By Tom Range, Sr.

By mid-September 1776, British forces had invaded Manhattan, called York Island, and threatened to cut off the Continental forces occupying the city of New York at the island's tip, from General Washington's main army, which had escaped from the British in Brooklyn and was positioned farther north. Scattered patriot outposts dotted the island's length. One of them, no doubt sarcastically named Bunker Hill after the battleground in Massachusetts, was commanded by the 21-year-old artillery officer, Captain Alexander Hamilton.

At a September council of war, a grim-faced Washington asked his generals if he should abandon New York City to the enemy. Rhode Islander Nathanael Greene, Washington's second-in-command, argued that "a general and speedy retreat is absolutely necessary" and insisted as well, that "I would burn the city and suburbs," which, he maintained, belonged largely to Loyalists, or Tories.

But Washington decided to leave the city unharmed when he decamped. Before he could do so however, the British attacked York Island two miles north of Hamilton's hill fort, leaving his company cut off and in danger of capture. Washington sent General Israel Putnam, in command of the garrison in the city, and his aide-de-camp, the 22-year-old Major Aaron Burr, to evacuate them.

The pair reached Fort Bunker Hill just as American militia from Lower Manhattan began to stream past Hamilton heading north. Although Hamilton had orders to rally his men for a stand, Burr, in the name of Washington, countermanded the orders and led Hamilton, with little but the clothes on his back, two cannons and his men, by a concealed path up the west side of the island to freshly dug entrenchments at Harlem Heights. Burr most likely saved Hamilton's life.

Within this time frame, from the successful invasion of York Island by the British to the consolidation of patriot forces at its northern tip, two events of legendary import occurred.

On September 15, Mary Murray, the wife of a prominent Tory merchant, invited the commanders of the invading British forces to tarry awhile at the family estate lying north of the city. The grateful Britishers took advantage of her hospitality thereby allowing much of the patriot army to make its way north past her estate hidden from view.

The second incident involved the capture of Nathan Hale, an eager but untrained spy sent by Washington to learn the troop deployment of the British forces. He was captured on September 21, the same day that much of New York was destroyed by fire. The young patriot was executed by hanging the following day.

Both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were familiar with New York City and its environs from their college days, though they had never met.

Burr was educated at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, and came from a notable New Jersey family.

Hamilton attended King's College in New York, now Columbia University. He was the illegitimate son of James Hamilton, a merchant from Scotland. Alexander was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis. Upon the death of his mother, Alex worked as a clerk in the Christiansted, St. Croix office of a New York-based import-export house. His employer was Nicholas Cruger of one of America's leading mercantile families. Wealthy merchants and churchmen in Christiansted recognized young Hamilton's abilities and arranged a scholarship fund for him to be educated in America.

The paths of these two students crossed throughout the Revolutionary War and in post-war political battlefields until their final meeting on the dueling grounds in Weehawken, New Jersey. On the morning of July 11, 1804, Hamilton faced the man who had rescued him 28 years earlier in Manhattan. A shot rang out. Burr's bullet struck Hamilton in the right side, tearing through his liver. Hamilton's pistol went off a split second later, snapping a twig overhead. Thirty-six hours later, Alexander Hamilton was dead. He was 49 years old.