Eyewitness 1861: A mostly true 'tall' tale about Lincoln's dueling
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Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln once said his early years could be summed up by a single line of verse from English poet Thomas Gray: "The short and simple annals of the Poor."
That wasn't near enough information for curious Americans in 1861, who wanted to know much more about their new president. Apocryphal stories about "Honest Abe" began to pile up like autumn leaves outside the door of a prairie cabin.
The Pittsburgh Daily Gazette offered its readers an improbable, but partially accurate, tale of Lincoln's near-comic participation in a duel in 1842.
Lincoln, a Whig, had been feuding with the Illinois state auditor, James Shields, and he had written a satirical letter, under the pseudonym Aunt Becca, for a local newspaper. In it, he joked about both his Democratic opponent's policies and his vanity.
In his 1995 biography of Lincoln, historian David Herbert Donald writes that Mary Todd, who Lincoln later would marry, angered Shields even more when she co-authored a second "Aunt Becca" letter to the editor, making fun of the politician's recent romantic misadventures.
When Lincoln took responsibility for both letters, Shields challenged him to a fight.
The story that appeared in the Nov. 14, 1861, edition of the Gazette appears to be wrong in claiming that Lincoln had insulted Shields in verse, not prose. But the story was accurate in noting that "there were those who believed that the verses had been indited by fairer hands than Lincoln's ... and it was impossible for him to back out by throwing the responsibility on another, and that other a lady." "Indite" is an archaic term meaning to write.
Dueling was illegal in Illinois, so the two men and their seconds agreed to meet at a spot known as Bloody Island in the middle of the Mississippi River in neighboring Missouri.
First Published October 2, 2011 12:00 am
