In November 1801, Hamilton advised his son Philip to deliberately miss his opponent in a duel — the same strategy he himself would adopt against Burr. Philip followed the advice; Eacker shot him dead anyway. Hamilton's failure to learn the lesson is one of history's most tragic ironies.
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At 37:20 · chapter starts 36:10
Dueling in early America was a highly ritualised performance of gentlemanly honour, not a death sentence. Dominic walks through the Code Duello: the insult, the exchange of letters, the appointment of seconds, and the formal procedure on the ground. Crucially, he emphasises that the vast majority of duels — perhaps 9 in 10 — never involved actual gunfire. The pistols were designed to be inaccurate; the whole system was built to allow both men to retreat with honour intact. One in five Southern senators before the Civil War had fought duels, but most survived. Hamilton himself had navigated six prior affairs of honor without a single shot being fired. The analogy, Tom suggests, is to the modern legal system: the threat of going to court is usually enough to force a settlement. What made Weehawken different — and fatal — is the episode's central question.
Hamilton's own son Philip was killed in a duel in November 1801, after challenging a man named George Eacker who had criticized Alexander Hamilton — a tragedy that Hamilton witnessed first-hand.
Hamilton had seven children, a massive mortgage on his country house, debts his wife couldn't repay — and he personally opposed dueling on moral grounds. Yet he accepted Burr's challenge because he believed public opinion required it and he needed to preserve his political usefulness for the Republic's future crises.
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Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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