Introduction: Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States, concluded the Declaration of Independence with "our sacred honor" to make the highest pledge to uphold the civil rights of the British North American colonies. By the 1830s, the gentlemen of the American South had turned their honor code into personal beliefs, and in order to achieve "honor", the Southern American gentlemen began to feud. Duels usually take place between people of equal status.
Among people of equal status, this "honor code" is more widely used and effective. The gentlemen of the American South who abide by this code must, of course, also settle major personal grievances between them. At the heart of the code of honor is duel. It makes sense that apologists in the American South have made sense to call dueling a touchstone for the spirit of the South, because it helps us to understand what it means to be manly, decent, and brave in the Southern United States.
Schematic of the duel in the Southern United States
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, dueling flourished in the United States from the Colonial Period, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War</h1>
The prevalence of duels in the South is particularly interesting because such practices have always been explicitly prohibited by U.S. law. In the early 19th century, every state in the south published laws explicitly prohibiting duels, and the wording of these laws was neither ambiguous nor mild. In 1802, the North Carolina Act in the United States provided for "the death penalty for duelists." As another example, a 1812 act in South Carolina provided for a one-year prison sentence and a $2,000 fine for all parties involved in a duel, including aides, and a survivor of a life-and-death duel on charges of homicide.
The duelist is not punished by the law, and once punished, he is naturally no longer able to hold lawyers, doctors, priests and all public offices. Some states, such as Alabama, require lawyers, state legislators, and other officials to swear that they have never participated in a duel or that they have never been an assistant to a duel.
However, duels are not an ancient custom in the American South. During the colonial period, duels were extremely rare throughout British North America, including the southern United States. In the century and a half from the founding of Jamestown to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, there were only a dozen or so duels in the colonies. Colonial public opinion generally condemned dueling. At that time, an American Virginia gentleman was not ashamed to ignore a challenge, and the challenger himself was sometimes punished by the law. The few duels that took place were usually related to the military.
It wasn't until the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War that duels became common. European officers who valued social status, such as the British, Germans, and French, came to the Americas to fight an open war, but they also brought with them the tradition of knighthood in private duels in defense of the honor of the gentleman.
Schematic of a duel
Rochambeau and some of the young nobles under DeGrace liked to settle certain disputes by duels; Lafayette was said to have demanded a separate duel with count Carlisle, the peace envoy sent by the British. Later, after the French Revolution and the fall of Bonaparte, the French exiles of New Orleans began what louisians called "a dueling revival, like the revival of all other life adjustments."
It was during the period from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War that duels developed dramatically in the United States. Duels take place all over the United States. Less than a year after Barton Gwinnett signed the Declaration of Independence, he was killed in a duel in Georgia (a by-product of this duel: the price of his autographed replica rose sharply).
The most famous American duel was the one between Alan Burr and Alexander Hamilton on July 10, 1804. The duel took place in Weihaoken Heights, New Jersey, in which Hamilton was killed, less than three years earlier, hamilton's son Philip had also been killed in a duel held in the same place. The duel between Burr and Hamilton prompted Yale President Timothy Dwight to give a speech against dueling to the students of the university (November 9, 1804), and a movement against dueling began in the north along with other reform-zealous movements.
Schematic diagram of a duel of gentlemen in the South of the United States
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >2. How did the history of duels in the Southern United States take shape? </h1>
At the same time, however, duels became more difficult in the Southern United States and continued long after the American Civil War. Of the southern statesmen who soared after 1790, it can be said that almost none of them were not implicated in the duel. Of course, official records in this regard are still lacking. Because although duels are illegal, very few are denounced, and reliable statistical material is not possible.
Many of the duels we know of are only a tiny fraction of them. Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Juda M. P. Benjamin, W. L. Janssey and Sam Houston — all of these people had challenged or received challenges from others. For most of them, this has happened more than once.
