3. THE PULL AND POWER OF VIOLENCE

0.       John Wentworth, Congressional Reminiscences: Adams, Benton, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster (Chicago: Fergus Printing Company, 1882), 13.

0.       French to Henry Flagg French, April 24, 1844, BBFFP. Emphasis in original. The gun was fired during a fight between John White (W-KY) and George Rathbun (D-NY), who were arguing about the presidential contender Henry Clay. Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., April 23, 1844, 551–54, 577–80; 28th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Rpt. 470, May 6, 1844, “Rencounter Between Messrs. White and Rathbun.” The House voted to give Wirt $150 in compensation, but he never fully recovered from the wound. 34th Cong., 3rd Sess., H. Rpt. 29, December 19, 1856, “John L. Wirt.”

0.       For contemporary accounts of the Graves-Cilley duel, in addition to French’s various writings and H. Rpt. 825 (mentioned below), see Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839; “Funeral Oration Delivered … Over the Body of Hon. Jonathan Cilley”; “Autobiography,” in John Carl Parish, George Wallace Jones (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1912), 157–70; E. M. Boyle, “Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William J. Graves of Kentucky, Representatives in Congress. An Historical Duel, 1838, as Narrated by Gen. Geo. W. Jones, Cilley’s Second,” Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder 6 (1889), 392. For accounts of Cilley’s college friend Horatio King, see “History of the Duel Between Jonathan Cilley and William J. Graves,” Collections and Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society 2 (April 1892): 127–48; King, Turning on the Light: A Dispassionate Survey of President Buchanan’s Administration, from 1860 to Its Close (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1895), 287–316; “Death of Cilley,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 4 (November–December 1840): 196–200. See also Bruce R. Kirby’s excellent “The Limits of Honor: Party, Section, and Dueling in the Jacksonian Congress” (M.A. thesis, George Mason University, 1997), 133–84; Don C. Seitz, Famous American Duels (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1929), 251–83; Myra L. Spaulding, “Dueling in the District of Columbia,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 29–30 (1928): 186–210; Lorenzo Sabine, Notes on Duels and Duelling (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Co., 1855), 89–108; Eve Anderson, A Breach of Privilege: Cilley Family Letters, 1820–1867 (Spruce Head, Maine: Seven Coin Press, 2002); Jeffrey L. Pasley, “Minnows, Spies, and Aristocrats: The Social Crisis in Congress in the Age of Martin Van Buren,” JER 27 (Winter 2007): 599–653; Ryan Chamberlain, Pistols, Politics and the Press: Dueling in 19th-Century American Journalism (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009), 55–62; Robert S. Levine, “‘The Honor of New England’: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Cilley-Graves Duel of 1838,” in The Field of Honor: Essays on Southern Character and American Identity, John Mayfield and Todd Hagstette, eds. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2017), 147–62; Roger Ginn, New England Must Not Be Trampled On: The Tragic Death of Jonathan Cilley (Camden, Maine: DownEast Books, 2016). My thanks to Mr. Ginn for sending me his book.

0.       French, diary entry, February 28, March 10 and 12, April 4 and 27, 1838, Witness, 75–80. His drawing appears in his diary entry of April 4, BBFFP.

0.       National Freemason 2, no. 6 (November 1864); ibid., 8 (February 1865).

0.       On “rough play,” see Richard Stott, Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009).

0.       25th Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 825, April 21, 1838, “Death of Mr. Cilley—Duel” (hereafter cited as H. Rpt. 825).

0.       French, diary entry, February 28, 1838, Witness, 75.

0.       French to Daniel French, January 30, 1835, BBFFP.

0.     French, diary entry, March 18, 1842, Witness, 139.

0.     Ibid., February 22, 1848, 199.

0.     Ibid., April 15, 1865, 469–71. Also ibid., April 15, 1866, 507.

0.     French thought that he had witnessed Cilley’s acceptance of Graves’s challenge, but Cilley received it at his boardinghouse. French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason 2, no. 6 (November 1864).

