21 July—We welcome Penny Mudgett to her new job as Litchfield’s assessor and wish her the best of luck in the toxic workplace town hall has become in recent years. (And it ain’t getting any better.) Chris Kelsey, Middlebury’s permanent assessor and Litchfield’s interim assessor for the four years since the previous permanent assessor left because of the unbearable toxicity, was mercifully fired to make way for Penny, who comes to Litchfield from Oxford, where she’s been assessing for five years. Out of the frying pan?
Coincidentally, just as Litchfield called on Chris Kelsey as a temp while looking for a permanent assessor, Oxford has called on him as a temp while that town looks for a permanent assessor to replace Penny Mudgett.
Among coincidences, both Penny and Chris live in Woodbury. But not together.
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Fifty-six years ago today, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left the moon to return to Earth. One wonders if they’d have elected to stay on the moon had Donald Trump been president in 1969.
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On the subject of Donald Trump, then, there’s a crowd-funding effort afoot to raise $40 million in order to have him assassinated. No kidding. It seems that a week after Midnight Hammer bombed Iranian nuclear facilities (for whatever it may have been worth), Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi on 29 June issued a fatwa against Trump, whom the big Shia kahuna accused—with some justification—of being an “enemy of Allah.”
The fatwa called upon “Muslims of the world” to kill Trump, promising them rewards befitting “warriors of Allah.”
This is the full text of the fatwa. Translated, of course:
“In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
“Anyone—whether an individual or a regime—who threatens the Islamic Ummah [Muslims in general], its head of state, leadership, or marja [supreme religious authority], or attempts violence against them, is classified as a muharib [infidel combatant]. Any form of cooperation or support for such individuals or regimes is strictly haram [forbidden] for Muslims and Islamic governments.
“It is incumbent upon all Muslims across the world to cause the perpetrators to regret their words and deeds. Those who endure hardship or loss in doing so shall, God willing, be rewarded as befitting their efforts towards following the path of God.
“May Allah protect the Islamic community from harm inflicted by its enemies and hasten the reappearance of Imam Mahdi, may peace be upon him.
“I wish you success in every endeavor.“
Other cleric kahunas joined the fatwa frenzy. So a group called “Blood Covenant,” connected with a former kahuna in Iran’s state media but likely fully sanctioned by the government, pledged “to award the prize to whoever can bring the militants and those who threaten the life of the Deputy of Imam Mahdi (may our souls be sacrificed for him) to justice for their actions.”
The “call to jihad” and promise of profit or paradise (but presumably not both) evidently has religious legitimacy as it invites believers to donate their cash and sacrifice their lives to assassinate Trump. How many virgins await the late hero?
But don’t get your hopes up. The bad news is that should anything happen to Trump, the first in line to the Oval Office is Vance . . .
20 July—Among the ephemeral gems flowing over the edges of the twin recycling bins in the Litchfield post orifice the other day were an even dozen Republican-themed envelopes addressed to USPS PO-box extortion victims including three no longer with us—two having crossed the bar, as Tennyson put it, and one having moved to Florida to prepare for it. And there was another envelope on the floor. None of the envelopes had been opened. Why would that be? Just wondering.
Anyway, that’s a pity, because the addressees on this side of the bar would have discovered that they were 2025 Charter Members of the Republican Presidential Task Force. And they’d have found personalized silvery plastic membership cards to prove it. The plastic key tags attached to the cards that confirmed the bearers to be 2025 charter members weren’t personalized but none the less impressive.
(The addressees also would have found begging letters, but since charter membership in the Republican Presidential Task Force didn’t appear to be contingent on sending money, who cares?)
The backsides of the silver membership cards naturally contained space for authorized signatures; the warning that the cards were non-transferable; the “Paid for by the Republican National Committee . . . Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee” disclaimer; and the Republican National Committee seal with the stylized elephant.
Also on the backsides was a message to the lucky, privileged members: “The bearer of this card is distinguished as an official 2025 Charter Member of the Republican Presidential Task Force. As a Task Force Member, you are recognized as a key supporter of President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party’s efforts to maintain our Congressional Majorities.”
Should one wonder why the message on the backsides shifted from the third person in the first sentence to the second person in the second sentence, before shifting again to the first person plural (or editorial singular) in the second sentence? Nah. Because the important thing is that the lucky (few?) GOP SOBs identified on the cards are actually recognized as presumably elite key supporters of Donald J. Trump’s and the Republican Party’s reprehensible efforts to make America a monarchy again . . .
