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past week on the history channel series on george washington. she has written several books, including a study of alexander hamilton. and her first major book titled "affairs of honor: national politics in the new republic"

won the national book award from the society of historians of the early american republic. the basis of tonight's lecture is titled "field of blood" published in 2018. with regard to that book, a historian, who some of you may recall was a former dust speaker, wrote that, quote, "with insightful analysis, she explores the relationships of the congressman before the civil war and finds a culture of astonishing violence in fistfights, duels and mass brawls. it changes how we think of political history." another permanent historian wrote that, "she describes many varieties of congressional violence including bullying, fighting in the halls of congress, fisticuffs, guns, knives, duels and threats of duals. with painstaking research, she penetrates the conspiracy of silence imposed by forces frequently reluctant to publicize the embarrassing truth. what a surprise that such an

important story should have waited so long to be told. " tonight we are honored that she will share that story with us as we welcome joanna freeman to the university of mary washington and to the "great lives" podium. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. it is my great pleasure to be with you this evening to talk, as was just suggested, about something of a juicy topic, and that is american duelists. it probably will not surprise you to learn that as someone who has studied alexander

hamilton for a good many decades, i have really good reasons to study dualing. over the years, i have watched reenactments of the burr-hamilton duel, in one case, standing close enough to the action to actually get splattered by hamilton's blood. which is really being up close and personal with your subject. on another occasion, i had the chance to shoot in black powder dueling pistol. now thanks to the policeman who was supervising my target practice, i was very your shields and plastic goggles, trying to take something -- which kind of took something away from the accuracy of the moment, but still, an amazing opportunity to get some small sense of the physical sensation of firing a dueling pistol. but getting a hands-on sense of a duel is one thing. understanding dueling is another, because when you get right down to it, dueling doesn't make sense. one person insults another person, and as a result, they travel to a field at the crack of dawn and fire pistols at each other.

does that solve anything? seemingly, no. is there a risk of life and limb? definitely, yes. so, what is the logic of dueling, and what drove americans to become duelists, or put another way, given dueling's seeming lack of logic, why did hundreds of american men in the 18th and early 19th centuries reason their way onto a dueling ground? that is what i want to explore with you this evening. i will do that in two parts. first i will briefly look at how american dueling really worked, and the logic behind it. i'd note that i am talking about american dueling here, because it differed from european dueling in several ways, that in one key way that i will talk about later. secondly, i will focus on

specific duelists, and talk about how they put dueling into per this and why. one of the first things we have to grapple with in discussing dueling is the concept of honor in early america. any gentleman of the period considered his honor and reputation his most valued possessions. to be dishonored was to lose your sense of self, your manhood, your status to read to be ashamed to face your family and friends. honor was even more important for allocations, who based their careers on public opinion. in early america, it really was character and reputation that qualified you for public office, not job skills or talents. elections went to the man with the best reputation. the man who the public most respected. so basically, to get voted into office, to get your friends into office or to exercise any

political power or influence, you needed to have the right sort of reputation. so for an early american politician, honor wasn't some kind of vague sense of self-worth, it represented his ability to proof himself a deserving political leader. so it was practical in some ways. in a sense, that is an idea i will keep coming back to. among men who were so touchy about their reputations, rules of behavior were very important, and that makes sense if you think about it. where insults can really have such great consequences, where the wrong word might lead to the dueling ground, there have to be clearly defined rules and standards so that accidental insults and violence can be avoided. the rules of honor, the code of honor, set out clear standards of conduct. certain words you were supposed to avoid. certain actions you were supposed to avoid. and it went in and was crossed

and honor was offended, the code of honor offered a regulated way to settle the dispute. hopefully, with negotiations, but sometimes, with gunplay on a dueling ground. for example, there were a number of what i always call for myself, alarm bell words. words you could never use in relation to another gentleman, because it was a almost like daring that person to challenge you to a duel. these words included some that were logical like "liar, " "coward." two have lost their zing, "rascal" and "scoundrel." they were serious in the 18th century. and my personal favorite, "puppy ." i guess it is insulting someone and suggesting a man is a effeminate and a toy. it was a serious insult

although it is hard to consider it that today. everyone knew that that insulting a man with one of those words was as good as challenging him to a duel. it was like a dare that demanded a response, and to ignore the kind of their would be best kind of dare--to ignore the kind of dare would be to insult yourself. this took place in 1797. alexander hamilton and james monroe became involved in a controversy. hamilton believed that munro had leaked some damaging information to the press, and he was outraged. so he decided that he

have moved into a realm where something bad might happen. so monro went and got a friend for himself. luckily for us, monro's friend recorded the entire conversation of what took place between hamilton and monroe the first thing you can tell from the conversation is that they did not like each other. things don't start out too well, you can tell right off the cuff that they hate each other. hamilton was a really logical thinker who clearly wanted to rehearse the entire history of the controversy step by step

lawyer would. monroe kept interrupting him complete frustration -- i know already. i lived through this. can you get going? in which hamilton would begin again at the beginning of his account. [laughter] so things went worse as their conversation went on. it did not take long for both men ultimately to lose their patience, hamilton clearly getting redder and redder and monroe getting icier and iceier until hamilton bluntly accused one row of leaking the information. when one road one row denied it, hamilton said, "this as your representation is totally false ." he is not using the l world, or saying, you are a liar, he is just being careful with his words. even though he did not use the buzz word, the accusation was serious enough to have a big

