May 30, 1806—Amid early morning fog, on the banks of the Red River in Logan County, Kentucky, Andrew Jackson—lawyer, planter, temporarily out of public life—engaged in a duel with Charles Dickinson, a Nashville attorney with a well-earned reputation as one of the deadliest shots in the state. Though Dickinson fired first and his aim was as true as ever, it wasn’t good enough—his opponent was only badly wounded.The consequences of that day—the uproar over Jackson’s decision to continue the duel when he didn’t have to, along with the bullet that remained lodged inside him—would last for the remainder of Old Hickory’s life, and play no small part in creating his legend as a man not to be trifled with.
This is what happens when two men get excited over liquor, horses—and especially a woman.
Perceptions of Andrew Jackson have evolved dramatically over the last 70 years or so. As America rose to counter a foreign enemy (multiple enemies, in fact) in WWII, Hollywood contributed The Remarkable Andrew (1942), in which the spirit of the victor of New Orleans and seventh President (played by Brian Donlevy) comes to the aid of a wrongly accused small-town accountant (played by William Holden) who idolizes him.
Flash forward to 2010, nearly 40 years after America washed its hands of a conflict in Southeast Asia—and now amid two wars involving the Islamic world—when the Public Theater presented the Michael Friedman musical Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, described by The New York Times as “likely to remain a true reflection of these United States for many years to come.”
There’s a world of difference in these two worldviews, also shaped, to no mean extent, by two generations’ diametrically opposed perceptions of Jackson’s treatment of slaves and Native Americans. But they are united on one point, something that the unfortunate Mr. Dickinson (did I mention that AJ’s shot killed him?) would readily agree with: Jackson would fight.
There are people in this world who are too cocky for their own good, and I’m afraid Dickinson was one of them. Put together youth (25 years old), good looks, a decent legal practice (a letter of recommendation by his teacher, John Marshall, didn’t hurt), an agreeable wife and the aforesaid deadly aim (one that had gotten him through a number of duels already), and Dickinson thought he could survive anything.
He should have known better than to mess with Jackson. Not yet 40 years old, Old Hickory was already inspiring stories about his ferocious temper, his ability to take a devastating blow, and his capacity to strike back.
A few incidents (recounted briefly but with brio) in Jon Meacham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the President, American Lion, will suffice:
* Recalling wrestling matches in their youth on the frontier, an acquaintance remarked: “I could throw him three times out of four, but he would never stay throwed.”
* Captured along with his brother Robert during the American Revolution, the 14-year-old Jackson was ordered by a British officer to clean his boots. Jackson refused, claiming that he was a prisoner of war and should be treated as such. The redcoat swung his sword, leaving scars on Jackson’s skull and fingers—and hatred for a foreign force that so mistreated Robert in captivity that he died shortly after release.
* While riding circuit in 1798 as a justice of the Tennessee Superior Court, Jackson came face to face with Russell Bean, indicted for “cutting off the ears of his infant child in a drunken frolic.” Bean scared out of his wits the local sheriff, then, armed with a knife and pistols, proceeded to taunt a local posse sent to bring him to court. Jackson, however, made the astonished Bean drop his guns and surrender. It was not simply Jackson‘s blunt order (“Now surrender, you infernal villain, this very instant, or I’ll blow you through”), but his look, Bean confessed later, that did the trick. When Bean looked into the eyes of the sheriff and townspeople, he said, he saw, “No shoot”; when he looked into Jackson's, he read, “Shoot.” That meant, Bean concluded (in a phrase I can't help but love), it was time for him to “sing small.”
Surely Dickinson knew all this. He had to—there weren’t many lawyers out on the frontier, and he and Jackson were often rivals at the bar. The wonder is not really that he got into trouble with Old Hickory, but why he didn’t do so sooner than he did.
Dickinson, you see, touched on the most sensitive point in Jackson’s life: the origin of his marriage to his dear wife Rachel. The two had wed as soon as her first husband, Lewis Robards, obtained a divorce, in 1791--or so they thought. But, it turned out, Robards had only filed for divorce, and his petition wasn’t granted for another two years. As soon as the pair learned this, they went through the ceremony again to formalize things, though they already thought of themselves as man and wife.
Nevertheless, this meant that, technically, Andrew and Rachel had been living together unmarried, in an adulterous, bigamous relationship, for two years.
Meacham writes that Jackson’s marital situation caused such a scandal during the 1828 Presidential campaign because the nation’s mores had grown more conservative than those of Jackson’s frontier environment of the early 1790s. But even by the turn of the century, on the frontier, tongues were wagging.
