Toxic Talk, Deadly Duel

The one (and perhaps only) thing Americans seem to agree on these days is political rhetoric is too toxic. They long for folks to cool down and behave like dignified statesmen from that long-ago time before Twitter inflamed passions.

Ah, the good old days! Except they weren't so good. In fact, angry words sometimes even resulted in death. This is the story of how one nasty exchange ended badly for everyone.

President Andrew Jackson despised banks. (Probably because he was in debt up to his eyeballs with bankers constantly hounding him for money.) He had an all-consuming hatred of the Second Bank of the United States. A forerunner of today's Federal Reserve System, it was responsible for establishing sound currency and regulating credit, meaning the bank's president, Nicholas Biddle, was the Jerome Powell of his day.

Jackson and his fellow Democrats thought Biddle's bank intentionally kept money in the hands of the rich and out of the hands of the working poor. They made destroying it Priority No. 1. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and the National Republicans fought back equally hard, defending it. By 1830, public discourse had grown just as toxic as today.

During that year's midterm elections, several blistering speeches came from Spencer Pettis, Missouri's only congressman and an ardent Jacksonian Democrat. Just 28 and wildly popular, his political future was bright. Pettis repeatedly damned the bank in general and banker Biddle in particular.

That infuriated Nicholas Biddle's brother Thomas, an Army major stationed in St. Louis. He wrote an angry letter to a local newspaper defending his big brother and savaging Pettis as "a dish of skimmed milk" (which apparently sounded worse in 1830 than it does today). Pettis responded with a letter questioning Biddle's manhood. It was personal now, and things only went downhill from there.

The men trash-talked each other to anyone who would listen. Things reached a tipping point on July 9, 1831, when Maj. Biddle heard Pettis was lying sick in a St. Louis hotel room. He burst in and attacked the ailing congressman with a whip. Biddle was arrested. When he appeared in court a few days later, Pettis pulled out a pistol and tried to shoot before being restrained by friends. Pettis then challenged Biddle to a duel.

The "affair of honor" was the talk of St. Louis. With dueling outlawed in Missouri and neighboring Illinois, they agreed to meet on a Mississippi River sandbar, a kind of no-man's land between the states where the authorities wouldn't interfere.

It was used so often for that purpose that the locals called it Bloody Island.

Although Biddle had the choice of terms, he also had a major disadvantage: he was seriously near-sighted. So, he chose pistols at five feet. (Note: not five paces — five feet.) With arms outstretched, the guns would almost touch. It would be suicide; there was no way either man could miss standing that close.

Some historians believe Biddle picked the absurd distance to scare Pettis into rejecting it, thus making Biddle the "winner" without actually shooting. However, Pettis didn't take the bait. He accepted.

A large crowd watched on the St. Louis riverfront late on Friday afternoon, August 26, as the men and their seconds slowly rowed to Bloody Island. The two stood back to back, then walked one step, turned, and fired directly at each other. Both fell to the ground in bleeding heaps. As they were carried away, each was heard saying he forgave the other.

Pettis died the next day and Biddle the day after that. Their funerals were among the largest and most elaborate held in St. Louis in the 19th century. As soon as they were buried, they were mostly forgotten. (Although a Missouri county was named in Pettis' honor 18 months later.)

Andrew Jackson eventually won his duel with the bank when it went out of business. But the deaths of Congressman Pettis and Maj. Biddle had nothing to do with determining the outcome.

This should serve as a cautionary tale for 2025. Let's hope people of all political persuasions tone down the rhetoric … before it's too late.