Original article available here.
Dueling and youth violence
By Deborah Prothrow-Stith
April 30, 2007
IN BOSTON TODAY, some neighborhoods are being terrorized by men who work out their grudges with guns and without regard to the law. But this is by no means the first outbreak of such violence.
Consider Alexander Hamilton, who signed the US Constitution, was the first secretary of the treasury, and was killed in a duel in 1804. He was killed in Hoboken, N.J., in nearly the same spot where his son Phillip had been killed in a duel three years earlier.
In July 1804, on the eve of his duel, Hamilton described in his journal the pros and cons of responding to the challenge of Vice President Aaron Burr. Against dueling he wrote that he had a wife and children, that he was deeply in debt, that he bore Burr no ill-will, that dueling was illegal in New York and condemned by Christianity. Nevertheless, he woke the next morning, joined his "second" -- a close friend whom Hamilton chose to support him -- for a boat ride to Hoboken. Hamilton, a giant of American history, a founding father of our country, was killed because he felt he had no choice but to duel. It is as hard to comprehend the obligation Hamilton felt as it is to understand the carnage from youth violence today.
Hamilton's journal provides insight into the cultural reasons why he felt compelled to duel. On the pro-dueling side, he wrote that he felt "pressing necessity not to decline the call," that not dueling would "cost him political support," and that dueling was "essential to his ability to be useful in the future."
On the surface, the elite white gentlemen of that day would seem to have little in common with the young urban males now labeled as "super-predators," "hard-core demons," or "high impact players." But there are striking parallels between dueling and urban violence today. Those parallels reveal how effectively a culture of violence can sustain itself.
Dueling was illegal, just as urban violence is today. Dueling gained favor in America during the Revolutionary War with the influx of Europeans, who had been dueling for centuries. In the years that followed, multiple laws against dueling were passed throughout the New World. Yet gentlemen were rarely brought to trial. If they were, witnesses (such as attending physicians and the crowd that often gathered) would not testify, and jurors would not convict. Young criminal suspects today are subject to aggressive prosecution. But codes of silence, common in the antebellum period, are still very much present today -- as the recent "Stop Snitching" campaign shows.
Both duels and urban violence grow out of minor disputes. Duels occurred because one man called another a liar or challenged his standing in society. There was a fatal duel in New Orleans between doctors over the correct treatment for a patient. Likewise, youth violence is about things that are small, when compared with the value of a life: the need to prove that you are tough, to avoid being a "sucker," to protect your possessions.
Both types of violence serve as an alternative form of justice for those who do not see law enforcement as an option. Members of elite society once felt that it was cowardice to rely upon the courts to respond to a slanderous comment. Today the legal system doesn't seem to offer protection for young men of color, who often say that they would never call the police for help. Instead, they handle their disputes privately.
Similarly, social norms offer support for both dueling and youth violence. Elite white gentlemen before the Civil War were expected to duel, often to the death. Some parents today tell their children things like: "Don't come back in this house without your basketball or I'll beat you." Today's parents don't want a wimp for a child; yesterday's women were told not to marry a man who had not proved himself with the blade.
Both forms of violence reserve elaborate roles for the combatants' peers. In dueling, the "seconds" in a duel were the friends or supporters who were charged with preventing the duel at its onset, served as messengers during the escalation phase of the challenge, gave advice to the participants, set up the duel logistics, ensured the duel's fairness, served as witnesses, and were expected to fight if rules were broken.
Today the role of friends and supporters is not formally prescribed as it was in the Code Duello, the "how-to manual" of dueling. But we can still consider the role of friends who pass rumors back and forth to escalate the conflict -- and the role of the crowd. Would there even be a fight at 3 o'clock on the corner if no one else showed up to watch?
Some people did rally against dueling, as many have against urban violence. Just as we have a contemporary violence prevention movement (fostered by survivors, public health agencies, clergy, and a number of other professions), there was an anti dueling movement fostered by clergy, women's societies, and prominent citizens such as Mark Twain, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Mary Shelley.
In his opposition to duels, Twain was swimming against the tide. The humorist wasn't anti violence: "I thoroughly disapprove of duels," he wrote in his autobiography. " . . . If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him."
But he understood the psychological factors that led men to duel. "In those early days dueling suddenly became a fashion in the new territory of Nevada and by 1864 everybody was anxious too have a chance in the new sport, mainly for the reason that he was not able to thoroughly respect himself so long as he had not killed or crippled somebody in a duel or been killed or crippled in one himself."
The end of the practice coincided with the Civil War and some scholars suggest that the war caused the end of dueling. The definitive work on the end of dueling has not yet been done. (I am currently beginning some research on the issue.) The explanation may lie in a confluence of factors, similar to those many of us credit with the dramatic reduction in youth violence in Boston in the mid- to late 1990s.
What is clear is that dueling eventually became a poorly regarded practice, and gentlemen instead opted to use lawsuits and courts to handle the slanderous statements made against them. What is also clear is that the practice has remained extinct for more than a century.
This is the good news and is further evidence that we are addressing a preventable problem today -- though we should hope it won't take a century and a civil war for urban violence to end.
We can learn some important lessons from dueling: The major lesson is that culture trumps laws. It matters what we say to our children. It matters how we're entertained. It matters when we watch superheroes solving problems violently.
But the rise and eventual fall of dueling also shows that violence is not inevitable. It is not the fate of poor urban youths, any more than it was the fate of rich white gentlemen. Codes of silence that feed violence can be broken. Just as gentlemen began to take their disputes to court, the law-enforcement system, including police and the courts, must convince minority youths that it is there to protect them.
There are many lessons to take from the end of dueling, and one of them is hope.