The  Dickinson  affair  may  be  considered  first,  because
it  was  the  less  important  of  the  two.  Had  Jackson  never
been  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency  that  duel  would  have
found  no  place  in  history,  except,  perhaps,  in  Major  Ben
Truman's  ingenious  and  interesting  Annals  of  the  Field
of  Honor.  Leaving  campaign  documents  out  of  the
question  and  considering  only  biographies  more  or  less
standard,  it  will  be  found  that  General  Eaton,  writing
prior  to  1824,  does  not  mention  it.  The  same  is  true
of  the  admirable  little  work  by  An  American  Officer  in
1825.  Dr.  John  Frost,  in  1847,  disposes  of  it  in  less
than  a  page  of  his  valuable  biography;  and  even  that
brief  mention  seems  to  have  been  introduced  as  a  preface
to  some  remarks  on  Jackson's  earnest  support  of  a  law
against  duelling,  debated  in  the  Tennessee  legislature
in  1817.  Amos  Kendall  gives  only  such  parts  of  the
correspondence  as  may  be  necessary  to  an  understanding
of  its  origin  and  describes  the  meeting  itself  tersely.
Judge  Walker  devotes  to  it  about  twenty  lines,  in  the
prelude  to  his  History  of  the  Louisiana  Campaign.
Colonel  Benton  describes  it  in  an  en  passant  fashion,  as
one  among  a  number  of  incidents  calculated  to  show  the
marvellous  nerve  and  prodigious  fortitude  of  the  man.
All  these  men,  except  Dr.  Frost,  were  themselves  be-
lievers in  the  Code  and  had  practised  it,  except  Mr.
Kendall.  Mr.  Parton  gives  up  to  it  fifty-three  pages  of
his  voluminous  work  at  one  stretch,  and  makes  numer-


DUEL    WITH    DICKINSON  155

ous  references  to  it  for  various  purposes  elsewhere  in
his  three  volumes.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  Mr.
