"Your memorialists have been informed, that, although the common law of the land declares homicide in a duel to be murder, the law has become obsolete, and a dead letter;— that all the decisions in our courts of justice have turned wholly on the fairness with which the duel was conducted; and verdicts of acquittal, or of manslaughter, have constantly been rendered. Thence arises a necessity for a clear and explicit expression of the legislative will, on this important subject, guaranteed by new and vigorous sanctions.

Your memorialists, therefore, humbly pray that your honorable house would be pleased to take this important subject into your most serious consideration; and that you would, in your wisdom, provide such remedies as may effectually destroy the evil practice complained of, by regulations wisely calculated to protect the fame and feelings of the innocent and insulted person; and to punish rigorously the bold offender who shall dare to lift his hand against his neighbor, and shed his blood in a duel, in violation of the Divine law and the law of his country."

No. II.

SENTIMENTS OF THE HON. ROBERT BARNWELL RHETT, LATE SENATOR IN CONGRESS FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, ON THE SUBJECT OF DUELLING.

THESE sentiments are mentioned with commendation in the Preliminary Essay to this work; and may be cited here at some length. In 1852, a personal controversy arose in the Senate between Mr. Rhett and the Hon. Jeremiah Clemens, a Senator from Alabama, which, at intervals, occupied the time of that body for several days. On the 27th of February, the latter gentleman, referring to a previous speech of Mr. Rhett, said :

"He says that I called him a knave and a traitor. No man who heard that speech of mine ever entertained such an opinion, but himself. The allusion to knavery was an illustration, not a charge. But, if I had done so, the subsequent course of that Senator justifies me in adding the epithet of coward to that of knave and traitor."

The President. "The Senator must not use expressions of that kind." Mr. Clemens. "I am not out of order, Mr. President, and I intend, if I can, to keep within the rules of order; but there are some things which I must say, and which I will say. If, when he believed that the charge of knavery was pending against him, he brooded over it, and took more than two months to prepare himself for a deliberate speech to answer it on the floor of the Senate, he does not deserve the character

of a man. No man, with the feeling of a man in his bosom, who believed such a charge was pending against him, would have sought redress here. He would have looked for it elsewhere. He submitted to it then, and now comes here, not to ask redress in the only way he should have sought it, but, as he says, to discredit the witness; and how does he propose to do it? He begins with the evidence of two of his co-conspirators. Now, in my State, they are not allowed by law to give evidence for one another. But that is not all. He has evaded the point. He has sought to create a false impression upon the Senate and the country."

Mr. Rhett, in the course of his reply, on the 28th of the same month, as officially reported, remarked:

"Mr. President, the course of the Senator from Alabama is precisely that which I expected it would be. I anticipated it in a conversation with a friend before I spoke. He had, without any cause on my part, stigmatized me here, on this floor, as one guilty of treason and knavery. I knew very well that a man who would commit suchan offence, who would insult without provocation, would not hesitate, under the exposure I intended to make, to add insult to insult. Therefore, when he yesterday pursued the course which he did pursue, it was precisely what I expected.

"I did not, as the Senator charges, brood two months over his attack. He heard what I stated on this point in his presence in the Senate. I stated that I neither knew nor heard of what he had said concerning me, until just before I was leaving my home in South Carolina to come to this city. On my arrival here, I waited for the resolution, on which he had attacked me, to come up for consideration. Seeing the course of things, I was in no hurry to read his speech. But, not many days since, about ten days, I suppose, I got the Senator's speech from the folding-room, and read it. I sent also for a copy of the speech of the Senator from Michigan [Mr Cass], who I heard had honored me with his notice. It did not require much brooding to determine my course. made up my mind that it became me, as a man and as a Senator, not to allow these imputations to pass unnoticed in the Senate. I was equally convinced that my reply to the Senator from Alabama would be followed by additional and probably aggravated insult. If he insulted me gratuitously, what right had I to expect that, when exposed before the Senate, he would be more forbearing. He is come up precisely to the estimate I had put upon his character.

I

"The Senator from Alabama denies that he meant to charge me with knavery and treason. Now I will read his words again to the Senate, and then I will leave the Senate to judge what their import is; and I will call upon the Senator from Alabama to say, if that is not their import, what they do mean. Here is what he says:

"There was the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner], the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Chase], and the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale], gathered about him in a sort of fraternal ring, while the countenance of the Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] was radiant

with gladness. Thus was exhibited the spectacle of an extreme Southern Senator denouncing in no measured terms the government of this country, and declaring himself a disunionist, on account of alleged wrongs heaped upon him, with four as rabid Abolitionists as this land contains drinking in his words with eager approbation,-applauding, cheering, and encouraging him. All this was nothing new to us, however strange it may appear to the plain and honest yeomanry of the country. Nor was it, when calmly considered, at all unnatural.

"A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind."

There is a sympathy in treason as well as in knavery; and those who are earnestly striving to accomplish the same end need not quarrel about the separate means employed.'

"Now here the Senator charges that there is a sympathy between these Senators and myself upon the matter of disunion; and he then observes, that there is a sympathy in treason as well as in knavery. Is not that plainly charging us with treason and knavery? I will leave the Senator from Alabama to explain if that is not his meaning of his words."

Mr. Clemens. "There is not a Senator on this floor who does not understand it precisely as I do. There is no more charge of knavery against him than there is against the Senator from Massachusetts, or the Senator from Ohio, - against whom I never meant to make such a charge. There is a charge of disunion; and he had himself avowed that he was a disunionist."

