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I 15 exchanged fire. Burr’s bullet pierced Hamil- ton’s liver and lodged in his spine, while Ham- ilton’s hit an overhead tree branch. A mortally wounded Hamilton died the following day in the company of his friends and family. In his last recorded statement, Hamilton uttered a brief statement commemorating the object to which he had devoted his life’s ambition, even to the point of death: “If they break this union, they will break my heart” (Chernow 2004, 708). In the end, Hamilton had played a decisive role in cre- ating and sustaining the republican experiment that outlived Hamilton’s personal decline in influence and power to become one of the most free and mighty political edifices in the history of the world.