The central question addressed by author Arnold Rogow in A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr is the question historians have asked for two centuries now: What terrible thing did Alexander Hamilton say that pushed Aaron Burr into issuing the challenge to a duel? Neither man ever said publicly, but that duel was fought on July 11, 1804, on a Jersey bluff overlooking Manhattan. Hamilton was shot in the abdomen and died 36 hours later.