Chatham County GaArchives History .....Savannah Duels - Chapter XX 1923
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 26, 2004, 11:10 pm


CHAPTER XX 

THE LAST DUEL BETWEEN SAVANNAHIANS.

A HARMLESS MEETING BETWEEN YOUNG ATTOENEYS—HOW SURVIVORS OF THE OLD SCHOOL OF
THOUGHT REGARD DUELLING THROUGH THE MELLOWED MEMORIES OF A HALF CENTURY OR
MORE—THE STIRRING SPEECH OF THE PROGENITOR OF SAVANNAHIANS OF TO-DAY THAT LEAD
NORTH CAROLINA TO ANTI-DUELLING LEGISLATION—THE STORY OF OLD SAVANNAH INCOMPLETE
WITHOUT THE CODE DUELLO.

    One hundred and thirty-eight years after the first recorded duel in Georgia,
two young Savannahians exchanged shots as the shades of night were falling and
thereby satisfied the demands of honor as the code prescribes. This was the last
duel between Savannahians and occurred in the summer of 1877, a few weeks after
the Johnston-Wetter affair.

    The principals were two lawyers who were destined to win and hold
recognition for many years among leaders of the bar. Their hostile meeting grew
out of a law suit in which, in later years, one admitted he had been unduly
aggressive toward his brother barrister. Under the code, the trouble should have
been amicably adjusted, but the representative of the aggrieved attorney
violated the spirit of the code itself by a letter of an offensive tone, which
precluded the withdrawal of the objectionable words that otherwise might have
been forthcoming. The challenged party was seconded by an attorney who early in
life became and is yet one of the prominent figures of Savannah life.

    Brampton was the scene of this closing episode in Savannah's duelling
history of nearly a century and a half. It was late in the evening when the
parties met. The delay was due to the challenger and his friends losing their
way in trying to find the place agreed upon. After the first harmless exchange
of shots the seconds drew apart to consider the matter of an adjustment which
would avoid the necessity of the principals firing at one another again.

    Dusk was rapidly drawing on and the attending surgeon for the challenged
party, was manifestly disturbed. Impatient over the delay, the physician
impetuously remarked: "This must be settled, or we must have another shot
promptly. It is getting dark and my man is nearsighted. It is not fair to him to
further delay."

    Whether this hastened the conclusion is not known, but the seconds speedily
announced a settlement which proved agreeable to all concerned. The surgeons,
whose instruments of steel were carelessly exposed to the glances of the
principals, gathered the keen edged tools of their profession, closed their
cases, and all returned to town, with cordial relations renewed between the
principals, that were not broken in the forty-six years that passed before one
of them a few months ago passed to the "great majority."

    The principals and one second in this affair subsequently took high rank
among the recognized leaders of the Savannah bar, honored by all. This last
meeting under the code gave living illustrations, almost a half century later,
of the fact that an unfortunately well aimed bullet might have deprived Savannah
of a citizen of the highest type of character and usefulness.

    In common with many others, the gentleman who accepted the challenge for
this meeting has always insisted that the code in some ways had, at the time
when it was resorted to, been a benefit to the South, that it had prevented much
unseemly brawling, had discouraged private vengeance, given opportunity for
reflection and the mediation of friends, and had lead to the peaceful adjustment
of m-any difficulties which but for its regulations might have terminated in
personal encounters on the public thoroughfares. In fact, he and the other older
citizens of Savannah who passed through part of the era of duelling believe that
the code acted as a check on the use of offensive remarks, prevented the
dissemination and magnifying of scandal, and had been in that way an agent for
positive good.

    "The fatalities are recalled," remarked this Savannahian of the old school,
"but it is not remembered that had it not been for the code the participants in
many duels, in the first heat of anger, might, in all probability would, have
resorted to weapons without the intervening endeavors of friends to pacify, nor
is it credited to the code that where one man was slain many doubtless were
saved by the interposition of its rules. The spirit of the times has changed and
duelling has forever passed away, but one may well doubt whether the atmosphere
of the present is as free from slanderous innuendoes, whether the honesty of men
and the virtue of women are as free from the sullying tongues as they were when
it could be invoked."

