Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri.  By Dick Steward.  (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c. 2000.)

            The high crime rate in late-twentieth-century St. Louis, Missouri, resulted, at least in part, from the legacy of nineteenth-century dueling, Dick Steward asserts in Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri.  Steward’s attempt to link dueling with modern crime distracts from the interesting evidence he gathered and his other, more reasonable, arguments.  Steward gives thorough and entertaining accounts of Missouri’s early duels.  Missouri’s dueling heritage may not cause contemporary crime but Steward effectively demonstrates it influenced the brutal fratricide the state experienced during the Civil War.

Missourians were no more or no less violent than other frontier people, Steward writes.  The state did develop a distinct code duello that Steward describes as “an odd mixture of southern conformity and western individualism” (p. 3).  Political conflict and a desire for fame led elites and aspiring leaders to duel.  By the Jacksonian Era, lower classes adopted dueling as an expression of equality.  In the late nineteenth-century, the formal southern duel surrendered to the improvised western duel known as the gunfight.

Dueling originated with European aristocrats.  Southerners imported the duel to America and the encounters matured into staged and often bloodless events. A heightened sense of family, womanhood, and personal honor sent Missourians and other Southerners to the dueling field.  Some differences, however, existed between Missouri and the Old South.  Missouri lacked a planter class and the defined social hierarchy that existed in the Old South.  Political and economic challenges confronted Missouri elites to an extent that southern planters never experienced.  Missouri elites used duels to justify hierarchy in a more egalitarian society than existed in the Old South.  Missouri duels lacked the romance and myth of southern duels.  Missouri men rarely dueled because of disputes over women.  In those instances, Missourians preferred murder.  Unlike other southern duelists, Missourians almost always sought blood.

The violence of Missouri duels contrasted with the territory’s peace under French and Spanish rule.  A few French Catholics lived in small settlements near the Mississippi River and rarely harmed each other.  Even a relatively cordial relationship existed with nearby Indians.  Few Americans entered Missouri until the end of Spanish rule.  The character of Missouri changed after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase as Americans, particularly Southerners, moved into the territory.  Missouri served as a base for future westward exploration and expansion.  The exclusion of slavery from the Northwest Territories made Missouri the logical destination for the institution’s expansion.  Missouri’s topography and the rich alluvial soils along its rivers offered the prospect of profitable slave agriculture.

Early American Missourians shared southern values of courage and cowardice.  Characteristics of courage include self-reliance, individualism, economic success, and an ability to protect oneself.  Matters of family honor sparked many early Missouri altercations and duels.  The first formal duel between American citizens occurred in 1807.  Mississippi River islands of unknown jurisdiction, such as Bloody Island near St. Louis, became favored dueling spots.  Certain professions, those favored by men seeking to get ahead, produced eager duelists.  Lawyers and junior military officers used duels for publicity and to eliminate rivals.  Dueling became popular first in the lead mines of southern Missouri and then spread to St. Louis.  St. Louis exerted cultural influence on the rest of Missouri and established trends that the rest of the state would follow — including dueling.

            The years before and immediately after statehood marked an era of intense political competition in Missouri and conflicts that sparked several duels. The French and Creole families of St. Louis resisted the efforts of American newcomers from Kentucky and Tennessee to enter the city’s elite.  Charles Lucas and Thomas Hart Benton met in the most famous Missouri political duel.  Benton fell in with the powerful junto faction of St. Louis Creole families soon after he arrived in 1815.  Lucas, the son of a territorial judge, rose to power through the anti-junto faction of American newcomers that sought to seize power from the Creoles.  Benton challenged Lucas in 1816 and Lucas refused.  The next year, Lucas questioned whether Benton paid taxes on his slaves and Benton insulted Lucas.  Lucas challenged Benton and the future senator severely wounded Lucas during the encounter.  Lucas recovered from his wounds and sought to avoid a second interview with Benton.  Meanwhile, the political factions offered competing accounts of what happened on Bloody Island and Benton challenged Lucas to a second duel with pistols at the distance of ten feet.  Benton mortally wounded Lucas during the second duel.  Steward argues several aspects of the second duel represented a tragic departure from the code duello.  He also observes that Benton and Lucas held different beliefs about the origin of honor.  Lucas, the descendant of Norman nobility, found honor in his lineage.  Benton believed each man won honor through his own actions.  Ironically, at the time of the duel, each man represented the political faction opposite of his own background.