0.     Most details in this paragraph are from ibid.; ibid., 8 (February 1865); French, diary entry, February 28, March 10, April 4, 1838, Witness, 75–76, 78–79; “Nominis in Umbra” [French], Washington Correspondent No. 10 and No. 12, dateline February 23, 1838, and undated, Chicago Democrat, BBFFP.

0.     French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason 2, no. 6 (November 1864); Caleb Cushing to John Cushing, July 7, 1836, in John M. Belohlavek, Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University, 2005), 92.

0.     “Washington Correspondence No. 12,” Chicago Democrat, [April 1838], BBFFP; French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason 2, no. 6 (November 1864).

0.     Cilley served from September 4 to October 16, 1837, and December 4, 1837, to February 24, 1838. French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason 2, no. 6 (November 1864); ibid., 8 (February 1865); Cilley to Deborah Cilley, September 24, 1837, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 120. On Cilley, see Anderson, Breach of Privilege; Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Biographical Sketch of Jonathan Cilley,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 3 (September 1838): 69–77; King, Turning On the Light, 287–316; Cyrus Eaton, History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, from Their First Exploration A.D. 1605; With Family Genealogies, 2 vols. (Hallowell: Masters, Smith, 1865), 1: passim (esp. 391–93); Memoirs and Services of Three Generations (Rockland, Maine: reprint from Courier-Gazette, 1909). On his fighting temper, see also John Ruggles to F.O.J. Smith, August 17, 1833, F.O.J. Smith Papers, NYPL (which notes the “violence” and “bitterness of his invective”); and an anonymous contemporary biographical sketch in the Cilley Biographical File at Bowdoin College Library, which mentions his “harsher traits” and “almost terrible energy.”

0.     General Joseph Cilley appears in Trumbull’s “The Surrender of General Burgoyne.” On the portrait, see Cilley to Deborah Cilley, January 16, 1838, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 144. Bradbury Cilley (F-NH) was a representative from 1813 to 1815; Jonathan’s older brother Joseph (Liberty-NH) was a senator from June 13, 1846, to March 3, 1847, filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of Levi Woodbury. See also Memoirs and Services of Three Generations.

0.     Cilley to Deborah Cilley, January 13, 1833, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 84.

0.     Hawthorne, journal entry, July 28, 1837, Passages from the American Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. 9 of The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 12 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883), 9:75–77. Along similar lines, after the duel, Cilley’s brother-in-law Hezekiah Prince, Jr., described him as “prompt, independent, and even obstinate,” noting that the only way to understand his actions was to understand his character. Prince to Franklin Pierce, undated, in F. B. Wilkie, “Geo. W. Jones,” Iowa Historical Record 2 (April 1887), 446.

0.     French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason, vol. 2, no. 6 (November 1864).

0.     Cilley to Deborah Cilley, September 24, 1837, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 120.

0.     Cilley to Deborah Cilley, January 12, 1838, ibid., 143.

0.     On Wise, see Simpson, A Good Southerner; Barton H. Wise, The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806–1876 (New York: Macmillan, 1899); James Pinkney Hambleton, “A Biographical Sketch of Henry A. Wise, with a History of the Political Campaign in Virginia in 1855” (Richmond, Va.: J. W. Randolph, 1856); Clement Eaton, “Henry A. Wise, a Liberal of the Old South,” Journal of Southern History 7, no. 4 (November 1941): 482–94; Clement Eaton, “Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Fire Eaters of 1856,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 21, no. 4 (March 1935): 495–512; Henry A. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1872); William A. Link, Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia, passim. For a different side of Wise, see Clayton Torrence, ed., “From the Society’s Collections: Letters of Mrs. Ann (Jennings) Wise to Her Husband, Henry A. Wise,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 58, no. 4 (October 1950): 492–515; John Sergeant Wise (Wise’s son), The End of an Era (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1902).

