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Harper’s Weekley, 1863

“There are parts of the United States where a politician must necessarily be prepared to fight duels … a politician who will not fight must stand aside, and cannot command the popular suffrage … Man is a carnivorous and bloody-minded creature. Civilization, even of the purest kind, only half tames him. Many of the best of men have a secret relish for blood, and slaughter, and horrors.
“Political duellists are the prize-fighters of their part of the country … Jones and Smith, of Arkansas, may not like being shot at; but the people of Arkansas – like the rest of us _ relish the excitement of a duel, and this is the price they set on their suffrages … Candidates among them they require to be fighting men.”

Good examples of this spirit are evidenced in the Burr-Hamilton duel where the much maligned Aaron Burr finished off Alexander Hamilton (who is the seed of the AmeriCorporatEmpire), Senator John Randolph and Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson’s duel with Charles Dickinson. Jackson may have been in 5 to 100 duels according to historians (a fav trick of Old Hickory to to show up wearing a massive clock, wherein his slender frame was hard to aim at).

Jackson and Dickinson were rival horse breeders and southern plantation owners with a long-standing hatred of each other. Dickinson accused Jackson of reneging on a horse bet, calling Jackson a “coward and an equivocator.” Dickinson also called Rachel Jackson a “bigamist.” (Rachel had married Jackson not knowing her first husband had failed to finalize their divorce.) After the insult to Rachel and a statement published in the National Review in which Dickinson called Jackson “a worthless scoundrel” and, again, a “coward,” Jackson challenged Dickinson to a duel.

On May 30, 1806, Jackson and Dickinson met at Harrison’s Mills on the Red River in Logan, Kentucky. At the first signal from their seconds, Dickinson fired. Jackson received Dickinson’s first bullet in the chest next to his heart. Jackson put his hand over the wound to staunch the flow of blood and stayed standing long enough to fire his gun. Dickinson’s seconds claimed Jackson’s first shot misfired, which would have meant the duel was over, but, in a breach of etiquette, Jackson re-cocked the gun and shot again, this time killing his opponent. Although Jackson recovered, he suffered chronic pain from the wound for the remainder of his life.