Texas Christian University                                                   Jeff Wells                   

 

Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri.  By Dick Steward.  (Columbia:  University of Missouri Press, c. 2000). 

            Dick Steward’s Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri describes the evolution of dueling in Missouri.  A hybrid of three ideas form the basis for Steward’s thesis.  First, the elites of Missouri society orchestrated dueling practices.  Thus, the duel began as an elite activity that set the standards for Missouri society.  Second, the code duello that became dominant in Missouri was a unique hybrid institution, “an odd mixture of southern conformity and western individualism” (p. 3).  Finally, the author asserts that the violence created by the duel provided the foundation for later violence in the modern world.  The author utilizes period newspapers, diaries, and papers of Missouri residents in order to support his thesis.  Sections of the book are reminiscent of Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor.  Although Wyatt-Brown clearly influenced this book, Steward’s ideas are original.

            Steward examines the Missouri duel through the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century.  According to the author, the duel began as an aristocratic practice imported to Missouri by southern settlers.  The southern code duello, however, acquired a western flavor becoming a more vulgarized adaptation in which hubris superseded honor. (p. 64).  In addition, most duels in Missouri demanded blood as an addendum to ritually satisfying ones honor. 

            The Jacksonian Era democratized the duel.  Traditionally, the duel served as a tool of the elite.  It began as a practice designed to preserve an aristocrat’s honor.  This changed during the early Republic as Missouri newcomers used the duel as a means to elevate themselves within the social hierarchy and eliminate political rivals.  In short, the lower and middle classes adopted the duel in order to elevate themselves in Missouri society.  Subsequently, the duel became a means to mask murder.  It elevated, “common criminal behavior into the vernacular of chivalry” (p. 202).   

            The Civil War era marked another transition in dueling practices.  According to Steward, dueling originally served as a means to defend personal honor.  Sectional arguments over slavery, however, allowed the practice of dueling to continue under the guise of self-sacrifice.  In essence, one could now claim to have faced danger in a duel championing a greater cause and thus gain notoriety from constituents.  According to Steward, “the Missouri duel was swept up in a far greater conflict and, like other forms of violence across the country, it reflected the menacing stresses and strains of sectional controversy and disunion . . . The duel had become a metaphor for sectional resolve and personal sacrifice in the months and years leading to the Civil War” (p. 149).  Missouri dueling survived the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, “Brawls and gunfights loosely interpreted as ‘duels’ therefore kept alive the memories of the code even into the twentieth century” (p. 204). 

            Steward’s conclusion is dubious.  On the one hand he displays great insight.  Steward writes, “In the hierarchy of violence, the duel stood at the apex and reflected the societal norms of that day and age.  On the other hand, dueling represented more than a mere reflection of Missouri’s cultural values; it romanticized the martial spirit and indoctrinated the populace into believing that violence was an acceptable means of problem solving” (p. 207).  Conversely, Steward appears to set forth a personal agenda.  He claims that Missouri duelists served as a, “transitional link from an earlier form of violence to the new” (p. 209).  The author purports that early dueling aristocrats compromised the future due to their hubris, “As natural aristocrats they trusted in their ability to lead by heroic acts, but they adhered to standards of honor soon to be transmuted by war, Reconstruction, and modernization.  The duelist became an anachronism in the last decades of the nineteenth century and was replaced in popular lore by the cowboy/gunfighter mythology” (p. 209).  Further stating his class and pacifist agenda he writes, “Violence within the bounds of honor has been replaced by personal confrontations void of civility and intent.  Lacking consensus in our lives and our communities and absent an ideology to structure purpose, the duel has become episodic.  From dueling banjoes, to pitcher’s duel, to a duel in the desert against Saddam Hussein, we convey through the roots of violence a disturbing image of our character” (p. 210).  This statement is interesting because the author contradicts himself a few pages earlier by denouncing historical reductionism (p. 208).  The book, however, is valuable despite its problematic conclusions.  It is recommended to those interested in examining the evolution of the code duello in a geographic setting influenced by both southern and western cultures.