He

Mr. Rhett. "If that is all the Senator has to say, his words stand unexplained. I ask him to explicate from his words I quote another meaning than that I put upon them. He does not attempt to do so. says that they do not contain the charge I allege they do contain. That is denial; but it is no proof. In his failure to show that they contain any other meaning than that I put upon them, he virtually admits that he cannot make his disclaimer consistent with his words. His words mention persons, - declare that they are in concert to accomplish a certain end, and then assert that there is sympathy in treason as well as knavery.' The Senator can take his choice between two alternatives. He was either using words without meaning anything by them, and thus talking nonsense to the Senate, or he did by his words make the charge I deduced from them. No man of sense can draw any other meaning from his words.

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6

Now, Mr. President, I admit that this was a gross and wanton insult, and I admit, too, that, acting upon the code of honor,' I ought not to have waited a month, or a day, or a moment, before I had required him to retract or fight. That is the course we are accustomed to pursue in the State I represent. I was perfectly aware of my position. I did not require the Senator from Alabama to tell me what I ought to have done, as a man of the world and a man of honor. But, Sir, I am a professor of the religion of Christ. I did not think it proper to challenge the Senator for two very important reasons. The first was, because I had another object in view, and still have it, far above the vindication

of myself from any personalities or insults that the Senator may have offered. Whilst vindicating myself on this floor, I would also vindicate the great cause with which I am identified. I have very feebly indicated my purposes in my defence, if the Senate has not perceived that I have used the Senator from Alabama, if not for my scorn or laughter, to bring up again the wrongs perpetrated by this government upon the South, and the consequent dangers which surround her; and again to place forward for public consideration those great conservative principles arising from State rights and State sovereignty, which alone can give her peace or safety.

"Sir, without sovereignty in the States - without the right of secession in the States - - we live under a consolidated despotism; and I am in favor of the exercise of the right of secession, if for no other purpose, for the purpose (as I intimated in the speech I delivered the other day) of testing the form of government under which we live.

For

"But my second reason for not calling the Senator from Alabama into the field was of a still higher and more controlling nature. twenty years I have been a member of the Church of Christ. The Senator knows it, everybody knows it. I cannot, and will not, dishonor my religious profession. If he, or any one else, supposes that I am so much afraid of his insults, or the opinion which requires them to be redressed in the field, as to be driven by them to abandon the profession of twenty years, he is entirely mistaken. I frankly admit that I fear God; and that I fear him more than man. Although desirous of the good opinion of all men · (for our usefulness is very largely dependent on the good opinion of our fellows)- — we can never obtain it by an abandonment of the principles we profess. True courage is best evinced by the firm maintenance of our principles amidst all temptations and all trials.* I did not assail the Senator from Alabama. He assailed me. I have defended myself; and in doing so, if he has seen any fear of him indicated by me, he is welcome to all the pride and gratification it can impart. If firmness in maintaining even worldly principles or a course of worldly policy be any indication of courage, I might not suffer from a comparison with even the Senator from Alabama. I have not here threatened and tried to bully the North; and when the North will not be bullied, and puts upon me the outrages and dishonors to which I had declared resistance, I have not quietly submitted, and then begged the 'humble privilege' of supporting them. I have not afterwards turned round upon one of those who was battling with me, and who would not yield, and accused him of fear, of cowardice. Sir, I profess the possession of no extraordinary courage; but I trust I have the courage to support the right and defy the wrong, although backed by an overwhelming public opinion, North and South. I am here alone; but, I trust, alone without fear. Have I quailed before any of you? Senators, answer, if I have ever done so."

*The italics are not the Senator's, but the author's.

No. III.

SENTIMENTS OF ELIPHALET NOTT, D.D., ON DUELLING.

THE following passages are extracted from a Sermon delivered by this eminent man,- who yet survives, in the North Dutch Church, Albany, New York, July 29, 1804, in consequence of the death of Hamilton. Dr. Nott at that time was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in that city. The discourse had a wide circulation, and was considered as among the ablest performances, whether of the pulpit or of the forum, of which that sad event was the occasion, in different parts of the Union. It contains some expressions which, perhaps, need qualification, and some opinions which will not receive universal assent. The parts omitted here are such, principally, as do not relate directly to Hamilton, and the code to which he was the victim :

:

"The occasion explains the choice of my subject. A subject on which I enter in obedience to your request. You have assembled to express your elegiac sorrows, and sad and solemn weeds cover you.

"Before such an audience, and on such an occasion, I enter on the duty assigned me with trembling. Do not mistake my meaning. I tremble indeed,-not, however, through fear of failing to merit your applause; for what have I to do with that when addressing the dying, and treading on the ashes of the dead, not through fear of failing justly to portray the character of that great man who is at once the theme of my encomium and regret: he needs not eulogy. His work is finished, and death has removed him beyond my censure, and I would fondly hope, through grace, above my praise.

"You will ask, then, why I tremble? I tremble to think that I am called to attack from this place a crime, the very idea of which almost freezes one with horror,- a crime, too, which exists among the polite and polished orders of society, and which is accompanied with every aggravation; committed with cool deliberation, and openly in the face of day!

"But I have a duty to perform. And, difficult and awful as that duty is, I will not shrink from it.

"Would to God my talents were adequate to the occasion. But such as they are, I devoutly proffer them to unfold the nature and counteract the influence of that barbarous custom, which, like a resistless torrent, is undermining the foundations of civil government, breaking down the barriers of social happiness, and sweeping away virtue, talents, and domestic felicity, in its desolating course.

--

"Another and an illustrious character, a father, a general, a statesman, -the very man who stood on an eminence and without a rival, among sages and heroes, the future hope of his country in danger, this man, yielding to the influence of a custom which deserves our eternal reprobation, has been brought to an untimely end.