impact. what happened at that moment is fascinating because as soon as hamilton said that, it was clear a line had been crossed. as soon as the words left hamilton's mouth, both men jumped to their feet. monroe responded by taking hamilton's dare and pushing it one step further. he said, you say i represented falsely? you are a scoundrel. [crowd grasps] [laughter] >> thank you for the sound effect. hamilton responded by saying, i will meet you like a gentleman. meaning, i am ready to duel. monroy replied, i am ready, get your pistols. their friends called him down and basically convince them to act like what had happened had not happened so that the seconds could negotiate. as i just suggested, this incident unfolded much more

quickly than most honored disputes. two men lost their tempers, which is not help men of honor were supposed to behave. most disputes followed really predictable ritualized steps. in a more conventional -- ritualized steps. in a more conventional dispute, a gentleman would have written a formal letter to the other with five basic statements. the first would have said, i am told you insulted me and you said xyz. it would have recorded precisely the words recorded -- this is what i am told you said. third, the letter would ask, is this true or false? fourth, it would ask, do you have am explanation for this? and fifth would demand, an immediate response typically by saying, i demand an immediate response as a man of honor. if you get that letter, that is

a duel to be in form letter. it is an alarm bell. whoever was offended was ready to fight. it gave the recipient a chance to explain himself or deny the insult or apologize. and sometimes that happened. but from this point on, as soon as you receive that kind of letter, you were engaged in an affair of honor, in which any word or action could lead to a duel. this is typically the point where each man would appoint a second to represent him, a person who was kind of acting as a dueling lawyer negotiating terms for his client, trying to appease the offended party without humiliating the offender. negotiations could take days or weeks, or even months, as, in this case, hamilton and monroe

did. for months, they exchanged letters in each one said, ready to fight when you are. the other one said, i am ready to fight when you are. no, i am ready to fight when you are. this goes on for months and in the end both men walk away and say, well, i showed him. it accomplished something but not something easy for us to see with the distance of time. the negotiating process was extremely ritualized because it enabled those involved to really< owt)át&ay their honor, their superior character, by being calm and passionless and even haughty in the face of death. ideally, the ritual of dueling allowed honor to be satisfied without any violence. and here we come to an aspect of dueling that is really counterintuitive. really does not make sense. probably opposite to what people think dueling is. the point of a duel was not to

kill your opponent. it is easy to assume that. two men going into a field to shoot each other, probably one wants to kill of the other. but that was not the point. the point of a duel was to prove that you were willing to die for your honor. so when he went to the dueling ground, i standing there, you are proving your willingness to risk your life for your honor as with your opponent. people didn't have to die to redeem their reputation, they didn't even have to get to the dueling ground to redeem their reputation dependent on negotiations. obviously, in that kind of situation, debts were relatively rare -- deaths were relatively rare in duels. i remember finding a newspaper poking fun at a recent duel. it said something like, he suffered a wound in that fashionable area, the shin. [laughter] there are a lot of shin wounds. the point of a dualistic prove you are willing to die for your

honor -- duel is to prove you are willing to die for your honor. the opponents often fell victim to such outrage that he had to leave the state. in many ways, into a list who killed his opponent was a failed dualist, because rather than redeeming his reputation, he risked damaging it. once you understand political dueling in this way, when you see that all the letters and negotiations are really a which alleged part of an affair of honor that might lead to a duel, you discovered there were many affairs of honor in america, more than people assume. for example, alexander hamilton was involved in at least 10 affairs of honor. at least 10 times, he got into some kind of dispute with someone. they had a ritualized negotiation. in some cases came near fighting, but he did not end up going to the dueling ground.

he even negotiated himself out of a fight with berenbergaa ron burr before. 10 is a lot of times to be involved in an affair of honor. tells you something about hamilton. in new york city alone, there were at least 17 other political affairs of honor. in other words, the burr-hamilton duel was not a grand exception, but rather part of a larger trend. when you look at these honor disputes and duels, you do see patterns. first, you noticed that a lot of these duels occurred shortly after an election. i actually remember discovering this with a calendar with elections on it and pinning the duels and going, this is an interesting pattern. second, when you look at the details, you discover that many of them were predictably provoked. a common ploy is that someone

would call another someone a self-interested politician and there is one obvious response to that, you are a liar. you got yourself a duel. in most cases, and this is the striking point, the loser of the election, or one of his friends, would find a way to provoke a winner or one of the winners'friends into a duel. what is happening here, these are duels that are not resulting from a slip of the tongue, they are deliberately provoked and strategically timed. in other words, many early american political duels were kind of like counter elections. someone who was dishonored by a lost election, a democratic contest, tried to redeem his reputation with an aristocratic contest of honor. a duel.

