Two combatants meet on a matter of honor. They’re both nauseous with fear. A dispute that
seemed so important a few days before seems a poor cause to kill or be killed.
But for both, killing or dying is preferable to disgrace.
Two seconds stand by. They’re supposed to be the
voices of reason at a clearly unreasonable proceeding, calming influences at an
occasion that could have been avoid if the principals had been sufficiently
calm.
A surgeon surveys the scene. He may shorting be tallying
the butcher’s bill.
The concept of dueling is at least a
century out of date. Yet the idea still has emotional resonance. In fact, a
former governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, commented that he wished he “lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel .
. . ” during a particularly
unpleasant television interview.
The duel is a staple of historical fiction. Both
Horatio Hornblower and Henry Flashman chanced death on the field of honor.
Dueling was, of course, not confined to the pages of
novels. The death toll associated with the custom included America’s first
secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. One of Georgia’s signers of the
Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett, died as a result of a wound received
in a duel.
A number of dueling guides were used by gentlemen.
They included the Irish Code Duello
and the Code of Honor, written by John
Lyde Wilson, a former South Carolina governor.
In a dispute between gentlemen, a duel was not a foregone
conclusion. An aggrieved party was ordinarily expected to seek satisfaction by
peaceful conciliation before sending a challenge.
The second was an indispensable player in the martial
drama. He was more than a mere attendant on the dueling ground. The second was
the disputant’s advisor and spokesman. He was a free agent and not bound to
simply execute his principal’s wishes, but expected to exercise independent
judgment on behalf of his friend’s honor and life. A second was, for example,
required to refuse to deliver a note demanding satisfaction if it contained
“improper or insulting words . . . .” He was, in practice, his principal’s attorney-at-lawlessness.
Georgia’s 1816 criminal code explicitly prohibited
dueling. Similar provisions remained on the books almost continuously until
1969. These laws punished challenging another to a duel, delivering a challenge
or otherwise acting as a second, and actually fighting a duel. Moreover, they
required every public peace officer to prevent dueling under pain of removal
from office.
Posting was the enforcement mechanism of the dueling
culture. If an individual failed to comport himself as a gentleman-duelist, the
opposing party could denounce him in writing and publish the denunciation in a
prominent public place. If a person, for example, refused a challenge or
demanded un-chivalrous conditions of combat, his foeman could reduce the terms
of the underlying dispute to writing, describe the non- or malfeasance, declare
the miscreant a coward and no gentleman and cause copies of the statement to be
displayed, or posted, throughout the
neighborhood. The laws against dueling also prohibited the practice of posting
a man as a coward for not accepting a challenge or not fighting a duel.
The custom of dueling proved easy to prohibit but difficult
to suppress. So long as he acted honorably and (of course) did not die, a duelist
was likely to befit socially from participating. If he won, he was vindicated.
If he lost, he was generally regarded with respect and sympathy. Moreover, many
duels lacked a clear winner and looser. Accepted practice tended to minimize
lethality. For example, Governor Wilson’s guide designated a smooth bore,
flintlock pistol with a relatively short barrel as the standard dueling weapon.
It was inaccurate and its firing mechanism tended to be unreliable,
particularly in damp weather. Some combatants even deloped: they deliberately missed. Dueling could become a pageant
of honor rather than true combat.
It could even be argued that organized dueling was relatively civilized. It limited the
scope of violent quarrels to the essential participants. Dueling could prevent
blood feuds where each injury begat an avenger and each avenger inflicted new
injury. This sort of uncontrolled violence could decimate whole families.
Dueling-related offenses disappeared from Georgia law
books decades ago. Fighting a duel is, however, still explicitly prohibited
under the federal Uniform Code of Military Justice.
References:
1816 Ga. Laws page 142, div. 9, §§ 4-9 (prohibiting
dueling).
1833 Ga. Laws page 143, div. 9, §§ 4-8 (prohibiting
dueling).
Thomas R. R. Cobb,
2 A Digest of the Statute Laws of the
State of Georgia 811-12 (1851) (prohibiting dueling).
The Code of Georgia of 1933 §§ 26-5201 – 26-5205 (prohibiting dueling).
1968 Ga. Laws page 1249, § 2 (repealing prohibition
on dueling).
10
U.S.C. § 914 (article 114 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, prohibiting
dueling).
John Lyde Wilson, The Code of Honor or Rules for the
Government of Principals and Seconds in Dueling (1858) available at Google
Books (including Governor Wilson’s rules, the Clonmell code, and the Galway
articles).