Dueling: Law Versus Custom

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The concept of dueling is at least a century out of date.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).