How did Alexander Hamilton die?
Was he a Christian?

Alexander Hamilton did much to secure Thomas Jefferson’s election as third United States President. This intensified the animosity already felt for him by Aaron Burr, whom he had frequently and effectually opposed; and Burr, on a trivial pretext, beguiled him into a duel (July 11th, 1804) at Weehawken, New Jersey, opposite New York – mortally wounding him at the first fire. Hamilton, who abhorred the prevalent code, but felt forced to fight in order to preserve his influence, previously had determined to discharge his pistol into the air. He died on the following day, July 12th,1804.1
In a Eulogy on General Alexander Hamilton, pronounced at the request of the Citizens of Boston, July 26th, 1804 by Honorable Harrison G. Otis, Esq., we read of Alexander Hamilton’s true Christianity:

…But while Religion mourns for this aberration of the judgment of a great man, she derives some consolation from his testimony in her favour. If she rejects the apology, she admits the repentance; and if the good example be not an atonement, it may be an antidote for the bad. Let us then, in an age of infidelity, join, in the imagination, the desolate group of wise, and children and friends, who surround the dying bed of the inquisitive, the luminous, the scientific Hamilton, and witness his attention to the Truth and comforts of our Holy Religion. Let us behold the lofty warrior bow his head before the Cross of the meek and lowly JESUS; and he who had so lately graced the sumptuous tables and society of the luxurious and rich, now, regardless of these meaner pleasures, and aspiring to be admitted to a sublime enjoyment with which no worldly joys can compare – to a devout and humble participation of the bread of life. The religious fervor of his last moments was not an impulse of decaying nature yielding to its fears, but the result of a firm conviction of the truths of the Gospel. I am well informed, that in early life, the evidences of the Christian Religion had attracted his serious examination, and obtained his deliberate assent to the Truth, and that he daily upon his knees devoted a portion of time to a compliance with one of its most important injunctions: And that however these edifying propensities might have yielded occasionally to the business and temptations of life, they always resumed their influence, and would probably have prompted him to a public profession of his faith in his Redeemer2

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Bibliography:

1

Scott, Walter Dill, B.A., Ph.D., L.L.D., (ed.) President Emeritus of Northwestern University. The American Peoples Encyclopedia. Alexander Hamilton. Chicago: The Spencer Press, Inc., 1948.

2

Otis, Harrison G., Esq., Honorable. Eulogy on General Alexander Hamilton, Pronounced at the Request of the Citizens of Boston, July 26th, 1804. Boston: Printed and sold by Manning and Loring, No. 21, Cornhill, 1804. Library of Congress, Rare Book Collection.


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