19 July—Before descending to the stercoraceous depths of the Epstein-Trump saga, we must congratulate Kenneth Savage. The caption to the picture of him in this morning’s Hearst Republican-American says it all: “Kenneth Savage holds the framed Guinness Book of World Records award presented to him by his family on Wednesday as he was surprised with the recognition for his 54-plus years as a science teacher at the Scotch Plains Tavern in Essex.”
Fifty-four years teaching anywhere certainly is a remarkable achievement, but doing it at a tavern poses quite a challenge, clearly making it worthy of recognition by the Guinness organization.
Now all the way down to Epstein-Trump. First, why all the interest in unsealing and presumably publishing all the succulent evidence? Easy. Can there be any doubt that it’s all about seeing who Epstein’s customers—clients?—were? Truth is, nobody really cares a twopenny turd about the salacious minutiae just as long as they—we—know whodunit. Okay, maybe the salacious details too, like whodunwhat and for how much.
Second, there’s Donald Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has never concealed his former friendship with the society whoremonger. And some observers have claimed that Trump and Epstein were in fact the closest of friends before falling out over a real estate deal in 2004. Of course it was real estate. Since Trump’s penchant for revenge is notorious, could that be why he didn’t try to quash or otherwise interfere with the case against Epstein in 2019?
Third, there’s Trump’s alleged birthday letter that accompanied a 50th-birthday gift to Epstein in 2003—a leather-bound collection of letters and notes compiled by Epstein’s accomplice in whoremongering Ghislaine Maxwell—to the birthday boy as revealed by The Wall Street Journal, but with no illustration. According to the WSJ, the letter was typewritten in the third person, included a drawing of a woman’s breasts, and was signed “Donald” with a heavy marker. The letter ended with, “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Could “Donald” ever be deciphered in a Trump signature? Just wondering.
On the one side, then, the WSJ crowd, all the way up (or down) to Rupert Murdoch, being fully aware of Trump’s litigious bullying, wouldn’t have risked the ten-billion-dollar libel suit Trump filed yesterday without having an arsenal of evidence to substantiate its story, for whatever it’s worth.
On the other side, assuming the birthday letter was in fact illustrated and signed by Donald Trump, what’s libelous about publishing it? It’s just a drawing of breasts accompanied by a somewhat cryptic birthday message. Libel shmibel.
Fourth, even though—or because—Trump now maintains that the Epstein files “were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by Biden,” he hasn’t in fact exerted his unworthy omnipotence to keep the dirt under wraps. So it’s a pretty safe assumption that he either has nothing to hide or just doesn’t give a damn about more dirt about him and/or his corrupt associates being exposed.
But you wonder why Trump had Jim Comey’s daughter Maurene fired yesterday. She had been on the team that prosecuted Epstein and Maxwell. Or, given Trump’s irrational and uncontrollable vengefulness, why he hadn’t ordered it earlier?
18 July—Today marks the centennial of the publication of “Mein Kampf.” The author of record, of course, was Adolf Hitler, but since he was a god-awful writer (but a pretty good painter) it’s likely that others—like noted parachutist Rudolf Hess, who also was Hitler’s typist and Stellvertreter des Führers (Deputy Führer), and Max Amann, who was the Nazi Party’s publisher—did rather more than just editing and proofreading. The book was a terrible read but it was a best-seller anyway and made Hitler, who held the copyright all by himself, lots and lots of Geld (money).
“The Art of the Deal,” also a money-making best-seller, was published some 62 years later, on 1 November 1987. The name boldly over the title on the jacket is Trump, but it’s credited on the bottom to Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz. According to Schwartz in 2016, Trump didn’t actually write any of the book but merely redacted “a few critical mentions of business colleagues” before publication. In all events, Schwartz owns the copyright jointly with Trump and received half the advance and royalties from Random House.
Presumably the Schwartz-Trump book is a better read than the Amann-Hess-Hitler book because Tony Schwartz is a good financial writer, but we couldn’t comment because we haven’t read it. (Don’t waste you time with “Mein Kampf,” by the way. We did.) Nor indeed could we comment on the Trump TV show that’s touted on some iterations of the book’s jacket even though it was no longer on the air at the time of publication because we know absolutely nothing about it.
