The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 149: Broadswords in a Pit

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

James and Rebecca simply could not settle their differences... that's where the broadswords came in.

This is the way I heard it. James sat at his kitchen table, reading the newspaper and trembling with rage. As the duly appointed state auditor of Illinois, he was accustomed to being criticized by disgruntled Republicans. But this was something else altogether. This was a letter to the editor, written by a sharp-tonged woman who identified herself only as Rebecca. Not only did this Rebecca accuse him of bankrupting her state with his quote, disastrous democratic policies, she did so in a way that mocked his vanity. In the most offensive passage, she imagined him addressing a group of distraught women

unable to pay their bills because of his recent decision to eliminate paper money in favor of gold and silver. Dear girls, the passage began, I can see you are in distress, but please understand. I cannot marry you all. Too well I know how much you suffer. but do, do remember, it is not my fault that I am so handsome and so very interesting. The gall, the temerity. What did this Rebecca know about the complexities of modern banking, and what sort of editor would allow such baseless aspersions to be cast from a critic with no last name? Livid and humiliated, James paid a visit to the editor of the Sangamode Journal,

who tried to explain the nature of satire to the apoplectic Democrat to no avail. He insisted on knowing the identity of Rebecca. So the editor told him, Rebecca, he said, was actually a man, a concerned citizen whose real name, the state auditor, recognized immediately. James wasted no time demanding an apology, which he sent via courier. It read, sir, I have become the object of slander, vituperation, and personal abuse.

Only a full retraction may prevent consequences which no one will regret more than myself. The man, called Rebecca, delighted to learn that his words had struck a chord, responded thusly. I might consider a public retraction if you could but reframe your request in a more gentlemanly fashion. Once again, James trembled with rage. A more gentlemanly fashion? Was he serious? This cowardly gutter snipe impugns his good name in a most unforgivable fashion, and now, given the opportunity to apologize, he chooses instead to lecture the state auditor on manners. This was outrageous. So James did the only thing an honorer.

man in his position could do. He challenged Rebecca to a duel. Pistols at dawn, he demanded. My honor requires it. In those days, dueling was illegal in Illinois, but over on bloody island, just a quick boat ride across the Mississippi, the great state of Missouri had no law forbidding grown men from shooting each other over a question of honor. Unfortunately, in his rush for satisfaction, James had overlooked an important bit of dueling protocol. The challenger does not determine the weapons or the venue. That falls to the one being challenged. Thus, his invitation was accepted, but not his terms. Never mind the pistols, said the man, called Rebecca. Let us settle the matter like men. Let us proceed at dawn.

with broadswords in a pit. Broad swords? In a pit? Good Lord, thought James. Who was this guy? What sort of savage fights with broadswords when pistols were readily available? But the man called Rebecca had further conditions.

He demanded they placed a plank on the ground between them, a divider at the bottom of the pit, which neither combatant could step across. Crossing the plank, he insisted, would be considered a mortal foul, punishable by an immediate bullet to the head. In that moment, James began to see the magnitude of his miscalculation. He was an excellent shot, but had little experience with a sword. Worse, he was only 5'8. His rival was much taller, with arms that dangled nearly to his knees at hands the size of hamhawks.

In those mitts, a broadsword would be a fearsome weapon indeed. And with an extra foot of reach, James realized he'd never get close enough to land a blow. But there was no backing out now. His honor would not permit it. And so, on the morning of September 22nd, 1842, a large crowd sailed over to Bloody Island to watch two honorable men hack each other to pieces. with broadswords. Inside the pit, on his side of the plank, James felt sick to his stomach. The giant across from him seemed utterly relaxed as he swung the massive cavalry sword over his

head, grinning as the blade swooshed through the air. It was a chilling sound, and it made James wonder about the crunch it would make when it collided with flesh and bone. Then, as if to answer that very question, his rival, to the far side of the enclosure where a thick branch from an oak tree drooped into the pit. Still grinning, he swung his sword with one hand, severing the branch in a single blow and earning a collective gasp from those assembled. This would be over quickly. James felt his sphincter titan as his adversary walked up to the plank that divided them waiting to engage. His options were now, simple, refused to step forward and live the rest of his life in shame or square off against

a man who was certain to kill him. Ultimately, James chose death before dishonor and slowly approached his towering rival, who surprised him with an unanticipated offer. Are you quite certain, sir, that you wouldn't prefer to discuss the root causes of our dispute before we come to blows? James quickly accepted as the crowd above them breathed a sigh of relief. Though many in attendance would have liked to see the state auditor run out of office, no one wanted to see him hacked to death in a pit, including the concerned citizen whose words had both instigated and diffused the entire situation. As for his choice of venue and weaponry,

he later explained, quote, I couldn't very well refuse his demand for, satisfaction, but I didn't want the damned fellow to kill me, which you would have surely done had I agreed to pistols. On the other hand, I didn't want to kill him either, but felt sure I could disarm him with a blade if it actually came to blows. The life spared that day belonged to James Shields, the only man elected senator to three different states, a vain but honorable man who went on to distinguish himself in battle as an officer in the Union Army. As for his adversary, the modern-day gladiator who could have killed him but didn't, he went on to become James Shields' boss, the same boss who promoted him to the rank of Major General 20 years after their aborted duel proving once again it's better to bury the hatchet than swing the sword.

