CHAPTER XLIX.

DUELS IN ILLINOIS, AND ATTEMPTS AT DUELS. ·

Affairs of Honor and Personal Difficulties.

The soil of Illinois has been blood-stained but comparatively a few times by the barbarous code duello. Those fierce and implacable passions which in controversy know no final argument but mortal combat have not found congenial culture on the level plains of the Prairie State. The records and details of the actual duels fought are particularly meagre, obscure and unsatisfactory. But we are tempted to give what there are. Of the first duel fought within the present limits of this State by residents, the names of the prin cipals even are not transmitted. All that we have been able to find recorded regarding it may be found in Reynold's Pioneer History, in the words following:

"At the time the English troops came to take possession of Fort Chartres, [1765], two young officers, one French and the other English, had a misunderstanding at the Fort. This quarrel arose as did the war of the Greeks against the Trojans, on account of a lady. These officers fought with small swords early on a Sunday morning, near the fort, and in the combat one was killed. The other left the fort and descended the river. I was informed of the above duel nearly 50 years ago, by a very aged Frenchman. He informed me of the details, and said he was present and saw the combat." Reynolds wrote this about 1850, and he must have received the information when he was barely 12 years old.

The next duel of which we have any record, occurred in 1809, and may be found in the same book. It proved a bloodless affair at the time, but an angry quarrel grew out of it, resulting afterwards in the dastardly assassination of one of the principals. The duel was arranged between. Rice Jones, son of John Rice Jones, a Welchman, the first and also one of the ablest lawyers Illinois has ever known, and Shadrach Bond, afterwards the first governor of the State. Jones, the elder, settled at Kaskaskia in 1790, but upon the formation of the Indiana territory, which included Illinois, removed to the capital, Vincennes, where he attained prominence. The son possessed a high order of intellect, was well educated, and located at Kaskaskia in 1806 to practice the profession of the law. He drifted into politics, and by his rare ability speedily attained to the leadership of his party. He was elected a member of the territorial legislature, which met at Vincennes. His talents, prominence and influence was distasteful to the opposite party, if it did not arouse jealousy in his own.

The question of public interest, and no little virulent excitement at the time, was the division of the territory by the detachment of Illinois. Young Jones and Bond became involved in a personal controversy; a challenge and acceptance followed, and the parties met for mortal combat on an island in the Mississippi, between St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia. The weapons were hair trigger pistols. After taking their positions Jones' weapon was prematurely discharged. Bond's second, named Dunlap, was disinclined to allow it as an inadvertence, claiming that according to the code it was Bond's fire next; but the latter, unwilling to take so murderous an advantage of his adversary, exclaimed that "it was an accident," and refused to fire. To conduct so noble the nature of Jones at once responded in an amicable spirit. The two principals reconciled their difficulty and quitted the field without further conflict. But the ignoble conduct of Dunlap rankled and led to a relentless quarrel between him and Jones. Hatred grew apace until finally the malignant heart of Dunlap prompted him to assassinate Jones in the public streets of Kaskaskia. The latter was standing on the sidewalk at the time, conversing with a lady, his arms resting on the railing of a gallery, when Dunlap crept up behind, unobserved, and with a pistol shot Jones dead in his tracks. Thus fell by the hand of a cowardly assassin, through a feud engendered by the most foolish miscalled code of honor, in the 28th year of his age, perhaps the most promising young man of the period. His untimely death, coupled with the manner of it, shocked the whole community, which sincerely mourned his loss. His murderer escaped to Texas and successfully evaded the just punishment due him from an earthly tribunal. In 1810 a law was adopted by the governor and judges, to suppress the practice of dueling, which constituted a fatal result in dueling murder, making the aiders, abettors or counselors principals in the crime.

Still later, in the same work, giving a sketch of the well known and dauntless pioneer Rector family, consisting of 9 sons and 4 daughters, and recounting the deeds of valor performed by some of them in the west during the war of 1812, the author records that "Thomas Rector, one of the younger brothers, had a duel with Joshua Barton, on Bloody Island, opposite St. Louis, and was as cool in that combat, as if he were shooting at a deer on the prairie. These young men espoused the quarrel of their elder brothers, and Barton fell in the conflict." No date or other particulars further than above quoted, are appended, but it occurred probably sometime during the war of 1812. Bloody Island, within the jurisdiction of Illinois, was more frequently the convenient and safe battle ground resorted to by St. Louis or Missouri belligerents for the settlement of their personal difficulties by the barbarous rules of the bloody code, than Illinoisans, and this is said to have given origin to the horrid name by which the island was known.

