Crossed Blades
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Crossed Blades
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August 27, 1937
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2
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12
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CROSSED BLADES
We have been very pleasantly surprised by the various letters we have received, expressing the desire that our column on duelling be continued indefinitely. Various readers have gone further, and promise to send us some data which they believe will prove interesting reading.
Col. Edwin Emerson, well known to all of us in fencing circles, and reputedly an authority on duelling customs, has sent us the following remarks about "Posting." We sincerely hope the Colonel will keep his promise to send us contributions regularly.
Editor
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Editor of The Riposte:
Dear Mr. de Capriles,
Much as I welcome your new department of "Crossed Blades," allow me to take issue with some of your remarks in the first article on "Posting," which you call "a purely American idea."
While you rightly state that the majority of American duels were arranged and carried on according to the Old World codes of honor, you go too far in limiting those to the European Continent. Many of our American duels, as the record shows, were fought by the so-called Irish Commandments, quoted at length by the American writer Lorenzo Sabine with the introductory remark, made in 1854: "It will be seen that some are still partially observed by both principals and seconds in our own country."
You go too far, too, in declaring that there is no truly American "code of Honor." Among my books on duels, I have an autographed copy of Captain Lanzilli's code, written in 1898, primarily for Latin American duellists, but adhered to, as I know, on several duelling occasions in the United States. One of these was a duel in San Francisco, resulting in the death of a Spanish consul general there. Captain Lanzilli, who taught fencing in San Francisco and Washington, went so far in Americanizing his code that he advocated the use of revolvers in lieu of smooth-bored duelling pistols, for the practical reason that duelling pistols are too scarce in America.
Major Truman, whose book on duelling you cite, was in error when he gave the notorious General Wilkinson’s slurs on the courage of John Randolph as the first recorded instance of "posting." Long before the days of John Randolph (who sufficiently proved his courage in the famous pistol duel he fought with Henry Clay near Washington), a young officer in the Continental army challenged General James Adair to a duel, threatening, if satisfaction were not accorded, to "post" him as a coward. According to Graydon’s Memoirs, the old hero of Indian Warfare replied that the challenger might so proceed, but assuredly in so doing would "post" himself as a fool and a liar, since nobody would believe him.
Francis Marion, another general of the Continental army, because of cowardly depredations of two officers of his brigade while campaigning in the South, posted their names on trees and houses and in public places as "cowards."
Of course, the ancient practice of publicly proclaiming the evader of a challenge to single combat as a "caitiff coward" to all intents and purposes amounted to what was later called "posting." This a contemporary chronicler of the Spanish Conquest of Granada wrote of a challenge to mortal combat passed in 1470 between Don Alfonso Aguilar and another Castilian nobleman. When Don Alfonso failed to appear on the field of honor, his challenger fastened Aguilar’s portrait to the tail of his horse and rode around the camp with it in sight of the King of Granada. I would emphatically call this "posting," even though the long stirrup straps of those days discouraged "posting" in the saddle.
Edwin Emerson.
