Free A Treasury of Great American Scandals by Michael Farquhar

Slowly and deliberately he raised his pistol, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The pistol hammer had stopped at half cock. In what could have only been an agonizing wait for Dickinson, Jackson slowly drew back the hammer, aimed again, and fired. The bullet ripped through Dickinson’s body and he bled to death. “I’d have hit him,” Jackson quipped, dismissing his own injury, “if he had shot me through the brain.”
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    Despite all the criticism of the cold-blooded way in which Jackson had killed Dickinson, that encounter at least met all the stringent contemporary requirements for civilized quarreling. Not all of Jackson’s fights did. Seven years after killing Charles Dickinson by the rules, he was badly wounded in what was a gutter brawl by comparison. It all started when a junior officer named William Carroll asked Jackson to serve as his second in a duel he was to fight with one Jesse
    Benton. Jackson, at age forty-six, wisely demurred. “Why, Captain Carroll, I am not the man for such an affair,” he wrote. “I am too old. The time has been when I should have gone out with pleasure; but, at my time of life, it would be extremely injudicious. You must get a man nearer to your own age.” But Carroll persisted, and Jackson eventually agreed.
    The duel between Carroll and Benton was a ridiculous affair, with Benton taking a squatting position as he wheeled around to shoot at Carroll. In the process, he caught a bullet in his behind, along with a sharp reprimand from Jackson for his disgraceful technique. Thomas Hart Benton, Jesse’s brother and an aide-de-camp to Jackson, was away in Washington working on the general’s affairs when the duel occurred. Upon returning to Tennessee and learning of his brother’s humiliation, Thomas Hart Benton threatened revenge. Word of his anger and threats soon reached Jackson, who wrote Benton asking if what was being said was true. Benton responded with four points, the first of which Old Hickory may have very well agreed with: “That it was very poor business in a man of your age and standing to be conducting a duel about nothing between young men who had no harm against each other, and that you would have done yourself more honor by advising them to reserve their courage for the public enemy.”
    Whether or not Jackson agreed with the points, the issue still remained as to whether Benton wanted a duel or not. “I have not threatened to challenge you,” Benton wrote. “On the contrary I have said that I would not do so; and I say so still. At the same time, the terror of your pistols is not to seal my lips. What I believe to be true, I shall speak; and if for this I am called to account, it must ever be so.”
    So, although there was no official challenge, Benton continued to bad-mouth Jackson all over Tennessee. This infuriated the general, whose reputation was only just beginning to recover from the Dickinson affair. He swore he would horsewhip Benton the next time he saw him. That opportunity came in Nashville, where Jackson and the Benton brothers were staying for a time. Making their way to the post office soon after arriving in Nashville, the general and his companions walked deliberately past the inn where the Bentons had rooms. This was a fairly clear indication that they were spoiling for a fight. Thomas Benton stood out front, “looking daggers” at them, as Jackson’s companion John Coffee noted. “Do you see that fellow?” Coffee asked Jackson in a hushed tone. “Oh yes,” the general replied, “I have my eye on him.” For some reason, though, Jackson did not attack. Instead, he and his group proceeded to the post office, picked up their mail, and headed back in the same direction.
    Now both Bentons were standing outside the inn. As Jackson came abreast of Thomas Benton, the future president suddenly wheeled on him, brandished a whip,