0.     French, diary entry, July 12, 1838, Witness, 90.

0.     Wise, Life of Henry Wise, 13.

0.     Ann Jennings Wise to Wise, January 4(?), 1836, in Torrence, ed., “Letters of Mrs. Ann (Jennings) Wise to Her Husband, Henry A. Wise,” 512.

0.     Buckingham, America, 2:324; [Memorandum of life in Washington], 21, Daniel R. Goodloe Papers, UNC.

0.     Globe, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 24, 1841, 206.

0.     French, diary entry, March 12, 1838, Witness, 77.

0.     Cilley to Deborah Cilley, January 16, 1838, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 146.

0.     Dickens to Albany Fonblanque, March 12, 1842, The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, 12 vols. (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1974), 3:118.

0.     “Address of Mr. Wise, Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, to His Constituents,” in Washington Intelligencer, March 16, 1838.

0.     Daily National Intelligencer, March 9, 1839, reporting Wise’s speech of February 21.

0.     Daily National Intelligencer (Washington), January 25, 1838; Globe, 25th Cong., 1st Sess., January 23, 1838, 127; Adams, Memoirs, January 23, 1838, 9:475.

0.     Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 12, 1838, 173. This turned out to be Senator John Ruggles (D-ME), Cilley’s former patron and next-door neighbor turned enemy back in Maine. Convinced that Cilley didn’t support Ruggles’s run for the Senate in 1832, Ruggles and his supporters had dedicated themselves to destroying Cilley’s career. Now Ruggles was charged with using his influence to help a friend get a patent in exchange for a cut of the profits. On the Ruggles dispute, see Ginn, New England Must Not Be Trampled On, 65–74, 140–45; Senate Report No. 377, “Report on the Investigation of John Ruggles, Senator from Maine,” 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., April 12, 1838.

0.     Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 12, 1838, 174–75.

0.     Ibid., 176.

0.     “Nominis in Umbra” [French], “Washington Correspondence,” Chicago Democrat, dateline February 12, 1838, clipping in BBFFP.

0.     Silbey, American Political Nation.

0.     Greenleaf Cilley to Jonathan Cilley, January 21, 1838; Jonathan Cilley to Greenleaf Cilley, January 26, 1838, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 107–108.

0.     French, diary entry, January 10, 1842, Witness, 135. Although a Whig, Tyler had vetoed a bank bill because it violated his sense of states’ rights. On “heading Captain Tyler,” see Dan Monroe, The Republican Vision of John Tyler (College Station: Texas A&M, 2003), 101–106.

0.     Niles’ National Register (Washington, D.C.), August 4, 1838; Extra Globe (Washington, D.C.), July 16, 1838.

0.     Ibid., The Times (Hartford); New Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth), July 24, 1838.

0.     Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., April 27, 1840, 362–63. Black had attacked Whigs for insisting on reduction, reform, and less government spending, and then squawking when a Whig committee chair’s salary would be reduced as a result.

0.     On the hold of manliness, loyalty, and “in-group honor,” see Patricia Roberts-Miller, Fanatical Schemes: Proslavery Rhetoric and the Tragedy of Consensus (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009), 194.

0.     John Fairfield to Anna Fairfield, June 1, 1838, John Fairfield Papers, LC. On their fight generally, see Globe, 25th Congress, 2nd Sess., June 1, 1838, 422–23; William Cabell Rives to his wife, June 2, 1838, William Cabell Rives Papers, LC; Isaac Fletcher to General E. B. Chase, June 5, 1838, MSS 838355, Dartmouth College; Kirby, “Limits of Honor,” 199–200.

0.     Balie Peyton to Henry Wise, June 17, 1838, in The Collector: A Magazine for Autograph and Historical Collectors 20 (January 1907): 26–27.