Texas Christian University                                                                          Justin S. Solonick

 

Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri. By Dick Steward. Columbia: University of Missouri Press (2000), 286 pgs.

            As the frontier line crept westward and sectional tensions heightened in the decades leading up to the Civil War, Missouri occupied a unique geographical and cultural place as both Western and Southern. Dick Steward links antebellum violence in Missouri to distinctly southern predilections. Yet, Missouri’s particular culture of violence persisted  even into the early twentieth century, and in many ways mirrored uniquely “western” forms. Steward highlights the ways in which Missouri’s code of violence represented both the South and the West as concepts in a history of American violence, and the ways in which it adapted and changed throughout the 1800s.

            Steward introduces the subject by noting an odd inversion of modern social theory: In examining southern dueling culture, one finds that violence is perpetuated primarily by that society’s elites, not its lower classes. This particularly southern trait of cultural violence traveled with southern immigrants to Missouri. The territory stood then at the edge of the American frontier, infusing the southern form with pieces of what scholars would later understand as a unique western form of violence. Steward theorizes that Missouri’s culture of violence attached social connotations to particular acts in such a way that they “conditioned people into accepting a functional view of violence.” (4) Dueling, in particular, “became the social craze of the southern upper class” (9) as planters and others took to the field of arms to contest and legitimize their social status. In Missouri, frontier elements produced a more animalistic and less civilized code for this type of violence, in part because it incorporated different social concepts into its battleground. Beginning in 1807, dueling became a part of Missouri’s “Americanization.” (24) In addition to serving as the proving ground for social concepts like “courage” (and, in turn, for “cowardice”), early Missourian duels served in a very real way as political contests. In perhaps his most interesting finding, Steward offers several case study examples to support his assertion that duelers – even those who killed their opponent – seldom, if ever, suffered political consequences for participating in the violent act. Dueling was thus a means of proving one’s honor, a particularly southern conception, yet uniquely a means for political advancement. Indeed, Steward suggests that the territorial elections from 1816-1824 legitimized dueling as “one upper-class tool in political clashes.” (41)

            Missourian violence increased in pace and adapted in form as the territory crept toward statehood. Steward identifies “getting the drop” on an opponent as closer in form to the Wild West shootouts of television and movie fame than to the Old South concept of a duel. Nevertheless, Missourian duels incorporated this sneaky element, suggesting a link to western forms of violence. The Gentry-Carroll incident suggests that “drop” killings could be viewed as a duel or murder depending on one’s allegiances to either the victor or the corpse.

            In examining the attempts of different social institutions to undercut this violence, Steward credits only evangelical Christianity for any real effect. He terms it both “a democratic and anti-aristocratic” (96) force, thus cutting twice as the cultural underpinnings of duello violence. However, this offers further insight into his overall theory as Steward argues that violence increased in Missouri as democracy expanded, theoretically undercutting elitism and their cultural forms. Instead, duels became similarly “democratized” (116) and adapted from a “metaphor for civility and a measurement of social status” (133) to a means of exhibiting leadership, self-sacrifice, and protagonism (140). As Missourians increasingly idolized cultural forms of violence, Steward suggests they unintentionally set the stage for the mythicization of Wild West characters like the gunfighter and outlaw. Regarding the latter category, Steward offers evidence of Missourians labeling simple gunfights or ordinary brawls as “duels” in order to legitimize their participation in them. Such instances “illustrated how the [duello] code had become a useful metaphor in the transition from the theory of controlled passion to the reality of unmitigated rage.” (206)