american duels, sometimes they would be summarized in newspapers, they would say something like mr. x met mr. y on a field of honor and with men behaved honorably. the subject would be, both men behaved honorably and thus they are fit to be leaders and you should vote for them in a selection. that is why these details are being published. and europeans were stunned at this custom, because it seemed like americans were advertising their duels for votes, which in a way, they were. this is a really distinctly american twist on the european practice of dueling. as i just suggested, these are not impulsive or irrational duels, not guided by uncontrolled suicidal impulses or murderous rage. early american political duels, at least for some time, were deliberate attempts to redeem an electoral loss and prove

oneself eligible for future leadership. the burr-hamilton duel fits perfectly into that pattern. it took place in 1804. that year, or pop lost his election for governor of new york with hamilton campaigning against him. not long after losing, burr felt compelled to redeem his name and reputation from that loss. there is actually a pamphlet written by one of his supporters at the time that says, if mr. burr did not redeem his reputation, -- if mr. beurr does not redeem his repetition, why should his followers follow him? he must do something. so burr did. after losing the new york elections, he was looking for a way to redo his reputation. low and behold, someone handed him a newspaper clipping that contained news of a dinner party were hamilton had insulted burr. burr used the clipping to initiate an affair of honor with hamilton, who had been

attacking burr for 15 years at that point. because of some sloppy insulting exchanges between the two men during those long negotiations, along with 15 years worth of insults, hamilton couldn't really apologize. in the end, with men felt insulted during the negotiations and obviously, they ended up dueling. i don't think either one of them wanted to kill the other. i know people think burr was an evil guy who wanted to kill hamilton. when you look at the letters before the duel, it doesn't seem that way as well. but they didn't of dueling and there were consequences. as i suggested earlier, this does not mean that burr won the duell. in some ways, he lost it. he fled town as did a flurry of his supporters, his newspaper editor, and the man who rode them across the river to the

dueling ground. now new york is upset. he has killed somebody. his enemies united against him to basically condemning as a murderer and and press murder charges. he was vulnerable and for some time, he hid in south carolina, where people were less upset about hamilton's death and more comfortable with dueling. after several months, he returned to his job as vice president of the united states, because he was vice president when he killed hamilton. he was finishing up his term and not coming back for a second term. given that deaths occasionally happened in dueling, he just went back to his job once the coast was clear.

over the years, in reading the letters of men who were in the room, congressmen and senators who were in the room when burr came back to my it is interesting, because a lot of them say things like, it looked like it wore on him. he looked as though he was weighted down. they could see basically, it is not all fun and roses when you are involved in a duel and you are being thrown out of town. people could see the impact of what happened. you can see how some american duelists, particularly political ones, use duels as a form of politics in the first decade or two of the new american republic. that was a big part of my first book "affairs of honor: national politics in the new republic here." this leads to the question, did this political use of dueling change over time, and if it did, how? that is the topic of my recent book mentioned earlier, "the field of blood: violence in congress and the road to the civil war are." the book

explores physical violence in congress in the decade leading up to the civil war. most of the violence i found actually was not or even do all negotiations, most of the violence -- was not duels or even duel negotiations. most of the violence was gunfights, fistfights, mass brawls. in the course of my research, i found 70 physically violent incidents in the house and senate between the 1830's to the civil war. including the most famous incident of all, the infamous caning of abolitionist senator charles sumner by represented is rustenburg's best representative preston brooks. took me many years to write this book because i had to uncover the violence, almost 100% of the time when i would say to people i am writing a book on violence in the congress, they would not necessarily know the name, but they would all basically say,

there is that guy. they all knew about the sumner caning. some of this violence of the 75 found was a product of the fact that the u.s. was violent in these decades. congress was representative. but some of the violence was a matter of strategy. dueling was part of that strategy. because by the 1830's, dueling was increasingly seen as a southern custom, something that southerners:4 being a sign of their culture. something that northerners demeaned as being barbaric. and in fact, by the 1830's and 1840's, north and south had two really different fighting cultures. southern culture obviously, the slavery-based culture, favored violence and in particular, man-to-man combat.

both things were vital in a slave-based culture. northerners were more prone to writing. north and south -- prone to rioting. one wasn't necessarily better than the other when it came to violence, but dueling became southern. in congress, that made a difference. in congress, southerners knew that they were willing to duel and that their northern colleagues were probably not willing to duel, particularly by this point, because by this point, congressmen from the north assumed that their constituents back home thought it was barbaric and southern and would not want their representative to take part in it. southerners used that to their advantage during congressional debate. they threatened and intimidated northern opponents, hinting at duels, knowing full well the northerners were likely to back down when confronted or sometimes not to even stand up

for confrontation. silencing themselves rather than being risk being humiliated on the floor of congress. i want to show you an example of this in action. in 1838, one congressmen killed another in a duel, the only time when one congressmen killed another. what lunch the duel was a clash between democrats and whigs on the house floor. a southern whig who tried to intimidate a northern democrat defendants. the southerner who was using intimidation to get his way was a virginian named henry wise. really interesting character. he ended up being the most frequent fighter in my book, which somehow book, which

somehow frequent-flier and frequent fighter were going back-and-forth in my head as i was writing the book. it was my most frequent fighter. he fought several duels, he was the second of several duels. a second and an educated man who went on to become governor of virginia, the man who signed john brown's death warrant. but he was also constantly rolling up his shoes to throw a punch. so in 18 -- rolling up his sleeves to throw a punch. punch. in 1838, he strides into the house, with a newspaper above his head and announces, -- i have your proof that the democrats are corrupt. a maine democrat who was in his first year in congress immediately stood up in protest and insisted, that is not true, democrats are not corrupt. at this, wise slowly and dramatically turned around to face him and with a sneer on his face said -- are you calling me a liar? [laughing] >> thank you. excellent with sound effects.