Such was the deeply held belief of a concerned citizen who always preferred a diplomatic solution. but was willing, when necessary, to settle things with broadswords in a pit, which is pretty much what happened when the Army of Northern Virginia refused to back down choosing instead to face off against the Army of the Potomac. Happily, America survived that terrible duel, and though we emerged from the pit, bloodied, and forever changed, we were still united, thanks to a country lawyer, who called himself Rebecca, long before the rest of the country, called him presidents, a president named Lincoln.

Anyway, that's the way I heard it. And that is why Abraham Lincoln is still my favorite president. This is the way I talked about the way I heard it. First of all, before we get started, with deference to my producer Chuck, who, as I mentioned at the outset, is horrified that I'm going to, lengthen our podcast unnecessarily and inordinately, let me say that the podcast itself is over. It ended with do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. This is something you're under no obligation to listen to. In fact, you're under no obligation to listen to any of it, obviously.

But to be perfectly clear, this is just going to be a few minutes of me explaining why the story you just heard came into existence, how I came to write it. and I'm doing it because many of you have expressed an interest in hearing about such things. Also, the feedback last week was really fun. I must have asked rhetorically, I thought, where you guys listen to the way I heard it. I mentioned that while listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast last week, I was picking up Freddy's dog crap, and it made me wonder what you guys were doing when you listened to mine. And Carol says she's in a hot air balloon in Africa.

How cool is that? Steve said he was in a septic tank in Tallahassee. Not as cool, but no less interesting. Sergio was driving through Oklahoma. Dozens of you wanted me to know precisely where you were. Some of you were in the tub. Some were on the toilet. Anyway, feel free to keep me up to speed

with where you listen to broad swords in a pit and whether or not you liked it. I'll tell you why I wrote it or how it came to happen. I was in bed one night flicking around the cable news channels trying to keep things both fair and balanced, if you know what I'm saying. And well, I listened to Adam Schiff, speak his mind, and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and President Trump and so forth and so on. And I wondered if these people would temper their words a bit more if we still lived

in an age where insults could be settled as, the gentleman once settled them outside in the street with pistols or swords or whatever. And it made me wonder if the death of dueling had somehow contributed in an unintended consequential way to a slow degradation of manners here in the 21st century. It was just a rumination, but it made me wonder about what the most realistic dueling scene in cinema was. So I spent the next couple hours going down a bottomless YouTube rabbit hole beginning with the final scene in Rob Roy. Rob Roy is not a great film, I think. It's a good movie. Liam Neeson, Tim Roth.

And shot back in 1995. And the final scene between those two actors is about the most realistic thing I'd ever seen on the big screen or the small screen with regard to two men trying to hack each other to pieces with swords. But I turned to Google to see if there was an even better example and was directed to the duelists, which I'd forgotten about. I saw this movie back in 1977, Ridley Scott film, Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel. And the realism of those scenes was even better than the one in Rob Roy, or worse, depending on your point of view. There is something nauseating, really, about two men facing off over a question of honor, each determined to kill. kill each other. But Way leads on to Way as it often does when you're going down the YouTube rabbit holes and I suddenly found myself watching a Polish movie called Potop, which is the deluge in English. And the deluge stars a couple of actors whose names I can't pronounce. It has to

do with the Swedish invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I know it sounds fascinating, right? Shot back in 1974 and there is a scene. where these two men demonstrate what saber fencing really is all about. It's shot in the pouring rain and in the mud, and it just drips with so much verisimilitude that I would encourage you to watch it. It's the single best dueling scene I've ever seen, and the experts seem to agree,

it's the best thing ever filmed for aficionados of duels. So it was armed with those scenes from those three, films and the vitriol in our current political landscape that drove me back to look at some dueling stories I had heard regarding Andrew Jackson, who killed a guy in a duel back in 1806, a horse breeder named Charles Dickinson. Dickinson actually shot Jackson first, right in the chest, but the crazy son of a gun didn't fall down at all. He just stood there, bleeding, drew his pistol, and killed Dickinson. Andrew Jackson, a president, who fought over a hundred duels,

a man who was not afraid to step outside for sure. So I sat down to write a story about Andrew Jackson, and then I somehow stumbled across a link that brought me to a website called, let me see if I can find it here, it's called the Battlefield Trust. That's what it is, the American Battlefield Trust.

and an article on that site, buried on that site, called Broad Swords and Banks by somebody called Kelsey Johnston. And that was the article that was filled with the information that I basically turned inside out to write the story that you just listened to. Not a story about a president who fought a hundred duels and killed a man, but a story about a president who wasn't afraid to step outside but did all he could to not feel. fight. And that, of course, is who Lincoln was. And I just am fascinated by the moment of clarity and horror that must have flown through James Shields' brain when Lincoln looked at him square in the face and said, never mind the pistols. Let's do it like men. At dawn, in a pit with broadswords. And so, I wrote a story called Broad Swords in a Pit. And you just listen to it. I hope you liked it. I hope you'll be back next week as well, and I hope you'll let me

know over on Facebook where it is you listen to these things because last week's comments were hysterical. Let's see if we can take it up a notch. Thanks to Chuck Klaus Meyer for producing this podcast, even though it's now twice as long as he would prefer. Thanks to one union for allowing me to record it in a state-of-the-art climate-controlled facility. I'll talk to you next.