Pic #5 from Our Recent NYC Trip

A fat middle-aged blogger from Ohio whose identity is not being released at this time stands at the grave site of Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton was only forty-seven years old when he died (some say he was forty-nine), killed in a duel by Aaron Burr, then Vice President of the United States. (Wait! The Vice President shot somebody? It's hard to imagine, isn't it?)

Hamilton is, as I've asserted rhapsodically on this site before, an extraordinary person. If the term genius can be applied to anybody, it most certainly can be to him.

I was a bit disappointed in the relatively poor condition of the monument. This is one of the heroes of American history, a creator of the free enterprise system, an ardent apologist for the passage of the US Constitution, and an insightful theorist and practitioner of democracy. He is certainly more deserving of our attention and accolades than his nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, an able propagandist and a slimy practitioner of the worst political arts.

The tomb sets in the churchyard of Trinity Church. The gravesite next to that of Hamilton and his wife is Robert Fulton's.

By the way, Hamilton's wife was seven years his senior and survived him by fifty years!

[For more on Hamilton, read here and here.]