he immediately knew this was moving into duel territory and he immediately backed down. but in the process of backpedaling, he insulted a newspaper editor. through a series of details i will not go into, there ended up being a duel. wise taunted him knowing full well that as a northerner, he would not want to fight the duel. so wise could score an easy point against a democrat. in fact, during the later duel negotiations, seeley discussed the fact that he did not want a duel, but he's constituents disapproved of it, but he didn't feel he could back down because by doing so, he could dishonor himself and all he represented. in my book, i refer to this as the northern congressmen's

dilemma. i don't want a duel, but if i am in this situation, i cannot turn around and back down because that will humiliate me and my constituents don't want that either. it was a difficult spot to be in. it influenced debate on the floor. northerners resigned from committees when bullied by southerners. they refuse to confront southerners because of it. there is a great diary entry from an ohio congressman describing what he sees. he says, there was a southern congressmen who was getting a per diem that he should not have been getting as a congressman. and this follow from ohio says, that is not right. he goes up to his friends of his from ohio and says, why are none of you stepping up and saying, protesting that he should not be getting that money? his friends respond, he has a dueling character so we will not do that. there it is, really blatant. of course, that process of intimidation and threatening and silencing people was a very

handy thing to have in play when the issue of slavery came up. issue which southerners had a lot to say and northerners kept being put in a difficult situation again and again and again. what you see is that all these years after the burr-hamilton duel, dueling was still a form of politics which said a lot about a politician's character. southerners were really using that to full advantage. but now, in the 1830's and beyond, it age communicated messages about politicians'characters in a more immediate and powerful way than never before because of great advances in technology. steam powered printing presses, railroads, the telegraph, all of them came to the fore in this period and together, they spread news of what was happening in congress faster and further than ever before. so southern bullying and duel taunting potentially had a more

powerful national impact. it is interesting, it has been an interesting time in american history to come up with a book on politicians behaving badly and physical violence between politicians. it took me so long to write it that i could not have known that this moment would be the moment when my book came out, but what of the things i found striking when i was finishing up the book was that there was a chapter in the book about the telegraph, a new form of technology. information spreading quickly. congressman suddenly do not control the spin. the public is learning all kinds of things and they cannot tell what is true or false. conspiracy. start to spread because of the confusion. it is so easy to spread them. if you think about it, the telegraph did what social media does today, which is, if politics is basically a conversation between politicians and the public, these forms of technology that scramble that conversation, it

makes perfect sense that they potentially scramble the working of democracy as well. the telegraph and social media is not a comparison i thought i would ever make but it is a striking one. because of the telegraph and other things that were spreading news much more quickly than ever before and much further than ever before of what was going on in congress, yhe word throughout the negotiations, what are new england going to think if i duel or if i don't duel? and wise knew that his constituents would be part of him for dangling a duel to defend what he represented. he even said so. henry wise is not only my most frequent-fighter, but he always said what he wanted to say.

someone would do something, threaten someone, and wise would stand up and said, this is like the last five times that it happened. and i would be a happy historian because i had five other times. he is that guy. so someone in congress says to wise, you should ashamed of yourself -- you should be a sham of yourself. we should throw you out. wise response, do it. go ahead. i will be back here in no time because my constituents put me here to fight on their behalf. they want me to behave this way. and in many ways, he was right. this is a period when people cycled in and out of congress, sometimes serving one term, maybe wise was reelected at least six times, which was unusual. his constituents are prone to what he was doing. you can see how dueling culture was one of many ways in which southerners exercised a great deal of control over the national government in this period. there was a reason why people spoke in general terms about a slave power. there was one. in congress, southerners had a

cultural advantage because of dueling culture, and the political advantage of extra representation because of the 3/5 compromise. i am sort of leaning towards the latter part of my comments here. what i want to do at this point is talk about a remarkable document that is going to help us look at how things changed, because they don't continue percolating along in congress identically for all these decades, and the change is important. and at the very end, i want to answer a question i get asked all the time when i talk about this topic. but first, the document, because it is an extra dinner document. it shows how the dynamics of dueling as i just described it in congress, percolated along for a while until the mid-1850's, when a new party came to congress, a northern party. an anti-slavery party. the republican party.

