Nothing noble about Jackson's duel
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In his May 22 column, Charley Reese suggested that the country would be a lot better off if our political leaders, especially President Clinton, modeled themselves after Andrew Jackson. According to Reese, we should admire Jackson because he was willing to duel an expert marksman, Charles Dickinson, for insulting his wife.
Reese mourns the passing of this kind of behavior. At the end of his column he even suggests that it might be a good idea to legalize dueling because it would restore "civility." His point seems to be that the ante-bellum South was a better society than ours. As a historian, I would like to suggest that Reese's understanding and use of history are not just faulty, but dangerous.
First, Reese is wrong about the facts of the duel. According to Jackson's biographer, Robert Remini, Jackson's duel with Charles Dickinson began over a disputed horse race wager, not Rachel Jackson's reputation. Moreover, the duel took nearly six months to come off because both Jackson and Dickinson were reluctant adversaries. Jackson agreed to duel only after his opponents got wind of the dispute and publicly questioned his courage. Thus, Jackson was hardly the selfless defender of womanhood that Reese imagines he was. His motives were as much political as anything else.
Even if Rachel's reputation became a factor in the dispute, we need a better understanding of what this means than Reese provides. Although Jackson may seem noble for risking death to defend his wife, keep in mind that he was motivated by an extremely paternalistic view of women. White Southern males believed that women, as inferior creatures, could not defend themselves. Thus, it was men's responsibility to protect "their" women.
Women received this protection at a high price — their complete subservience to men. White women were not at the same level as African-American slaves, but they did have this in common: neither could expect to be free and independent members of society. Jackson accepted this conception of gender relationship as natural and right. This does not
make him evil; it simply makes him a product of his age.
Reese's understanding of the South's code of honor is flawed. Most historians agree that the Old South was hardly a "civil" place — at least by our modern definition of the term. Because Southerners believed that they had only as much worth, or honor, as others conferred upon them, they were extremely sensitive to insult. To retain status, one had to be able to back his words with deeds and to aggressively rebuke any challenge to his reputation. This made the South an extremely violent place.
Only on rare occasions did Southerners act out their passions in ritualized duels. More often, affairs of honor were ugly and bloody events. Southerners believed that one received the greatest satisfaction by mauling his adversary in a public place. Because they liked to feel their adversary wither beneath them, they preferred knifes, clubs or their bare hands to pistols at 20 paces. And they did not always wait to give their adversary fair warning. Thus Preston Brook's infamous caning of Charles Summer on the floor of the United States Senate is probably a more typical example of ante-bellum Southern honor at work than Andrew Jackson's duel.
Let me suggest that Reese's understanding of history suffers from a malignant case of toxic nostalgia. He rejects the present and finds solace in a mythical past when men were men and virtue triumphed over evil. No doubt we all invent the past to fit our own purposes, but we do so at great risk. Too often, our inventions are oversimplifications that have just enough truth to them — or at least the appearance of truth — to be seductive. This is what I. find troubling about Reese's essay.
Reese invokes one of America's most cherished icons — the rugged Andrew Jackson — and recommend that we create a society that would allow his type to rule again. To the unwary reader this may seem like a good idea. But the past is more complex than Reese suggests. Jackson the man was not the same as Jackson the icon. And the culture of his age involved more than chivalric demonstrations of personal honor. To return to the ethical standards of the ante-bellum South is to return to paternalism, violence and an extreme form of racial and gender inequality. Is this what we want?
STEVE TRIPP
Associate Professor of History
Grand Valley State University
Allendale