Alexander Hamilton was a celebrated bon vivant bisexual sodomite, and Aaron Burr a notorious ladies man typical of a deeply closeted tortured soul. What was the real reason why they dueled on July 4, 1804 and who was the handsome young naked man who threw himself at their feet in protest, declaring his love for them both? Was he the Marquis de Lafayette, or perhaps William Charles Cole Claiborne? Because the closet was, by the turn of the 19th century, a firmly entrenched reality of political culture, we may never know, but the closet knows, the closet always knows, and, like the secretive Mona Lisa, the closet will not incur any revelations.