unlike former northerners, republicans running for congress, in their promotional campaign material, insisted that they would fight the slave power. in congress, that had the a real meaning to it. some republicans in the 1850's were fighting men, unlike northerners who came before. they came to congress armed, they stood up to bullying, and they said so often. so when you read in the time periods, you see northerners rise to the feet when being bullied and they will say things like, you can't say that about me i am a different kind of northerner. i am a different kind of person. i will not take this. you better be careful. so clearly, the arrival of the republican party and these different kind of northerners

changed the dynamics of bullying in congress but it also confronted americans with a difficult decision. what should they do when confronted with duels or challenges or insults aimed at provoking a duel? it is wanting to stand up to southerners, but fighting a duel? when it came to their constituents, it probably crossed a line. the document i found was addressing this specific problem. it was a formal statement signed by three republican congressmen, simon cameron, benjamin franklin wade and zachariah chandler. it tells a story of a decision about dueling that they made in 1858. as the document explains, there was a long history of southerners insulting northerners. at a certain period of time when the insults became particularly offensive, these three men had a conversation and made a group decision. they describe it as they could

not stand the humiliation of being insulted any longer. they couldn't bear the fact that southern bullying was intimidating northerners into silence. as they put it into the document, it was an outrage that made them frantic with shame. -- un enendurable outrage that

made them frantic with shame. his statements, willing to fight the most of the coffin. so we should not be doing this, but we will. in the statements, they said, we knew that this would ostracize us at home, we knew this was risking our lives in some ways, but for the sake of all they represented, they decided they needed to fight. what is striking about that statement is that it exists. it shows the northerners attesting to what the ruling meant and the situation they were in and the decision they made. as a historian, the part that struck me was why they made the statement. it is signed by all three men. it explains at the end of the document, they had put this down on paper to explain to posterity what it wants to look to be in favor of liberty decimating their words -- to be in favor of liberty and to express such sentiments in the highest places of official life in the united states. they basically say in their words, we wanted those who come after us and study us to understand what it meant to

oppose slavery in congress. when i found that statement, essentially, they were talking to me and anyone else who was studying them. they basically were saying, look at what this felt like. look how difficult this was. you won't see it unless we point to appear. have a document, joanne freeman. it is really handy and you can read a book. amazingly, a powerful document. for these three duelists in the 1850's, dueling still had power. and although they did not end up fighting duels, their willingness to do all served as proof of their character much in the same way it had served for per pop and hamilton. the simple fact they were willing to duel tamed some of their southern colleagues down. they were slightly less willing to believe northerners after the three men made their declarations. but even that was not really enough to make a difference in the years between 1855 and 1860 were the most violent years in the history of congress, and of course, we all know what came next. i want to close by answering an obvious question, which i am asked all the time, which is,

when does this change and how? what happens after the civil war? this certainly does not go on. part of the answer as to when does it change and how, has to do with the fact that after the civil war, the dynamics of congress shifted. now, northerners had power. for example, when one southerner during a debate about southern states being readmitted to the union, attempted to be violent during debates, a northerners stood up and basically said, you see that? you all remember that? from 1857, 1858, 1859? you want to let that back in here? that is a powerful statement to make. it really shows you northerners flaunting a kind of power that they did not have before. in this sense, the northern victory in the civil war changed the meaning of dueling in congress. with the north in control,

refusing to duel became a way to display a politicians character. before i close and open things up to questions in a moment, i want to throw something out there in case folks are interested. this is a biographical series of lectures. i spoke in a general way about duelists, one thing i didn't talk about because he was not a dualist, is the main character at the heart of my book, who basically enabled me to write this story because of how he changed from that period at the beginning of the book to the period at the end. his name is benjamin brown french. i thank him all the time because i really could not have told his story without him. i would be happy to talk about that as well. i don't know if it is a great life, but it is a significant life. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, joanne. this is a little out of the

ordinary that we do these things. we usually wait till the very end. but i want you to see this now, to point out that this will be our topic on tuesday, this coming tuesday. because it was rescheduled. on the original schedules printed, this was supposed to be february 13. could not do it then. bear in mind, we will have a lecture next tuesday night on john quincy adams. the title of the book is "the problem of democracy." i hope you will all be here for that. all right. are we ready for questions? questions. if you will raise your hand and stand if you will, and ask the question as succinctly as

possible. we will take as many as we can. ok? >> how many duels actually stopped when the duelists were on the field with their guns question mark how many -- with their guns? how many clicked and decided to negotiate there? when you were a dualist, were you required to shoot somebody, injure them to kill them, or should them to not kill them? >> the first question is how many negotiated their way out of the dueling ground? occasionally, that happened. sometimes, the way a duel would work is you would exchange firearms than the seconds would talk to each other and say, is honor satisfied? this person is offended, does he feel satisfied now?

if the answer was yes, they would shake hands and go occasionally, they managed to talk something out on the field that they have not done before. that is common. but the second half of your question, it is particularly interesting, what were they trying to do when they were shooting? if the point of a duel, as i suggested earlier, is to prove you are willing to die for your honor, if your opponent shoots his gun in the air, he is depriving you of that. there is a reason why there are a lot of shin wounds. people are not trying to kill each other i'm about the earth generally shooting in each other's directions. they are not the world's most accurate weapons. so it was not necessarily polite to shoot at the sky. you had to at least eight in the general direction of the other person. as i said, there were a lot of leg wounds. the people who were killed, in the case of the burr-hamilton duel, burr shoots, hamilton is hit and burr's first instinct is to run towards him.