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Yesterday’s “Mallard Fillmore” comic reads: “In response to recent U.S. military action, Iranian hackers briefly took down Trump’s Truth Social platform . . . causing disruption and inconvenience to literally tens of active users.”
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The latest news about the Trump dictatorship’s execrable populist xenophobic so-called third-country deportations is that five victims have been shipped off to Eswatini. Eswatini? When we read that, we naturally reckoned that Trump, real estate con man—sorry, make that mogul—that he is, had created a steerage-class resort-country expressly as a destination for his exiles (including but not limited to alleged gang members, trumped-up criminals, and critics) who eventually are bound to number in the millions.
But we must abjectly apologize to Eswatini. Because we were surprised—positively gobsmacked, in fact—to discover that Eswatini is in actual fact a very very very little landlocked country in Southern Africa, with South Africa (where Trump’s invited Afrikaner refugees come from) on three sides and Mozambique on one. And it’s been an independent nation—Umbuso weSwatini (the Kingdom of Eswatini)—and a member of the United Nations since the United Kingdom granted it independence in 1968. We were living in the UK at the time and didn’t even know it. Our bad.
Like the United States, Eswatini is an absolute monarchy with a bicameral legislature of record, for all it’s worth. While Eswatini is the last absolutel monarchy in Africa, the United States is the resurrection of absolute monarchy in North America.
Anyway, in our unworthy defense, Eswatini became Eswatini only in 2018, when, during the celebration of its 50th year of independence—and the king’s coincidental 50th birthday, as it happened—it changed its name from Swaziland, which of course everybody knew. And that was done, according to informed sources, not only to reflect the country’s original Swazi name, but also to avoid confusion with Switzerland.
Makes perfect sense. But by the time Swaziland became Eswatini Switzerland didn’t have truly anonymous numbered bank accounts. So who cared?
17 July—Word is going around that the popular Epstein-Barr virus, initialized as EBV, was named in honor of pimp Jeffrey Epstein and attorney general William Barr. Don’t believe it. Because the EBV was actually named after the people who discovered it in 1961, English pathologist Sir Anthony Epstein (who died last year at 102) and Irish virologist Yvonne Barr (who died in 2016 at 83), who was working in Epstein’s lab at Middlesex Hospital in London.
To refresh your memory, the Epstein-Barr Virus, also known as human herpes virus 4 (HHV-4), is one of the nine known human herpesvirus types and one of the most common viruses in humans. About 95 percent of the world’s population has been infected with it at some point in their lives. Most people are infected during childhood or adolescence, usually without experiencing noticeable symptoms.
Nevertheless, Epstein-Barr virus is highly contagious, spread primarily through close contact with bodily fluids, most commonly saliva, but also blood, urine, and semen, among others.
Once a person is infected with EBV, the virus remains latent in that lucky person for life. And even in death, because it’s not impossible for a cadaver’s bodily fluid to transmit the virus.
EBV is perhaps best known for causing infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever to Brits), although what’s popularly known as kissing disease because of spit swapping can also be caused by other viruses. It’s most common among adolescents and young adults. When real grown-ups get it, it’s not unlikely to be misdiagnosed and to develop complications.
Epstein-Barr virus also is closely linked to any number of cancers and autoimmune diseases. And it can infect non-human animals, like dogs, cats, and rabbits. Unfortunately, no vaccine has yet been formulated to prevent EBV infection. But when such a vaccine is developed, the world had better hope that the nutty mountebank Robert Kennedy Jr. isn’t around . . .
16 July—Eighty years ago today (that’s 1945, kids), in the aptly named Jornada del Muerto (Day of the Dead) desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the world’s very first atomic bomb was tested. It was code-named Trinity by Los Alamos Laboratory and project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, evidently alluding to the first line of Metaphysical poet John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” In the poem Donne begs God’s—the Holy Trinity’s—intercession to escape from sin, even if it requires harsh measures. Makes sense in the circumstance. Gotta give it to Oppy. And the Jornada del Muerto desert had been given that name well before Trinity.
Trinity’s explosion was equivalent to 21 kilotons—21,000 tons—of TNT, the mushroom cloud reached an altitude of over seven miles, and the chain reaction didn’t blow up the whole planet. So the test was destructively successful and rich in radioactive contamination.