0.     This isn’t to say that manly honor was a Southern construct or that non-Southerners were unmanly, oblivious to honor culture, or nonviolent by nature. Rather, modes of fighting and ideas of manhood differed in North, South, and West, and the code duello—a defined set of rites and rituals centered on the practice of dueling—was seen as explicitly and defiantly Southern for much of the nineteenth century. During that same period, Northerners increasingly found the code both alien and extreme, though not entirely unfamiliar; indeed, Northern moral and sectional discomfort with dueling, joined with their understanding of dueling’s implications, was precisely what gave the code of honor its power in the national arena of Congress. See notes 141, 146, and 151 in chapter 2.

0.     Daily National Intelligencer (Washington), February 16, 1838; “Washington Correspondent,” Chicago Democrat, undated [April 1838], BBFFP.

0.     On the importance of manliness in Southern rhetoric, see Roberts-Miller, Fanatical Schemes, 103–26; on Wise as a manly champion of the South, see ibid., 203.

0.     Jones told the investigative committee that Cilley had been handed an article from a Baltimore paper dated February 22 or 23. Based on his summary, this one seems likely. Baltimore Sun, February 22, 1838; H. Rpt. 825, 49. See also Baltimore Sun, February 23, 1838.

0.     Register of Debates, 25th Cong., 1st Sess., September 23, 1837, 766.

0.     Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., December 4, 1837, 284.

0.     H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Duncan (quoting Pierce), 102–103; ibid., testimony of Pierce, 121. On Northern ambivalence about dueling in this period, see Foote, Gentlemen and the Roughs, 93–118.

0.     For example, William Duer (W-NY) had Charles Conrad (W-LA) by his side after Richard Kidder Meade (D-VA) challenged him in 1849; Jonathan Cilley was advised by Jesse Bynum (D-NC) among others when William Graves (W-KY) challenged him in 1838; George Kremer (J-PA) was advised by George McDuffie (D-SC) among others during his 1825 honor dispute with Henry Clay (W-KY); Leonard Jarvis (J-ME) chose Robert Lytle (J-OH)—who spent his young adulthood in Kentucky—as his second when he challenged F.O.J. Smith (J-ME) to a duel in 1835, and Smith chose James Love (AJ-KY) as his second; and Kentucky-born Francis Blair (R-MO) advised New York–born Charles James, Anson Burlingame’s second, in his near-duel with Preston Brooks in 1856. James almost refused the job because he knew “almost nothing of the code.” “Passing of a Remarkable Man,” Washington Post, October 27, 1901, 29.

0.     Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Andrew Jackson’s Honor,” in Wyatt-Brown, Shaping of Southern Culture, 56–80; John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955). On the nonenforcement of anti-dueling laws, see esp. Matthew A. Byron, “Crime and Punishment: The Impotency of Dueling Laws in the United States” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2008); Harwell Wells, “The End of the Affair? Anti-Dueling Laws and Social Norms in Antebellum America,” Vanderbilt Law Review 54, 1805–47 (see esp. 1831–37).

0.     Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., April 5, 1838, 282. On dueling as a civilizing force, see John Hope Franklin, The Militant South: 1800–1861 (Chicago: University of Illinois, 2002; orig. ed. 1956), 59–62; Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 353.

0.     Daily National Intelligencer, March 9, 1839, reporting February 21, 1839, speech of Wise.

0.     Franklin, Militant South, 61.

0.     Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 353–54; W. Stephen Belko, The Invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 245–46. Green raised the matter in his paper two years later when he published (and sneered at) Webb’s private letter discussing the incident. Webb tried to challenge Green to a duel, but when Green cowhided Webb’s second, Webb posted Green as a “SCOUNDREL and a COWARD” in broadsides pasted all over Washington. See Webb, “To the Public” (Washington, D.C., 1832), American Broadsides and Ephemera, infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive/?p_product=ABEA&p_theme=abea&p_nbid=C4AB50NEMTMyMDUwODM2OS40MzY1MTE6MToxMzoxMzAuMTMyLjIxLjc3&p_action=doc&p_queryname=4412&p_docref=v2:0F2B1FCB879B099B@ABEA-10F453EC151070D8@4412-10DEEFA6F1F28B78@1, accessed November 5, 2011.

