(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
White to move and mate in two #690 - By the Sword [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-10
A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions
In the first eighty years of the republic it was hard for any prominent public figure, especially in the South and especially one with a militia commission, to avoid a duel of some kind. Abraham Lincoln was caught up in at least two challenges (as well as a third, but that involved flinging cow dung at twenty paces). The first took place in 1832, when a fellow militia officer in the Black Hawk War, James Zachary, called Lincoln a coward. Captain Lincoln of the Illinois militia, as he then was, answered, “If any man thinks me a coward, let him test it.” Captain Zachary replied, “You think you can get away with it, just because you are larger and heavier than me.” Lincoln told him, “You can guard against that. Choose your own weapons.” But Zachary, like Washington’s opponent, backed off.
Lincoln’s second challenge effectively won him honor and a wife. …
…
Lincoln had for some time been penning satirical squibs for the Journal under the pseudonym “Aunt Rebecca,” …
… Lincoln’s first article about the auditor appeared in August 1842. It was uncharacteristically personal: “Shields is a fool as well as a liar. With him truth is out of the question.” At the outset, Shields kept silent. Mary Todd and a friend, Julia Jayne, wrote a further gibe, also as “Aunt Rebecca.” Baiting Shields had become a summer sport. Lincoln wrote the next piece, in which he referred to the unfortunate auditor as “floating about on the air, without heft or earthly substance, just like a lock of cat fur where cats have been fightin’.” A fourth article followed, again by Mary and Julia Jayne, then a fifth, this time in rhyme, asserting that Shields had “won” Aunt Rebecca and that the two were to be married. It was lame stuff, but Shield’s patience broke. He sent an envoy, General Whiteside, to Francis’s office to demand his attacker’s true name, under threat of exacting satisfaction from Francis himself.
…
Lincoln, as the man challenged, now set out his “instructions,” under four headings. First, the weapons were to be “calvary broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal in all respects.” Second, …
…
The conditions were accepted, and on the day chosen the two parties made their way to the dueling ground, known as Bloody Island. Before the bout could begin, however, two horsemen rode up: an associate of Shields, Revill W. English, and John J. Hardin, a political colleague of Lincoln and a kinsman of Mary Todd. Hurried words passed, Lincoln and Shields agreeing to exchange apologies, and a reconciliation took place. Lincoln even proposed to Shields that they play a game of “Old Sledge” to determine who should pay for the expenses of their trip. Shields “pungled”—chipped in his share.
…
Never again would Lincoln write a pseudonymous article, and for the rest of his life he would be ashamed of the episode. Once during the Civil War, when an officer asked him at a White House reception if he had ever fought a duel, the president reddened and snapped, “I do not deny it, but if you desire my friendship never mention it again.” ...
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/10/2328840/-White-to-move-and-mate-in-two-690-By-the-Sword?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
