I read recently that Abe Lincoln, when younger, would serve as seconds in some duels. Questions:
How common were duels at their “peak” (peaks?) in the U.S.?
Were deuls always to the death? What were the rules and variations?
What the heck did a second do? Just observe?
I believe he was also supposed to take your place if you chickened out or otherwise couldn’t make it.
Here is the Code Duello. Seconds do all sorts of things like load the weapons and set the terms of firing.
I don’t know how many duels ended in death, but now you’ve got me curious about it. Anyone know?
They probably also held a clean pair of pants for you.
Well, adam yax’s cite goes directly against some of my speculation (no firing into the air, for example), so I’d go with he says. American duelling traditions, though, may well be different.
According to the link given by the previous poster (rule 13) deliberatly shooting in the air, into the ground, etc…would have been unacceptable (because it would have meant that the man engaged in the duel without good cause. He should have apologized previously, if the offender, or not have provoked a duel at the first place if the offensee).
If I recall correctly, Alexander Hamilton fired into the air before being shot by Aaron Burr, so I guess it happened at least once in a while.
Carry the loser off …
True, but that’s for English and Continental duelling, and the heading does say that “In America, the principal rules were followed, although occasionally there were some glaring deviations.” Also, this thread currently on the first page of GQ mentions incidents in both America and England where participants intentionally missed without loss of honor.
Looking further into the Code Duello link, I found this page on American duelling, which mentions that an American duelling code was compiled in 1838 (but doesn’t give the content of it) and also goes into the specific role of a second.
[quote]
In a typical duel, each party acted through a second. The seconds’ duty, above all, was to try to reconcile the parties without violence. An offended party sent a challenge through his second. If the recipient apologized, the matter usually ended. If he elected to fight, the recipient chose the weapons and the time and place of the encounter. Up until combat began, apologies could be given and the duel stopped. After combat began, it could be stopped at any point after honor had been satisfied
[quote]
Some other interesting points:
the first duel in America was fought with swords between two servants in Plymouth in 1621
the pistols commonly used in duelling were very inaccurate, and even experienced shooters had difficulty hitting their target
duellists were expected to shoot within three seconds, anything more being considered dishonorable
Doesn’t mention anything about firing into the air, though.
From my reading, this was not the most common method of the pistol duel. Instead, they would each be at a distance from each other, already facing. That was certainly how the duel involving not-yet-President Andrew Jackson was done.
This is because the guns of the day were inaccurate anyway, and duelling pistols were unrifled.
“Rifling,” for the uninitiated, is spiral grooving inside the barrel of the gun, which provides “spin” to the bullet - which was, back then, a round lead ball. Round lead balls make inaccurate projectiles anyway, because their shape is so non-aerodynamic that it’s hard for them to fly true. The “spin” helps stabilize it. (Ever try to throw a football without spiralling it? Same idea.) So even your average gun of those days was pretty inaccurate by our standards. However, duelling pistols (yes, they were made specifically for duelling, and usually came in pairs) were unrifled so as to level the playing field a little and, hopefully, lower the death toll, because the balls would pretty much just go loopydoop in the general direction of where you’d aimed.
Now, some folks had cheater guns, which were partially rifled, stopping just far enough up that you couldn’t see it by looking down the barrel. But the majority were completely unrifled.
Slight hijack but check out Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick if you want to see the workings of a duel and the involvement of the “seconds”. Given Kubrick’s legendary attention to detail I would suspect the duels featured in the film are reasonably accurate (and very tense as well).
racinchikki has me curious, because all the information I’ve seen indicates exactly the opposite.
As far as I can tell, the most expensive guns of the late flintlock era were duelling and travelling pistols, because gunmakers were especially persnicketty when producing them. Making matched sets in the time before mass production was difficult, and that contibuted to the expense I’m sure, but people writing about quality guns generally praised them for their accuracy. I’ve never actually seen a duelling pistol, but I once had the opportunity to examine a travelling pistol produced c. 1750 and it was most definitely rifled. My understanding was that the only real difference between the types was that duelling pistols tended to have lighter triggers, like modern target pistols. Admittedly, it’s sometimes difficult to categorize equipment produced in a time when everything was a custom job.
Smoothbores, like muskets, were generally military weapons expected to maintain high rates of fire.
Also, how do you partially rifle a gun barrel? It seems to me that the only options are to rifle the whole thing and then bore out the lands in part of it (which would render that section of the barrel useless) or rifle from the breech end and plug it which would leave the smooth section at land height, rendering the rifling useless.
Of course a travelling pistol would be rifled, because it would need to be accurate - I would assume from the name that it’s for protection from highwaymen and other dangers of the road. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a duelling pistol that was fully-rifled, although I’ve seen several in displays, none of which had visible rifling.
Of course, now that it actually comes down to it, I can’t find a very clear cite on the web concerning the matter of rifling in duelling pistols, one way or the other. Here’s what I did come up with:
The information I’ve had regarding duelling has always been about England, so I’ve only been half-educated. I apologize.
I will make further note that with plenty of practice, one could learn the vagaries of even a smoothbore flintlock and become fairly accurate. The second page I’ve cited has further reference to accuracy.
Thanks for the links. I’m beginning to think that things were even less standardized than I thought, but I’m now willing to stipulate smoothbore duellers.
After perusing your second link, though, I’m still inclined to consider “blind rifling” as complete BS.
[www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410621+“single+and+smooth”&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]See](http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:5b0L8x9WnJAJ:[url) here for an explanation of loading “single and smooth.”
Also, see what you can find on “scratch rifling” in duelling pistols. I’ve seen it mentioned in print resources, but can’t find anything on-line. It was essentially a way of cheating. Shallow scratches in the pistol’s bore spun the ball just enough to give the user an edge in accuracy over a smooth bore pistol. BTW, a smooth bore pistol with a properly fitted ball fired from a clean bore is far more accurate than you think, more than accurate enough to kill a man at the distances at which duels were fought. Andrew Jackson survived his famous duel (barely) against a noted marksman by wearing voluminous clothing and having his tailor relocate his jacket buttons, which he knew his opponent would use as an aiming point.
Well, I see my link to a caced version of a page didn’t survive. The pertinent bit from the article was
Duelling pistols were very well-made because they were custom-built for rich people who wanted them to work perfectly every time.
As Scumpup mentioned, a smoothbore duelling pistol is entirely different from a smoothbore musket – the latter used a ball quite a bit smaller than the bore size, to allow for powder residue* to build up after repeated firing without cleaning; they were inaccurate (especially on the first shot) because the ball was small enough to rattle around in the barrel. If the ball was the size of the bore, the first few shots would be accurate, then you wouldn’t be able to ram the ball down the barrel because of the buildup.
Duelling pistols, OTOH, used a ball and patch that fit the bore tightly, because accuracy was important; they were only expected to be fired a few times per duel, so the residue buildup wasn’t an issue. A smoothbore pistol with a well-fitted ball (and a little practice) could be accurate enough at the short ranges at which duels were fought.