Legal Dueling in America

So why did such rational men choose to fight for excuses or simple tolerance? Maybe because they didn`t see an alternative. Hamilton, at least, was explicit. „The ability to be useful in the future,” he wrote. in the crises of our public affairs that are likely to occur. imposed on me (as I thought) a special necessity not to refuse the call. And Lincoln, though appalled at being held responsible for staging the vanity of a political rival, could not bring himself to express regret. Pride obviously has something to do with it, but pride, reinforced by the imperatives of a dueling society. For a man who wanted a political future, escaping a challenge may not seem like a plausible option. The duel was based on a code of honor. Duels were not so much conducted to kill the opponent, but to obtain „satisfaction,” that is, to restore honor by showing a willingness to risk one`s life for it, and as such, the tradition of duel was originally reserved for male members of the nobility; In modern times, however, it extended to those of the upper class in general. Sometimes duels with pistols or swords were fought between women.

[1] [2] The weapons and rules of duels in the Indonesian archipelago vary from one culture to another. In Madura, the duel is known as carok and was usually practiced with sickle or cellurite. The Madurais filled their sickles with a khodam, a kind of mythical spirit, with a kind of prayer before engaging in a duel. [103] According to a 2020 study, dueling behavior declined in the United States as state capacity (measured by post office density) increased. [6] Portuguese traveler Duarte Barbosa relates that duels were a common practice among the nobles of the Vijayanagara Empire and that it was the only legal way to commit „murder”. After setting a day for the duel and obtaining permission from the king or minister, the duelists came to the designated field „with great joy.” Duelists did not wear armor and were naked from the waist down. From the waist down, they wore a tightly round cotton cloth with many folds. The weapons used for the duels were swords, shields and daggers that the king equipped them with equal length. The judges decided what rewards would be given to the duelists; The winner can even buy the loser`s estate. [100] Pentagon spokeswoman Lisa Lawrence said the wording of Section 114 states that duels remain prohibited because they are „likely to result in the death or serious bodily injury of another person.” In the 1770s, the practice of duel was increasingly attacked by many sections of enlightened society, as a violent relic of Europe`s medieval past unfit for modern life. As England began to industrialize and benefit from more effective urban planning and policing, the culture of street violence in general began to slowly decline.

The growing middle class maintained its reputation either through allegations of slander or through the rapid growth of the print media of the early 19th century. In the nineteenth century, she was able to defend her honor and resolve conflicts through correspondence in newspapers. [13] But if circumventing the rules made the duel even bloodier than it should be, strict compliance could also be risky. Some potential duelists have discovered that even the formal groundwork of code can trigger an irreversible chain of events. In 1838, when Colonel James Watson Webb, an aggressive editor of a Whig newspaper, felt mistreated in Congress by Representative Jonathan Cilley, a Democrat from Maine, he sent Representative William Graves from Kentucky to present his request for an apology. When Cilley refused to accept Webb`s note, Graves, following what one Whig diarist called „the ridiculous code of honor that governs these gentlemen,” felt compelled to challenge Cilley himself. Subsequently, the two members of Congress, who had not the slightest ill will, retreated to a field in Maryland to shoot each other with rifles from a distance of 80 to 100 meters. After each exchange of fire, negotiations were held to break it, but no acceptable common ground could be found, although the issues that were still at stake seemed terribly trivial. Graves` third shot hit Cilley and killed him. Vokey said he had never been involved in cases in which soldiers were accused of dueling, nor did he know that such cases were decided by the military`s judicial system.

Duels were also common among prominent Russian writers, poets and politicians. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin fought 29 duels and challenged many personalities[77] before being killed in a duel with Georges d`Anthès in 1837. His successor Mikhail Lermontov was killed four years later by fellow officer Nikolai Martynov. The tradition of duel slowly died out in the Russian Empire from the middle of the 19th century. Although the code of dueling was, at best, an imaginative alternative to true law and order, some saw it as indispensable not only as a brake on justice, but also as a means of enforcing good manners. The people of New England may have prided themselves on treating an insult only as an insult, but for the dual nobility of the South, such indifference betrayed a lack of good reproduction.