            Steward thus ends much as he begins, with an intriguing premise that is generally well conceived and sufficiently evidenced. Despite the book’s seemingly salacious content, however, Steward’s narrative becomes increasingly repetitive as the work progresses. Similarly, his treatment of the subject leaves the reader unconvinced that nineteenth-century Missourian violence was more unique or consequential than that in other specific geographical or temporal settings. It ultimately seems too narrowly focused to substantially alter existing scholarship on the roots and social consequences of violence. Nevertheless, to the younger scholar Steward offers a series of generally interesting case studies in a rather intriguing, if unfulfilling, account of the liminal status of Missourian violence situated squarely between unique southern and western forms.

Matthew A. McNiece

 

Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri. By Dick Steward. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2000.

 Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri, by Dick Steward, focused on the code duello in nineteenth century Missouri, a distinct hybrid formed from traits of Southern conformity and Western individualism.  Steward, professor of history at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, saw dueling as a cultural institution, a pattern of behaviors, beliefs, and customs organized to meet societal goals.  In that culture firearms took on a symbolic meaning, becoming icons that confirmed high status.  Many felt dueling reduced the overall level of rudeness, although it also produced a few bullies who honed their skills to terrorize others, making certain to be challenged so that they could name the conditions.

 Thesis:  Steward argued that dueling in Missouri became much more than just a violent response to interpersonal disputes, that it served both as an instrument defining membership in the elite of society and as a means of upward mobility.  Nineteenth-century Missouri society formed around men who used duels to access and bolster positions of power, employing a philosophy of violence that defined courage and cowardice, honor and shame within its narrow guidelines.  That development, combined with the belief that gentlemen were above some laws, set dangerous precedents that became the roots of acceptance of violence in the twentieth-century.

 Steward traced the spread of dueling to the Missouri frontier where the Southern, formal duel became a socioeconomic force used by many aspiring young men to improve their status and to eliminate rivals.  Many Missouri lawyers became involved, especially those from low and middle-class backgrounds who used duels to enhance their social standing.  Steward cited as an example an 1824 meeting between Abiel Leonard and Major Taylor Berry.  Leonard, who before had been a public prosecutor of uneven success, developed a lucrative private practice fashioned on the notoriety of the event.  Status ramifications remained but by the late territorial period the impetus for dueling developed political overtones, especially the promotion of sectional causes involving slavery.  After 1850 the incidence of dueling increased, driven by a growing tendency to reduce most issues to slavery conflicts.  That effect, along with the rationalization of the brutality of slavery, became further evidence of the South’s acceptance of violence.

 Opposition originated mainly from the church and the press.  Religious leaders were dueling’s most vocal critics but divisions between and within the faiths limited their effect.  Joseph Charles, the “Father of Missouri Journalism,” was an early and forceful opponent of the code but the press’s eventual support of preferential treatment for societal elites did more to perpetuate than retard the practice.

 The general character of engagements changed after 1830 as duels became more frequent but less lethal, maintaining the form without the intent.  Steward suggests that that process was part of the maturation of Missouri society, noting that deadly encounters had transitioned to the frontiers of Texas, Colorado, and Arkansas where the lower classes incorporated crude exhibitions, such as fistfights. Dueling also declined because technological improvements (more accurate weapons) made the practice much more lethal. Following the Civil War dueling became the domain of the Western gunfighter, who became the most enduring and popular folk hero. In the twentieth century dueling and duelists lost favor, due in part to Frederick Jackson Turner’s scheme of history in which the frontier environment conditioned the person, an idea that downplayed the significance of dueling, an import form Europe.

 Steward's work is competent and, due to the number of anecdotes, reads rather easily. His themes, while not noted for their brashness, are clear and supportable. However, the critical evaluation of Turner’s negative influence on dueling’s legacy seemed strained and regrettable.Just how many things can be blamed on Turner?

Harold Rich