A Treasury of Great American Scandals (8 page)

Barron, Decatur, and their seconds met at the Bladensburg Dueling Ground on the morning of March 22, 1820. After they had taken their positions, Barron addressed Decatur: “Sir, I hope, on meeting in another world, we shall be better friends than in this.” Decatur, who reportedly intended only to wound Barron, responded, “I have never been your enemy, sir.” After the call, the shots were fired at almost the same time. Both men fell, and each believed himself to be dying. Lying in pools of blood, their heads not ten feet apart, they addressed each other. “I am mortally wounded; at least I believe so,” Decatur said. “I wish I had fallen in the service of my country.” Making his peace, Barron begged for forgiveness. “I freely forgive you my death,” Decatur told him, “though not those who have stimulated you to seek my life.” Decatur was taken back to his Washington home, where he succumbed to his injury later that night. Barron, like Burr before him, lived to face the wrath of a nation plunged into grief over a fallen hero.

 

 

A year before the Barron-Decatur duel, Bladensburg's “Dark and Bloody Grounds” was the sight of the fatal showdown between General Armistead T. Mason, former U.S. senator from Virginia, and his cousin, Colonel John M. M'Carty of the same state. Mason had questioned M'Carty's right to vote at the Leesburg polls, an affront that so incensed M'Carty he instantly challenged his cousin to a duel. His challenge, however, prescribed the terms and conditions for their fight, which was heretical to the Code Duello. The code specifically stated that only the challenged party had the right to place conditions on the fight. Mason, therefore, declined, but advised his cousin he would gladly accept a proper dueling offer. M'Carty ignored him and posted Mason as a coward. Indignant, Mason now challenged M'Carty, but he was summarily dismissed due to his original refusal. Seething at the rebuke, Mason nevertheless took his friends' advice and let the matter drop—that is, until some months later a future U.S. president convinced him otherwise.

Andrew Jackson, notorious dueling aficionado,
⁹
bluntly told Mason he should throw down the gauntlet again. Duly inspired by Old Hickory, Mason fired off a note to his rival: “I have resigned my commission for the special and sole purpose of fighting you [dueling was against army regulations] and I am now free to accept or send a challenge and to fight a duel.” Mason then instructed his seconds to present the note to M'Carty and offer a challenge: “Agree to any terms that he may propose, and to any distance—to three feet, his pretended favorite distance—or three inches, should his impetuous and rash courage prefer it. To any specifics of firearms—pistols, muskets, or rifles—agree at once.” M'Carty still refused him, however, once again citing Mason's original cowardice. It was only when Mason's seconds threatened to slap him with a shameful posting that he changed his mind.

Perhaps inspired by Mason's obvious determination for bloodshed, or maybe fearing it, M'Carty proposed they settle their squabble once and for all by leaping off the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Rejected by Mason's seconds as unsanctioned by the code, as well as patently insane, M'Carty then proposed they blow themselves to bits atop a gunpowder keg. M'Carty obviously wasn't clear on the concept of this dueling thing. According to newspapers of the time, M'Carty at last heroically—or desperately—suggested they fight with muskets, charged with buckshot, at ten feet. Doubtless this proposal too would prove fatal to both participants, but Mason's seconds, recalling their man's instructions, accepted. It was later modified to twelve feet with a single ball.

The two cousins met at the dueling ground on the morning of February 6, 1819. Though it was snowing violently, M'Carty was stripped to his shirt with his sleeves rolled up, while Mason wore a large overcoat. Presented with their weapons, they were given the count and warned not to shoot before one or after three. In accordance with the Code Duello, the seconds were instructed to shoot the opposing party immediately for firing too soon or too late. With the muzzles of their weapons nearly touching, the men fired simultaneously. Mason fell dead, his aim apparently thrown off by his heavy coat. M'Carty's shoulder was shattered as Mason's ball entered his wrist and tore up through his arm. The surrounding shrubbery was reportedly decorated for days with grisly ornaments of shredded flesh and clothing. Mason's seconds were able to report publicly “that the affair, although fatally, was honorably terminated.”

