Code Duello

No means for Conflict Resolution

Code Duello

What is old … should be new again

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Lee Robbins told me about the cowman he had gone to when he first arrived from Texas. He had found work on the branding crew at the Flying A’s. Lee thought he was being taken advantage of a bit when he rotated into the flanking position and the roper roped the biggest calf in the pen around the neck.

            “I hear you boys from Texas can flank these little bitty New Mexico calves,” the roper had muttered under his breath as he turned, tied hard and fast to face the storm. “Go down the rope to that one.”

            Lee had felt the same sort of wrath when he was challenged with the sorrel horse that could stick his head between his front legs elevated three feet in the air.

            “Get yourself a bat and hit him in the head when he does that,” the same fellow suggested. “I’m sure it will stop him from doing it.”

            Lee admitted he tried it and came close to breaking his own neck trying to seek vengeance in a situation he needed to be in full control of every sense he ever had.  He realized he could no more hit that horse in that situation than he could hit a bulls eye at 150 yards with a BB gun.

He learned a very important lesson from that fellow … there is nothing like a little humility to adjust a reckless, condescending attitude.

The ghost of Old Hickory

Andrew Jackson was a cocky little character. I would imagine he was a bit hard to take in many circumstances, but you can’t deny his never say die attitude.  That president, who never knew he couldn’t, just didn’t know there was such a thing as quit.

He was also clairvoyant. His prediction the Civil War would be fought … and lost by the South decades before the war was an eerie example. He suggested that the folks of the South would first fight for themselves, and then … they would fight each other, and, then …they would lose.  He was right.

There is another fascinating aspect in the thinking of Jackson in his assessment of conflict resolution. As a southerner, he was fairly north-south. He was not only appalled at the statutory elimination of conflict resolution that occurred February 20, 1839, he worried openly that the very future of the country was put in jeopardy as a result.

What happened on that day in history? Dueling was outlawed in the District of Columbia!

Jackson agonized over the congressional action. He simply didn’t know how future conflict would be substantively reduced. By the looks and actions of our world as displayed and acted out by Congress since those times … he was right.

Code Duello

Dueling was once rather commonplace. How commonplace you might ask? It wasn’t just Alexander Hamilton’s death at the hand of Aaron Burr that made history. A bit of research turns up at least 56 United States senators dueled from the time of our independence to the end of the Civil War.

There were also at least 29 governors, seven cabinet secretaries, and 57 Congressman who also adhered to the rules of the day … the Code Duello … and blasted away at sunup at the Oaks!

In fact, there are several thousand documented accounts of dueling in the United States in matters associated with leadership. The vast majority were in the south. What was the cause of that phenomenon? It appears to be founded in honor and integrity!

Many writings of the time set forth the premise that honor could not be repaired through mere words or through a legal system. Likewise, there were issues that simply needed to be resolved outside of a legal system that could become bogged down and impacted.

Dueling was an extralegal means to defend and repair that honor. It can be argued it was actually a preferred regional method to resolve conflict before the Civil War. It proved to be cheap and it was very effective!  

How effective?

A study done by Broderick and Mason suggested it was a deterrent that was 88% effective. Can you imagine that rate of success?

If Santa Fe and inner city high schools could graduate 88% of their freshman level entrants, they would double their actual graduation rates!

How about criminal assimilation or the termination of smoking habits? An 88% success rate would be astounding based upon study results.

The result Factors

What makes the history of dueling so intriguing isn’t the fact that poor leaders were disposed of with regularity. On the contrary, the actual rate of deaths was very low. Only one in 14 duels resulted in a death. It was the blood on the ground and the stains down the pants legs that became the real modifiers of behavior.    

 In studying the issue, even the sorry state of accuracy of the weapons was part of the reeducation process. Sightless, smooth bore pistols with short sight radii combined with sweaty hands, elevated heart rates, and adrenaline in abundance made for very poor accuracy. (Remember Lee Robbins trying to hit that bucking horse with the bat as he contemplated his own survival? He couldn’t get it done!)

Of all the senators who fought duels, only three were actually killed. Another factor that has so much modern consequence is the fact that the overwhelming majority of all those killed were just politicians. Doctors and store owners tended to adjust the prices of their goods and services to remedy discord.

The Mason-Dixon Line was also a factor. The majority of duels (and thus modifying behavior) took place south of the Line. The further north the less likely duels would be fought.

There was a definite northern societal repulsion of the event. The further north from the Mason-Dixon Line the more barbaric it was deemed by Americans. It was ‘brutish’ and those folks always supported a more civilized method of conflict resolution … words and intelligence.

That was exactly what Andrew Jackson feared. He feared that in the absence of dueling there would be a void of any appropriate means of mitigating libel which, by its very nature, would encourage undesirable social behavior.

Shall we count the ways he was right?

To the modern world

Washington confounds us.

It seems that each and every leader that crosses the thresholds of Dulles or Reagan International runs the distinct risk of losing his or her foundational identity. We, the American public, are lost in the shuffle. We are insulted by their fiduciary irresponsibility to our existence. We are appalled at their human nature to seek compromise and cooperation rather than deal decisively with conflict through a constitutional compass. We are abandoned through their absence of moral courage with … words and intelligence.

Jackson got it right. His fears were manifested in the highest order.

There is no reference to his insight as to the depth and breadth of the mechanism he deemed so important to conflict resolution. As a southerner who fought several duels was he compelled to believe it was a universal need, or, with age, would he have been content to simply overturn the decision by Congress in 1839? That decision was limited to the District of Columbia.

What if dueling in the heart of our black economic hole, Washington DC, was made legal and mandatory in a constitutional amendment? What if was limited only to Washington elected officials who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution?

The historical facts seem to strongly suggest the mere threat of the act would refocus debate to the merits of conflicting positions rather than on attention paid to libel leveled by the two dysfunctional parties in our midst.

As we are left to contemplate such a rational concept, we can only visualize the scene at the Oaks when the former Speaker of the House was challenged to a duel by the Lady from Minnesota after the Speaker informed America that we would have to see what Obama Care really meant only after the bill was passed.

At 24 paces, the two would turn to the order …READY!

The adrenaline would cause all order of muscle control to start to flutter.

At the default state of AIM … the orifice of the end of those .32 caliber dueling pieces would start to appear to be cavernous.

At the verge of FIRE … the good speaker could be heard to scream … “Uhhhh …. Let’s plug these holes and get serious about your position there, Ma’am! I am starting to see your point!!”

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “I worry that the Jackson prediction of the Civil War outcome is the same plight we find ourselves in here in the West. We fight for our existence, but it is a fight that remains incongruous and woefully undercapitalized. Will our fate be the same?”