by H. W. Brands
Jackson devoted his public life to battling birth and breeding as requisites for personal advancement. But in a critical realm of his private life he placed as much store in bloodlines and pedigree as the haughtiest émigré from Bourbon France.
Jackson began racing horses long before he could afford to purchase thoroughbreds. As a boy in the Waxhaw he tested himself and his mounts against other boys and horses, and the distinction he earned was what led to his selection as a courier for the patriot forces in the Revolutionary War. At sixteen he was an authorized appraiser of horseflesh. The earliest surviving document bearing Jackson’s signature is a 1783 appraisal of “one bay horse, brands unknown to the appraisers, value £150.” Charleston racehorses galloped away with his inheritance after the war and turned his face back toward the West. As an apprentice lawyer and then a novice practitioner he lacked the funds to purchase horses or even wager much on their speed, but no one in Nashville could ignore the races. And as Jackson acquired capital and standing in the community, he became a pillar of what even rabid democrats didn’t blush at calling the “sport of kings.”
In fact, though, the democrats were taking control of the sport. Organized horse racing in America had begun in the Northeast, particularly on Long Island, where a seventeenth-century British colonel indulged his passion for racing by building a track patterned after and named for the famous Newmarket course in England. Gradually the epicenter of equine activity shifted south, to Maryland and Virginia, with their milder winters and lusher pastures. Wealthy planters became the patrons of the sport, which knit the upper classes of America to those of the mother country by threads of affinity and selective (horse) breeding. The Revolution severed the threads, and though after the war turfmen on both sides of the water strove to restore them, they were never the same. Meanwhile the opening of Kentucky and Tennessee to settlement brought new and cheaper pastures to the sport. In time Kentucky would claim preeminence with its shimmering bluegrass, but in Jackson’s day Tennessee, particularly the Cumberland, was where the serious racers and breeders took their animals and their business.
Until the first decade of the nineteenth century, racing in Tennessee was conducted on a casual, though hardly nonserious, basis. Proud owners matched their steeds against those of others equally prideful, and they and the spectators who gathered for the races laid bets on the outcome. But in 1804 the racing community staged its first organized trial, at Gallatin, an easy ride from Nashville. Jackson took part, entering his mare Indian Queen. The horse didn’t win, yet the loss whetted Jackson’s appetite for racing, as did the appearance that season of one of the most famous horses in America. Truxton (apparently named for the navy captain, whose swift ship Constellation was called the “Yankee Race Horse”) had been sired by an English champion, Diomed, that upon crossing the Atlantic became the most important and valuable stud in American history. Truxton’s owner in 1804, John Verell, brought the horse to Tennessee for the races, only to discover that he couldn’t take the horse back out of the state due to a lien levied against him for an old debt. Jackson solved Verell’s financial problem by assuming Verell’s debt in exchange for Truxton. The debt was fifteen hundred dollars; Jackson threw in three geldings and promised two more if Truxton performed well in the next round of races.
Until this point Jackson had been one horseman among many, but with the purchase of Truxton he became the leading force in the Nashville racing community. He acquired another champion, Greyhound, and an interest in a racetrack at Clover Bottom. He organized races, with Truxton the favorite and principal attraction. And he looked forward to a long career for Truxton at stud, which would make his owner the foremost breeder in Tennessee.
Truxton’s reputation naturally attracted the fastest and strongest challengers. To defeat Jackson’s stallion would heighten any horseman’s stature—and increase the value of his animals. Joseph Erwin judged his Ploughboy the equal of Truxton and was willing to back his judgment with money, or what substituted for money in the cash-short West. He scheduled a race with Jackson for November 1805. The wager was two thousand dollars, but side bets would multiply that amount several times. As warrant of his seriousness he posted an appearance bond: eight hundred dollars, payable to Jackson in the event Ploughboy failed to make the starting line. Several promissory notes covered the bond and the wager.