 

 

The same could not be said of the 1836 duel between two congressmen, Jesse Bynum of North Carolina and Daniel Jenifer of Maryland. It was a pathetic spectacle. Jenifer had denounced in the House the course of President Jackson's party, which caused Bynum to leap to his feet and proclaim, “It is ungentlemanly of you to say so.” Jenifer, wounded, insisted Bynum retract his statement. “I won't take it back!” the defiant Bynum retorted. “I repeat it!” And so off they were to Bladensburg, with fellow congressmen serving as seconds and witnesses.

Both men stood on the field, ten feet apart, boasting of their marksmanship. The first shots were fired. Neither was hit. Same result with the second, third, and fourth shots. “When they gonna fight?” Jenifer's hackman reportedly asked an attending surgeon. “Why, don't you see they have already fired four times?” the surgeon replied. “Oh,” said the hackman, “I thought they was jus' practicin'.”

Before the sixth shot, Bynum's pistol discharged, probably accidentally. One of Jenifer's seconds immediately aimed his pistol at Bynum preparing to shoot him down in accordance with the code. “Don't shoot!” Jenifer ordered before taking his own shot and missing. The pitiful match, after six missed shots, was at last, mercifully, called a draw.

Overreaction Jackson

 

 

 

 

Andrew Jackson was one of dueling's most ardent enthusiasts. This may have had something to do with the marked homicidal tendencies he exhibited throughout much of his career, coupled with a hair-trigger temper and an overheated sense of personal honor. Sources vary as to exactly how many ritual combats Old Hickory participated in, either as a principal or second, but the frequency is by all accounts astonishing. And though Jackson was spared death on the field of honor, he was left full of lead for the rest of his life.

Perhaps his most notable duel was fought in 1806 with a well-connected Tennessee lawyer named Charles Dickinson. It was this conflict, which arose out of horse racing debts, that left the future president with a bullet permanently embedded near his heart, and his reputation shot as well. Dickinson had publicly declared Jackson to be “a poltroon and a coward,” which, given the general's allergy to even the slightest insult, immediately resulted in a challenge. Dickinson accepted and the two agreed to an encounter in Logan County, Kentucky, just over the Tennessee border. They would face each other at a distance of twenty-four feet.

Clearly the better shot of the two—in fact, one of the best in Tennessee—Dickinson made merry on his journey to the Kentucky dueling ground with a large group of friends, confident that he would win. He delighted his companions with his quick wit and demonstrations of his shooting skills. After severing a string with a bullet shot from a distance of twenty-four feet, Dickinson left the pieces with an innkeeper on the way. “If General Jackson comes along this road, show him
that!
” he gloated. Jackson, by contrast, was all business, plotting strategy with his companions, knowing he was at a disadvantage. They decided that since Dickinson was the better shot, it would be best to let him fire first. That way, assuming he lived, Jackson could take careful aim back at Dickinson and not be thrown off his mark by trying to draw and fire faster.

Arriving at the chosen site, the parties took their positions. At the order to fire, Dickinson quickly raised his pistol and shot Jackson in the chest. But the general did not fall. Instead, he stood his place, clutching at his chest with teeth clenched. “Great God!” a horrified Dickinson cried. “Have I missed him?” Stunned, he was ordered back to his mark. Jackson was now free to shoot him at his leisure. Slowly and deliberately he raised his pistol, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The pistol hammer had stopped at half cock. In what could have only been an agonizing wait for Dickinson, Jackson slowly drew back the hammer, aimed again, and fired. The bullet ripped through Dickinson's body and he bled to death. “I'd have hit him,” Jackson quipped, dismissing his own injury, “if he had shot me through the brain.”

 

 

Despite all the criticism of the cold-blooded way in which Jackson had killed Dickinson, that encounter at least met all the stringent contemporary requirements for civilized quarreling. Not all of Jackson's fights did. Seven years after killing Charles Dickinson by the rules, he was badly wounded in what was a gutter brawl by comparison. It all started when a junior officer named William Carroll asked Jackson to serve as his second in a duel he was to fight with one Jesse

Benton. Jackson, at age forty-six, wisely demurred. “Why, Captain Carroll, I am not the man for such an affair,” he wrote. “I am too old. The time has been when I should have gone out with pleasure; but, at my time of life, it would be extremely injudicious. You must get a man nearer to your own age.” But Carroll persisted, and Jackson eventually agreed.

