The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-04-08
THE DECLINE
 OF DUELLING

This is the 9Oth anniversary of one
 of the last Guels to be fought in Amer
 ica by men of great fame and inn portance, Henry Clay and John Ran dolph having been the principals in this appeal to the ''code of honers.'' It was not until after the civil war that the practice of duelling was fin ally squelched in America, but even at the time of the Clay-Rand1oph af- fair public opinion was turning strongly against this method of set ting arguments Both statesmen were roundly denounced in the press and pulpit for setting such an exam pie for humber men to follow
 John Randolph, who was a descen- l dant of Pocahontas and a master of brilliant. and seathing wit and sar- casrn, was a foe of Henry Clay from 1 the time the latter entered Congress. The two.-Virginians frequently en- gagged in verbal combat, and, although Clay was the greater orator, Ran dolph had vastly great command Of offensive epithets. At length Clay demanded an apology forgcertain un- flattering remarks Randolph had dropped. and, this being refused, he challenged the scion of the house of Pocahontas to a meeting on the field of honor.'' Randolph accepted, and
 the two men faced each other, pfs- tols in hand on April 8, 1926. Two shots were exchanged without effect and then. Randolph having declared that he would not again fire at Clay, the seconds terminated the dueI./ Clay and Randolph remained unreconci1ed for seven years. When Randolph was on the verge of the grave he was carried to the Senate, on purpose, he declared, to hear once more the voice of his old foe. When Clay con Icluded his address he went inmedi- ately to his dying enemy and exchang- ed tcordial sa1utationS.
 As late as 1842 Clay issued a ':card'' denouncing some of his political foes and intimating that he was ready to- meet them on the so-caIled field of honor" This aroused a storm of pro-
 test and Clay hastily issued a letter to his constituents, in which he ad-
 mitted that a duel t.was within my contemplation He added: ''I owe 1 it to the community to say, that what ever I may have heretofore done, or, by inevitable circumstances, might be forced to do, no man in it's holds in
 deeper abhorrence than I do that per- nicious practice .Condemned as it must be by the judgment and pFilo-3 Isophy, to say nothing of the religion,
 of every thinking man, it is an affair of feeling, about which we cannot,
 though we should. reason. Its true corrective will be found when all shall unite, as all ought to unites in it's un- qualified proscription.''
 In the last sentence the eloquent adopted son of eso1d Kaintuck''s point 1 ed out the remedy that was soon ladopted. Legal enactments had far less to do with the decline of duelling
 in America and England than the power of enlightened public opinion, which viewed with horror those who had recourse to the field of honor" The first duel in North America was fought at Plymouth in 1921 and was between two serving men. From | that time until about half Ia century ago duels occurred with more or less
 frequency in all parts of North Amer l lea, although most frequent in the l South The introduction of pugiIism
 resu1ted in the substitution of fero-
 cious fistic combats for due1s among the humber masses of the popu1a- ton, but this mode of deciding argu- ments did not appeal to educated men. l The most famous of the American due1ling fields was that at Bladen- burg, where the Washington states men and army officers often met on the field of honor, The first duel ] was fought there in 1908, between 1 two congressman, one of whom was seriously wounded. The Decatur Barron encounter, in which the for mer was killed and the latter danger ousIy wounded, was one of the most notable instances of an appeal to the bloody code of the duelIo on the his tor1c ground of B1adensburg.