As race day approached, Erwin grew nervous. Ploughboy’s training runs were slower than he had hoped and weren’t getting faster. At the last moment Erwin decided to forfeit the eight hundred dollars rather than risk the entire two thousand. He informed Jackson, who matter-of-factly required delivery of the promissories.
What happened next occasioned dispute. Erwin wanted to substitute different notes for the promissories Jackson had inspected and approved at the time of the original agreement. Because promissories ranged drastically in their reliability and liquidity, such a switch could amount to reneging on the debt. By the testimony of the principals—Jackson and Erwin—the matter was settled to the satisfaction of both. But rumors circulated that Jackson had impugned the integrity of Erwin and his partner and son-in-law, Charles Dickinson, whose name was on some of the notes. Thomas Swann, a young man new in Nashville and trying to make an impression, insinuated himself into the dispute. Swann told Erwin and Dickinson that Jackson had accused against them of double-dealing. Jackson responded by declaring that anyone who said such a thing was “a damned liar.”
Swann seems to have been setting Jackson up, for he immediately wrote Jackson a letter claiming injury and demanding satisfaction. “The harshness of this expression has deeply wounded my feelings,” Swann said. “It is language to which I am a stranger, which no man acquainted with my character would venture to apply to me, and which . . . I shall be under the necessity of taking proper notice of.”
Jackson knew about picking fights to advance his reputation, having done just that against John Sevier. But now, within weeks of his fortieth birthday, he was the one the young bucks challenged. He had no intention of letting them make their reputations at his expense. He swatted away Swann with a homily about truth and tale bearing.
Let me, sir, observe one thing: that I never wantonly sport with the feelings of innocence, nor am I ever awed into measures. If incautiously I inflict a wound, I always hasten to remove it. If offence is taken where none is offered or intended, it gives me no pain. If a tale is listened to many days after the discourse should have taken place when all parties are under the same roof, I always leave the person to judge of the motives that induced the information, draw their own conclusions, and act accordingly. There are certain traits that always accompany the gentleman and man of truth. The moment he hears harsh expressions applied to a friend, he will immediately communicate it, that an open explanation may take place.
For reasons unclear, Jackson inferred that Dickinson was behind Swann’s challenge. Some who knew Jackson asserted afterward that Dickinson had committed that most mortal of sins: aspersing the honor of Rachel. Though no surviving contemporary evidence supports this explanation, it fits the tragic denouement. After lecturing Swann on the gentlemanly way of treating misunderstanding, Jackson proceeded to identify its opposite. “The base, poltroon and cowardly tale-bearer will always act in the background.” Specifically naming Charles Dickinson, Jackson added, “I write it for his eye. . . . When the conversation dropped between Mr. Dickinson and myself, I thought it was at an end. As he wishes to blow the coal I am ready to light it to a blaze that it may be consumed at once and finally extinguished. . . . At all times be assured I hold myself answerable for any of my conduct, and should any thing herein contained give Mr. Dickinson the spleen, I will furnish him with an anodyne.”
Perhaps Dickinson hadn’t mentioned Rachel, or perhaps he preferred to answer Jackson’s charge on the relatively higher ground of the horse race. In any event, when Swann relayed Jackson’s insult to Dickinson, the latter retraced the issues of who said what to whom regarding the stakes and the notes. But h
e ended his letter in the same tone Jackson used toward him. “As to the word coward, I think it as applicable to yourself as anyone I know and I shall be very glad when an opportunity serves to know in what manner you give your anodynes and hope you will take in payment one of my most moderate cathartics.”
Swann, for his part, didn’t appreciate being elbowed out of what was becoming a most noteworthy quarrel. “Think not that I am intimidated by your threats,” he wrote Jackson. “No power terrestrial shall prevent the settled purpose of my soul. . . . Your menaces I set at defiance, and now demand of you that reparation which one gentleman is entitled to receive of another.”
Jackson paid no more attention to this than to Swann’s earlier challenge. He declined to recognize Swann as a gentleman and threatened to thrash him rather than trade pistol fire. Swann confronted Jackson at a Nashville tavern, where Jackson began beating him with a cane. Onlookers broke up the fight, and Jackson strode off. Swann ran to the papers and published letters from references asserting that he was in fact a gentleman.