The duel between Carroll and Benton was a ridiculous affair, with Benton taking a squatting position as he wheeled around to shoot at Carroll. In the process, he caught a bullet in his behind, along with a sharp reprimand from Jackson for his disgraceful technique. Thomas Hart Benton, Jesse's brother and an aide-de-camp to Jackson, was away in Washington working on the general's affairs when the duel occurred. Upon returning to Tennessee and learning of his brother's humiliation, Thomas Hart Benton threatened revenge. Word of his anger and threats soon reached Jackson, who wrote Benton asking if what was being said was true. Benton responded with four points, the first of which Old Hickory may have very well agreed with: “That it was very poor business in a man of your age and standing to be conducting a duel about nothing between young men who had no harm against each other, and that you would have done yourself more honor by advising them to reserve their courage for the public enemy.”

Whether or not Jackson agreed with the points, the issue still remained as to whether Benton wanted a duel or not. “I have not threatened to challenge you,” Benton wrote. “On the contrary I have said that I would not do so; and I say so still. At the same time, the terror of your pistols is not to seal my lips. What I believe to be true, I shall speak; and if for this I am called to account, it must ever be so.”

So, although there was no official challenge, Benton continued to bad-mouth Jackson all over Tennessee. This infuriated the general, whose reputation was only just beginning to recover from the Dickinson affair. He swore he would horsewhip Benton the next time he saw him. That opportunity came in Nashville, where Jackson and the Benton brothers were staying for a time. Making their way to the post office soon after arriving in Nashville, the general and his companions walked deliberately past the inn where the Bentons had rooms. This was a fairly clear indication that they were spoiling for a fight. Thomas Benton stood out front, “looking daggers” at them, as Jackson's companion John Coffee noted. “Do you see that fellow?” Coffee asked Jackson in a hushed tone. “Oh yes,” the general replied, “I have my eye on him.” For some reason, though, Jackson did not attack. Instead, he and his group proceeded to the post office, picked up their mail, and headed back in the same direction.

Now both Bentons were standing outside the inn. As Jackson came abreast of Thomas Benton, the future president suddenly wheeled on him, brandished a whip, and yelled, “Now, you damned rascal, I am going to punish you. Defend yourself !” With that, Benton reached into his pocket as if going for his gun. Jackson then drew out his own gun and forced his adversary back inside the inn. As this was happening, Jesse Benton slipped away and took another position inside. As his brother was being forced in, Jesse fired at Jackson, shattering the general's arm and shoulder. Jackson fired at Thomas as he fell, but his shot missed.

Racing in from the street, John Coffee immediately saw his friend lying prostrate in a pool of blood and fired at Thomas Benton. Missing, he then tried to club him with his pistol, but Benton retreated, falling out of the building backward down a flight of stairs. Another of Jackson's companions, his nephew Stockley Hays, tried to run Jesse Benton through with his sword cane, but the weapon hit a button and broke. As the two men wrestled on the ground, Hays resorted to stabbing Jesse Benton repeatedly in the arms with a dirk. The crowd pulled them apart before Benton was in a position to shoot Hays.

As the melee came to end, Jackson was carried away to the Nashville Inn. He was bleeding profusely, saturating two mattresses. A physician in attendance suggested amputating the shattered limb, but Jackson wouldn't hear of it. “I'll keep my arm,” he ordered before drifting into unconsciousness. The bullet remained with him for the next twenty years, along with the one lodged near his heart. The Bentons, meanwhile, were loudly denouncing Jackson as a failed assassin. Coming across a small sword the general had dropped in the encounter, Thomas Hart Benton snapped it in two while shouting insults about Jackson. He then paraded the pieces across the public square. Yet despite his bravado, Benton was well aware of the true danger he now faced from Jackson and his outraged associates: “I am literally in hell here,” he wrote; “the meanest wretches under heaven to contend with—are at work on me. . . . I am in the middle of hell, and see no alternative but to kill or be killed; for I will not crouch to Jackson; and the fact that I and my brother defeated him and his tribe, and broke his small sword in the public square, will for ever rankle in his bosom and make him thirst for vengeance. My life is in danger . . . for it is a settled plan to turn out puppy after puppy to bully me, and when I have got into a scrape, to have me killed somehow in the scuffle.”