The history of the American South during this period is full of dramatic events of duels, with some of the leading figures playing major roles. For example, Henry Clay's duel with Humphrey Marshall (January 19, 1809) and John Randolph of Roanoke (April 8, 1826); James Barron's duel with Commodore Stephen Decatur (March 22, 1820 in Bradensburg, Maryland), in which Decath was killed; Thomas Hart Benton's duel with Charles Lucas (St. Louis, September 27, 1817), in which Lucas was killed;
Louisiana Governor William M. C. C. Clyburn's duel with Daniel Clarke (New Orleans, summer 1807); Edmund Flagg's duel with the editor of the Sentinel newspaper in Vicksburg, Virginia (1840); actor Edwin Forrest and James W. Clarke' duel with James Crick. Duel by H. Caldwell (around 1824 in New Orleans, Caldwell refused to accept the challenge); General Nathan Bedford Forrest (apologized and refused to accept the challenge);
Schematic map of the Southern United States region
South Carolina Governor James Hamilton, who is said to have fought fourteen duels, each time wounding the other; Roger Hamilton of Kentucky, who later became a Confederate general, was killed in a duel. W. Hansen; duels between Georgia Congressman George McDuffie and Georgia Congressman William Cumming (Washington, 1822), Duels with Kentucky Congressman Thomas Metcalfe and Ohio Congressman Joseph Vance (Vance refused to duel); North Carolina Congressman Richard Cumming. D. Speight's duel with North Carolina Congressman John Stanley (1802). There are many other examples that can be given.
Notable duels in public life in the American South usually take place in dueling arenas under oak trees. On May 30, 1806, Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson (later President of the United States) dueled with Charles Dickinson, a beautiful lawyer, athlete, and playboy from Nashville, in Logan County, Kentucky, not far from the state border (in order to circumvent Tennessee law). In the context of this duel, there was political rivalry (Jackson had served as a judge and congressman on the Tennessee Court of Appeals), a woman's reputation, a love of horses, and other face-saving Southern chivalry. Andrew Jackson's suspicious behavior in this duel — his first shot failed to fire and then fired a second shot — made his political life uneasy for the rest of his life.
The duel between Henry Clay and Humphrey Marshall stemmed from Marshall's attack on Clay's "demagogic propaganda" as Clay advocated passing a bill to protect manufacturing in the Kentucky legislature. Both sides suffered a slight injury in the duel, but Clay did not return to the state legislature for three weeks, and his supporters later triumphantly stated that their hero "would rather fight and bleed for the goal of protection." Juda P. Benjamin's challenge to Jefferson Davis for davis's use of slander in the debate (Davis's public apology for refusing to duel) led to Davis's greater respect for Benjamin's character, thus beginning a close political alliance between them.
Messy clues show how common duels were among the leaders of the American South in the 19th century, and how easily Southern public opinion condoned or even praised such acts. For example, the Alabama Legislature passed special bills in 1841 that exempted the thirteen nominees from taking an oath of never dueling. In the six years that followed, a number of similar bills were passed at least two other sessions of the Alabama Legislature.
A wife in New Orleans recalled, "There were as many duels as there were proposals to beautiful women." "There are several people who claim to have fought fifty duels. One man had a duel with his in-laws; another man and his son were dueling on the same day. One Sunday in 1839, there were ten duels in New Orleans alone. In the ancient cemetery, many tombstones are inscribed: "Died on the battlefield of honor." "
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3. What are the criteria for dueling among gentlemen in the American South? </h1>
Another proof of the frequency of duels is the detailed and multiplicity of the common rules of duels. The most used dueling manual is the Code of Honor, or The Guiding Rules for Duelists and Assistants (1839). Written by South Carolina Governor John Ryder Wilson, the book has been reprinted several times, the last of which was released in 1858. The Louisiana liked to follow the more elaborate "Twenty-Six Rules" of John Macdonald Taylor of New Orleans.
Different weapons are often used in different parts of the southern United States, such as swords in southern Louisiana and pistols in Kentucky. A true gentleman knows the rules of dueling: he must challenge "in the language of a gentleman", not using abusive words; if the other party is not a gentleman, he must refuse his challenge; he should delegate appropriate powers to his assistants. The details of the code of honor are universally respected. The formal arrangements for the 1806 duel between Jackson and Dickinson were signed by aides on both sides:
The two sides agreed that the firing distance would be twenty-four feet, with the two sides facing each other and the muzzle of the gun vertically downward. When both sides are ready, the password to "fire" is given, and they can fire at any time. If either party fires before the firing order is issued, we promise to shoot it down immediately. Who will issue the password to determine the casting of lots, and the same is true for the selection of directions. The parties agreed that the duel between General Andrew Jackson and Mr. Charles Dickinson should comply with the above provisions.
The musket of the 19th century was a commonly used dueling tool
Another time, when Andrew Jackson was challenged by someone he "did not think was a gentleman," he refused to accept the challenge, but he suggested going to an uninhabited grove and shooting informally, but this was not a gentleman's duel, and this should be clearly understood. Once, when James Hamilton Jr., a prominent duelist and one-time governor of South Carolina, was serving as a dueling aid, he refused to allow his dueling protagonist, Georgia Congressman George McDuffie, to duel with Kentucky Congressman Thomas Metcalfe, who violated the rules of dueling because metcalfe chose a rifle.