along the lines of what i suggested, i don't think he thought there was going to be bloodshed. >> in your research, i wonder if you came across the provision in the kentucky state constitution, which was still in effect in the 1970's when i went into the legislature, that you had to swear you had never fought in a duel or offered duels. >> that is really interesting. in the kentucky state constitution that said, if you were going into the legislature, you had to swear that you had never fought a duel. state officials. that is really interesting. because in the period that i am speaking about, from burr and

hamilton and all the way through, dueling was legal. the people doing the dueling were the lawmakers. they were elite and they felt that they could violate those laws with impunity -- a dueling was illegal. there were people who were arrested for dueling but they weren't members of congress and folks. the question about swearing that you wouldn't duel, one of the ways in which anti-dueling folks tried to push their agenda was that sort of thing, basically saying to constituents, don't vote for duelists. or to legislatures, put something in there that says people will say or do they will not do it. it was a way to solve the problem. but they very much recognized along the lines of what we're talking about, right, we are

talking about men representing constituents and doing the things they feel they need to do to represent them. if those people say that will have some influence. state by state, there were people doing that precise thing. there was no national anti-dueling law. >> questions here. >> really enjoyed your talk tonight, but i guess after watching the debates last night, i would figure time went by, the desert of nevada would be very full this morning. my question is you mainly talked about politicians and the ruling class for lack of better words. would the local butcher and blacksmith solve a problem this way in the south and did wives ever get involved? did ladies ever pull out the little pistols? >> i'll answer the second question first, did women ever get involved, not with pistols, but some of them would learn in advance that there was a duel and would try and intervene. as a matter of fact, one of hamilton's near duels, i don't know if his wife -- someone

finds out and hamilton says, i can't, i have to -- i'm working this out, it's become complicated and his opponent said something along the lines of, i should think you would have control of your wife so we can go ahead and do this. women sometimes did intervene. they certainly had power, personal power and cultural power, but i can't say that i know of a lot of duels that were cast aside that way, but this relates to your other question which is what about non elite folk. so there were average people dueling, they tended to be arrested, right. i remember finding a letter from the late 1790's and it says something like the jails are full of duelists, those aren't the guys i write about that are in jail. they were

dueling. what is fascinating to me is that everybody understood the rules and implications of dueling and honor and the strongest example of that to me is something that took place in the early 19th century in boston in which one man insulted another man in the newspaper and there ended up--one man ended up killing the other man on the street and there ended up being a trial. everyone who was on the street or saw it testifying. and they testify to what they saw and what they were thinking. the barrel makers, candle makers, a barber, every level of society. in one way or another, what they all say is i saw that newspaper thing where one was going attack the other. i came personally to the street because something is going to happen here because it has to happen. i saw it was in the newspaper. what the trial makes clear is that everybody understood that culture and how it worked and what should happen. that was fascinating to me.

that's the sort of thing that is difficult to find. the testimony in this trial really proved it. >> as he said, thank you for a great evening. >> thank you. >> with reference to your issue where ben wade and his two buddies made the big statement, they must have scared the bejeepers out of the southerners, a couple years after the republicans, lincoln was elected, they said that was it. did they make a statement that affected the whole republican party? >> that's an interesting question. you are right that those three men, benjamin franklin wade came into congress with a gun and put it down on his desk. that's a statement, right. here you go, i'm not like those northerners in the past. it shifted the dynamics. it didn't necessarily take away power from the southerners in

congress. so i wouldn't say that it suddenly changed southerners and how they were behaving particularly given that the issue of slavery was reaching a peak at this moment. it complicated things. there is a great example in 1858, there is a northern kind of fighting man in congress and he is standing amidst the southerners and he objects to something and a fellow from south carolina yells out, go object in your own part of the house, don't object near us. and the northerners who did the objecting says something like i'm not going to listen to any slave driver with a whip telling me what to do, i'm going to do what i want to do. this does not make the fellow from south carolina happy and he marches over there and gets ready to slug the northerner and the northerner hits him first and flattens him. what happens in this moment

shows you that things have changed, but it hasn't. southerners who see one of their own flattened begin to stream across the house, dozens at a time, northerners who see southerners running to the point of combat beginning jumping over desks and chairs to get to the spot to help their fellow and in the end, there is a huge brawl, 30 guys punching each other, throwing spitoons, a real brawl that ends when one congress grabs another's hair and it comes off because it's a toupee. the slapstick is eternal. it goes all the way back. on the one hand, that's a really striking moment in which north and south are battling in the space in front of the

speaker's chair. there is a reporter that says it looks like a battle. so on the one hand the dynamic is really different, the southerners aren't scared, they're unsettled and trying to figure out how to maintain with the grip of what they had before. what is interesting along the lines of what you're suggesting, think about what this long tradition of northerners who won't fight, think about what they did for southerners and they were up against and the war started. there are a lot of statements of southerners giving speeches in the south and they say things like are you have seen these guys in congress, this is nothing. we can do this. we can do this quickly. these guys don't know how to fight. by the end and when the war came, things were different. >> question here, joanne. >> hi, out of curiosity, did the dueling culture have any sort of impact on the whole stereotypical wild west dueling? >> interesting question, the relation between dueling and

