Duel with the Devil

New York, the last days of 1799. The United States is barely a decade old, and two factions are fighting over what kind of country it will become. The Federalists, backed by money and led by Alexander Hamilton, face the Republicans, a more populist party led by Aaron Burr. Burr and Hamilton are also the city's two best lawyers, and their rivalry, in court and in politics, is growing more bitter as an election approaches.

Then a young Quaker woman named Elma Sands is found dead in a well in Manhattan, one newly built by Burr's company. The killing grips the whole country. Suspicion falls on Levi Weeks, a good-looking young carpenter who had courted her, and a furious public demands that he hang. His only chance is to put together the strongest defense team the city can offer, and that means getting two sworn enemies, Hamilton and Burr, to sit at the same table and argue on his side.

Paul Collins follows the crime, the sensational trial and the uneasy partnership of the two famous rivals, and he says his research turns up the first real break in this case in more than two centuries. The book reads as both a courtroom drama and a portrait of the early republic in the age of the Founders, told as narrative nonfiction.