Andrew Jackson

Jackson and Dueling | Jackson-Dickinson (1805) | Jackson-Benton (1813) | Biographies of Jackson

Jackson and Dueling

Web Archive: "Andrew Jackson's Honor" by Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Fascinating article.

Moreover, his activities early in his career in Nashville can serve to illustrate the nature of politics and patronage and their connection with dueling not only on the frontier but in the South if not the nation at that time. In other words, Jackson's sense of honor can be treated as a sort of metaphor signifying a particular Southern distinctiveness. Above all, Jackson was as deeply committed to white Southern customs, convictions, and prejudices as any observer could imagine.

By ritualizing violence in a punctilious grammar of honor, as it were, duels were supposed to prevent potential chaos. That scourge of public and familial order, the blood feud, could be avoided under the problematic idea that a man's sullied reputation would thereby be restored. As often happened, the Dickinson affair did not give the satisfaction sought but for a few months isolated Jackson, just as Aaron Burr's killing of Alexander Hamilton had damaged the Vice-President's career.

Kentucky "Battles, Duels, Panics and Skirmishes" by Sandra K Gorin, including brief summaries of the Jackson-Dickenson and Desha-Kimbrough duels.

Jackson-Dickinson (1805)

"Andrew Jackson's Duel with Charles Dickinson" from Hal Morris' A brief biography of Andrew Jackson 1767-1845 .

"Caroline Squire Duels Andrew Jackson" by Joe Valliant from The Daffin Family Tree.

Jackson-Benton (1813)

Jackson-Benton Duel 1813 from Marquis James' 1938 The Life of Andrew Jackson and Another description from William Nisbet Chambers' Old Bullion Benton, with a painting of Benton.

Biographies of Jackson

Amazon. The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Vincent Remini. The definitive short biography based upon Remini's (now out-of-print) definitive long biography.

Grolier's "The American Presidency" site.

The White House.

North Carolina Encyclopedia.