Nine years later, 1 March 1954, America’s biggest bomb ever, a thermonuclear (hydrogen) device code-named Castle Bravo (because the series of nuclear tests was called Operation Castle and Bravo is the second letter of the phonetic alphabet and Castle Bravo was the—uh—first test of the series [go figure]) was detonated over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Its yield, which turned out to be two-and-a-half times larger than the planned six megatons, was 15 megatons—15,000,000 tons of TNT and the mushroom cloud reached an altitude of 25 miles and spread out over 62 miles, contaminating a much larger area of the central Pacific. Blame the lithium.
But that was child’s play. Because on 30 October 1961 the Soviets exploded the biggest bomb ever over the Mityushikha Bay Nuclear Testing Range in the really northern Arctic. Called Vanya by the Russkies and Tsar Bomba (Emperor Bomb) by the West, the 50 megaton—50,000,000 ton—Soviet thermonuclear mother’s cloud reached 40 miles into the stratosphere, with the blast destroying everything within a 22-mile radius and causing severe damage as far as 62 miles away.
But we have nothing to worry about because of various non-proliferation and test-ban treaties—even though they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on . . .
15 July—The penultimate paragraph of yesterday’s disquisition contained a passing comment about underage women not appearing to be Donald Trump’s style, “with or without consent.” The mention of Trump and sexual encounters of any sort motivated an alert reader to point out that just last Thursday the Second Circuit Court of Appeals formally ended Trump’s appeal of 2023 and 2024 jury verdicts that had found him liable of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll.
Remember the headlines? Civil trials, not criminal because that’s where the money is: total money damages now stand at about $90 million. Sexual abuse, not rape, because in New York rape means forcible penile penetration and Trump’s penetration of Carroll was forcibly digital. Do you wonder why?
(Combine money and digital, by the way, and you get cryptocurrency and Trump’s self-dealing meme coins. Combine money and penile and you get Trump.)
Trump has 90 days from the circuit decision to appeal to the Supreme Court. And you’d better believe he’ll do it. And it’s far from inconceivable that, based on their disgraceful, absolutely disgusting record on Trump-motivated litigation thus far, a majority of the Supremes will decide that Trump’s defamatory comments constituted an official act as president and are therefore immune from any monetary damages or other penalties.
So when Carroll v. Trump gets to SCOTUS, Trump’s case likely will be delivered by D. John Sauer, Solicitor General of the United States, who had been Trump’s lead attorney in the Carroll litigation and represented Trump in his unfortunately successful appeal to SCOTUS in Trump v. United States, which effectively made Trump and his successors above the law.
Naturally, Trump’s scummy, mendacious West Wing spin doctors have weighed in:
“The American People are supporting President Trump in historic numbers, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoaxes, the defense of which the Attorney General has determined is legally required to be taken over by the Department of Justice because Carroll based her false claims on the President’s official acts, including statements from the White House.”
Yeah, right. Actually, most polls show Trump’s approval rating hovering in the low forties and going down while his disapproval rating is in the mid to high fifties and going up . . .
14 July—You’ve got to hand it to Donald Trump. He’s even wormed his way from golf into bridge and today he made the headline of the bridge column in the Hearst Republican-American: “Trump manipulation.” So what else is new?
While not new, on this date in 1789, hundreds of anti-monarchist Parisians, rather than wasting their time demonstrating with signs that read “PAS DE ROIS EN FRANCE” (“NO KINGS IN FRANCE”), stormed the Bastille, a mediaeval fortress and armory that at the time was being used to incarcerate lots of political prisoners. The insurrectionists freed the prisoners, stole weapons and gunpowder, and murdered the warden after he had surrendered. Almost a hundred insurrectionists got killed, by the way.
And on this date in 1933, Adolf Hitler’s flunky government outlawed all political parties except the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), also known by the initialism NSDAP, and unpopularly known as the Nazi Party.
Of course, such a thing could never happen here. Of course. Because America has a strong constitution that the incumbent king and his flunky government revere and whose precepts they’d never even think of not following, let alone abusing cavalierly. And there’s absolutely no chance that the masked blackshirts who persecute and otherwise abuse only people who look like they might just possibly be illegal immigrants will ever persecute and otherwise abuse anybody else. Like critics of their Führer.