The next and last duel which resulted fatally between Illinois citizens and upon its soil, was fought within the limits of Belleville, in February, 1819, between Alonzo C. Stuart and William Bennett. It grew out of a drunken carousal in which besides the combatants, many citizens of St. Clair county participated. Stuart and Bennett fell out, and with the view to having some

rare sport and making a butt of Bennett, it was proposed among the outsiders that these two, to settle their quarrel, should fight a sham duel. Stuart was let into the secret but Bennett was kept in the dark. Both parties readily agreed to the duel. Nathan Fike and Jacob Short acted as seconds. The weapons selected were rifles, which were loaded with powder only. The combatants fearlessly took their position on the field at 40 paces, and at the proper signal, Bennett fired with good aim, and to the horror of every one present, Stuart fell mortally wounded in the breast and expired almost instantly. Stuart, to highten the merriment against his antagonist, had not fired his weapon at all, but Bennett, probably suspecting a cheat or trick, and animated by malice was proven on the trial to have secretly slipped a ball into his rifle. Stuart was a most estimable citizen and his untimely death was deeply and generally regretted.

Bennett and the two seconds, Fike and Short, were arrested and imprisoned. In the spring they were indicted for murder. Daniel P. Cook was prosecuting attorney, and Thomas H. Benton, of St. Louis, appeared for the defendants. A separate trial was granted and the two seconds were acquitted. The transaction was condemned, yet as it clearly appeared that the seconds intended no harm, the verdict was generally approved.* Next Bennett was to be tried, but having learned that the testimony elicited in the other cases was damaging to him, he broke jail and made his escape into Arkansas. His whereabouts was some two years later discovered, and by means of artifice, ("which was not approved," says Reynolds, the judge, who sat in his trial), he was taken back to Belleville, tried in 1821, at a special term of the court, couvicted of murder, sentenced and executed.

Gov. Bond was strenuously and clamorously besieged for a considerable time with petitions praying a pardon for the doomed man, but without avail. He, who on the field, as we have seen, was unwilling to take an advantage of his deadly foe, would not yield to entreaty in this case, and William Bennett dangled at the rope's end till he was dead, in presence of a great multitude of spectators, who doubtless took in a great moral lesson. To the advocates of the code, his fate must have appeared peculiarly hard. They may have well conceived that Bennett, in ignorance of the sham intended, by putting a ball into his rifle was but doubly assuring his defense against an adversary who was entitled to an equal chance with him. But fatal dueling was murder in the eye of the law, as it ever should be.

Stone Duel.-Among the motly and heterogenious collection of men at the Galena lead mines in 1829, representing almost every nationality of the civilized world, together with a sprinkling of Indians, on the holy Sabbath might be witnessed, within the limited area of the town, the preaching of the gospel, dancing, all manner of gambling and horse-racing under the hill-it was, perhaps, not astonishing to them that a duel, exceptionable and outlandish in form, should there also be fought. This was nothing less than a deadly set-to by the throwing of stones. The chas tisement inflicted by such a combat is something fearful to con

Reynolds' Life and Times.

template-better be shot into fragments than bruised and mangled to death with stones. The name of but one of the principals in this fight is recorded-the same Thomas Higgins of whom we have already related a marvelous Indian rencontre during the war of 1812. A quarrel between him and another was arranged to be settled by this cruel wager of battle. A pile of stones carefully assorted, both as to number and size, was placed within easy reach of the stand or post of the respective combatants, who took their positions ten paces apart. The dreadful conflict was to open by the hurling of these stones at each other on a given signal from the seconds. The stones flew fast and thick for a moment, but the battle was of short duration, Higgins proving too brave, dexterous and powerful for his adversary, who fled in great precipitation to save his life.*

We now approach a period of something less than two years in the annals of of Illinois, exceedingly rife with belligerent bluster. The legislative session of 1840-1, attended by much political strife and vengeful partisan legislation, was also fruitful of threatened combats and "affairs of honor" between members and other offi cial dignitaries. Indeed, one honorable senator, Mr. Hacker, fond of making a good point, improved the occasion to move the suspension of the dueling law for two weeks, to accommodate all the doughty and chivalrous gentlemen with full opportunity to settle their personal difficulties. The occasion of this was a personal question between two senators, Messrs. E. D. Baker and Judge Pearson. The former, smarting under the epithet of "falsehood," threatened chastisement to the latter by a "fist-fight" in the public street. Pearson declined making a "blackguard" of himself, but intimated a readiness to fight as gentlemen, according to the code of honor.t

