The final meeting of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr took place on the banks of the Hudson in 1804. Their first was in August 1775 at the Continental Army camp outside Boston, during the early months of the Revolutionary War. Their wartime experiences shaped their lives and contributed to the fraying of the friendship that ended in the famous duel. Colonel Hamilton and Colonel Burr recounts the dramatic Revolutionary War service of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

The war helped turn Burr into an outsider: his early mentor and patron General Richard Montgomery died in battle, and Burr failed to secure a place on Washington’s staff, despite valorous service at New York in 1776, New Jersey in 1777, Valley Forge, and Monmouth in 1778. Ever ambitious, he would live the rest of his life on the fringes of greatness. Hamilton, thanks in large part to his relationship with Washington forged during the war, would enter the pantheon of the country’s Founding Fathers. Not only did he serve as Washington’s chief aide for four years, he served well at New York and Trenton, crossed the Delaware on Christmas night 1776, and commanded three battalions at Yorktown.

The Revolutionary War remains an important source of the Hamilton-Burr conflict, and Lefkowitz explores their roles vividly and traces the war through their later careers and conflicts.

Arthur S. Lefkowitz is an independent historian whose previous books are Eyewitness Images from the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold in the Company of Heroes: The Lives of the Extraordinary Patriots Who Followed Arnold to Canada at the Start of the American Revolution, American Turtle Submarine: The Best-Kept Secret of the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold’s Army: The 1775 American Invasion of Canada during the Revolutionary War, Bushnell’s Submarine, George Washington’s Indispensable Men, and The Long Retreat: The Calamitous Defense of New Jersey, 1776. He lives in Piscataway, New Jersey.