Bryan Burrough
speaker
583 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2026
last heard 4d ago
Bryan Burrough’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Every duel, of course, began with an insult to a man's honor, commonly a spoken comment, even a single word.
This was literally a trigger word.
The author Barbara Holland, in her excellent book, Gentleman's Blood, lists words such as liar, paltron, coward, puppy, fornicator, madman, and bastard.
Burr killed Hamilton over despicable.
Hamilton's son Philip was killed over damned rascals.
There were also duels in the literature prompted by allegations of incest, treason, and, wouldn't you know, devil worship.
If you felt you'd been insulted, your first step was to send a letter asking the offender basically to take it back.
If he refused, then you could challenge him to a duel.
Sometimes these challenges were given in person, but you could also post a written challenge in a public place, in a tavern, on a street corner, or even in a newspaper in the classified ads.
Your rival was almost certain to accept.
To do otherwise was considered social and political suicide.
At that point, your next step was to agree on a time and a place for the duel and decide the weapons you'd use.
In the antebellum South, this typically meant single-shot flintlock pistols.
Next, you and your rival would each choose a second to accompany you at the duel.
The job of the second was to keep their cool and, if possible, negotiate a truce.
If that failed, you'd typically begin the duel by facing your rival, or you might face away from another and take 10 or 20 paces.
The signal would come from one of your seconds.
Usually they'd shout fire.
If you shot before that, your opponent's second was typically allowed to shoot at you.
If you and your opponent both missed your shots, and this actually happened a lot, you could try again if you wanted, or you could just leave it there with your honor totally intact.
Showing 181–200 of 583 · page 10 of 30
← Previous
Next →