Many Nashville residents deemed the triangular feud an entertaining diversion from winter’s gloom. Yet some city elders found the affair dismaying and anachronistic. James Robertson urged Jackson to calm himself and “not suffer passion to get the upper hand of your good sense.” Robertson thought the whole business of dueling had gone on too long. “No honor can be attached either to the conquered or the conqueror, and certainly the consequences ought to be taken in view. Should you fall, your talents are lost to your country, besides the irreparable loss your family and friends must sustain. . . . On the other hand, were you to risk your life and in defending it take the life of your fellow mortal, might this not make you miserable so long as you lived?” Robertson pointed to Aaron Burr. “I suppose if dueling could be justifiable, it must have been in his case.” But the victory had ruined his career and probably his conscience. “It is believed that he has not had ease in mind since the fatal hour he killed Hamilton.” Robertson implored Jackson to listen to age. “Will you pardon me, my friend, when I tell you that I have been longer in the world than you have and . . . have heard the opinions of people more than you have, and do hear the false honor of dueling ridiculed by most thinking persons.” He assured Jackson that no one in Nashville questioned his bravery. Now was the time to demonstrate other gifts. “You will have more than ten to one which will applaud your prudence in avoiding a duel.”
Robertson’s counsel slowed the momentum toward a reckoning, but not as much as Dickinson’s departure from Nashville on business. In February Jackson published a defense of his conduct, which almost certainly convinced no one not previously inclined toward his view of the affair. He insulted some of Swann’s and Dickinson’s friends, one of whom, Nathaniel McNairy, challenged Jackson to back his words with weapons. Jackson evidently accepted, although perhaps for form’s sake. The principals and seconds met on the field but the latter arranged a settlement that suited the former without the exchange of fire. Or maybe McNairy wasn’t wholly satisfied, for he shortly fought a duel with one of Jackson’s supporters, who was wounded.
A side effect of the assorted imbroglios was heightened interest in the contest that had started the whole affair. The Nashville Impartial Review of March 15 carried a notice:
On Thursday the 3rd of April next will be run the greatest and most interesting match race ever run in the Western country, between General Jackson’s horse Truxton, 6 years old, carrying 124 lbs., and Captain Joseph Erwin’s horse Ploughboy, 8 years old, carrying 130 lbs. Those horses will run the two mile heats for the sum of 3000 dollars. . . . All persons are requested not to bring their dogs to the field, as they will be shot.
Race day arrived, attracting what Jackson called “the largest concourse of people I ever saw, unless in an army.” Truxton had suffered a thigh injury in training, causing the leg to swell visibly. But after everything that had happened regarding the race, Jackson refused to withdraw him. The injury, however, suppressed some of the betting. “This was unfortunate, or Carthage would have been destroyed,” Jackson said. As it was, Carthage was badly damaged. The race consisted of two heats, each of two miles. In a driving rain Truxton showed great heart, beating Ploughboy both times. “There was about 10,000 dollars won,” Jackson recorded, “and if it had not been for the accident there would have been at least 20,000. Thus ends the fate of Ploughboy.”
Jackson was still counting his money when Dickinson returned from New Orleans. The younger man’s anger hadn’t subsided in his absence. If anything his wounded honor had festered on the long journey south and back. He read Jackson’s published version of the affair only to dismiss it as beneath reply, except to elaborate his earlier opinion of Jackson. “I declare him (notwithstanding he is a major general of the militia of Mero District) to be a worthless scoundrel, a paltroon and a coward,” Dickinson wrote in the Impartial Review.
Quite possibly Jackson had been willing to let the matter blow over. James Robertson’s views on dueling carried weight in Nashville and perhaps with Jackson himself. But against this latest affront he felt he had to respond. “Your conduct and expressions relative to me of late have been of such a nature and so insulting that it requires, and shall have, my notice,” he informed Dickinson. “Insults may be given by men of such a kind that they must be noticed.” Jackson said he would have taken action in reply to Dickinson’s earlier letter but the author had left town. Now he was back and publishing pieces “more replete with blackguard abuse than any of your other productions.” With mocking irony Jackson declared, “I hope, sir, your courage will be an ample security to me that I will obtain speedily that satisfaction due me for the insults offered, and in the way my friend, who hands you this, will point out.”
