Dueling

Dueling in America lasted from the eighteenth century through the late nineteenth century, serving as a way for selfstyled gentlemen to settle conflicts about apparent insults through a series of elaborate steps, leading ultimately to violence. The practice was especially important in dramatizing relationships between rituals and expressions of masculinity and social class.

The duel was far more common in the South than in the rest of the United States. Political figures, military leaders, lawyers, newspaper editors, and other men in public positions of authority ran the risk of being publicly insulted, and, when insulted, often turned to the duel, as many southern men put it,“to demand satisfaction.” Some politicians claimed that participating in a duel was necessary to preserve their reputations as honorable men worthy of being leaders, especially as it showed they valued their principles more than their lives.

The process that might lead to a duel began when one man heard or read that another had insulted him, either by suggesting that the man was not the other's equal or by questioning his character—a concept rooted in understandings of both manhood and upper-class status. He might hear, for example, that someone questioned his courage, his honesty, or the good name of family members. Two instances involving the future president Andrew Jackson dramatize typical [Page 136]reasons for dueling: One concerned the slow and uncertain way a man was trying, perhaps dishonestly, to pay Jackson a gambling debt. The other involved insults about the dubious divorce of Rachel Robards Jackson, who became Andrew Jackson's wife. Name-calling—coward, poltroon, and liar were among the favorites—often compelled men to protect their honor by dueling.

Dueling represented for many elite men of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mostly in the South, a ritual defense of what they considered two central elements of manhood: honor and public reputation. This print depicts the 1804 duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. (From the collections of the Library of Congress)

Honor, which was fundamental to elite southern constructions of manhood, required that a man follow a clear, formalized series of steps when insulted. If he was unsure about the process, he could check a guide to the practice, such as John Lyde Wilson's The Code of Honor or Rules for the Government of Principles and Seconds in Duelling, published in Charleston in 1838. First, the insulted male pondered whether what he had read or heard was really an insult. If convinced he had indeed been insulted, he took the next step and wrote the offending person, or one of his friends or relatives, asking for an explanation. The issue frequently concentrated on a central tenet of an honor-based society: that men of the same class status respect each other as equals.

At this point, networks of male friends were crucial in pushing a dispute toward either a duel or a more peaceful resolution; in either case the men were guided by a code of honor. The man who felt insulted had a close friend, his “second,” contact a friend of the opposing party, either to ask for more clarification or to set a time and place for a duel. Sometimes seconds were able to discover language necessary for one man to explain his words to the other's satisfaction. If not, the seconds were responsible for making sure the weapons the duelists chose would be fair to both participants, and also for enforcing the rules at the duel itself.

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