This Day in Senate History (Randolph, Clay Meet in Duel)

Apr. 7, 1826—In a dense forest above a bridge in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac where they had carved out reputations as among America’s most eloquent and brilliant politicians, Secretary of State Henry Clay (pictured) and Senator John Randolph of Virginia met in an “affair of honor”—i.e., a formal, prearranged duel. After an exchange of ineffectual gunfire, the two stopped, smiled, and shook hands, their lives luckily preserved.

That outcome—shot at without result—was more common than the lethal kind. But not everyone was so fortunate as Randolph and Clay in those early days of the republic. The practice continued, despite laws forbidding it, the opposition of prominent Americans like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and high-profile fatalities that horrified an increasing portion of the country, including:

*Alexander Hamilton, shot by Vice-President Aaron Burr in Weehawken, NJ, in 1804;

*Naval war hero Stephen Decatur, killed by another commodore, James Barron, in 1820;

*Charles Dickinson, mortally wounded in 1806 by Andrew Jackson for having committed an especially unpardonable sin in the rising politician’s mind: insulting his wife Rachel;

*Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, dying in 1777 three days after being shot by political rival Lachlan McIntosh.

All four of those deaths resulted from gunfire—like most duels on American soil. Though challenged parties, as part of the so-called Code Duello rules informally regulating the practice, had the choice of weapons, these tended to be smooth-bore pistols, unlike the swords often used in Europe.

Attorneys and journalists were among the challenged parties. (Indeed, nearly four decades later, the young journalist Mark Twain had to be hustled out of Nevada for having written a satirical hoax—an experience he would memorialize several years later in “How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel": “I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me now, I would... take him kindly... by the hand and lead him to a quiet... spot, and kill him")

More often, politicians were in the line of fire, despite congressional rules on decorum in debate. That had seldom if ever stopped Randolph, who, as historian Henry Adams observed, had acted for the last 20 years like “the bully of a race course, was on the floor “ready at any sudden impulse to spring at his enemies, gouging, biting, tearing, and rending his victims with the ferocity of a rough-and-tumble fight.”

But Clay should have known better. Though normally cordial and ready to disregard slights, he’d already been involved with one duel 17 years before, with a fellow member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, Humphrey Marshall. An exchange of invective between the two had climaxed in a spitting match, then Clay’s challenge.

Three rounds of gunfire left both men slightly wounded before it was terminated. Nine years later, Clay gave signs that he’d learned his lesson about escalating quarrels when, as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, he introduced a resolution banning dueling.

What brought on Clay’s appointment with Randolph was the Virginian’s claim that the relationship between President John Quincy Adams and Clay amounted to a “puritan with the blackleg.” 

(There were two possibilities for the meaning of “blackleg,” neither complimentary: 1) a fatal disease affecting livestock; 2) an idiom carried over from Great Britain, signifying a cheating gambler or swindling—a reference to Clay’s penchant for wagering.)

Once again, Clay took offense enough to issue a challenge. This time, the duel was shorter—and with less contact to the body—than the one with Marshall. Both men’s first shots went awry. Clay’s second bullet went through Randolph’s coat near the hip, and the Virginian, after firing into the air, announced he would not continue.

“You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay,” Randolph joked, prompting Clay to reply, ‘I am glad the debt is no greater.”

Altogether the affair was, according to Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri (who had seen and even participated in his share), the “highest toned” duel he had ever witnessed. Matters became so cordial between Randolph and Clay that, when the Virginian was dying, he insisted on being carried into the Senate to shake his old adversary’s hand before he expired.

Inevitably, a “what-if” scenario comes to mind about this duel: If Clay’s shot had found its mark against Randolph, would it have haunted the rest of his career, as Jackson’s had after meeting Dickinson? On the other hand, if Randolph hadn’t been wearing thick gloves that caused his pistol to discharge accidentally and then go wide, what might have happened to Clay?

The more important question might have been what would have happened to the United States. In Clay’s single term as Secretary of State, the department settled 12 commercial treaties—more than all five prior Presidential administrations combined—and built strong ties with the newly independent Latin American republics.

With his service to John Quincy Adams over, he ran unsuccessfully for President two more times, and arguably was more qualified for the office than any of its other occupants through the rest of his life. Back in the Senate, his advocacy for internal improvements and devotion to the Union (demonstrated in compromises that temporarily averted civil war) influenced the young Abraham Lincoln, who regarded him as his “beau ideal of a statesman.”

All of that would have been lost if Clay had fallen in his all-but-forgotten encounters with Humphrey Marshall and John Randolph.