The fashionable ritual of a formal duel between two gentlemen in the south of the United States must not be confused with the ordinary quarrels that were everywhere in the country at that time. There is an informal tendency among the poorer classes of the former South, and in the Southwest, which has been settled more recently—Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky on the other side of the mountain.—
The original statutes prohibiting duels often also forbade more informal duels. For example, the law passed in Alabama in 1837 (outlawing general duels) explicitly provided for the punishment of anyone who carries or uses a knife "called a long hunting knife or sheathed knife" for the poor in a duel. The elaborate, step-by-step duel between two gentlemen in the south, and the sudden outburst of a westerner with a pistol and firing at every turn, are incomparable.
But the remnants of formal duels can also be seen in vulgar forms. Augustus B. Longstreet, in his Scenes of Life in Georgia (1835), details a duel in which both sides used only bare-handed fists and sharp teeth, and at the end they washed off the blood from their bodies and shook hands, like gentlemen who had just dueled, believing that their quarrel was over.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >4. Why do the gentlemen of the American South have to duel? Are they all the curse of honor? </h1>
What a man defends by duels is far more elusive than his so-called legal rights. This is because this "deadly custom" in the South is not so much to avenge a murderer or to protect one's own life, limbs or property as to protect one's "good reputation." Since duels are often referred to as "matters of honor" and dueling grounds are called "battlefields of honor", this honor is also another name for good reputation. Wilson's Code of Honor says that good reputation is more precious than life itself. As long as a man is willing to duel, it means that he values the opinions of his gentlemen and colleagues more than his own life and legal rights.
"The slanderer secretly creates gossip, slanders and damages the reputation of others" – the gentleman's only legitimate means of defense against such a egregious act is a duel. Andrew Jackson declared that "slanderers are more hateful than murderers," arguing that unless the slanderers can be "despised" by society in some other way, any attempt to suppress a duel is futile. It was only because Dickinson openly called Jackson "a vile rogue, coward, and coward" that Jackson challenged him. As far as we know, almost all duels are caused by insulting verbal and written language.
Therefore, dueling is a rule that the southern gentleman of the United States must obey in order to obtain a good impression of himself by society, or rather, in order to obtain a good impression of himself by others, and this rule is often called the "code of honor". This attitude is also expressed in the tradition of military honor, with George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Robert E. Lee. E. Lee's spirit of bravery was an example of this tradition, which has been maintained in many small military academies in the south from the War of Independence to the Civil War.
It was also in this era that the so-called "honor system" appeared. Henry St. George Tucker, a former president of the Virginia Supreme Court and later a professor of law and a member of the Faculty Council at the University of Virginia, introduced the practice to American life in 1842. It quickly expanded to other parts of the South and throughout the United States.
The so-called "honor" that causes such a situation is difficult to explain clearly to outsiders, and this is the most typical feature of honor. According to Frederick Law Olmsted, a northerner, "This honor has almost become the traditional standard of affection and action, and a man who is to consider himself a gentleman usually must have this traditional standard." "
Schematic of the American Civil War
In the thirty years before the American Civil War, the gentlemen of the South often boasted that they were all indifferent to public opinion and to the praise of the whole world, but they were most concerned with their local reputation, with the praise of the Southern gentlemen who were equal to him, which can really be called an aggressive thing. The southern gentlemen said, "For those who are extremely honored, only shame and loss of honor are sins." "
The stipulations of the code of honor are the result of subtlety, and in fact they cannot be taught, nor learned, let alone understood from books: they must be inherited. Such laws are far from the increasingly specialized statutes that are developing in New England. It also expresses a different spirit, which is not found in the fickle or emerging community, because the order of distribution of rights there is set by the newcomers for their own benefit, and where the vigilante chambers of the miners' camps try cases and also take place at the assembly of all the members.
Schematic of a 19th-century American gentleman duel
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
In short, the purpose of the 19th-century Southern Gentleman's Duel was to fight for honor, and this honor expressed the southern gentleman's belief in the stability or solidification of the Southern way of life, which was extremely mysterious. In fact, in the eyes of the gentlemen of the American South, "honor" is the faith they strive to pursue. Duels are formed in the unique system of the Southern United States itself, and the prevalence of duels in the Southern United States is the result of subtlety, and only those who understand the spirit of dueling can truly duel.