When Yo Mama Had a Sword: Dueling

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“When dueling was legal, we were politer.”—Anonymous

“When dueling was legal, we were meeker.”—The Wordspinner

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/12/11—I almost caused an accident recently listening to Dr. J. Rufus Fears lecturing on Julius Caesar. Dr. Fears is one of the Teaching Company’s star academics, but stellar as his credentials are, I haven’t been overly impressed with the company’s Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life series.

Fears did briefly command my attention, however, when he said, “You’re going to laugh, but there’s truth in this: honor can only exist in an age that takes the duel seriously.” I reached for the rewind button so fast that I swerved out of my lane, causing the fellow behind me to honk.

I really couldn’t blame him. Had we been living in the 19th century, he might well have challenged me to a duel—you know, “Pistols for two, whiskey for one.”

Samuel Johnson probably offered the most famous defense of the code duello: “A man may shoot the man who invades his character, as he may shoot him who attempts to break into his house.”

I don’t own a gun, but if I did, I’d have no compunction shooting a man raping my wife. If he were inside our home, I could legally shoot him; if I shot him out of doors, I’d probably face some jail time which, in a moment of white-hot passion, is hardly a deterrent.

But to return to the incident on the highway, if the other driver had gestured obscenely after I cut him off, would that have constituted an invasion of my character? I don’t think so. Had he pulled up beside me at the next stop light scowling, I would have explained and apologized. If that had not sufficed, I would have invited him to follow me to the police station. Then, I would have hired a lawyer, and we could have settled the matter in the courtroom like honorable men in the 21st century.

Dueling is thought to have begun in AD 501, when King Gundebald of Burgundy created the judicial duel as an alternative to the trial by ordeal (“What I said is the truth because I’m willing to put my hand in boiling water.”)

The judicial variation arose when the evidence in a dispute was insufficient or contradictory. In such cases, Gundebald authorized sword fighting between defendant and plaintiff to resolve the matter. Since God naturally favors the righteous, the integrity of the victor would naturally be upheld.

The well-meaning king could not have known how popular dueling would become: it’s estimated that 40,000 Frenchmen alone died in duels between 1420 and 1600. In early-19th-century New Orleans, three to four people died each day from dueling wounds. Between 1798 and 1860, the US Navy lost almost as many men to dueling as it did in combat. When one considers World War I a duel, as some historians do, you’ll understand what I mean by its popularity: fifteen million (including the “seconds”) died settling that “affair of honor” involving Archduke what’s-his-name.

Women don’t get a free pass on dueling, either.

Even those who declined to swashbuckle boasted that they’d rather be “the widow of a brave man than the wife of a coward.”Regardless of whether it was a male or female, the issue which led to a challenge was seldom black or white. Is a man who laughs off an insult or some jostling in a crowd a coward, or is he following the sensible injunction to turn the other cheek? Not until Roman Catholics started excommunicating duelists, and American Puritans began executing the winners, and Queen Victoria ordered their dishonorable discharge from her military, did the tide begin to ebb.

A typical “insult” was often no more than an honest assessment of a parvenu and his reckless spending.

Hearing the slight, the spendthrift might issue the following, “Sir, if your courage is equal to your impudence, you will meet me at dawn beneath the oaks.”

Often, the individual challenged never fully understood the reason why he had been summoned, but few, regardless of age or health, could “decline the call of honor,” especially after the introduction of dueling pistols.

Tradition demanded that the matter be resolved in a secluded place (to avoid the police) and within 48 hours (to prevent target practice). Assuming mediation failed, the duelists’ seconds or “sticklers,” as they were called, fixed the precise time, place, and weapons, and then stood by with pistols of their own to shoot anyone who fired prematurely.

According to the early 17^th-century treatise, The Art of Dueling by Salvator Fabris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapier), if a contestant was struck, the shooter was expected to “express regret,” the wounded was instructed to “treat the matter coolly,” and the mortally wounded was advised to “go off with as good a grace as possible.” Or, as Shakespeare might have written, “Exit without sanctimony.”

But if the victor with engraved challenges in his vest pocket was a practiced bully who loved the action, where was the justice? And what was his compensation? Even after 618,000 died in the War Between the States, few were able to answer those questions in any rational way. Justice remained a flip of a coin. The South Carolina legislature finally outlawed dueling in 1880, but it was the last state in the union to do so. Hundreds of duels were fought here, but not one winner was ever found guilty of murder.

Today, “single combat” is as antiquated as debtor prisons and quaint as arranged marriages. “Yo Mama” jokes took the place of dueling in the Black community for a while, but their day seems to have passed, as well.

My German wife remembers grade-school students being challenged to a “duel” by classmates in the 1950s. If the dare were accepted, a long blade of grass with serrated edges was chosen and, at a signal from a third party, the two started sawing the blade across their protruding tongues. The first to quit after blood had been drawn was considered the loser.

She also recalls that most of the doctors and dentists she met had a Schmiss. This was a much-sought-after facial scar obtained in a sword fight at the university. To make them more visible, pickle juice was rubbed into the wound and a dog’s hair was placed in it before it was sewn shut.

When I was ten, I played chicken on my bicycle and have a scar on my nose to prove it, but I’m not terribly proud of it. Had I been at Waterloo, I like to think I would have had enough sense to move from the path of a cannon ball I saw coming. The troops who were there were ordered to hold their ground and most did. Some, like Dr. Fears, evidently take my willingness to duck as evidence of our general decline; I see it as evidence of moral progress—honor be damned.

Cartoonist Saul Steinberg caught the gist of the issue in one of his expressionistic masterpieces wherein two businessmen are crossing swords inside a crocodile’s mouth. No caption, of course, is necessary; the only winner is the croc.