    But as an offset to this mellowed aspect, and to give a fully rounded
picture, I will reproduce an extract from the speech of the twenty-two year old
Nash which bowled over the opposition to the anti-duelling law in the North
Carolina legislature one hundred and twenty years ago and placed that state in
the vanguard of those putting the stern ban of legal disapproval and condign
punishment on the devotees of the custom. In a somewhat puritanical spirit, not
characteristic of the South of that day or later, with all the fires of emotion
awakened by the recent slaying of an honored citizen of his home county, he
pictured duelling as "cherishing our evil passions and destructive of the
happiness of others." Said he:

    "Few and feeble are the arguments upon which the practice of duelling is
defended, while, on the contrary, those against it are numerous and weighty. Nor
is it a little remarkable that the former are drawn from the weaknesses and
vices of human nature, while the latter have their foundation in its virtues.
    "We are told that the lofty spirit which leads the duellist to the field is
one essential to the well-being of society— placing the weak upon a level with
the strong, and redressing injuries which lie beyond the reach of the law—that
if you could succeed in entirely abolishing the practice, you would introduce in
its place assassination.

    "Is this true, Sir? Do, indeed, the courtesies of life depend on the base
principle of fear? And is this lawless practice a potent agent to correct the
morals of society? Is it, indeed, true, that we depend for any part of our
comfort upon a practice condemned alike by the word of God and by the dictates
of reason?

    "No, Sir, the idea is not to be harbored. Duelling fosters those feelings
and principles which are at war with our happiness here and hereafter. What is
that 'lofty spirit' but the spirit of revenge and pride? That deadly and
vindictive principle, smothering every gentle and benign feeling of the heart,
bids the duellist wash away the fancied insult in the blood of the offender.

    “Every virtuous feeling of the heart withers, every endearment is crushed
and subdued. The desolating ruin the duellist is about to pour on others who
have never injured him cannot arrest his progress—he presses forward to his
object regardless of every tie, social and divine, and glories in his laurels,
though steeped in blood and bedewed with the tears of the widow and fatherless."

    And realizing that there, as in Georgia and other states, many of the
combats originated in the stress of political differences and conflict of
political ambitions, he pointed out that exclusion of duellists from public
honors would be the strongest medium for the suppression of such meetings. His
graphic portraiture is well worth preserving as presenting concisely the
argument which lead many states to compel public officials to take a solemn oath
that they had not been concerned in any duel after a certain date.

    "Ours is a country in which from its happy Constitution the offices of
government are open to the genius of every grade. Our young men of talent no
sooner enter busy scenes of life than they perceive a glittering prize before
them. Pressing forward, they encounter spirits equally ambitious, restless and
sanguine. And it is by such that most of these duels are fought. Once convince
them that this act of folly and madness consigns them to the shades of private
life, and many a one who now laughs to scorn the denunciations of religion as
the cloak of cowards, will pause and hesitate, and many a dispute that now is
incapable of adjustment will be amicably settled."

    Instances came after 1877 of personal difficulties with talk of challenges,
almost precipitating duels, but none in which the parties actually resorted to
the field to exchange shots. The inclination to condemn duelling grew stronger
and stronger, and it is doubtful if at any time in the last thirty-five years
there has been any real likelihood of two Savannahians resorting to the code.

    When Governor Wilson wrote the introduction to his "Code of Honor: Its
Rationale and Uses," he spoke in the most positive of words:

    "So long as the gentleman is not eliminated from existence—until the advent
of the millenium—the Code of Honor will be used."

    No one will contend that the gentleman has been eliminated from Savannah, or
that the millenium has come here any more than it has elsewhere—but the compiler
of the code under which many men fought, and under which many men were saved
from fighting, simply erred in his foresight and judgment. Copies of his "Code"
are preserved in Savannah and elsewhere as relics of a bygone day. The rules and
regulations so carefully prepared by him have long ceased to have value or
interest save as they throw light on the obsolete custom of duelling in the
South. Duelling seems almost as remote from the life of the present as the
feudal age out of which it sprung. It was a last, long-lingering remnant of the
customs of chivalry and found its grave in the new conditions of life that came
after the South's war for separate nationality.

    It is all academic now. But no picture of the Savannah of the past can be
complete without including the code duello within its scope, and no study of its
political and social life would be quite the truth that excluded it from its
purview. And if history is but a pageant, as Birrell says, then the unrolling of
its varied scenes reveals no local incidents of more dramatic interest than
those in which Savannah's most virile men, feeling that "honor is not to be
sported with," calmly met to exchange shots, with utter disdain of results:

"Set honor in one eye, and death in the other, And I will look on both
indifferently: For, let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more
than I fear death."


Additional Comments:
From:

ANNALS   OF   SAVANNAH

SAVANNAH DUELS AND DUELLISTS

1733-1877
BY

Thomas Gamble

COPYRIGHT 1923
REVIEW PUBLISHING & PRINTING COMPANY SAVANNAH, GEORGIA


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