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Andrew Jackson
Today’s partisan bickering seems mild compared to the
political roiling of the early Republic, where policy differences could end up
with bullets being exchanged in the early morning hours.
John Randolph was a
Virginia Congressman who was one of the primary spokesmen of a faction of the
Democratic-Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson. Randolph ’s
faction wanted to ensure social
stability with minimal government interference, and decried “creeping
nationalism”. He once said, "I am
an aristocrat. I love liberty, I hate equality." In 1825 he entered the Senate. In 1826 Randolph made a fiery speech in the
Senate denouncing the foreign policy of President John Quincy Adams. Specifically he was against the President
sending a delegation to the Panamanian Congress of Latin American
Republics. Randolph railed against the
President and the Secretary of State, Henry Clay, intimating that Clay was a
scoundrel. The Secretary of State took
offense at this insinuation and challenged Senator Randolph to a duel.
Both Clay and
Randolph had been involved in previous duels.
Clay fought a duel while a member of the Kentucky state legislature. Randolph fought a duel while a student at the
College of William and Mary and again in 1815 while in the House of
Representatives. By 1826 dueling was
illegal in Virginia where the duel was to be fought, but a little matter of the
law was not about to deter lawmakers Clay and Randolph from fighting.
Dueling
politicians were not rare in the young republic. Andrew Jackson fought over one hundred duels
before becoming President. In those
days, if you called the President a liar you were likely to have to back up
your words with a sword or a dueling pistol.
Dueling in America flowed down from the ancient practice of trial by
combat developed in the Middle Ages. A
test of arms between two opponents was deemed the surest way of knowing which
party God favored in a dispute.
These are the often overlooked stories of early
America. Stories such as the roots of racism in America, famous murders that
rocked the colonies, the scandalous doings of some of the most famous of the
Founding Fathers, the first Emancipation Proclamation that got revoked, and
stories of several notorious generals who have been swept under history’s rug.
