Duel with the Devil by Paul Collins

The body of a young woman, Elma Sands, was found in a well outside of Manhattan on the second day of 1800. A carpenter who boarded in her family’s house, some suggested he was her secret lover, was immediately accused. The case led to one of the first sensationalized, broadly followed murder trials in the young United States. Paul Collins recounts the events in Duel with the Devil.

The carpenter, Levi Weeks, might well have been convicted of the crime had he not had a legal dream team with the competence to show the weakness of the prosecution case and suggest an alternate explanation for Sand’s death. That is one of the interesting things about his trial. His defense team consisted of political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr along with their fellow Revolutionary War veteran Brockhurst Livingston.

The political and legal elite of New York state, and especially Manhattan, of those days was close knit and often resulted in odd combinations. Hamilton and Burr were both in debt to Weeks’ brother Ezra, a prominent builder, which may explain their participation.

Weeks was found not guilty after what was considered a very long trial for the time, mainly due to the great number of prosecution witnesses. Sands’ murder was never properly solved.

She was probably killed by another roomer in her house, Richard Croucher. He had fled England to escape the insane asylum after his behavior led him trouble and criminal charges. Shortly after Weeks’ trial, he was convicted of raping his 13-year old stepdaughter. He was released after three years on the agreement that he would leave the country. He went to Virginia instead, where he fleeced the merchants of Richmond. It appears he eventually made his way back to England, where he continued criminality led to his execution.

Hamilton and Burr famously faced declines. They dueled and Hamilton died from the wound he received. Their co-counsel fared better; Livingston went on to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weeks left Manhattan. We worked his way west and became a successful builder in Natchez.

Collins’ book reads almost like a novel. It is interesting, quick-reading history.

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Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Collins, Paul. Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton & Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America’s First Sensational Murder Mystery. New York: Crown, 2013.

Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Chadwick, Bruce. Triumvirate: The Story of an Unlikely Alliance that Saved the Constitution and United the Nation. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2009.


A fragile nation risks falling apart as its ineffective and poorly organized government slides deeper into gridlock. Jealous geographic factions threaten to tear the fragile country apart. To fix these ills, a new form of government is proposed, but is greeted by many opponents. Three men orchestrate a campaign to overcome this opposition and see the new government approved. Along the way, they produce a series of essays that are still read by students of politics and democracy more than two centuries later.

This is the true story of the United States and the ratification of its Constitution. The men are James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, authors of The Federalist. Bruce Chadwick recounts the tale in Triumvirate, a readable book of history that retains the sense of a story while conveying the facts.

The Federalist is well known, if no longer widely read, as a factor greatly advancing the cause of the Constitution’s supporters. What is less known is that it was only a part of a plan to rally support for the new government and give it a solid foundation by seeing through its ratification in every state.

The sense that comes from the books is that it is Madison, Hamilton and Jay’s early insight that a concerted effort was needed, and the steps they took to put together, organization and their supporters with forceful arguments for their cause, that carried the victory. Opponents of the plan, the Anti-Federalists, seemed to be in the majority in the larger states and included brilliant, respected and patriotic men who also forcefully argued their cause in essays and assemblies. However, Anti-Federalists disliked the Constitution for different reason, lacked clear leaders, were late to organize and had no coherent, consistent set of arguments for their position.

It’s easy to paint the Anti-Federalists as shortsighted enemies of union, as the Federalists did. Many wanted nothing more than a bill of rights added to a plan of government they otherwise liked, though some had additional objections. Chadwick treats the Anti-Federalists fairly and points out the weaknesses and blind spots of the Federalists.

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Momentary...interests have a more active..control over human conduct than general or remote considerations

“Momentary and immediate interests have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility, or justice.”

-Alexander Hamilton