One of these was Dickinson’s. The first time Jackson heard about this, he requested via Dickinson’s father-in-law, Col. Joseph Erwin, an apology. Jackson accepted Dickinson’s explanation—that he only started talking after too much to drink, and didn’t mean anything by it.
Over time, something of a myth has grown up around Jackson, to the effect that once you were on his bad side, not even God could get you off it. Not so: Seven years after the Dickinson imbroglio, Jackson became involved in another duel, with Thomas Hart Benton; received a bullet from that encounter; but later, in Washington, became an ally and diehard friend of Benton, by now a U.S. Senator from Missouri.
Unlike Benton, Dickinson wouldn’t live either to old age or into Jackson’s good graces. With the matter over Rachel seemingly taken care of, a dispute arose between the two over their shared passion for horseracing. Dickinson, exasperated by a forfeit and outright loss by a horse owned by Col. Erwin to one owned by Jackson, had one drink too many again, and again he made insinuations about Jackson and Rachel.
By this time, Jackson had also gotten wind of a rumor that some of Dickinson’s statements were about to make their way into print. Among Dickinson’s assertions: that Jackson was cowardly. Representatives from Jackson reached Dickinson before he could leave the state for Maryland (his birthplace and home of his ancestors) and demanded immediate satisfaction from the rash attorney. The meeting was set for May 30.
Jackson and his "second" for the duel were certain he couldn’t outdraw Dickinson, and determined that his best chance was somehow to withstand Dickinson’s shot before getting off one of his own. At this point, they hit upon a simple but (within the terms of the elaborate Code Duello formulated in Ireland in 1777) acceptable means of doing so: wear a loose coat that would provide a more elusive target for Dickinson.
All of this was unbeknownst to Dickinson, who was feeling even more confident (if that could be possible) on the way to the encounter, when, just for practice, he aimed at a string supporting an apple and cut the cord in two. Then, once he got to the site of the encounter and got the word to pace off, he turned almost immediately and fired.
The bullet scraped Jackson’s breastbone and broke some ribs—but more important, it didn’t touch his heart. Dickinson didn’t even know this much—all he could see was that Jackson stood as erect as ever. “Great God! Have I missed him?” Dickinson exclaimed, immediately sensing his own jeopardy—because now, by the Code Duello, Jackson could get off a clear shot at him.
Jackson pointed his pistol, aimed—and nothing happened: His pistol was at half-lock. At this point, by settled practice, Jackson, with his honor clearly established by his willingness not just to meet his opponent but to endure a shot from him, could have simply aimed at the trees, fired a worthless shot, called it a day, and let cooler heads smooth things over once again with his opponent.
But Jackson was reading the Code Duello very literally, and knew that an empty click technically didn’t count as a shot at all. This time when he aimed, he got his shot off, and it struck Dickinson in the abdomen. The latter was taken to a nearby house, where he bled to death from the wound.
Jackson and his second were 20 miles away when they noticed that Jackson was bleeding into his shoes. Some observers thought that Jackson didn’t seek immediate attention because he didn’t want Dickinson to have the satisfaction that he had struck him at all.
The Dickinson duel would return to haunt Jackson two decades later, when supporters of John Quincy Adams not only cited it as an example of the general’s intemperate nature, but also pointed to his decision to fire at Dickinson as a cold-blooded murder. It didn’t matter: unlike the disputed election of 1824, which ended up with Jackson losing the election in the House of Representatives despite winning the popular vote, this time he won walking away.
Dickinson was hardly the last person to underestimate Jackson’s fierce will. Nearly 30 years later, Jackson became the first President to suffer an assassination attempt, while he was leaving the Capitol as part of the funeral procession for a congressman. This time, by the standards of the day, the 67-year-old Jackson really was Old Hickory. But he reacted just the way he would have 30 years before.
After the assailant, named Richard Lawrence, attempted to fire at him, Jackson and the crowd rushed him. Lawrence, now with a second gun (and, by some accounts, close enough to touch Jackson’s coat), pulled the trigger again. Even with the different weapon, the gun misfired.
Now Jackson turned upon him, and Lawrence—like Bean and Dickinson before him—knew genuine fear, as Jackson, employing a trick he’d learned long ago on the frontier, swung his cane at the assailant’s stomach and brought him to heel.
Andrew Jackson was a hugely controversial figure, even for a position that seems to attract (or create) such types. His encounter with Dickinson illustrates one of the great faults of his personality: a propensity to enlarge a quarrel unto it became an unnecessary matter of life or death.
It also demonstrates, as certainly as his later near-death experience with Lawrence three decades later, one of his virtues: a physical fearlessness so absolute as to make men confident in themselves simply because they were associated with Old Hickory.
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