Stubbornness was only one of the characteristics that led Shields to the dueling field in September 1842. He also had courage in the face of death. During the Mexican War, he would take a bullet in the chest at the Battle of Cerro Gordo. After surgery and nine weeks of recuperation, he would return to command. This was clearly not a man who would run away from a fight to the death. So, on September 22, 1842, Shields left Illinois, where dueling was illegal, for Missouri, where it was allowed. He walked ashore onto Bloody Island ready to kill Lincoln or be killed by him.

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Fortunately for Shields and Lincoln, shared friends John J. Hardin, a relative of Mary Todd, and Dr. R.W. English sped to the duel scene-at least as much as anyone could speed in a small boat in 1842-and pleaded with the would-be combatants to let bygones be bygones. It was a truly desperate attempt to bring peace, but it worked. The duel was cancelled. Though the incident ended without violence, Lincoln avoided talking about it, preferring to forget it ever happened. In a letter written on December 9, 1865, Mary Lincoln recalled that an army officer visiting the White House asked her husband, ‘Is it true…that you once went out, to fight a duel and all for the sake of the lady by your side?’ Lincoln replied, ‘I do not deny it, but if you desire my friendship, you will never mention it again.’

Despite his bad experience with heavy-handed sarcasm, Lincoln did not retire his acerbic wit. Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln’s Democratic opponent in the 1858 election for one of Illinois’s seats in the U.S. Senate, learned that firsthand. Lincoln roasted Douglas to a crisp during a debate in Charleston on September 18, and that display was not a one-time happening. Major General George B. McClellan, who received many kind words from Lincoln early in the Civil War, also knew the sting of Lincoln’s sarcasm. Annoyed by McClellan’s slowness in attacking Confederate armies in Virginia in late 1861 and early 1862, Lincoln referred to McClellan’s massive Army of the Potomac as ‘McClellan’s bodyguard.’ He remarked that if McClellan did not care to use his army for fighting, he ‘would like to borrow it.’

Lincoln never again got tangled up in the makings of a duel. Shields, on the other hand, found himself involved in such proceedings in 1850, when on behalf of Democratic Congressman William H. Bissell, he presented the acceptance of a challenge to a duel issued by future Confederate president Jefferson Davis. But he immediately set to work settling the matter without violence. He was successful. Lincoln and Shields apparently settled their differences, or at least agreed to disagree. During the Civil War, Shields was nominated for the rank of brigadier general in the Union army. Final approval fell to the president-Lincoln. He approved. With that move some 20 years after the duel that was not, Lincoln publicly buried the cavalry broadsword.

This article was written by Louis Vargo and originally published in the February 2002 issue of Civil War Times Magazine.

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