Violence, Masculinity, Image, and Reality on the Antebellum Frontier

Ryan L. Dearinger

It is a permanent and universal interest of mankind that men should not kill each other; but the particular and momentary interest of a nation or class may in certain cases make homicide excusable or even honorable. Honor is nothing but this particular rule, based on a particular state of society, by means of which a people distributes praise or blame. —Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville, perhaps the most prophetic and certainly the most cited nineteenth-century foreign observer of American life, had more to say about the image, reality, and significance of violence than scholars have recognized. Like many of his contemporaries who observed Jacksonian America, he was puzzled by the ambiguous relationship between honor, violence, and social class, particularly as it played out in the ritual of the duel. The refusal of a challenge to duel, Tocqueville noted, was the only act he knew to be considered both honorable and dishonorable. Viewing the custom as aristocratic and driven by insecurity and greed, he was, "astonish[ed] to find that when honor is at the zenith of its power its rules are at their strangest; apparently the further they get from common sense, the better they are obeyed." Tocqueville saw little room for rules of honor in a democratic and expanding nation. Lacking both "deep roots and strong influence," he wrote, these rules were "like a religion whose temples are allowed to remain but in which no one longer believes."1	1
This dueling pistol is typical of those that were used on the antebellum frontier. They were not very accurate beyond short range and often missed their intended target. Reproduced from Ben C. Truman, Duelling in America, ed. Steven Randolph Wood (1884; San Diego, Calif., 1992).
As a peculiar and exclusive, yet infrequent, form of violence, the duel tells us much about who could fight, how they could fight, and the consequences involved. Honor, autonomy, chivalry, and revenge—these and other factors have long received the attention of scholars who, following Tocqueville, have investigated the social, political, and psychological aspects of the American version of the code duello. Far less noted has been the degree to which this form of violence helped elites distinguish their standing and image from that of the "rough-and-tumble" lower classes of the backcountry, thus setting the parameters for democratic opportunity. Few scholars have critiqued the efforts of elites to legitimize the duel—including the unwritten rules governing weapons and tactics, gentlemanly conduct, and even style of dress and language—as being completely at odds with the Jacksonian ethic of spontaneous and uninhibited freedom from prescribed social, legal, and political barriers. Moreover, the discrepancy between the image these men wished to secure and the reality of their actions has been virtually ignored. The frontier "affair of honor" was often conducted, portrayed, and construed in a manner inconsistent with the gentlemanly precepts that its champions staunchly defended. This essay examines the identity of the frontier duelist as defined by himself, his peers, perceptive travelers, newspaper editors, religious and political figures, and fiction writers. Focused on the midwestern frontier, its primary subjects are elites, aspiring elites, and their ostensible inferiors.	. . .