Murder by any other name...

Murder by any other name...

Duelling - A system of rules

It is strange to think anybody ever thought that murder could be dressed up as a civilised institution. In the past, however, duelling tried to do just that by subjecting single combat to codes of practice. One particularly influential set of rules, the Irish code duello, was drawn up in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary in 1777.

The Irish code, (like its 1838 American Counterpart drawn up by the South Carolina Governor), reads like a piece of detailed legislation. It consisted of 26 rules that included everything from prescribed methods of apology to what constitutes a misfired shot. Parodying the lead up to litigation the preliminaries before a duel could drag out for weeks or months as letters and counter-letters were exchanged. Continuing with the legal comparison, the duties of a duellist’s second described in the Duello read more like a description of alternative dispute resolution methods than organised violence.

Like litigation and ADR duelling was conceived of as a reasonable and civilised institution for dispute settlement. It was thought that if death, like injustice in the courts, occurred in a few cases that was a small price to pay. The 1836 manual, ‘The Art of Duelling’, compares the duel victim to ‘the individual who is killed by the overturn of a stage-coach’. They are characterised as

‘both [being] unfortunate victims to a practice from which we derive great advantage.’ 

Steeped in staid language duelling was not about killing but about obtaining the rather nebulous ‘satisfaction’. ‘The Duel: a History’ (1965) by Robert Baldick, described the purpose of the Irish code, in administrative terms, as for the ‘better government of duelists’. Duels were thought to prevent larger Hatfield and McCoy style blood feuds. It was also supposed to generally increase civility in society by incentivising people to watch their manners lest they become entangled in a duel.

The Reality

Robert E. Howard, fantasy and historical adventure writer, said that

‘[c]ivilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.’

Beyond this preposterous romanticised notion of duelling, however, lay the barbaric reality.


Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States,is one who shattered the duelling illusion. He was a prolific duellist who kept guns aside exclusively for his defence of his wife’s honour. In his duel with Charles Dickinson he was brave enough to stand still for his opponent’s first shot which lodged in his chest. However, when it came time for Jackson’s shot his gun only half-cocked. Under rule 20 of the code Duello, all cases of misfire are treated as being equivalent to a shot with ‘a snap or non-cock’ ‘to be considered a misfire.’ The duel should have ended at that point or proceeded, on agreement, to a further round with Dickinson firing first again. In spite of this Jackson simply immediately re-cocked his gun, took slow calculated aim and killed Dickinson with a shot.




Breaking the rules, especially in matters of life and death, rankles with our sense of fair play and we view his action as despicable. On the other hand, it must be incredibly difficult to stick to the rules, and not fire, when somebody has just shot you in the chest. Fighting taps into an animalistic instinct and one can understand why somebody in Jackson’s position may have shot Dickinson. Viewed in this way, it appears that fighting simply doesn’t lend itself to formalised rules. Passions are high and adrenaline is flowing.

In fact, duels were liable to break down in to utter chaos as another Andrew Jackson episode illustrates. On this occasion Jackson was merely a second in a duel. One of the participants, Benton, was shot in the buttocks. He and his brother, future Senator Thomas Hart Benton were resultingly angry. The brother called Jackson out on his handling of the duel and Jackson threatened to horsewhip him. Later in a Nashville hotel things escalated. Jackson thought Thomas Hart Benton was reaching for his pistol, Jackson drew his but Jesse burst through the door and shot Jackson in the shoulder. The falling Jackson fired at and missed Thomas. Thomas returned fire and Jesse moved in for the kill. At this point several other men ran into the room, Jesse was pinned to the floor and stabbed and a friend of Jackson’s fired at a retreating Thomas who fell backwards down a flight of stairs.

Farce!


Duelling was often at a farcical disconnect with its pretensions towards decorum and order. Alain de Botton says of the reasons for duelling that ‘they were often petty in the extreme.’ He gives a number of examples. In Paris, in 1878, one man killed another who had described his apartment as tasteless (Alain De Botton). In Florence in 1902, a literary man killed a cousin who had accused him of not understanding Dante (Alain De Botton).

This dispute settlement mechanism was as prone to dispute creation as it was to dispute resolution. George Washington advised General Nathanael Greene on his refusal to duel Captain James Gunn that it ‘would have been foolish to take up the challenge, since an officer couldn't perform as an officer if he had to worry constantly about offending subordinates.'

One of the most famous duels in American History the Burr-Hamilton duel shows how futile duelling can be. In that duel the standing vice-president Aaron Burr and the former secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had written in a letter the night before the duel and had otherwise conveyed that he intended not to aim for Burr. This may or may not have been true. In any event, Hamilton’s shot was a throwaway shot, Burr shot and killed Hamilton and his career and life was destroyed in the ensuing political fallout.



Duel of wits

Ultimately, what impressed me more when I was reading about duelling were not accounts of skilled duellists but was Mark Twain realising he was a poor duellist and his quick witted second getting him out of a duel. There the second, shot a bird's head off, attributed it to Twain’s gun skill and likened duelling Twain to suicide. The opponent dropped out.

The legendary Southern duellist Alexander Keith McClung, by contrast cut a rather pathetic figure. He was hard drinking, dressed in a flowing cape and recited morbid poetry. He was expelled from the navy as a young man for threatening the lives of his colleagues. In 1855, he shot himself dead in a Jackson hotel leaving behind a final pitiful poem, ‘invocation to death’.


(Sources: PBS on duelling, Wikipedia, ‘Duel!’ by Ross Drake –Smithsonian, Art of manliness website, status anxiety by Alain de Botton, etc)