0.     Daily National Intelligencer, September 12 and 13, 1837; Globe, September 13, 1837; Morning Herald (N.Y.), September 13, 1837; Pennsylvania Inquirer and Daily Courier, September 14, 1837.

0.     Report, testimony of Schaumburg, 86. Emphasis in original.

0.     “The Cilley Duel,” Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839. The quote comes from a speech by Graves to his constituents in the wake of the duel.

0.     H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Wise, 55.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Bynum, 66.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Graves, 127; Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839. For the note, see H. Rpt. 825, 40; Graves presented the committee with the letter, which Wise endorsed on the back as Graves’s second, noting that he hadn’t known that Graves had borne the letter until after he had tried to deliver it to Cilley.

0.     Details in these paragraphs are from H. Rpt. 825. See chapter 5 for more on street fights as northern duels.

0.     Adams, diary entry, June 29, 1840, Memoirs, 10:324.

0.     H. Rpt. 825, 126–27.

0.     Shelden, Washington Brotherhood, discusses this extensively.

0.     Ibid., 105; Thomas Hart Benton to Editor of Globe, March 6, 1838, Washington Globe, March 7, 1838; Niles’ Weekly Register, March 10, 1838; Farmer’s Cabinet (Amherst, N.H.), March 16, 1836. Three of Cilley’s advisors—George Jones (delegate-WI), Alexander Duncan (D-OH), and Jesse Bynum (D-NC)—sought Benton’s advice on their way to the dueling ground; Benton thought that because Cilley and Graves were family men with no ill will between them, the matter should be settled without gunplay or at most with one exchange of fire. H. Rpt. 825, 105.

0.     On Clay’s involvement, see Melba Porter Hay, “Henry Clay and the Graves-Cilley Duel,” in A Mythic Land Apart: Reassessing Southerners and Their History, ed. John David Smith, Thomas H. Appleton, and Charles Pierce Roland (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), 57–80; as well as Wise’s later statement and the resulting correspondence. See chapter 4 for details.

0.     Jones, “Autobiography,” in Parish, George Wallace Jones, 158.

0.     Graves to Henry Clay, February 16, 1842, The Papers of Henry Clay: The Whig Leader, January 1, 1837–December 31, 1843, ed. Robert Seager II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 9:657.

0.     On privilege of debate, see Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, ed. Thomas M. Cooley, 2 vols. (Clark, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 2008: orig. ed. 1833), 1:610–12.

0.     For their correspondence, see Daily National Intelligencer, September 13, 1837, and the Globe of the same day.

0.     H. Rpt. 825, 10; ibid., testimony of Wise, 59, 64; ibid., testimony of Jones, 46–47.

0.     Ibid.

0.     Webb to unknown, February 28, 1836, Niles’ National Register, March 10, 1838. Emphasis in original.

0.     On the complications of dishonoring Graves, see Chamberlain, Pistols, Politics and the Press, 57–58.

0.     H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Duncan, 103.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Schaumburg, 87.

0.     Boyle, “Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William J. Graves of Kentucky,” Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder 6 (1889): 391.

0.     Cilley to Deborah Cilley, February 22, 1838, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 154.

0.     Graves to Cilley, February 23, 1838; Cilley to Graves, February 23, 1838, Congressional Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., 330.

0.     Calhoon and Hawes testified that Crittenden was chosen because he was “known to the nation”; because “his efforts to compromise the matter would be more likely than ours to prove successful”; and because if no compromise was reached, his presence would suggest that everything had been done to preserve Graves’s life. H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Calhoon and Hawes, 131–32.

