Choose your weapons!
A variety of arms were used during 19th century duels
While researching my new book, Anatomy of a Duel: Secession, Civil War, and the Evolution of Kentucky Violence, I examined the different types of weapons used by American duelists during the nineteenth century.
According to the code duello — the rules that governed affairs of honor across the American South — the person challenged to fight typically chose the weapons. John Lyde Wilson, a former governor of South Carolina who published an 1838 pamphlet about dueling, believed that antagonists should use short barreled, smoothbore flintlock pistols while standing sixty feet apart. While pistols were mostly used, duelists often fought from ten paces, or about thirty feet apart.
This was the case in 1804, when Alexander Hamilton fought Aaron Burr at Weehawken, New Jersey. In this fatal encounter, Hamilton and Burr used English flintlock dueling pistols made of “walnut, brass and gold.” As most people know from the musical “Hamilton,” Burr shot Hamilton, who died the next morning.
Hamilton was not the only high-profile American politician to fight on the field of honor. In 1806, future president Andrew Jackson dueled Charles Dickinson because Dickinson had accused Jackson of not paying up after losing a bet. Dickinson had also insulted Jackson and Jackson’s wife, Rachel. When they met on a Kentucky dueling ground near the Tennessee state line, Jackson, who was wounded in the affray, killed Dickinson. Although dueling was illegal, Jackson was never prosecuted. Voters elected him president in 1828. Jackson’s proclivity for defending his honor was so renowned that he was later gifted with a pair of dueling pistols.
Jackson’s long-time political opponent, Henry Clay, also fought several duels. Clay, who served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Secretary of State, and who ran for president three times, also owned a set of English-made dueling pistols.
In 1809, when Clay was a Kentucky state legislator, another politician called one of Clay’s proposals the “clap-trap of a demagogue.” Insulted, Clay challenged him to a duel. After exchanging three shots with pistols, Clay was wounded. He later wrote, “My wound is no way serious, as the bone is unhurt . . .”
In 1826, when he was Secretary of State, Clay again dueled with pistols after another politician called him a “cross between the Puritan and the Black-Leg” (a swindler). In that fight, both duelists emerged unscathed.
While pistols were the usual weapon of choice, challenged duelists sometimes picked different arms if they might provide an advantage.
In my book Anatomy of a Duel, I focus on an affair of honor that was fought between a Union colonel and a pro-Confederate civilian during the Civil War. In this fight, the duelists used Colt Revolving Rifles loaded with one shot. They stood 60 yards apart. One duelist killed the other by shooting him in the chest.
First made in 1855, the Colt Revolving Rifle was a five-shot, .56 caliber, 50-inch-long weapon that was essentially an oversized rifle-version of Colt’s famous revolving pistol. This rifle was used in at least one other duel. In the fall of 1863, C. A. Reed killed Richard Copeland near Augusta, Georgia, in a formal duel with that type of weapon. One newspaper wrote that “Copeland was struck at Reed’s second fire — the ball entering the body at the upper end of the breast-bone, and passing out under the left arm. It was a fair stand up fight, both parties evincing great coolness.” The reporter added, “He expired in a few minutes after he fell.”
Rifles were also used when two members of the U.S. Congress, Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William Graves of Kentucky, fought a duel in 1838. This duel illustrates that weapons weren’t always uniform. Although duelists were typically armed with the same type of weapon to keep the proceedings fair, this wasn’t always the case.
In the Graves-Cilley duel, both men used percussion cap rifles, with Cilley’s being .38 caliber and Graves’s .44 caliber. The two men stood more than eighty yards apart and fired three shots. In the final exchange, Graves mortally wounded Cilley. Joanne Freeman’s great book, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, explains the history of this duel.
Shotguns were another type of long gun sometimes used in duels. In 1843, for example, an editor of a Louisiana newspaper was killed while dueling with double barreled shotguns. Nearly a decade later, on October 5, 1852, two hotheaded students from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, fought a duel with shotguns, loaded with slugs, at forty yards. In that episode, Benjamin Thompson killed Thomas White at the first fire, shooting him through the head.
While firearms were usually the choice for duelists, some picked bladed weapons.
In 1839, two men dueled in Franklin, Louisiana, with knives. One newspaper wrote that the fight started because of “a few careless words, which produced a quarrel, a scuffle, and finally a challenge to a duel with Bowie knives.” One fighter was “a gentleman” while the other was a steamboat clerk. The newspaper wrote that the clerk “was killed, having received eight inches of his antagonist’s weapon in the abdomen.”
A year later, William Wade and J. H. Robinson dueled with knives near Vicksburg, Mississippi. It must have been a savage fight; Robinson killed Wade, yet Robinson later died of his wounds.
In some instances, the choice of weapons ended duels before they started. This tended to happen if one duelist believed that his opponent would have too much of an advantage.
In 1860, Roger Pryor of Virginia challenged fellow congressman John Potter of Wisconsin to a duel. Potter, as the challenged party, picked Bowie knives because he was larger and stronger than Pryor. The Virginian ultimately backed out of the duel, claiming that gentlemen should not use Bowie knives. However, he likely avoided the fight because of Potter’s size advantage.
Suicidal terms could also end affairs of honor. In Missouri, one challenged man chose double-barreled shotguns with the shooters standing two feet apart and the guns balanced on ropes for better accuracy. Unsurprisingly, his opponent rejected that suggestion and the duel never happened.
A duel between two University of Virginia students was also cancelled because the challenged man wanted to fight at thirty feet “with rifles mounted on rests.” One of the students, Lewis Wigfall, later became a Confederate politician.
The choice of weapons even got future president Abraham Lincoln out of a duel.
In 1842, the Illinois state auditor challenged Lincoln over the authorship of several insulting letters written to a newspaper. Lincoln chose broadswords as the weapon, knowing that he had a size advantage over the more diminutive auditor. Lincoln, who had honed his physical strength swinging an axe, said that “I could have split him in two.” The auditor wisely avoided the fight.
While most duelists followed John Lyde Wilson’s suggestion and used pistols, challenged parties often picked weapons that gave them an advantage. Therefore, from pistols to rifles to shotguns to Bowie knives, a variety of arms were ultimately used when honor drove men to the dueling ground.
Stuart W. Sanders is the author of five books. His latest, Anatomy of a Duel: Secession, Civil War, and the Evolution of Kentucky Violence,” was published by the University Press of Kentucky.