On the subject of Führers, then, it appears that Donald Trump also has wormed his way into wildlife. Probably not with Jeffrey Epstein, mind you, because underage women don’t appear to be his style, with or without consent. But even the local vulpine community can’t hold back on Trump. Just this morning, as I was checking out the Spanish radishes and carrots, I noticed a slender red fox smiling at me from the meadow. So I greeted him and sought his opinion of Donald Trump. Just to be sociable, of course.
So the fox didn’t hesitate to respond concisely and, as it happens, right on the mark. But evidently the fox still has some questions about Trump. Don’t we all?
13 July—On this day in 1900, New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt, laying the cornerstone for what’s now the Old County Courthouse in Mineola/Garden City, Lawn Guylind, spoke of the need for honesty in government. Certainly politicians since the beginning of government have spoken of the need for honesty in government, if only because it makes them sound honest to the great unwashed. But the future president meant it because he was a Republican idealist when Republicans were still the good guys.
Anyway, during TR’s speech, a pickpocket picked 243 dollars from the pockets of two men in the crowd. Presumably the dip, as pickpockets are known in the trade, wasn’t a government functionary, because everybody knows that government never picks anybody’s pockets—and, indeed, never does anything that can be considered dishonest.
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This from the latest issue of “The Flying Lady,” a periodical by and for stuck-up car aficionados. It was written by an experienced and respected automotive engineer, mechanic, and restorer:
“Back in 1990, when Ford took over Jaguar and Land Rover, people said that was the ruin of those brands. I disagreed, and time proved me right. Ford focused on quality and within a few years, they transformed one of the least reliable cars on the road into something with Ford-like reliability. VW did the same with Bentley, applying their considerable engineering resources to solving one problem after another. The final Azure [a Bentley convertible produced from 1995 to 2010] was a beneficiary of that effort.”
While everybody knows that Jaguar and Land Rover were indeed, like the USPS, reliable only for being unreliable, who remembered that Ford had ever owned Jaguar and Land Rover? As it happens, Ford sold both brands to Tata in 2008. And they’re still among the most unreliable cars on the market. They’re still essentially British, after all.
Were Jaguars and Land Rovers really any less unreliable during the Ford years? For Ford-like reliability, keep in mind that Ford is regarded by many as an acronym for Fix Or Replace Daily. Even today, while Ford trucks are said to be reliable and durable, the same isn’t said about Ford cars.
As for Volkswagen improving Bentley reliability after buying it from Vickers in 1998, maybe, maybe not. Bentley’s and sister-marque Rolls-Royce’s quality and consequent reliability—they were notorious for “one problem after another”—had in fact deteriorated considerably and shamefully since the 1960s, over a decade before Vickers entered the picture. Volkswagen’s group reliability has been average at best, just like Bentley’s. Volkswagen also bought Lamborghini and Bugatti in 1998, both of which appear to be more reliable than they had been. Volkswagen also owns Audi, whose family of cars isn’t unreliable, and Porsche, whose family of cars is generally quite reliable.
Although the formerly British Bentley Azure may have benefited from German engineering while keeping British metal-pounding and furniture-making—what the Brits do best—Bentleys are still just overpriced Volkswagens. And Rolls-Royces are overpriced BMWs. With British bodies and interiors, of course.
In the same “Flying Lady,” from a less-uncritical expert on the absorbing subject of key fobs:
“I’ve saved the best for last. The [Bentley] GT was designed by the Germans on a VW platform. They go back to a single alarm module-immobilizer unit mounted under the driver’s floor. They call their unit kessy and the location is under the driver’s carpet. This not only makes it difficult to get to—you have to remove the driver’s seat—but it also has the benefit of filling up with water. This is an example of that great German engineering we all hear about! Remember if you just want the engineering screwed up ask the English, if you want over the top awful overly complex engineering ask a German!”
12 July—Just this morning, the White House announced Donald Trump’s latest embarrassingly irrational and vindictive move in the round-robin tariff tournament he created and keeps going. No surprises, of course. Nor were there any real surprises in his minatory letter on Wednesday to the President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, reproduced here:
Had Trump not indulged—make that reveled—in his customary hyperbolic delusional mendacity, his rationale for sticking a punitive 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imports could have been less unacceptable, even though he’s unlawfully usurped congressional authority in laying tariffs as well as virtually everything else. With the cowardly, self-serving compliance with the GOP-dominated Congress, of course.