0.     Graves to Henry Clay, February 16, 1842, Papers of Henry Clay, 9:656–57.

0.     On Jones’s duels, see his obituary in the Daily Picayune (New Orleans), July 27, 1896. On Schaumburg’s status as a notorious duelist, see H. Rpt. 825, 170; “Ye Ancient Chivalry,” Macon Telegraph and Messenger, June 14, 1882; John Augustin, “The Oaks. The Old Duelling-Grounds of New Orleans” (1887), in The Louisiana Book: Selection from the Literature of the State, ed. Thomas M’Caleb (New Orleans: R. F. Straughan, 1894), 80. On Pierce noticing him on the street, see H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Pierce, 122. According to Jones, Lewis Linn (D-MO) recommended Jones as Cilley’s second; Jones’s autobiography, Parish, George Wallace Jones, 160.

0.     [William Graves’s address to his constituents], Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839.

0.     George W. Jones to H. Prince, March 17, 1838, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 178.

0.     The next few pages draw on testimony of various duel participants in H. Rpt. 825.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Menefee, 79.

0.     Ibid., 58, 79.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Wise, 60.

0.     Ibid., 9.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Bynum, March 11, 1838, 71.

0.     Ibid., testimony of Duncan, 107.

0.     Ibid.

0.   Wise to Pierce, June 22, 1852, Franklin Pierce Papers, LC; John C. Wise, Recollections of Thirteen Presidents (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1906), 35–39.

0.   Nominis in Umbra [French], “Washington Correspondence,” dateline February 23, 1838, Chicago Democrat, BBFFP.

0.   Adams to Charles Francis Adams, March 19, 1838, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1899), June Meeting, 1898, 288–92, quote on 289.

0.   H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Fairfield, 144.

0.   French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason 2, no. 8 (February 1865).

0.   The friends were Charles King and Reverdy Johnson. Statement of Charles King, February 4, 1842, in Clay Papers, 9:644 footnote; also Clay to Webb, January 30, 1842, ibid., 9:643–44; Clay to Wise, February 28, 1842, ibid., 9:662–63. Some of Graves’s advisors slowed down his search for a rifle in the hope of devising a compromise; sadly, Jones’s helpful offer of a rifle foiled this plan. H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Wise, 57.

0.   Most details in this paragraph are from “Congressional Reminiscences,” 8 (February 1865); French, diary entry, February 28, March 10, April 4, 1838, Witness, 75–76, 78–79; “Nominis in Umbra” [French], Washington Correspondent No. 10 and No. 12, dateline February 23, 1838, and undated, Chicago Democrat, BBFFP.

0.   “Funeral Oration Delivered at the Capitol,” 13.

0.   French, diary entry, February 28, 1838, Witness, 75.

0.   Condemning the hypocrisy of Cilley’s funeral a year later, Wise said, “[I]f I ever fall on the field of honor whilst a member of this House, I now beseech my friends … not to permit a political parade to be made over my dead body.” Speech of February 21, 1839, Daily National Intelligencer, March 9, 1839. Emphasis in original.

0.   [Washington] Niles’ National Register, March 24, 1838. My thanks to R. B. Bernstein for bringing this to my attention. See also John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, March 19, 1838, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 291.

0.   John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, March 19, 1838, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 290.

0.   “Nominis in Umbra” [French], “Washington Correspondent,” dateline March 3, 1838, Chicago Democrat, March 21, 1838, clipping in BBFFP.

0.   Dolley Madison to Elizabeth Coles, February 21 and 26, 1838, The Papers of Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville: UVA Press, 2008), rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/DYMN-01-05-02-0344, accessed October 5, 2011.

0.   New York Courier and Enquirer, February 26, 1838; Waldo Patriot (Belfast, Maine), March 9, 1838.

0.   They fought in Delaware. New York’s anti-dueling law applied to New Yorkers who left the state. According to Byron, there had been only two previous indictments under that law, which dated back to 1817; both offenders were pardoned. Byron, “Crime and Punishment,” 86–88. On the duel, see also Seitz, Famous American Duels, 283–309; James L. Crouthamel, James Watson Webb: A Biography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan, 1969), 74–76; Henry Clay to James Watson Webb, February 7, 1842, Papers of Henry Clay, 9:648; correspondence in the Webb Papers; and a remarkable commemorative volume given to Webb by Governor William Seward, containing accounts of Webb’s trial and petitions for his release. James Watson Webb Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

0.   Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America, with Remarks on Its Institutions, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman’s, 1839), 2:16.