sort of wild west gunfight, certainly the similarity of idea and method is really striking, right, if you think of a southern shootout, two guys facing each other and, you know, and a signal and they both grab a gun and shoot, so there is a -- it feels very similar to a duel, but what is striking, at some point early in my project, i was looking to see how dueling and death and duels progress across the country, right, they're happening on the east coast and what happens as the nation moves west. what i found was just before statehood, there would be more gun fights, more duels, there would be more violence. if it's coming from the same sort of idea, the reason why is because people knew that statehood was coming and people

were going to claim power so there was like this shuffle of a moment where people are like, oh, yeah, i'm better to you, no, i'm better to you. we better show it now. soon there will be a government and it's going to matter. i think the idea of it and the culture of it is similar, but i don't necessarily think that people drew that immediate connection and said this is just a western duel. it was just very similar in the logic of it that you're proving your honor and your skill, but in shootouts, i think more people are dying than in dueling which really is more about the display. >> you said that dueling was illegal. what exactly was illegal, the fact that a group of men were peaceably assembling on a certain spot, the fact that one man had a gun, the fact that two men had guns which they were entitled to bear arms, the

fact, you said they were not trying to kill each other and if there was no killing, what was illegal? >> good question. it differed in different states. sometimes it was sending and receiving a challenge that was illegal. sometimes, i think there was a second example that was just in mimi mind and just left my mind. sometimes it had to do with meeting for the purpose to a dueling ground. there were sort of tweaks that were assigned if you did those things, you were liable for dueling. a document i found at the new york historical society about the burr-hamilton duel. burr took notes at his trial and what people are trying to prove, he knew a challenge had

been sent or he saw a duel taking place, both of those things would have been legally problematic. what is fascinating is, they get all of these people to testify, so the doctor who was on the ground testifies, the boatman who rowed them across testifies and the doctor, it's very clear that anyone who knows hamilton lyrics, this is the document that led to the lyric. the document the doctor testifies and he is asked what did you see and he says, well i had my back to the dueling ground, i didn't see anything. i was looking out at the water. i heard two shots, but i have no idea what happened. they carried the guns in a sack so during the trial when people are asked, did you see weapons, nope. i didn't see any weapons. so in a way they're cooperating with each other to enable themselves to engage in this and to get around the fact that specific things in different states are illegal. these are all of the sorts of

things that make this fascinating to me and i'll explain actually the document. so the document actually leads to the lyric in the hamilton song, it's striking that it's in my book, it's in my first book, i talk about the rules of dueling and when i went to see the play, i heard that line, there is a line in a song about the rules of dueling that says the doctor turns his back so he can have deniability. i was at the show with a historian friend and i said that's my document! that's my document! i later discovered that, lin-manuel miranda had read my book and it had inspired parts of that song. what is facinating about that, those aren't things that are commonly known, the ways these guys are trying to get around the laws so they can engage in the behavior that was important to them but illegal in all of these small ways. >> a question back here. >> thank you. to go back to the question of how women interacted with

dueling culture, i'm thinking back to ron's hamilton biography, he talks about when the reynolds affair came forward, how eliza hamilton was bousted, was there a woman to attack to her honor on that level? >> really interesting question, was there a way for women to respond to attacks on their honor. not that they could get pistols and go to the dueling ground, they weren't part of that culture. john adams and a woman and a historian who really has a public presence in the late 18th century and she does some things that kind of make john adams feel dishonored and it's clear he somehow or other wants to make his honor feel better, warren writes to a male friend

and she is like, now what i do? this is not my realm. the male friend has to come in. on the one hand, women aren't really a part of that culture, but if they heard an insult, saw an insult, in one way or another, were witnesses to it, they had a huge impact. so if there was an insult in the street that maybe lots of people didn't see, maybe it wouldn't matter. if a woman was there, that's it, right. then you have really been humiliated. so women had a big influence and sometimes they did find out in advance and would do what they could do to ideally make this not happen. but there wasn't an exact female equivalent of dueling. i once found an article in the late 18th century magazine of sorts and it was basically arguing, you know, men have this handy thing called a duel that they settle their disputes and shake hands and they're done. women don't have anything like that.

we don't get to shake hands and be done with any of our fights. really interesting article and it's kind of long the lines of your question. >> thank you. during your research, did you come into contact with the career of andrew jackson who if memory serves was a prolific duelist of caustic character? >> indeed. the fact that he was a prolific duelist, that he advertised that about himself in some ways, that was held against him by particularly northerners, he is bad because he is a duelist, among other people, that made him kind of a leader, he represents an interesting kind of moment when ideas about leadership in america are kind of shifting. so is dueling sort of a pro and

a con for jackson, but it's more of a pro. because it impresses people. it makes him a leader in a more graphic and violent way than i have been talking about. the character in the center of my book, benjamin brown french, he knows jackson. in his diary, he spends a lot of time he fought a lot of duels, he is quite a guy, he is impressive. jackson as a duelist, he is a little scary. not explicitly political, sometimes it had to do with one lawyer attacking another or something, but i went to the smithsonian room where they have weapons of various sorts because i want to do see what all of these weapons that i was writing about looked like, they had a table of duelling pistol sets. most sets are beautiful and