With the gage undeniably down, planning for the duel proceeded. Dickinson’s second, Hanson Catlet, suggested the morning of Friday, May 30, a week hence. Jackson’s second, Thomas Overton, reflecting his principal’s impatience to settle the matter, asked why they had to wait so long. “If you can not obtain pistols,” Overton said half seriously, half scornfully, “we pledge ourselves to give you choice of ours.” When Catlet hadn’t answered this offer twenty-four hours later, Overton followed up angrily: “For God’s sake, let the business be brought to issue immediately.” But Catlet, with no other explanation than that an earlier date would “not now be convenient,” stood firm for the 30th. Other details fell into place.
It is agreed that the distance shall be 24 feet, the parties to stand facing each other with their pistols down perpendicularly. When they are ready, the single word fire to be given, at which they are to fire as soon as they please. Should either fire before the word given, we pledge ourselves to shoot him down instantly. The person to give the word to be determined by lot, as also the choice of position.
The dueling ground was in Kentucky, in keeping with that state’s more tolerant attitude toward affairs of honor. Near Harrison’s Mill, on the bank of the Red River, was an open space in the hardwood forest sufficiently large to accommodate the antagonists and their retinues yet private enough to exclude the uninvolved. Jackson and Overton rode north from Nashville on Thursday, May 29, and spent the night at a tavern owned by a man named Miller. Dickinson, Catlet, and several of the younger man’s friends made the same ride and stayed at the house of William Harrison a short distance down the river.
Dickinson was said to be in high spirits, which may have been a mask for his true feelings. Or they may have been real. He had reason to be hopeful. He was a marksman, reputedly able to place four balls within the space of a dollar coin at twenty-four feet. In a test of skill with pistols, he certainly expected to defeat Jackson, whose aim was no better than adequate.
But a duel was more than a test of marksmanship. It was at least as much a test of will. Rarely did duelists race to get off the first shot (unlike the gunfighters in the Wild West shootouts into which dueling would eventually evolve). Pistol fire was seldom instantly fatal, and so a wounded man
might expect to shoot back. Strategy, therefore, required deciding whether to fire the first shot, in hopes of spoiling the opponent’s aim, or to absorb the first shot in order to aim and fire more deliberately. Even with practiced marksmen, it wasn’t unusual for the first shot to miss. Shooting for one’s life was a different matter than shooting for amusement. A second shooter might then aim and fire at leisure.
Jackson determined to adopt the deliberate route. He lacked sufficient confidence in his aim to think he could debilitate Dickinson with a single quick shot. But he had supreme confidence in his will—in his capacity to get off a shot even with a pistol round in his own body. He later said, “I should have hit him, if he had shot me through the brain.” That probably would have been beyond even Jackson, but if Dickinson missed Jackson’s brain and his heart, he would indeed return fire. And it would be better to take the hit deliberately. Pistol bullets in those days were small, lacking the mass to knock a man down by their momentum. But the blow from a bullet could spoil a man’s aim in the act of shooting. Wiser to take the blow, recover one’s balance, and return a careful shot.
In late May the Kentucky sun rose well before seven. Yet the same trees that sheltered the dueling ground from the gaze of passersby prevented the sun from shining directly upon the duelists. Neither would be shooting into the sun or into sun-dappled shadow. The flat light yielded no favors or disadvantages. The two parties arrived separately a few minutes before seven. Dickinson’s mood was as sober now as Jackson’s had been all along. Both sides got quickly to business. Overton and Catlet drew straws. Catlet won the choice of position, Overton the fire command. The twenty-four feet—eight paces—were measured off. Jackson and Dickinson took their positions, pistols in hand at their sides.