0.   In February 1841, William King (D-AL) challenged Henry Clay (W-KY) to a duel and Clay accepted, but the matter was mediated behind closed doors, though not before both men were arrested and released on bond. The New Yorker, March 13, 1841; Adams, diary entry, March 9, 1841, Memoirs, 10:441–42; Gobright, Recollection of Men and Things, 44–49; Forney, Anecdotes, 300; Perley, Reminiscences, 1:259–60; The New World (N.Y.), March 13, 1841; and for the bond posted against Clay, see Churchman’s Weekly Herald and Philanthropist, September 4, 1844. The Globe mentions only a “very unpleasant collision.” Globe, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 14, 1841, 256–57; for the collision, see ibid., March 9, 1841, 248. The next duel was in spring 1842, when Thomas Marshall (W-KY) challenged James Watson Webb. The next fistfight, on June 1, 1838, pitted Hopkins Turney (D-TN) against John Bell (W-TN).

0.   Henry Flagg French to Benjamin Brown French, March 4, 1838, BBFFP.

0.   J. Emery to John Fairfield, March 19, 1838, John Fairfield Papers, LC.

0.   For a sampling of the petitions, see H. Rpt. 825, 161–62, 174–75.

0.   New-Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord), March 5, 1838.

0.   United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 (March 1838): 493–508. See also Robert Sampson, John L. O’Sullivan and His Times (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003), 54–57.

0.   New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord), March 5, 1838; Waldo Patriot (Belfast, Maine), March 9, 1838; Portsmouth (N.H.) Journal of Literature and Politics, March 10, 1838.

0.   Crittenden to Leslie L. Coombs, March 20, 1838, in The Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, ed. Chapman Coleman, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1871), 1:107–8.

0.   Franklin, Militant South, 61–62.

0.   Wise insisted that he had done all he could to prevent a fight; he thought Cilley’s Democratic friends had prevented him from putting in writing what he’d said to Graves in person.

0.   Thomas Hart Benton to Editor of the Globe, March 6, 1838, Washington Globe, March 7, 1838; Niles’ Weekly Register, March 10, 1838; Farmer’s Cabinet (Amherst, N.H.), March 16, 1836. See also H. Rpt. 825, 105. Benton may have been more involved than he admitted. In his autobiography written years later, Jones recalled seeing Pierce and Benton conferring in the room of Lewis Linn (D-MO), and hearing Benton say, “They can’t object to the rifle and you can refer them to the cases of Moore and Letcher, of Kentucky, and others.” Linn and Jones were messmates. Jones’s autobiography, in Parish, George Wallace Jones, 160.

0.   “Address of Mr. Wise,” National Intelligencer, March 16, 1838; “The Cilley Duel,” Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839; “Letter from Col. Webb,” February 28, 1838, Niles’ National Register, March 3, 1838; Pierce to Isaac Toucey, March 12, 1838, published as “Mr. Pierce’s Letter,” New Hampshire Statesman and State Journal, March 31, 1838; and Niles’ National Register, March 24, 1838 (among other places).

0.   “Address of Mr. Wise,” National Intelligencer, March 16, 1838; “The Cilley Duel,” Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839.

0.   Crittenden to Leslie L. Coombs, March 20, 1838, in Coleman, Life of John J. Crittenden, 108. Emphasis in original.

0.   My reasoning here was inspired by Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

0.   H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Pierce, 121–22; ibid., testimony of Schaumburg, 86–87; ibid., testimony of Williams, 142.