But opening the letter with a totally fallacious panegyrical defense of his fellow autocratic criminal scumbag Jair Bolsonaro to even partially justify his tariffs is reprehensible. But it’s Trump, isn’t it?
Is it worth noting that Trump phrased his relationship with Bolsonaro in the past tense? Anyway, of course Trump “respected” a scumbag like Bolsonaro “greatly.” But it’s well known that “most other Leaders of Countries” didn’t and don’t. On the contrary, Bolsonaro was and is respected only by others of his and Trump’s despicable, corrupt, autocratic ilk, who need not be named.
Talk about “international disgrace”: To call Bolsonaro “a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term” is a travesty at best. (Where does Trump get his weird capitalization?) And “including by the United States”? Sure, but only by Trump and his flunkies.
And Trump’s demand that Bolsonaro’s trial for attempting a coup “should end IMMEDIATELY!”? Truth is, Trump himself should be tried for attempting a coup. And he would be tried had the Supreme Court not made him an absolute monarch. But Trump shouldn’t be sticking his nose in Brazilian affairs anyway.
Trump accuses Brazil of “causing these unsustainable Trade Deficits against the United States . . . a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security.” Problem here is that the United States actually has a trade surplus with Brazil. But when do facts or truth matter to Donald Trump—or most other politicians, for that matter?
On the other hand, Trump is right on the mark about the corruption of Brazil’s supreme court—and by extension the country’s government. No secret there. And Trump certainly knows about how to corrupt courts and governments. And everything else. No secret there, either . . .
11 July—Today marks the 221st anniversary of the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton duel on the dueling grounds of Weehawken, New Jersey. Yes, it wasn’t uncommon for American towns to have dueling grounds in the good old days. Just as towns have dog parks nowadays.
At the time of the duel, Burr was Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, but had it not been for Hamilton he might have been chosen president and Jefferson vice president in the 1800 election. Electors cast two votes each in those days, and the top vote-getter became president while the second-highest vote-getter became vice president.
As it happened in 1800, Jefferson and Burr, running as Democratic-Republicans (commonly known these days as Jeffersonian Republicans), having outpolled the Adams-Pinckney Federalist ticket, tied at 73 electoral votes each. So it was up to the House of Representatives, with each of the 16 state delegations casting one vote, to break the tie. As it also happened in 1800, the House was controlled by the Federalists, Hamilton’s party.
It took 36 ballots in the House, but Jefferson ultimately won the top job—as the party would have preferred in the first place. No surprise that Burr didn’t take it too well. The salt in Burr’s wound was that Hamilton, although a political enemy (as opposed to rival) and no personal friend of Jefferson, saw Burr as a greater threat to the republic and thus used his considerable influence to push for Jefferson. At the time, by the way, Hamilton had no official connection with government. Just lots of influence.
Jefferson never really trusted Burr either, and by 1804, the Jefferson team realized that Burr was actually a liability, so he wasn’t offered a spot on the presidential ticket. Instead, while still serving as vice president, he decided to run for governor of New York—with Federalist backing, no less. But that didn’t stop Federalist Hamilton from actively—and rather viciously—campaigning against him and supporting the Democratic-Republican who ultimately won the gubernatorial election in April.
After his latest ignominious loss that he attributed to Hamilton’s libelous denunciation, Burr had his honor to defend, and all that, and since relatively few people died in duels he reckoned he had nothing to lose, so he challenged Hamilton to a duel. Hamilton had moral and personal misgivings about dueling and had a son who had died in a duel, but a guy had to to what a guy had to do.
Hamilton, the challengee, had choice of weapons, so, rather than swords or seltzer bottles, he chose pistols, in particular his brother-in-law’s Wogdon & Barton (English, of course) flintlock smooth-bore dueling pistols with hair triggers and sights.
It’s said that Hamilton took the first shot and missed. It’s also said that he intentionally missed, perhaps even firing into the air. But Burr’s shot hit Hamilton in the gut, causing the fatal injury. Hamilton died the next day.
It must be mentioned that Aaron Burr—properly, Aaron Burr Jr.—was an alumnus of Tapping Reeve’s little law school on South Street as well as Tapping’s brother-in-law. And Mrs. Reeve is the eponym of Sally Burr Road . . .