The exciting presidential contest of 1840 resulted in the defeat of the democracy. The chagrin of the dominant party in Illinois, which had gone democratic, seems to have impelled them to proceed to any length to secure absolute control of every department of government in the State. The two questions before the legisla ture in 1840-1 to secure these revengeful partisan ends, were a repeal of the State bank charters, and the reorganization of the ju diciary. It had been assumed by the democrats that the supreme court, which was composed of 3 whigs and 1 democrat, would decide the Galena alien case, pending for some time, against the aliens, and against the wishes and interests of that party. To prevent this, or to overrule a decision fraught with such dire results to that party, 5 democratic judges were added to the court. The measure, looked upon as a revolutionary one, was resisted step by step by the whigs; the debates incident to it took a wide range, were often bitter in personal invective and defiant contradictions, and threats of combats and affairs of honor were not unfrequent. Among others in these debates, the Hon. J. J. Hardin shone with unwonted power and brilliancy. In one of his speeches the Hon. A. R. Dodge, of Peoria, discovering, as he thought, an indignity personal to himself, took exception, and an "affair" seemed imminent. The controversy was referred to "friends,” the

"Reynolds' Life and Times.

+See Ill. State Register, Feb. 12, 1841

speaker Hon. W. D. Lee Ewing, and Wm. A. Richardson acting for Dodge, and J. J. Brown and E. B. Webb for Hardin. These respective, and we will add, sensible and judicious "friends,” reported as follows:

"In the matter of controversy and misunderstanding existing between the Hon. J. J. Hardin and the Hon. A R. Dodge, the undersigned (the respective friends of the parties,) believe that no cause of quarrel now exists; the Hon. J. J. Hardin disavows the imputation of falsehood as applied to the Hon. A. R. Dodge personally-but was and should be understood as denying the charge that the whig party was opposed to extending the right of suffrage to unnaturalized foreigners; and to the charge in general terms he applied the epithets "falsehood and calumny," and not to Mr. Dodge; the undersigned, on this statement of the case and the facts, pronounce the difficulty honorably and amicably arranged and settled, and should be so received by those gentlemen. Hereunto we set our hands."

Another "affair" growing out of the same partisan measure, which gained considerable notoriety at the time, and which went a step farther, was that of the Hon. Theophilus W. Smith, one of the supreme judges, and the Hon. John A. McClernand, then a young member of the house. McClernand, as we have seen, had some two years prior received the appointment of secretary of State from Gov. Carlin, but the old incumbent, A. P. Field, a whig, refused to yield up the office to him, in which the supreme court had sustained him. Much partisan feeling had been stirred up against the court in connection with this case. McClernand now took a leading and very active part in the passage of the act which returned the old supreme judges to the drudgery of circuit duty. He made an acrimonious speech against the whig members of the court, charging that a majority of that tribunal had opinions prepared at one time to decide the alien case adversely to that class, and that but recently the whig judges, with the view to influence legislation upon the judiciary bill, had evaded the constitutional question in the case, and decided it upon an unimportant point. He had this information, it seems, from S. A. Douglas, but held himself personally responsible also for the assertion. Judge Smith (democrat,) had given currency to these reports against his associates, but now, at the request of J. J. Hardin, he joined them in a published card denying that such ever was the fact. A number of gentlemen in their cards sustained McClernand that Smith had given out such reports. The issue of fact being thus narrowed down against this functionary of the supreme bench, and placed thus in no very enviable position before the public and his associates, he was stung to the sending of a note to McClernand by the hands of his "friend," Dr. Merriman (said to have been an old rover of the high seas, and who, we shall see, was mixed up in nearly all the "affairs" of that period,) penned in such discreet language that it might be construed into a challenge or not; but the impetuous McClernand promptly accepted it as a challenge, holding his second responsible if his principal should attempt a different interpretation, and, without further parley, as the challenged party, named the place of meeting, which was to be in Missouri; the time, early; the weapons, rifles; and distance, 40 paces. This meant business, as the phrase now goes. We have

The Ill State Journal of Friday, March 5th, 1851, in evident allusion to this case, gives the distance at 60 yards

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