0.   “Nominis in Umbra” [French], “Washington Correspondence” [ca. February 1838], Chicago Democrat, BBFFP; French, diary entry, February 28, 1838, Witness, 75; “Washington Correspondent,” dateline February 12 and 23, 1838, Chicago Democrat clipping in BBFFP; Baltimore Age, February 24, 1838.

0.   French to unknown correspondent, January 29, 1837, BBFFP. See also Globe, 24th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 27, 1837, 135. Emphasis in original.

0.   French, diary entry, March 10, 1838, Witness, 76.

0.   Adams to Charles Francis Adams, February 12, 1838, in Kirby, “Limits of Honor,” 145. Adams was praising Maine-born Seargent Smith Prentiss (W-MS).

0.   Francis Pickens to James Henry Hammond, March 5, 1838, in Kirby, “Limits of Honor,” 175. Franklin Elmore (SRD-SC) likewise praised Cilley as “a true friend of the South.” Elmore to James Henry Hammond, April 2, 1838, ibid., 147.

0.   See for example J. Emery to John Fairfield, March 19, 1838, John Fairfield Papers, LC. See also Levine, “Honor of New England,” 153–60.

0.   Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 26, 1838, 199, 200. John Fairfield (D-ME) announced Cilley’s death in the House; Reuel Williams (D-ME) announced it in the Senate.

0.   Adams to Charles Francis Adams, March 19, 1838, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1899), June Meeting, 1898, 288–92, quote on 292.

0.   “Nominis in Umbra” [French], “Washington Correspondence,” dateline March 15, 1838, clipping in BBFFP; New Hampshire Patriot (Concord), April 9, 1838.

0.   [French], dateline March 15, 1838, clipping in BBFFP.

0.   See photo at www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=39386650, accessed October 2, 2011.

0.   Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 28, 1838, 200–202.

0.   The lone Rhode Island Whig was Robert B. Cranston. Of the forty-nine negative votes, five were from Northerners (in addition to Cranston, three from New York and one from New Jersey), seven were from Northwestern states (Illinois and Indiana), and eight Southern votes were Democratic. Journal of the House, vol. 32, February 28, 1838, 506–507.

0.   Intriguingly, modern Southerners are more likely than Northerners to approve of violence when used as a tool. Nisbett and Cohen, Culture of Honor, 28, 38.

0.   In addition to the committee members, Graves, Wise, Jones, Menefee, and Pierce attended and were permitted to cross-examine witnesses. H. Rpt. 825, 2.

0.   The four congressmen were Isaac Toucey (D-CT), William Potter (D-PA), Andrew D. W. Bruyn (D-NY), and Seaton Grantland (W-GA).

0.   George Grennell (W-MA) and James Rariden (W-IN).

0.   Franklin H. Elmore (D-SC).

0.   This was the optimum outcome to Adams, who was outraged that the Democratic committee majority had taken sides. Adams, diary entry, May 10, 1838, Memoir, 10:527; for an account of the committee debate and the decision to table punishment, see Hinds’ Precedents, chapter LII, “Punishment of Members for Contempt,” no. 1644, 2:1116–19.

0.   The Senate passed the bill on April 6, 1838; the House on February 13, 1839. See also Wells, “End of the Affair,” esp. 1805–808.

0.   Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 30, 1838, 278.

0.   Ibid., April 5, 1838, 284.

0.   House Journal, February 13, 1839, 539. The bill passed with 110 yeas, 16 nays (virtually all Southerners), and 93 men in town but absent, only 23 of them offering a formal excuse.

0.   French, diary entry, April 27, 1838, Witness, 79–80; French, diary entry, April 28, 1838, BBFFP. The marginal addition is dated 1847.

0.   Parish, George Wallace Jones, 27; Joseph Schafer, “Sectional and Personal Politics in Early Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 4 (June 1935): 456–57; Shelly A. Thayer, “The Delegate and the Duel: The Early Political Career of George Wallace Jones,” Palimpsest 5 (September–October 1984): 178–88. Menefee didn’t run for reelection.