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Letters lead to duel challenge for Abe

Abraham Lincoln, who saw service in the Black Hawk War in Northern Illinois, is said to have joked that the only blood he shed during the conflict was from mosquito bites.

He almost shed a whole lot more when he was challenged to a duel in 1842 by James Shields, then Illinois' Auditor of Public Accounts.
That summer, a letter was published in The  Springfield Journal from "Lost Township," wherein Shields was labeled a “ballroom dandy … without heft or substance, just like a lot of cat fur where cats had been fightin.’"
No one guessed who the writer, “Aunt Becca,” was. Only Lincoln knew it was he who had written the words and submitted them to the Journal.
Shields was understandably upset, and swore it would be “pistols for two” if he should find out who had been lampooning him.
Then, a second “Aunt Becca” letter appeared, worse than the first. However, the author was not Lincoln, but Mary Todd and her sister, Elizabeth Edwards. At this time,  Mary and Abraham had been keeping company for several years.
Shields and Lincoln had met in Vandalia, while both served in the legislature. Rather than let the ladies be embarrassed, Lincoln claimed authorship of both letters and agreed to meet Shields “on the field of honor.”
Lincoln had the choice of weapons, and chose broadswords. The duel was set for Sept. 22, 1842, at Alton, on the neck of land between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.  Dr. Merriman was Lincoln’s second.
Some say the duel was called off because Shields realized Lincoln had an advantage due to his size.
Friends are known to have intervened and straightened out the misunderstanding between the two men.
Lincoln later told a friend, Gen. Linder, that he had one month of practice with broadswords and had chosen that particular weapon, because, “To tell you the truth, I did not want to kill Shields…I didn’t want that darned fellow to kill me, which I rather think he would have done if we had selected pistols.”
In 1843, one year after the “Aunt Becca” letters had been published, James Shields was elevated to a judgeship on the Illinois Supreme Court.
He fought in the Mexican War of 1848 and was appointed governor of the Oregon Territory.
The following year, he was elected senator from Illinois and resigned the office in Oregon.
In 1856, Shields moved to Minnesota, and two years later was chosen U.S. senator from that state.
After that term, he moved to California,  returning to Illinois at the onset of the Civil War to offer his services as an old soldier.
Brigadier Gen. Shields resigned in March 1863 due to injuries and made his home in Carrollton, Mo. He once again took up the practice of law and in 1874 served in the Missouri legislature.
In 1879, he was elected senator and became the only man in this country to serve as senator from three states. A statue in Carrollton, Mo., honors the memory of James Shields.
I shudder to think of the historical repercussions if Lincoln had chosen pistols and Shields had been the victor that September day at Alton.

Linda Hanabarger

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