The Duel: Andrew Jackson Takes a Bullet to Buy His Aim, 1806 RoadyGoat
1806The marker on the Adairville square points two miles west, to the Red River bottoms on the old Jeff Burr farm, where on May 30, 1806, Andrew Jackson shot and killed Charles Dickinson. Both men were Tennesseans; they crossed the state line not because dueling was legal in Kentucky (it was illegal here too) but to put themselves out of reach of Tennessee's authorities. The quarrel began over a forfeited horse-race wager between Jackson's stallion Truxton and Ploughboy, owned by Dickinson's father-in-law, and curdled in the newspapers until Dickinson printed that Jackson was "a worthless scoundrel, a poltroon, and a coward." (Dickinson had also, while drunk, insulted Jackson's wife Rachel, and apologized; Jackson had let that go.) Dickinson was the finest pistol shot in Tennessee, so Jackson and his second, Thomas Overton, made a cold decision: let Dickinson fire first, absorb it, then aim at leisure. Dickinson fired. Dust puffed from Jackson's coat. Jackson did not fall; he put a hand to his chest and stood. Dickinson recoiled from his mark, crying "Great God! Have I missed him?", and Overton forced him back to stand and take his return fire. Jackson pulled the trigger and the pistol stopped at half-cock. He drew the hammer back, aimed again, and fired; Dickinson bled to death by dusk. Jackson's biographer James Parton wrote that Dickinson's "aim had been perfect. He had sent the ball precisely where he supposed Jackson's heart was beating. But the thinness of his body and the looseness of his coat combining to deceive Dickinson, the ball had only broken a rib or two." Whether Jackson had the RIGHT to re-cock was argued bitterly and never settled: a "snap" normally counted as your shot, but Jackson's hammer never fell at all. His seconds certified the duel fair; Dickinson's father-in-law published that Jackson had taken an "unguarded, illiberal and unjust advantage." Jackson walked off concealing the wound so Dickinson would die believing he had missed, and only later did his surgeon notice a shoe full of blood. The ball lodged too near his heart to cut out, and he carried it for the remaining thirty-nine years of his life. (Sources: Kentucky Historical Marker #100; Library of Congress; Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 1859.)
