And the road to the cocivil war this was part of the great lives lecture series hosted by theninr university of Mary Washington. Helln. Everybody. Goodnr evening. nrninrnicowelcome to tonightsnt lives presentation. Program sponsor, the qlaw firm, for their generoushtqaosupport this year butnr for several yeas now. It is this kind ofnr corporate om support along with matt fromo many of you asnini niindividualt enables theni great lives series friends from the lawnijf firm tt so we can acknowledge them. [applause] also, anit ninrnr roblem ninrninninininrxdcow3nl hat i would like simpson circle, a group composed of former marylp m9 we are here tonight and we }vould like to have themt kstd so we can acknowledge them. nrinco introducing tonight nisp, dr. nijoanne freeman, i wouldnixdnro i]nr that one of her mostnr commendable qualifications isnr wvlpuc e university. nrcothatsnir u in any case, not long after receivind qco degree, she was recognized already aahjaju e nations top yuug historians. conicococoninininrcoi]coxdnrcona 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 tonights 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 burrhamilton duel, in one case, standing close enough to the action to actually get splattered by hamiltons 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 handson sense of a duel is one thing. Understanding dueling is another, because when you get right down to it, dueling doesnt 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 duelings 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. Id 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 wasnt some kind of vague sense of selfworth, 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 dareto 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, monros 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 dont 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 hamiltons mouth, both men jumped to their feet. Monroe responded by taking hamiltons 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 at 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 didnt have to die to redeem their reputation, they didnt 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 burrhamilton 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 selfinterested 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 winnersfriends 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 burrhamilton 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 couldnt really apologize. In the end, with men felt insulted during the negotiations and obviously, they ended up dueling. I dont 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 doesnt seem that way as well. But they didnt 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 hamiltons 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 th