[March 15th
marks the 250th anniversary of Andrew
Jackson’s birth. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five sides to this controversial,
influential figure and president,
leading up to a special weekend post on Jackson and Trump!]
On what two of
Jackson’s many duels help us understand about both the activity and the man.
By far the most
famous single duel in American history—even before the smash
hit musical that has made it famous to a whole new generation of Americans—would
have to be the
July 1804 tilt between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. But thanks to the
confluence of both cultural and personal contexts, Andrew Jackson is likely
just as famous as an individual participant in numerous duels (the number is
uncertain but has been said to be as high
as 103). For one thing, dueling was particularly prevalent on the frontier,
and at the time of Jackson’s youthful experiences in Tennessee that state was
very much on the new nation’s western frontier; although dueling was
technically illegal in Tennessee, Jackson, himself a lawyer, fought most of his
duels while living there (often crossing
into Kentucky to do so). For another thing, while living in Nashville Jackson
fell in love with Rachel
Donelson Robards, a very unhappily married woman, and the two were married
before (it turned out) she had received a divorce; this led to numerous accusations
of adultery, many leveled at Jackson by legal or political opponents, and
to which Jackson’s most consistent answer was a challenge to duel. And for a
third, and simplest, thing, Andrew Jackson seems to have been a man prone to
anger and violence, living in an era when codes of gentlemanly behavior
gave him an acceptable outlet for those tendencies.
All duels weren’t
created equal, though, and two very distinct Jackson duels offer dueling images
(I know, I know—don’t shoot me) of the activity. Jackson’s first recorded
duel was in North Carolina on August 12th, 1788, against Waightstill Avery,
a fellow attorney and prominent Revolutionary War veteran who had handily
bested the much younger Jackson (he was only 21 at the time, to Avery’s 47) in a
court battle. Chastened by the legal outmaneuvering, the hot-tempered Jackson
challenged Avery to a duel on two consecutive days of the trial, and on the
second Avery accepted. By the time the two men arrived at the dueling grounds
later that evening, however, their passions had cooled sufficiently that they
resolved the matter in an apparently honorable but entirely harmless way:
firing their guns into the air. While I don’t know how many of Jackson’s 103
duels were similarly symbolic rather than life-threatening, it seems likely
that this possibility played out a fair amount of the time—after all, whatever
the era and its social codes and mores, few people actively seek death on a regular
basis, and fewer still can consistently find willing compatriots in that
pursuit. That Jackson and Avery apparently became
and remained friendly after their symbolic duel only cements the idea that
such displays of honor often existed as much to make a point as to end a life.
Friendship was
very much not the outcome of Jackson’s most famous single duel, however: a
fatal contest
with fellow attorney Charles Dickinson in May 1806. This time Jackson was
the elder (39 to Dickinson’s 26), and Dickinson more the instigator: a series
of family
and financial skirmishes culminated in Dickinson insulting Jackson’s wife
Rachel, a move that by this time was more or less guaranteed to result in a
challenge to duel. Dickinson, well known as a crack shot (he had supposedly already
killed 26 men in duels by this time), shot first and hit Jackson in the chest,
narrowly missing his heart; but the hardy Jackson did not fall (leading to
Dickinson’s famous cry, “My God! Have I missed him?”) and hit Dickinson, who
died of his wounds later that night. Jackson would carry the bullet inside him
for the rest of his life, certainly a reminder of the far more destructive and
fatal possibilities of dueling. Indeed, while Dickinson is the only man whom we
know Jackson killed in a duel, it’s fair to say that the practice served as a
constant reminder of the presence of violence in both Jackson’s individual
temperament and his society and era.
Last
JacksonStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Jackson histories or contexts you’d highlight?
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