

Awful Foreshadowing

 

Events in history sometimes seem as if they were written by a novelist, or should I say Novelist.  Such was the sad case of Philip Hamilton.  Eldest son of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Hamilton, Hamilton graduated at the age of 19 from Columbia, a brilliant student like his father.  It was at a Fourth of July celebration at Columbia that he heard George I. Eacker, a 27 year old lawyer and a political supporter of Aaron Burr, give a speech attacking his father.  Hamilton and his friend Richard Price called Eacker out in a Manhattan theater on November 21, 1801.  Eacker called them damned rascals and they responded by challenging Eacker to duels.  Eacker fought a duel the next day with Richard Price in which neither of the participants was injured, although shots were exchanged.

On November 22, 1801 in Weehawken, New Jersey, the same place where his father would receive his fatal wound from Aaron Burr, Hamilton and Eacker faced each other.  Apparently they faced each other about a minute without raising their pistols, and one wishes that reason had prevailed.  Eacker finally fired, hitting Hamilton in his right hip and left arm.  Hamilton also fired, but this may have been merely an involuntary reaction to the force of the shot that hit him.  Some sources say that Alexander Hamilton had counseled his son to fire in the air before his opponent fired, so that the matter could be settled honorably without blood shed.

Alexander Hamilton collapsed when he heard that his son had been shot.  Philip Hamilton died after 14 hours in agony, his mother and father by his side.  Before he died he professed his faith in Christ.  The physician who attended him, Doctor David Hosack, would do the same for Philip’s father after his own duel.  George Eacker survived the duel only by a smidge over two years, dying of consumption on January 4, 1804.

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Mary De Voe
Friday, September 30, AD 2016 7:32am

God’s Justice is as fine as gold.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Friday, September 30, AD 2016 8:26am

Events in history sometimes seem as if they written by a novelist, or should I say Novelist.

I’ve found a lot of peace as I began to realize this. Why doesn’t God step in and solve every problem? Because it would make for a very boring story. Indeed it’s hard to read the Bible without coming away with the impression that the Almighty has a flair for the dramatic.

The Christian Teacher
The Christian Teacher
Friday, September 30, AD 2016 6:55pm

What is the “consumption” that killed a lot of these folks?

Mary De Voe
Saturday, October 1, AD 2016 11:42am

Isaiah 50: 8-9 The Fifth Amendment. Court trial, habeas Corpus, faced by one’s accuser in a court of law, no trial in absentia, giving the citizen his day in court.

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