Dueling

Dueling in 1889

The following information about Dueling is from the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States by the Best American and European Writers.

“We think, with our honorable collaborator, that something should be done against dueling. Experience has proven that a Draconian penalty would remain powerless. There is too flagrant an injustice in confounding with the assassin the honorable man who, yielding to a prejudice which reigns like a king in society, kills his equal, for public sentiment not to cry out against this too radical solution of the question. But we hesitate to admit the theory proposed by Mr. Pessard, although his proposition has already begun to be put in practice. The tribunal of honor can not but diminish the number of duels, but it does not attack the root of the prejudice. Rather would it strengthen it. Now, all our efforts should aim at its extermination.

The best means to obtain this result will be, we believe: 1, to deny social recognition to any one who has challenged and then killed his adversary in a duel; 2, to have it admitted by the code of honor that no one is obliged to fight with a man who has already killed an adversary, or who, from the fact of having been engaged in three previous duels, has come to be considered as a professional duelist (we avoid using a stronger word); 3, rigorously to enforce the payment of fine and heavy pecuniary indemnity to the family of the victim; this last point is already reached. We do not flatter ourselves that we have thus solved the problem, but we would be happy to have indicated the true remedy.—M. B.”