Can there be honor in a society without the duel? Can there be a civil society without honor? I believe the answer to these questions is no, and no.It has been nearly a century and a half since the last duel was fought in America between United States Senator David C. Broderick, of California, and ex-Chief Justice David S. Terry, of the Supreme Court of California, on September 13, 1859. The encounter took place near Lake Merced on the south western edge of San Francisco--a place where I stood many times when I lived in that beautiful city.
It is no small irony that that last duel in America was fought between two men of the law: a U.S. Senator, and a State Supreme Court Justice. After all, since 1859 America has become a nation of laws. In a nation governed by laws, the duel is prohibited as a method for settling disputes. Instead, we have a system of laws at the local, state, and federal level that are too innumerable to count. The Affordable Care Act alone is nearly two thousand pages. Tolstoy would be impressed!
A decade before the duel between Broderick and Terry, Henry David Thoreau lamented the slide of America toward a nation of laws in his essay entitled, Civil Disobedience, published in 1849. He foretold of the enslavement of the citizen to the "machine" of the state. And yet, despite Thoreau's warnings and the daily evidence to the contrary, many today believe we have a more "civil" society where individuals settle their differences at the bar of torts, attorney in one hand and checkbook in the other. This we call "justice".
Nearly a decade after the Broderick-Terry duel, in a small southwestern Virgina town, an honorable man named Robert E. Lee became the President of a struggling college after the end of the Civil War. Among the many things he accomplished during his five year tenure as President of what was then called Washington College, included the abolition of the set of formal written rules and regulations that governed student behavior. Lee established one central idea: that each student "conduct himself as a gentleman." Lee also transferred the responsibility of administering the "honor code" from the faculty to the student body. Sacrebleu!
In a truly civil society, where individuals conduct themselves as gentlemen (and gentlewomen), which is a better response when a grave offense has been committed by an individual against one's person, family, or property:
1) Call on an officer of the law, or
2) Challenge the offender to pistols for two at dawn, and coffee for one?
