Category: Fleming

Opponents of dueling have made many valid arguments against staking life and honor on swordsmanship or marksmanship, and not all of them went so far as Twain in deriding the very notion of personal honor.   Before evaluating the arguments on both sides, we should have some understanding of what this honor is that would cause a man to risk death.  In the 21st century, honor has little meaning in vernacular English.  It can hardly be used without quotation marks or an ironic intonation of the voice.  This was not always so.  Once upon a time, one could take for...

The Sense of Honor I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more. Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Lucasta” used to be one of those poems that everyone had to commit to memory, and these last two lines constituted the most oft-quoted reference to the principle of honor in English literature.  Lovelace was a young man of good family, whose loyalty to his king and church first sent him to war, later put him in prison, and ultimately plunged him into poverty.  He had left Oxford with an M.A. and was about to serve under Lord Goring...

Charles Lee was a trained soldier.  The son of a British officer, he had served in North America and Portugal during the Seven Years War, and, later, he had gone to Poland  as aide-de-camp to the Polish King.  A strong Whig, he bought an estate in Virginia, where he sympathized strongly with the defense of American rights.  When the Revolution broke out, Lee, as the senior professional officer in the colonies, naturally expected to be made commander-in-chief of the American forces.  When the position went to George Washington, Lee was naturally unhappy.  When, at the Battle of Monmouth, Lee failed to...