carved with all kinds of little ivory things for show and most people don't ever use them. if they do, they use them once. andrew jackson's dueling pistols were like death weapons. there was nothing for show, they were just bonk, they stood out on the table as being something that really was there for use as opposed to a handy thing to display. he was a different kind of a politician and his rise really changed the nature of politics in a lot of ways. >> here is a question, thanks for just an absolutely enlightening presentation, the context of your presentation kind of goes to what's next. it's been said that the strategists figures out to win the war, the grand strategyies figures out the piece of as the

war. lincoln assassinated, johnson takes over. after john came in, u.s. grant, at what point in time, i would assume as you were saying the republicans came in, hey, we aren't going to take that any more, you have a warrior as the head of the executive branch. through force of personality was he able to dig into that more than just the presence of republican congress but not only having the grand strategist there, but the warrior as well? >> that's an interesting question. i didn't go far enough to focus on grant as president, however, above and beyond what i'm talking about dueling culture, back to our first president, there is military men as presidents and that matters. jefferson when he runs for president, that's held against him. he was never a military man. he was governor of virginia, he

ran from the british, he is bad, it comes up in all of these contests. it's an issue because it supposedly said something about character and being able to defend the nation and that's, i mean, in a way, that's a long thread in american leadership and in particular what people look for in presidents. so jackson is part of that same tradition, not john quincy adams. i saw a, like a campaign broadside when jackson and john-quincy adams were running against each other for president. it says something like vote for the man who can fight, not for the man who can write. [laughter] >> so that shows you sort of jackson persona, so it mattered, that sort of thing mattered is the short answer to your question. >> thank you so much for your presentation. you did mention that there were

differences between the american nature of dueling and european, but you didn't get into too much of the differences. when i was a young man long ago, i was in europe and i sort of had a brush with the fraternity that was part of their tradition had to do with dueling and the scar on the face and the operation of the second man to protect them and so on. could you or did you get into that and could you give us a little feedback on that? >> sure. i didn't write about it, but in the process of looking at america, i was looking at dueling and honor culture in other places to be able to compare. you're absolutely right, what i talked about in my talk is different the u.s. versus europe, americans advertising duels in the newspaper to make a point about their leadership democratic duels in a sense. that was one big difference,

but also in not every nation, but certainly in some european nations, dueling went on as serving a real social culture long after the period that i'm talking about in the united states. however, this was sword dueling, this was epee, not guns. so you could have a dueling scar and have that be something that really shows you're a certain kind of man and you're not going to get killed. in a way, it gets back to what i was saying before that dueling isn't about killing, that kind of dueling is more about making a statement showing who you are. in 1908, i believe, there was an international anti-dueling conference in berlin. 1908. so this culture goes on, but it goes on in a different form, i think, in europe than it does the united states. in the united states they were never using swords, they were never fencing in duels. guns were very democratic, they were just focused on guns in

the united states, so the whole culture of it is a little bit in europe. >> since aaron burr was vice president when he killed alexander hamilton, was there any attempt by congress to impeach him? >> impeachment, i didn't expect that to come up. [laughter] >> so that's interesting. there was a mixed response. aaron burr killed hamilton, he was gone for a while in south carolina and he reappears and presides over the senate again. some federalists, hamiltonian federalists want to do something on the act that he is there. they're horrified, they want to do something. so they begin to talk about, not in congress, but they begin to talk in new jersey and in new york about pushing in one way or another, to really grab at the laws, these sort of individual laws about what is or isn't illegal to really take that out on burr, to really

like, get him in legal trouble for what he did. what is interesting in congress, i don't remember how many, i want to say like 15 or 20 republicans, jeffersonian republican congressman sign a statement in response to that that basically says we never punish people for dueling, why are you taking this out on burr, it's not fair. really striking. so, again, i know i said it before, the logic of this is so fascinating and so powerful and so sort of counterintuitive and backward, that's a great example. lawmakers and members of congress signing a statement saying, we know it's illegal, we don't punish people for this. why are you punishing burr is a striking example of the type of culture i'm talking about. >> one of my students has a question. >> i was wondering if in your

research you came across the, i don't remember if it came like an actual duel, but a challenge between abraham lincoln and one of his contemporaries in illinois, shields? >> shields, yeah, so that's interesting. not something that i have written about, it's not in congress. however, there was something of an honor dispute between lincoln and this fellow shields. it's often written about on the one hand as it's kind of a joke, that it wasn't serious. people talk about the facts that lincoln got to pick weapons so he chose swords that were long and his arms are longer so he could reach the other guy and the other guy couldn't reach him. that is one way of talking about it. there is a book that actually, this fellow was writing it when i had a particular fellowship, doug wilson, i think it's honored call, or something like

that. when we talked about this incident, we ended up feeling like there was seriousness to it, that it wasn't just a joke, they don't necessarily end up dueling but when you look at what they were doing, they were taking it seriously and thinking about what they were doing and as i suggested, you don't have to go to a dueling ground to make a point, right. you just have to show yourself to be a certain kind of person and to be willing to do something during the negotiations. if you have a good second, they can kind of stop things that way before they get to the dueling ground. >> a good example, i never heard of that. all right, i think we are out of time, so thanks, let's give our thanks to joanne, thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp.

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