Dueling: How to die with honor

The fighting of duels died out in the 1800s, but was an organized form of suicide. Although many variants are found, a man, who feels that he has been wronged by another, challenges the other party to a duel. If the other party feels that his honor is at stake, he then can accept the challenge and gets to choose the weapons to be used. Each of the two parties chooses one of his friends to be his “second.” The job of the seconds is to make sure that the agreed upon rules of the duel are followed, to try to make peace between the antagonists before the day of the duel, and to haul away the resulting wounded or dead.

Dueling has its roots in antiquity when armies faced off against each other. A champion from each army would often go forth into the area between the combatants. They would begin by challenging each other, which soon would devolve into taunting and insulting the other champion. The object was to enrage the other man, and cause him to charge into combat recklessly. A man blind with rage was already partially defeated, and easy pickings for a skilled fighter. A good example of this sort of thing is from the Bible. Goliath challenged the Israelites to send out their greatest warrior. The giant heaped abuse on the Israelites daily as no fighter came forth. Finally a shave-tail youth came out of the Israelite lines to respond to the giant, but he only carried a small strap of leather. The giant was heavily armed and armored, and he treated the answer to his challenge as a joke. Goliath, along with the entire Philistine army, laughed. The laughter stopped when the stone from David’s sling cracked Goliath’s skull.

As always, where there are rules to dueling there are also exceptions. One of these involves two Frenchmen who dueled by flinging billiard balls at each other. Another instance from the early 1800s, also involving Frenchmen, centers around their hobby — hot air ballooning. The story goes that each of them ascended into the heavens where they took firearms and tried to shoot each other down. One of them apparently succeeded and the other man plunged to his death. My favorite is about the “Iron Man” of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, who challenged a man to a duel. He accepted and chose two sausages as the weapons — one of them infected with round worm. Bismarck huffily declined the terms.

There are a number of fights that have been described by some as duels, but do not come up to the mark as “organized.” Jim Bowie, of Alamo fame, once cut a man to ribbons on an island in the Mississippi River using his viscously effective “Bowie” knife. Bowie did not come away unscathed, as he had three deep sword cane wounds administered by the other man. It was felt that islands in a river between two states were no-man’s land, and were beyond the laws of either state. Dueling was being outlawed in most states, and these islands became well known dueling grounds. Bloody Island in the Mississippi River between St. Louis and western Illinois was one of the best known of these, but that story will have to wait until later.

Here in Maury County there have been at least two historic fights that some have described as duels. In the 1830’s James K. Polk’s younger brother, William H., killed Richard Hightower Hayes with a gunshot within sight of the courthouse. In 1863 General Bedford Forrest killed one of his own Lieutenants, Andrew Wills Gould, in a scuffle in the old Masonic Building, but these were both just hotheaded fights and do not rise to the strict description of a duel.

Just imagine the guts it would take to stand just feet from your antagonist and let him shoot at you as you returned fire. In the coming next few weeks we will take a look at a few of these early American duels and the men who participated in them.

◆◆◆

Bob Duncan is director of the Maury County archives. Email him at bduncan@maurycounty-tn.gov.